Closing a £23.59 million bridge facility for International House in Ealing, London this week represents more than just our largest transaction to date. It demonstrates something we've been building toward for years: the ability to deliver funding across the capital stack, meeting both the needs of the borrower and of institutional and retail investors.
International House sits prominently on Ealing Broadway, a four-storey office building that Soller Group is converting into 148 residential units. The location—15 minutes from Central London via Elizabeth Line—embodies the kind of well-connected, planning-approved opportunity that attracts serious capital.
But the real story isn't the £23.59 million facility size. It's how we structured it
Traditional development finance often requires developers to coordinate multiple lenders: senior debt from one source, mezzanine from another, potentially equity from a third. Each relationship brings separate documentation, different timelines, and competing priorities.
Our whole loan approach changes this dynamic entirely. Soller Group works with one lender relationship across the entire capital stack—senior and mezzanine tranches coordinated through a single execution process.
The benefits are tangible: faster decisions, streamlined documentation, and exit flexibility that serves the project rather than individual lender requirements. In this case, dual exit options—either asset sale following
planning approval or refinancing into development finance.
What makes this transaction particularly interesting is how we funded it. Rather than choosing between institutional or retail capital, we combined both.
Institutional funding provides the senior tranche with competitive pricing and established execution capability. Our retail platform contributes to the overall facility, ensuring our core mission remains intact: giving individual investors access to institutional-quality development finance opportunities.
This isn't about moving away from retail investors—it's about bringing them along to larger, more sophisticated transactions they couldn't access individually.
The development finance market has been consolidating around scale. Larger transactions increasingly require institutional capital, potentially excluding retail investors from the best opportunities.
Our hybrid approach suggests a different path: using institutional partnerships to enhance rather than replace retail participation. The result is facilities that compete on size and execution while maintaining the
direct property investment access that individual investors value.
This transaction positions us differently in the market. We're no longer limited by single funding sources or constrained to smaller deals. The ability to deliver whole loans through combined capital sources opens opportunities that would otherwise require much larger balance sheets.
For developers, this means access to comprehensive funding solutions without the complexity of multiple lender relationships. For our retail investors, it means participation in larger, institutional-quality transactions while maintaining the direct property access that defines our platform.
The International House transaction proves concept. We can deliver whole loans at scale while staying true to our founding mission. The question now isn't whether we can compete for larger, more complex opportunities—it's how quickly we can scale this capability.
As Nick Treadway, CEO of Soller Group, the borrower, noted: "Shojin understood the nuances of the transaction from an early stage and delivered a sophisticated solution for this complex opportunity. We look forward to working with them again in the near future."
As the development finance market continues evolving, the firms that succeed will be those that can combine capital efficiency with execution sophistication. This transaction suggests we're building exactly that combination.
For whole loan opportunities covering the entire capital stack, contact our team at funding@shojin.co.uk