A commercial mortgage broker for a market with no best-buy tables

Vortex Finance is a whole-of-market commercial mortgage broker. We are not tied to any single bank or lender. We compare a panel of 100+ commercial lenders on your side of the table — high-street banks, challenger banks and specialist lenders — package your case the way an underwriter wants to see it, and come back with indicative terms. There is no fee to find out what fits.

What a commercial mortgage broker does

A lender approves and funds the loan. A broker finds the lender whose appetite fits your business, your property and your numbers, then puts the case in front of them in the right shape. On commercial, those are two very different jobs — because there is no list of rates to compare in the first place.

We do four things on a commercial case. We match your deal to the lenders whose criteria fit the asset, the trade and the loan size, across the whole market. We package the trading accounts, the asset and the exit into a file an underwriter can credit-approve. We negotiate pricing that is never published, using what we know each lender will move on. And we manage the case from agreement in principle through valuation and legals to drawdown. Done well, that is the difference between a deal that completes and weeks lost on a lender that was never going to say yes.

Why whole-of-market matters most on commercial

Residential mortgages have comparison tables. Commercial mortgages do not. There are no best-buy tables, no published rates, and no two deals priced the same way. Pricing is set case by case on the strength of the business, the property and the relationship with the lender.

That is exactly why whole-of-market matters more here than anywhere else. Go to your own bank and you get one credit appetite, one view of the asset, one answer. We compare 100+ commercial lenders, including challenger banks and specialist lenders that never appear on the high street, and we know which ones lend on your property type, your sector and your loan size. You see the shortlist before you commit, with no lender bias, because we are not tied to one. Where speed matters more than price, a commercial bridge can complete first and refinance onto a term loan once the deal is settled.

Owner-occupier or investment, and what you can borrow

Commercial mortgages split into two broad cases. An owner-occupier mortgage funds premises your own business will trade from — a shop, a warehouse, a surgery, an office. An investment mortgage funds property you let to a commercial tenant. Lenders treat them differently, and owner-occupiers can sometimes borrow at a higher loan-to-value than investors, because the lender can see the business behind the building.

Indicative commercial rates currently run around 7% to 9% a year, priced case by case rather than off a rate card. Maximum loan-to-value typically reaches around 75%, sometimes higher for a strong owner-occupier covenant.

Here is a worked example. Say your business wants to buy its trading premises for £600,000. At 75% loan-to-value the lender advances £450,000 and you put in £150,000 plus costs. At an indicative 8% on interest-only, that is roughly £36,000 of interest a year, or about £3,000 a month — against rent you would otherwise pay a landlord. The lender will want the trading accounts to cover that comfortably. We map this before submission, so you know the deal stands up before a valuer is ever instructed. You can sketch the numbers first with our finance calculators.

What a commercial lender weighs

On a commercial case the lender is underwriting four things at once: the business, the asset, the covenant and the exit. Strong trading accounts make the pricing; a weaker set can still work if the asset and exit are right. Our job is to present all four in the lender’s language so the case is judged on its strengths, not held up by its gaps.

Building from scratch or heavily converting commercial space is a different product again — that is a development finance job, drawn down in stages against works, and we arrange those cases too.

How a commercial mortgage broker is paid

On most commercial deals we earn a procuration fee from the lender when the loan completes. That is standard practice across the broker market and it does not change the terms you are offered. On more complex cases a broker fee may also apply — and if it does, we put it in writing and agree it with you before you commit to anything.

There is no charge to get indicative terms, a lender shortlist, or a view on whether your deal stacks up. You only move to a fee position once you have seen the options and told us to proceed. Every fee that touches your deal is disclosed upfront, in writing.

What to bring to a first conversation

The faster you can put a case in front of the right lender, the cleaner the pricing. To return indicative terms we usually need the last two to three years of business accounts — or a business plan if you are newer — recent management figures, details of the property and the price, the deposit you can put in, and a sense of how the loan will be repaid. If you are missing pieces we can still indicate; we simply sharpen the terms as the file fills in.

Common questions

All rates, loan-to-values and figures above are indicative (June 2026). The lender confirms the final terms on application, once it has seen the property, your accounts and your file. Vortex Finance is a broker, not a lender.