Specialist Light Industrial Finance in Portsmouth

Looking for funding on an industrial unit in Portsmouth? Portsmouth sits in Hampshire, within the South East industrial market. We are a finance arranger, not a lender: we arrange commercial mortgages and the full range of light industrial finance on Portsmouth property, from acquisition and bridging through development and mezzanine to long-term debt, across Hampshire.

Lenders underwrite a Portsmouth industrial deal on its own fundamentals first, the rent roll or the trading business, the tenants, the unit and the borrower, then test it against the wider market. Multi-let rents in the region average around £13.14/sq ft (South East & East multi-let average, Gerald Eve (Newmark), Multi-Let Winter bulletin 2024, Q3 2024), with prime South East estates at £22/sq ft (Gerald Eve (Newmark), Multi-Let Winter bulletin 2024, Q3 2024) and prime equivalent yields around 5.15% (Gerald Eve (Newmark), Multi-Let Winter bulletin 2024, Q3 2024).

How much you can borrow against Portsmouth industrial property

On an industrial investment in Portsmouth, a commercial mortgage usually reaches around 65 to 70 percent of value, so you would budget for equity of roughly a third of the price plus stamp duty and costs. The figure is driven by the quality of the income, the tenants, the unexpired lease terms and the condition of the unit, not the postcode. Vacant or part-let property is funded differently: bridging finance secures an auction purchase or a unit awaiting letting, typically to around 70 to 75 percent of value from around 0.75 percent per month, and development or refurbishment finance funds works to around 65 to 75 percent of cost, with mezzanine stretching the stack where the scheme supports it. Interest rates depend on the lender, the leverage and the income profile, so we quote them deal by deal rather than as a headline rate. We size the right facility, rate and equity requirement for your Portsmouth deal.

The South East industrial market

Portsmouth is an established industrial market within South East, the kind of catchment lenders are comfortable underwriting. Well-let units and estates attract competitive commercial-mortgage and term-debt pricing, while bridging and refurbishment finance suit vacant units, auction purchases and value-add plays where the exit is clear.

The ring of estates around London, from Slough and the Thames Valley to Crawley, Basildon and the Cambridge to Colchester arc, is the largest multi-let market outside the capital and the natural overspill for occupiers priced out of it.

Prime rents in this region run from £22.00 per sq ft in Hemel Hempstead and £21.50 in Crawley down to £10.00 in Colchester and Ipswich, on South East and East of England all-grades averages of £13.14 and £11.66 (Gerald Eve, Q3 2024). The bulletin counts 56 schemes in the regional pipeline but only 1.5m sq ft under construction across two large regions, so the supply squeeze that drove the post-2020 rental run is structural rather than cyclical. Equivalent yields of 5.15 to 5.60 percent keep the region firmly on institutional buy lists, and trade counters remain the largest occupier segment at around a quarter of space. We arrange estate acquisitions, refurbishment programmes and owner-occupier purchases here in roughly equal measure, and lender appetite is the deepest outside London.

Market commentary and figures for South East are drawn from Gerald Eve (a Newmark company) (Multi-Let, Winter bulletin, 2024).