Private Lender Sydney

Sydney's commercial property landscape

Sydney remains Australia's deepest and most liquid commercial property market. From the high-rise office towers lining Pitt Street and Martin Place through to the tightly-held terrace rows of Surry Hills, Darlinghurst, and Newtown, the city offers an enormous spectrum of property-secured lending opportunities for corporate borrowers. The sheer density of transactions in the Sydney CBD and inner ring means that turnaround expectations are compressed: vendor finance clauses are rare, auction clearance rates remain a weekly barometer, and forty-two-day settlement contracts remain the standard for unconditional exchanges. For a Pty Ltd buyer competing at auction or acquiring a site off-market, having indicative funding lined up ahead of the hammer is not a luxury; it is a competitive requirement.

Inner-west suburbs such as Marrickville, Petersham, and Dulwich Hill have experienced significant zoning uplift as councils push through medium-density residential rezonings along the light rail and metro corridors. Entity borrowers seeking to acquire and hold development-zoned sites often need bridging finance to secure a contract before full DA approval is in hand. We arrange first mortgage bridging loans against these assets, working with panel valuers who understand the gap between the "as is" value of an existing cottage and the "as if complete" value of an approved multi-unit scheme.

Western Sydney's development corridors — stretching from Parramatta through Marsden Park, Box Hill, and out towards the new Western Sydney Airport precinct at Badgerys Creek — present a fundamentally different lending proposition. Lot sizes are larger, site values are lower per square metre, but the velocity of land-banking and subdivision activity is intense. We see strong demand from developer SPVs that need to settle on englobo parcels while DA and subdivision certificate timelines play out over twelve to twenty-four months. A private first mortgage arranged against raw or partly-serviced land with a clear path to subdivision approval is a bread-and-butter transaction for our panel.

NSW-specific regulatory considerations

Corporate borrowers operating in New South Wales should be aware of several state-level regulatory factors that influence the structure and cost of property-secured transactions:

• —NSW stamp duty for entity transfers. Revenue NSW imposes ad valorem transfer duty on acquisitions of dutiable property by companies, trusts, and other entities. For corporate borrowers acquiring security property, the duty liability crystallises at exchange and must be budgeted in the total transaction cost. Where a borrower is acquiring property through a change of beneficial ownership in a landholder entity (rather than a direct transfer), the landholder duty provisions under Part 4 of the Duties Act 1997 (NSW) may apply, and our panel solicitors can advise on structuring.
• —NSW Presale Finance Guarantee relevance. Developers selling off-the-plan in NSW under the Home Building Act framework sometimes face buyers who cannot settle because their own finance approval has lapsed. In those circumstances a developer SPV may need short-term working capital to cover the gap between expected settlement proceeds and construction outgoings. We arrange second mortgages and mezzanine-style facilities against partly-completed projects to address these cash-flow timing mismatches.
• —NSW land tax. Revenue NSW levies land tax annually on the unimproved land value of property owned by entities (companies, trusts, and partnerships are not entitled to the principal place of residence exemption). Entity borrowers should factor in the land-tax liability as a holding cost when modelling a bridging or construction loan — it is assessed as at 31 December each year and payable from the following financial year.

Settlement pressure in Sydney's market

Sydney's conveyancing ecosystem operates under tight timelines. Standard residential contracts exchanged under the 2019 edition of the Law Society / Real Estate Institute of NSW contract typically provide for a forty-two-day settlement period after exchange, and commercial contracts are often shorter by negotiation. Auction purchases require exchange on the fall of the hammer with a ten per cent deposit, and any finance condition is expressly excluded. For a Pty Ltd buyer bidding at auction, the inability to obtain fast unconditional funding can mean forfeiting the deposit and facing a vendor's damages claim. Our panel lenders understand Sydney's auction cadence and can issue indicative letters of offer within days of a borrower's application, subject to valuation and standard credit assessment.

Electronic settlement via PEXA is now mandatory for most real property transactions in NSW. Our panel solicitors and settlement agents have established PEXA workspaces and can coordinate mortgage registration, discharge of any existing encumbrance, and funds flow on settlement day. We work with Sydney-based panel valuers and panel solicitors with deep coverage across metropolitan Sydney and regional NSW; everything is co-ordinated digitally through PEXA, document portals and direct broker communication so timeline-critical deals are not held up by file-hand-offs or in-person attendances.

Sydney scenario — illustrative

Loan products we arrange for Sydney borrowers

Every loan we arrange is a business-purpose facility to an entity borrower (Pty Ltd, unit trust, or other non-natural person), secured by Australian real property. Our four core product categories are:

• —First Mortgage Loans — registered first mortgages for acquisition, bridging, and refinance of commercial and residential investment property across Sydney and NSW.
• —Second Mortgage Loans — registered second mortgages where a borrower needs additional capital behind an existing first mortgage, common for Sydney entities unlocking equity in appreciating property to fund a separate acquisition or business expense.
• —Construction Finance (No Presales) — progress-draw construction facilities for Sydney developers who prefer not to pre-sell, particularly relevant for small-lot townhouse and boutique apartment projects in inner-west and eastern suburbs corridors.
• —Renovation & Flip Finance — short-term facilities for entity borrowers acquiring, renovating, and reselling residential or commercial property in Sydney, covering both purchase price and renovation costs in a single drawdown structure.

Not sure which product fits your deal? View sample deals or start an enquiry and we will match you with the right structure from our panel.

NSW panel and Sydney market coverage

We work with an established bench of NSW-based service providers who support every Sydney transaction we arrange: certified practising valuers with coverage from the Northern Beaches to Campbelltown, commercial solicitors who specialise in private lending documentation, and settlement agents with established PEXA workspaces. When a deal is time-critical — and in Sydney, most deals are — the depth of that NSW panel is what allows us to instruct valuations, draft documents and settle electronically inside compressed timeframes, without relying on any single provider being available.

We also maintain relationships with mortgage managers, accountants, and property advisers across metropolitan Sydney and regional NSW, including the Hunter Valley, Illawarra, and Central Coast corridors. If your entity holds security property outside metropolitan Sydney, we can still arrange finance — our panel's geographic appetite extends across all of NSW, subject to valuation and credit assessment.

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Private Credit Loans (operated by Andorra Capital Solutions Pty Ltd)

National service — registered office in Sydney (postal only). We arrange loans for entity borrowers across all Australian states and territories.