Bridging and buy to let finance in Paisley and Renfrewshire

Paisley is a tenement town. Renfrewshire Council’s housing strategy says tenements are home to almost a third of the area’s people, many of them built before 1919, and that around two thirds of the private rented homes in Renfrewshire were in Paisley and Linwood on 2015 registration data. We arrange bridging finance from £75k and buy to let finance for landlords and limited companies buying in Paisley, Renfrew, Johnstone, Linwood and the rest of Renfrewshire. Independent and tied to no lender. We search more than 200 lenders through specialist sourcing platforms. Homes for you or your family to live in are not something we finance.

Old tenements and the cost of the common parts

The same strategy is frank about condition: the poorest-quality housing in Renfrewshire is concentrated in older privately owned tenements, and the cheapest lets tend to be small tenement flats with building condition problems. For an investor that is both the opportunity and the risk. A tired Paisley flat can be bought for a modest price, but the roof, the stonework and the close are shared, and a common repair your neighbours cannot fund lands on everyone.

The council is trying to break that deadlock. Its Missing Shares pilot can pay up to £10,000 towards a non-paying owner’s share of an agreed tenement repair. Before you buy, ask the factor or the other owners what repairs are planned, whether a missing-shares arrangement is in place, and what your share would be. Lenders will ask the same questions, and a valuer who sees scaffolding will want the answers.

Flats that need internal work before a buy to let lender will look at them are refurbishment bridging cases. Budget for the common repairs as well as your own kitchen and bathroom.

Regeneration areas: know where the bulldozers are

Renfrewshire Council is running a ten-year housing-led regeneration programme, worth £100 million, across eight areas of Paisley, Renfrew and Johnstone. In some of them, Ferguslie and Broomlands among them, the plans include improvement, new building and, from 2028, demolition. The council’s regeneration areas are mostly tenements and deck-access flats it built between the 1930s and the 1960s, with several hundred privately owned flats in the same blocks.

That cuts both ways for a lender. A flat in a block that will be refurbished may gain value; a flat in a block earmarked for demolition is very hard to finance at all. Check the council’s plans for the specific block before you bid, especially at auction, where these flats sometimes appear. Our page on auction finance covers the checks to do before the hammer falls.

In the town centre, the Orchard Street Housing Renewal Area and the nearby Causeyside Street tenements are being refurbished inside the Paisley Town Centre Conservation Area, so conservation rules apply to work there.

Lets near the university

The University of the West of Scotland’s Paisley campus brings student demand to the town centre. Renfrewshire licenses HMOs, and its licensing page does not mention an overprovision policy, but planning still applies to any change of use; our HMO finance page covers what lenders need. Renfrewshire has no short-term let control area.

Bridging to a buy to let in Renfrewshire

Most investment deals here end in a buy to let refinance once the flat is fixed and let. On the lower rents of many Paisley tenements, the lender’s rental stress test is often what limits that loan, so run it before you buy on the bridge to let calculator, and check the loan clears our £75k minimum. Our bridge to let page covers the six month rule some term lenders apply. Two to three weeks is realistic in Scotland. Faster is possible on simple cases.