Property finance in 2026 looks, on the face of it, pretty good. Lenders are competing hard. Decisions in Principle are flying back in minutes. Rates are being advertised at levels that would've seemed optimistic a couple of years ago (though with the broader macro environment still exerting upward pressure, the picture isn't quite as rosy as we'd hoped).
And yet SME developers are still getting squeezed. Margins are tighter than they should be. Schemes that look solid on paper are coming unstuck. And more often than not, the culprit isn't the market - it's the assumptions buried in the appraisal.
That's what LandTech and Brickflow set out to investigate. And what we found is going to make uncomfortable reading for anyone who's ever built a financial model around an advertised rate...
The Rate You're Quoted and the Rate You Pay
There's a number that lenders love to put in their marketing, and there's a number that actually appears in your loan agreement. The gap between the two is wider than most developers expect - and the implications for your margins are significant.
It's not that lenders are acting in bad faith; it's that those headline figures represent a very specific, very idealised borrower profile. Most SME developers don't fit it, and the pricing reflects that. The question is: does your appraisal?
In the white paper, we dig into the real-world data behind this gap - including what it actually costs developers who build their models on the wrong number.
Fast Doesn't Mean Safe
The speed at which you can get a DIP these days is remarkable. It's also, if you're not careful, a trap.
A quick "yes" from a lender feels like progress. It can give you the confidence to move on a site, commit to investors, or push ahead with planning. But a DIP is only as good as the assumptions sitting behind it - and those assumptions don't always survive contact with a full credit process.
There's also a regional dimension to this that doesn't get nearly enough attention. Where you're building matters more than many developers realise, and not just for demand. The white paper gets into the details on this, including what the data tells us about turnaround times, lender appetite, and where the gaps between promise and delivery tend to be widest.
Planning Delays Are a Finance Problem, Not Just a Planning Problem
This is the one that tends to catch developers off guard. Most people know that planning takes longer than it should. Fewer people have properly modelled what that delay costs them in finance terms.
The numbers, when you run them, are sobering. And because you can't always secure development finance on an unconsented site, any delay before planning is granted means you're sitting on more expensive short-term debt for longer. Weeks turn into months. Months turn into a figure that can genuinely change whether a scheme works or not.
It doesn't stop there, either. The market exposure that comes with an extended planning timeline creates its own risks - ones that have caught out developers before and will do again. The white paper sets out the full picture, including what the current data says about planning timelines and how developers can stress-test their models accordingly.
The Full Picture Is In the White Paper
We've pointed at three of the pressure points here, but they're part of a bigger story - one that also covers valuations, leverage, lender behaviour, and what SME developers can actually do to protect their margins in this market.
LandTech and Brickflow have partnered to bring development finance directly into LandInsight, because we think developers deserve the same clarity and market access that larger players have always had. The white paper is part of that - an honest look at what the data really says, without the marketing gloss.
Download the white paper now.
