The area is currently undergoing a major £5.25bn regeneration programme, creating thousands of new jobs and homes for local people.

Regentsmead has received a significant spike in enquiries in the area, where it has funded, or agreed funding, for six sites this year.

“Croydon is a wonderful area that is ripe for development given its proximity to London and very good infrastructure,” said Ashley Ilsen, head of lending and CMO at Regentsmead.

“In recent years, the local council has done well to [develop] excellent transport links, however, at times, a good supply of quality housing has perhaps been lower down the agenda.

“We have seen a huge shift in impetus recently from the council to encourage developers, which has seen Croydon labelled as a regeneration area, which means, in theory, they should welcome new planning proposals for good-quality schemes.”

“Regentsmead has developed a very strong reputation among Croydon property developers for its level of service, speed and expertise, which has seen Regentsmead become the first port of call for development finance” said Sam Howard Chief Operating Officer at Regentsmead. “We are delighted to be able to be the finance partner on such a large number of varied high quality schemes.”

 In order to capture some of the developments going on within the thriving borough, Development Finance Today visited a number of the sites with Regentsmead.

The first development, situated in Stafford Road, was previously home to a car park and garages.

The site has planning permission for four homes and has just been given the green light after an archaeological dig.

Regentsmead provided the developer with a £1.1m loan, for a 15-month term, on a gross development value of £2.5m.

Another site Development Finance Today visited was in south Croydon, where the developer had held a small parcel of land for four years. The land is set to make room for a new four-bedroom house with a modern decking space in the garden. 

Regentsmead provided the developer with £200,000 for a 12-month term, with a gross development value of £600,000.

Another site Regentsmead has funded in Croydon was a large gated garden which will make way for nine high-end homes. With the end value at around £3.5m, Regenstmead agreed a £1.1m loan.

The last site Development Finance Today visited in Croydon was on Campbell Road, where Regentsmead has just agreed to fund a major property conversion.

So far, the existing property has been gutted, and a basement dig, which took a total of five months, has left the building on stilts.

Regentsmead provided a 15-month loan with £600,000 towards construction costs, with an end value of £2m.

“Campbell Road is a very interesting project,” Ashley said.

“The developer in question said they were frustrated by how many lenders shied away from the technicalities of the scheme.

“As is the case with many basement excavations, there is a significant amount of engineering required, however, this is where the extra value is added that truly makes the scheme worthwhile for the developer.

“It makes us very comfortable knowing that there is a quality construction team in place that has excellent experience of excavating basements. We are already discussing phase two of this project.”

The development is set to create a total of seven apartments, and with six to seven people on-site each day, the site manager expected it to be completed by June 2017.

Ashley added: “It’s great to see so many SME developers in the area are choosing Regentsmead as their preferred development finance partner and we have quickly established ourselves and further developed our local expertise.”