Specialist commercial mortgage broker for businesses across the East of England

High technology firms in electronics and biochemistry, including ARM Holdings, operate on science parks around Cambridge, forming the so-called Silicon Fen. Smaller technology, life sciences and engineering companies in that cluster sometimes buy their own units rather than rent.

Two things shape these cases. First, lenders lend on profit, not promise: a company with at least two years of profitable accounts is a standard owner-occupier case, while a loss-making, venture-funded business usually is not. Second, the building. A standard office or light industrial unit on a science park is straightforward to value. A unit with heavy laboratory fit-out is assessed on how readily another occupier could use it, and specialist fit-out often adds little to the value a lender relies on. We raise that early, so the deposit is planned around the realistic valuation.

The economy of Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and Suffolk is traditionally mostly agricultural, and Norfolk is the UK's biggest producer of potatoes. Across the Fens, the Norfolk Broads and the Suffolk coast, the trading businesses that buy their premises include:

• food processors, packers and cold stores
• agricultural engineers, machinery dealers and merchants
• haulage and distribution yards
• farm shops, garden centres and rural retail
• pubs, hotels and holiday businesses along the coast and the Broads, priced as trading businesses at typically 7.0 to 9.0% a year, indicative

A working farm is usually financed with an agricultural mortgage, a separate product. A business that trades from rural commercial premises is a normal business mortgage case, and lenders will look at the access, planning use and the depth of the local market for the building.

The Greater Watford area hosts many UK head offices, and Luton is home to easyJet. The New Towns of Basildon, Harlow, Stevenage and Hemel Hempstead were built with planned industrial estates and town centres, and Stansted Airport anchors logistics and aviation-support businesses in west Essex.

In this southern belt the typical buyers are engineering and manufacturing firms on the New Town estates, distribution and trade businesses near the M1, M11 and A12, and the professional, dental and veterinary practices that serve commuter towns. Our page on franchise and professional practice mortgages covers how lenders read a practice's accounts. Companies weighing a move out of the capital can compare with our page on business mortgages in London.

For an owner-occupier mortgage the usual terms are, all indicative and subject to status, accounts and valuation:

• Rates: 6.0 to 7.5% a year owner-occupier; 6.0 to 8.0% for a commercial remortgage.
• Loan to value: typically 70 to 75%, up to 80% for strong cases.
• Term: 5 to 25 years, some to 30, with arrangement fees typically 1 to 2%.

Purchases are taxed under Stamp Duty Land Tax at the non-residential rates: 0% up to £150,000, 2% from £150,001 to £250,000 and 5% above £250,000 (HMRC, gov.uk; rates as at October 2026; check the current rates before you buy). Lenders do not lend the tax. Our commercial stamp duty guide has a worked example. Some directors instead use a SIPP or SSAS to buy the building and lease it to the company, through buying premises through a pension; that needs a regulated pension adviser or scheme administrator, and we introduce rather than advise.

Commercial lending to a limited company is unregulated and falls outside the FCA's regulated mortgage perimeter. Where a deal would be regulated, for example lending to a sole trader or individual, or a property where the borrower or a close family member will live in part of it, we refer it to an appropriately authorised firm.