Dealt Out to Bring Transparency to Financing

Dealt.com.au was launched in March of this year as Australia’s first real-time commercial real estate debt marketplace.

The platform was initially conceived as a way to provide greater transparency in non-bank pricing and to provide borrowers with greater choice and, therefore, a better pricing outcome for their project.

Many developers have, lured by a low interest rate, been caught out by lenders’ structuring additional fees, including exit fees, smoothing fees, extreme early repayment penalties and discharge fees.

Dealt.com.au said it has a built-in development feasibility engine that can not only use as a free substitute for the likes of Estate Master, but has the benefit of all lenders submitting their finance terms via the dealt platform, which automatically recalculates the feasibility and provides developers with a comparison of project returns and profitability.

This not only saves time, the transparency allows developers to make the best financial decision for their project.

Founding shareholder James Storey said they had had great feedback from developers and brokers not only being able to save time but also to see the true impact on their project returns, and not get caught out by an offer that looks attractive on the surface, with structured fees during construction or on exit.

The platform now has more than 75 non-bank lenders and family offices actively competing for projects.

“Since launching a little over a month ago, we have had great success,” Storey said.

“One developer looking for site finance received seven term sheets in 24 hours of signing up.

“The borrower was able to negotiate directly though the platform, securing a 65 per cent Loan-to-Valuation ratio in the 7s.”

Rather than charge the borrower, Storey positioned the platform to charge lenders 20 to 25bp of the loan amount.

“It is a small fee, and lenders are happy to pay as the majority are either pooled mortgage funds or credit funds with high cash balances” he said.

“Pricing can be so variable even from the same lender, depending on recent repayments or they might have had new inflows of capital.

“The market is really changing—gone are the days when people were concerned about ‘shopping a deal’.

“Everyone knows the market is competitive and to get the best price you need to go to a diverse range of lenders”.

Dealt.com.au has more features in the works and, after recent backing from 360 Capital’s private equity business and US-based Talos, LLC, continues to strive to provide the transparency the non-bank market requires to truly become an institutional market.

Dealt Platform webinar

When: May 13, 2021 09:30AM Sydney

Topic: Dealt Platform

Register in advance here

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