Commercial Mortgages Old Street
Old Street sits on the City fringe, where Islington meets Hackney and the Square Mile, and it answers to several names: Old Street roundabout, Silicon Roundabout, East London Tech City, St Luke's and Finsbury. It is an office district first and everything else second. We arrange commercial mortgages across EC1V and EC1Y on let office and workspace buildings, flex suites, ground-floor Class E units and the firms buying the floors they already trade from.
A commercial mortgage in Old Street is long-term secured debt against business premises, underwritten on rental cover, trading profit or EBITDA depending on how the property is held. Commercial Mortgages London is a specialist commercial mortgage broker arranging owner-occupier, investment, semi-commercial and trading-business mortgages across Old Street.
Postcode districts: EC1V, EC1Y.
Loading map...
Old Street and the Silicon Roundabout office market
The London Plan designates City Fringe and Tech City as one of London's 47 Opportunity Areas. Every Opportunity Area must support a minimum of 5,000 new jobs or 2,500 new homes, or a combination of the two, and that designation is the reason office floorspace around this roundabout has been rebuilt, re-let and repriced so aggressively. The occupier story is real rather than promotional: London tech companies have raised $5.2 billion of venture capital since 2010, more than 100 of them are now valued above $1 billion, and $2.28 billion went into the sector in 2015 alone, up 69% on the $1.3 billion invested the year before. A disproportionate share of those businesses took their first floors within a short walk of EC1V.
The stock is office-led and unusually varied in quality. EC1V and EC1Y hold new-build towers, refurbished 1980s blocks, converted warehouse floors and small managed suites above ground-floor Class E, often on the same street. Camden and Islington together held 2,294,000 square metres of office floorspace on the last full sub-market breakdown, behind only the City and Westminster. That figure dates from 2001 and reads as relative scale rather than current stock, but the ranking has held. For an underwriter the live question is tenant profile rather than building age. Venture-funded occupiers on short leases with limited trading history are a different covenant conversation from a bank tenant in EC2, two hundred metres away.
HM Land Registry cannot tell us much here, and that silence is the most useful thing about it. Only 96 open-market residential transactions completed in the EC1V and EC1Y postcode districts in the twelve months to 29 May 2026. That is too small a sample to quote a reliable median, and it reflects how little of this area is residential. We assess values here from commercial comparables and lender valuations rather than Land Registry medians. Ninety-six sales across two postcode districts in a full year is a statement about land use rather than about pricing: almost everything with a street frontage here is office, workspace or Class E, which is why we treat this as a commercial risk market and not as an inner London residential proxy.
Three tests decide what a building here can carry. A let office or workspace asset is underwritten on interest cover stressed at 140 to 160%, which lands most deals at 65 to 75% LTV and prices between 6.5 and 8.5%. A business buying the floors it already occupies is tested on EBITDA cover of 1.3 to 1.5 times, can reach 75% on bricks and prices 6.0 to 7.5%. A part-vacant building bought to refurbish and re-let takes a bridge at 8.5 to 11.0%, or 0.70 to 0.95% per month, then terms out once income is proven. Old Street sees more of that third structure than almost anywhere else in central London.
No machine-readable planning register covers EC1V and EC1Y
Old Street sits inside the London Borough of Islington, which does not publish a planning register we can read by machine. This page therefore cites no applications, no counts and no approval rates for EC1V or EC1Y. The Square Mile boundary runs close enough that some fringe schemes are decided by the City of London Corporation instead, and that register we can read, but lifting City applications onto a page about Old Street would misrepresent where those decisions were actually made. So we leave the section empty and say why. What we can verify for this district is the transaction picture, and it is a thin one: 96 open-market residential sales across both postcode districts in twelve months. Where a specific deal turns on a change of use, a lawful development certificate or a licensing position, we check the council portal by hand before submission and put the result in the credit paper.
Commercial property we fund around the Old Street roundabout
Refurbished office floors
Let space in reworked 1980s and 1990s blocks, priced on interest cover at 140 to 160% and LTV of 65 to 75%.
Flex and managed workspace
Buildings let on short and licensed terms, where lenders test the operator's occupancy record as much as the rent roll.
Converted warehouse and studio space
Period industrial stock let to creative, media and technology occupiers on covenant and unexpired term.
Ground-floor Class E units
Coffee, food and service retail beneath office floors, funded as investment at 6.5 to 8.5% pa.
Owner-occupied professional floors
Agencies, consultancies and practices buying their own space on EBITDA cover of 1.3 to 1.5x.
Part-vacant repositioning stock
Buildings bought below stabilised value, bridged at 8.5 to 11.0% pa and termed out after letting.
Mortgage structures for EC1V and EC1Y office assets
Let offices and workspace buildings route through a commercial investment mortgage tested on interest cover. Firms buying the floors they occupy route through an owner-occupier commercial mortgage tested on EBITDA. Vacant or part-vacant buildings bought for refurbishment take a bridge-to-let at 8.5 to 11.0% and convert to a term facility once the lettings are signed. Owners with several EC1 buildings on separate loans use portfolio refinance to bring them under one covenant test at 6.5 to 8.0%. Facilities agreed before the rate reset are repriced through a commercial remortgage at 6.0 to 8.0%. Commercial mortgages here are unregulated lending outside the FCA's regulated mortgage perimeter, and we hold no FCA authorisation for that reason.
Commercial investment
Let office and workspace floors in EC1V and EC1Y, interest cover stressed at 140 to 160%, LTV 65 to 75%, 6.5 to 8.5% pa.
Commercial bridging
Part-vacant buildings bought for refurbishment and re-letting, 8.5 to 11.0% pa or 0.70 to 0.95% per month, termed out once let.
Owner-occupier
Agencies, consultancies and practices buying the floors they trade from, EBITDA cover 1.3 to 1.5x, LTV to 75%, 6.0 to 7.5% pa.
Portfolio refinance
Several EC1 buildings under one facility and one covenant test, 6.5 to 8.0% pa.
Commercial remortgage
Facilities agreed before the rate reset, repriced at maturity, 6.0 to 8.0% pa.
Which lenders take City fringe tech office stock
The tenant covenant, not the building, decides which lenders bid on an Old Street deal. NatWest, Lloyds, Barclays and Santander will take a well-let EC1V building with a mature occupier and a decent unexpired term at 60 to 65% LTV and the bottom of the 6.5 to 8.5% band. Most of this market is multi-let and shorter-let stock, which is the natural territory of Shawbrook, InterBay Commercial, Allica, Hampshire Trust and Cambridge and Counties. Cynergy Bank, LendInvest, Together and Recognise fund part-vacant and repositioning cases, including bridges into a term exit. OakNorth and Handelsbanken take larger relationship-led tickets. Where the rent roll is made up of early-stage occupiers we go to the mid-market desks first, because a clearing bank credit committee will discount that income.
Property types we finance in Old Street
Asset classes most active in Old Street, each linked to the dedicated finance structure, lender appetite and typical terms for that property type.
Old Street commercial mortgage rates, fees and deposit
The commercial mortgage rates we are placing in Old Street at mid-2026 sit at 6.5 to 8.5% pa for the dominant local profile, which here is flexible and multi-let office space with shorter leases. Expect loan to value of 65 to 75%, which puts the deposit or retained equity at roughly a quarter to a third of the value of the property. Owner-occupied business borrowing prices from 6.0 to 7.5% pa, commercial investment from 6.5 to 8.5% pa, and trading businesses from 7.0 to 9.0% pa. A commercial remortgage on an asset you already hold in EC1V, EC1Y runs 6.0 to 8.0% pa.
Costs beyond the rate are where Old Street deals are won or lost. Arrangement fees run 1.0 to 2.0% of the facility. Valuation fees start around £1,500 on a single unit and reach £8,000 or more on a multi-let London building, and the RICS Red Book valuation is the critical path on almost every case, so we instruct it in week one. Legal costs run £4,000 to £15,000. Stamp duty land tax applies at the non-residential rates. Check early repayment charges before you fix, because a five-year fix broken in year two is rarely the cheapest way to repay.
Bridging finance in Old Street, and when it is the right answer
Not every Old Street purchase fits a term facility on day one. An auction lot, a vacant unit that needs letting before a lender will price it, or a change-of-use scheme awaiting consent all point at commercial bridging first. Bridging loans run 8.5 to 11.0% pa, or 0.70 to 0.95% per month, over three to twenty-four months, and exit onto a commercial mortgage once the asset is income-producing. We only recommend bridging finance where the exit is genuinely identified and underwritten, because an unplanned bridge is the most expensive money in commercial finance. If the term lender will take the deal now, we will tell you to skip the bridge.
Which Old Street commercial mortgage lenders to approach
There is no single best lender for Old Street commercial property, only the right lender for this building on this week's credit appetite. High-street commercial lenders price keenest on prime business: Lloyds, NatWest, Barclays and Santander all compete where the covenant is strong. Challenger lenders such as Allica, Aldermore, Cambridge and Counties, OakNorth and Paragon take most of the SME and mid-market finance in EC1V, EC1Y. Specialist lenders, Shawbrook, InterBay Commercial, LendInvest, Cynergy Bank, Together and Hampshire Trust, cover the semi-commercial, multi-let and shorter-lease commercial finance the high street declines.
Comparing those finance options properly is the work. Most brokers send a deal to two lenders they know. We benchmark it across the panel, because the difference between the third-best and the best quote on a Old Street commercial property is usually worth more than every fee in the transaction combined. We arrange commercial mortgages, commercial remortgages, portfolio facilities, second charges and bridging loans. We do not arrange unsecured business loans, and we do not arrange buy-to-let mortgages on residential property, so if that is what your deal needs we will say so and point you elsewhere rather than waste a month finding out.
On eligibility, the property finance question we are asked most in Old Street is what a lender needs before it will commit. For owner-occupied business, two years of filed accounts is the usual minimum, though twelve to eighteen months places comfortably in well-understood sectors. For investment properties the eligibility test is about the tenant, the lease and the cover ratio rather than about you personally. Clean credit for the company and its directors matters throughout, and a full inspection rather than a desktop valuation is worth insisting on, because a thin report can cost five to ten percentage points of LTV. Send us the property market context you already have, the lease or the accounts, and we will tell you which lenders will look at it before you spend anything.
Why we do not quote a median for Old Street
Only 96 open-market residential transactions completed in EC1V, EC1Y postcode districts in the 12 months to 2026-05-29. That is too small a sample to quote a reliable median, and it reflects how little of this area is residential. We assess values here from commercial comparables and lender valuations rather than Land Registry medians.
That scarcity is the point. Where almost nothing residential changes hands, almost everything is commercial, and the valuation conversation moves from comparables to income. Lenders here underwrite the lease, the covenant and the yield rather than the price per square foot of the flat next door.
Old Street commercial mortgage FAQs
Buying or refinancing in Old Street?
Free-of-charge deal assessment. Indicative commercial mortgage terms within 48 hours.