After a false start, Relendex, the secured P2P lending platform for commercial property investments, has relaunched its property funding platform with a £700,000 deal.

B&C had previously reported that the platform was seemingly on the brink of failure having not been able to attain full funding for its first advertised loan deal.

However, the platform is now back on track having launched the first of many new loan deals on its live marketplace.

B&C spoke to founder and CEO of Relendex, Michael Lynn, about the false start, who admitted “we needed to walk before we could run” and that it wasn’t the right loan deal to kick-start the platform launch.

Now, Relendex is launching a loan auction for £700,000 on a 12-month term. The offering is for a senior first charge loan, with an LTV of 52 per cent, on a new-build residential apartment building in Newquay.

The loan covers nine of the fifteen units in the apartment building and lenders and investors successful in the auction lot will earn rates from 9 per cent.

There are many other loans in the pipeline for the platform, with six loans listed as “COMING SOON” on the Relendex Live Marketplace.

Commenting on the dropped first loan, Michael said: “It’s about matching borrower requirement against lender appetite. It’s like a big bird taking off, you’ve got to have the momentum and run-up before you can fly.”

Michael added: “We now have strong appetite and support and have gained that momentum. We’ve got some indications from a number of lenders and have strong relationships with a number of investors, HNW individuals and a couple of investment companies.”

The lot sizes are a lot smaller now, ranging up to £850,000, and there is a much better understanding when dealing with lender appetites and for particular lots.

The platform made a bad start after numerously extending the expiry date of its first loan deal, a much larger £2.95 million loan, which was subsequently withdrawn from the platform.

Michael informed B&C that that the loan was also withdrawn due to a reliance on an underwriter. The underwriter purpose was to bring a guarantee of funds for a particular project, but “that didn’t come through”.

The platform’s optimism could have been its downfall in respect to its first loan; however as Relendex is dealing typically with higher-ticket loans it is no surprise that it takes longer to attain the full amount of funding needed and indeed for it to complete. The news that Relendex is starting off again with smaller loan sizes is a positive move forwards and one which should prove popular amongst lenders and investors.

Relendex launched in April 2012 as the “first peer-to-peer lending exchange” for commercial property loans with an aim of raising £250 million of funding.

For its launch, Relendex had taken on ex-astl CEO Adrian Bloomfield on an advisory basis. The lender had also announced that it had appointed Mirabaud Securities, one of Switzerland’s oldest and most well-regarded private banks, to raise up to £250 million from private and institutional lenders to invest in commercial property loans via its online exchange platform.

Other property P2P platforms are working well within the marketplace, including the LendInvest platform, which recently broke the £8.5 million barrier for loans completed to date.

Relendex is now back on track with its new auction offering. We await to see how the first loans progress.