If you have ever found yourself with a temporary financial difficulty then you may find that bridging loans in the UK could be the perfect answer to your problems. A good example of a time when you may find that you require a bridging loan would be if you have found a property that you wish to buy but you have not yet fully completed on your existing property and therefore do not have the funds available to you yet. Taking out a bridging loan may help you to secure your new home and if you buy at auction, your deposit too. A bridging loan works essentially as a very short term mortgage and will be secured against property so that the lender can recoup their money should you default on paying the money back. It is important to remember before taking out a bridging loan that, typically, they are more expensive then any other forms of loan due the high rates of interest that are charged. So do make sure that you will have the funds to repay it fairly quickly as the timeframe is mostly between 1 mo to a year. The reason for these higher rates tends to be due to the added work and speed involved, but also because they pose greater risk to the lender. Bridging loans are also very useful for people who have inherited a property and who have to pay inheritance tax (IHT) before the property is theirs. When you come to take out a bridging loan in the UK, the borrowing will commonly be secured against an existing property as a form of guarantee to the lender that they will get their money back. The bridging loan would depend on a successful valuation of the relevant property, in which the lender will obtain confirmation of the property's value from a professional valuer. The lender will normally advance a bridging loan of up to a percentage of the property value minus any existing mortgages. This will of course depend upon the lender or broker that you choose to go through as many have different terms. A standard bridging loan could be anything from between ?25,000 to ?500,000, those lesser or greater amounts have been known to be made available, but this will depend again upon the lender but also how much property you have to secure the loan with. UK bridging loans are available from a standard high street bank or building society, or from a specialist bridging lender. Due to the nature of bridging loans it is more then likely that you will need your loan very quickly and if this is the case then you may find that the specialist bridging loans UK lenders may be a more sensible option. A specialist broker will be able to set up a deal very quickly and efficiently. The specialists can mostly come up with the money within only a few days to a week, although it is not uncommon for a bridging loan to be set up within 48 hours.