Brickflow Renews Exclusive VAT Bridging Partnership with BloomSmith to Streamline Commercial Property Deals

Brickflow and BloomSmith have renewed their exclusive partnership, securing a streamlined route for brokers to fund VAT on commercial property purchases. For fintech professionals, this move underscores the growing importance of niche, embedded lending solutions within digital marketplaces to resolve specific friction points in complex real estate transactions.

What was announced

Brickflow has renewed its exclusive partnership with BloomSmith, maintaining the latter as the platform’s sole provider for VAT bridging loans. The arrangement, which began in 2025, provides a dedicated channel for brokers to secure the 20% VAT payment required at the completion of eligible commercial property transactions. Because BloomSmith’s product does not require a fixed legal charge, borrowers can cover this tax obligation without tying up existing equity or reopening negotiations with their senior debt providers.

This is particularly relevant for high-value deals; for instance, a £1 million commercial purchase requires £200,000 in cash on completion day. While this VAT is often reclaimable later, the immediate liquidity requirement can stall deals if not managed through specialist finance. The renewal follows a period of rapid ecosystem expansion for Brickflow. In the last year, the marketplace has integrated its funding search into LandTech’s LandInsight platform, incorporated Sprift property data into broker workflows, and added rent advances of up to £50,000 via Factored. It also partnered with Revcore for distressed real estate solutions. Currently, the Brickflow marketplace connects more than 300 brokerages with a panel of over 160 lenders across bridging, development finance, and commercial mortgages.

"We only give exclusivity to a lender that keeps delivering, and BloomSmith's performance on the platform made renewing an easy decision. VAT on completion day is a stage that too often gets patched together at the last minute, and brokers should be able to solve it without disrupting the rest of the deal. That is the ecosystem we are building, and BloomSmith is a big part of it. It is what smarter decisions and bigger pipelines look like for our brokers."

Daniel Silver, Head of Strategic Partnerships at Brickflow

The companies involved

Brickflow operates as a central digital marketplace for the UK’s specialist property finance sector. The platform is designed to replace manual loan sourcing by providing brokers with a searchable database of lending products, covering development finance, bridging loans, and commercial mortgages. By aggregating over 160 lenders, Brickflow aims to bring transparency and speed to a corner of the finance market that has traditionally relied on fragmented, relationship-based deal-making. The company has positioned itself as an ecosystem player, frequently embedding its tools into third-party site appraisal and data platforms to capture deal flow at the point of origin.

BloomSmith is a specialist lender focused entirely on the VAT bridging niche. In the UK commercial property market, VAT is a frequent hurdle because it must be paid upfront even when the buyer intends to recover it from HMRC later. BloomSmith’s model is built around this specific friction point, offering a product that sits alongside senior debt without disrupting the primary funding structure. As an exclusive partner on the Brickflow platform, the company serves as a primary resource for brokers navigating the tax implications of commercial acquisitions.

What FF News has reported before

FF News has previously tracked Brickflow’s efforts to automate and embed property finance. In August 2026, the publication reported on how Brickflow and Together Launch Instant Automated Decisions-in-Principle for Commercial Brokers, a move aimed at reducing the time between application and approval. Later that year, coverage detailed how the firm was expanding its reach into investor-facing tools, as seen when Brickflow Embeds Live Property Funding Comparison into Upstix Investor Platform. These developments highlight a consistent strategy of moving beyond a standalone marketplace to become an integrated component of the wider real estate technology stack.

What this means

This renewal signals a shift in how digital marketplaces are evolving from generalist aggregators into curated ecosystems of specialist tools. By maintaining an exclusive provider for a niche like VAT bridging, Brickflow is effectively acknowledging that a standard lending search is often insufficient for complex commercial deals. This puts pressure on traditional, manual brokerages that lack the real-time connectivity to solve completion-day liquidity issues. It also raises questions for the wider sector about whether exclusivity will become the norm for highly specialized products, potentially limiting competition in exchange for a more seamless, "guaranteed" user experience for the broker.