loan-to-value

However, these fixed rates of below 4% are only available to borrowers with a 60% loan-to-value and an £899 fee applies.

Coventry Building Society, the UK's eighth largest lender according to UK Finance, lowered its two-year fixed rate to the end of October 2027 to 3.89% - but the product is only for borrowers with a 65% loan-to-value and comes with a £999 fee.

"The traditional financiers have pulled back their loan-to-value ratios, narrowed the type of borrower that they're wanting to deal with, it's generally harder and you're more likely to fall into the alternatives sector."

Lenders might view the WeWork debacle as a cautionary tale, sources said, potentially requiring borrowers to inject more equity into their properties to reduce the loan-to-value ratio.

Ravi Anand, managing director of specialist lender ThinCats, said firms without large asset bases were struggling to access all but the most vanilla, loan-to-value based finance from mainstream banks, with loans based on core profit much harder to come by.