INVESTORS have coughed up a total of £5.055million to fund the conversion of a former Taunton office block into 55 self-contained apartments.

The cash will support the development at 1 Tangier Central, based in a gated community that features several other offices, including the County Gazette's base.

Property investment platform Sourced Capital has today (Monday, July 4) announced the closing of its largest loan to date.

It is anticipated that all the homes should be ready to be occupied within 10 to 12 months of the commencement of the scheme.

The loan will be used to purchase and develop the building and has a term of 18 months to accommodate the development and sales periods, with a loan to gross development value of 67 per cent.

The targeted interest rate return for investors is 12 per cent per annum for investments over £20,000.

Sourced Capital commercial director Derek Pratt said there has been huge demand from investors in the most recent loans launched by the company, which is directly authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

Prior to the Taunton loan, the two most recent deals launched on the Sourced Capital investment platform were funded in record time - the first, a £2.1million loan funded in just 24 hours, and the second being a £267,000 loan funded in under a minute.

Mr Pratt added: "We are delighted to announce the closing of our most recent investment opportunity, which provided more qualified investors than ever the opportunity to invest in an increasingly popular asset class.

"Over recent months, demand for this type of investment has been growing steadily to the point where we have funded deals in under a minute.

"This loan helped to satisfy that demand from our investors looking for rates of return that can stay ahead of targeted inflation rates.”

Sourced Capital has returned over £16million of capital and about £2.68million of interest to investors since its inception in 2019 and, with the Taunton deal, has now funded more than £32million of loans for property developments across the UK.

Over the past three years, investors have achieved an average return more than 11 per cent per annum.

For this type of investment, there is no protection from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, so there is a risk of loss to investors’ capital, even with the loans benefitting from first legal charge security.