Commercial Mortgages Old Portsmouth and Spice Island

The Old Portsmouth and Spice Island commercial property market

Old Portsmouth is the most architecturally protected commercial submarket in Portsmouth and the densest concentration of listed waterfront hospitality on the central Solent. The Bath Square and Broad Street pub cluster (The Still and West, The Spice Island Inn, The Bridge Tavern, The Dolphin) carries a heritage-licensed trade that ties directly to the HMS Victory, Mary Rose and Spinnaker Tower visitor flow through the Historic Dockyard, the cross-harbour Wightlink and Hovertravel passenger footfall, and the Naval Base civilian catchment immediately to the north. Around the pub stack, boutique hotel, guesthouse and serviced-apartment accommodation along Broad Street and the Camber funds against trading accounts rather than bricks-and-mortar comparison, and heritage office floors in converted merchant buildings carry a small but resilient owner-occupier professional firm base.

Transactions are dominated by long-hold private operators on the Bath Square and Broad Street pub freehold, boutique hospitality and guesthouse operators buying their building, and a steady flow of waterfront restaurant and small-hotel refinancings against the heritage visitor cycle. The deep-volume zone for our PO1 Old Portsmouth commercial mortgage book sits in the £400K to £2.5M bracket, listed pub freehold, small boutique hotel acquisition, heritage office floors and small mixed-use blocks. Pricing currently 6.5 to 8.5% pa for clean heritage hospitality investment on Bath Square, with strong-covenant flag-operated stock at 6.5 to 7.5% and independent listed pub freehold at 7.5 to 8.5%. Refinancing volumes picked up materially through 2025 and 2026 as five-year fixes from the post-pandemic hospitality recovery cycle matured into a higher base-rate environment.

HM Land Registry residential transactions inside the PO1 conservation core cluster around the converted naval terraces along Broad Street and the Camber, with recent files including a Nobbs Lane PO1 2EY semi-freehold at £383,000 and an Isambard Brunel Road PO1 2RX flat at £105,000 that signals the wider central PO1 leasehold flat trade. They are not a direct commercial signal but they confirm that heritage Old Portsmouth continues to absorb residential buyer demand against the backdrop of the wider Portsmouth city centre and Gunwharf Quays leisure economy, which underwrites the ground-floor pub, hotel and restaurant trading-business income that most of our Old Portsmouth and Spice Island commercial mortgage lending sits against.

Active commercial property types in Old Portsmouth and Spice Island

Lender appetite for Old Portsmouth heritage pub, boutique hotel and waterfront F&B

Heritage hospitality is the deepest single sector in Old Portsmouth and Spice Island, and the lender pool narrows to a heritage-comfortable shortlist on listed waterfront stock. Cynergy Bank runs one of the most active UK hospitality books and sits at the top of our shortlist on Bath Square and Broad Street listed pub freehold, boutique hotel and guesthouse, prime independent stock at 60 to 70% LTV and 7.0 to 8.5% pa on EBITDA cover at 1.5 to 1.8x. Shawbrook and InterBay Commercial cover heritage mixed-use and Class E upper-floor repositioning across the PO1 conservation core. LendInvest covers refurbishment and bridge-to-let where the listed asset is being repositioned, including the Spice Island heritage hospitality scheme archetype at Bath Square. Lloyds, NatWest, Barclays and Santander compete on the largest flag-operated boutique hotel and heritage office investment freeholds at 60 to 65% LTV and 6.5 to 7.5% pa, with Lloyds and NatWest carrying the strongest South Coast commercial RM presence in the central Portsmouth catchment. Allica Bank is active across South Coast hospitality on small listed pub, boutique hotel and waterfront F&B owner-occupier freehold. HTB and Together take selected listed-pub and boutique-hotel investment and mixed-use heritage deals. Cambridge & Counties, Paragon and YBS Commercial take selected PO1 heritage investment and mixed-use deals where the operator track record and listed-building maintenance plan fit each lender policy. Hampshire Trust Bank is headquartered in Hampshire and brings strong local knowledge to Old Portsmouth heritage hospitality and conservation-area mixed-use freehold deals. Refinancing on a stabilised listed waterfront pub or boutique hotel typically prices 7.0 to 8.5% pa at 60 to 70% LTV across the operator-EBITDA-led product. Commercial mortgages are unregulated lending and fall outside the FCA regulated mortgage perimeter, we do not hold FCA authorisation because the products we arrange are unregulated.