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Thank you to everybody that has joined in the last couple of minutes. This is our second webinar of our West One Commercial series. My name is Sam Pettit, and I'm the Regional Account Manager for West One, supporting our intermediaries across the north of England and up into Scotland across our bridging development and our commercial mortgage products.

So our commercial team is based up in Manchester. and we have Craig Sanders who joins us. He is one of our telephone BDMs.

So if you've if you've dealt with the team, you've spoken with the team, had any new enquiries that you've picked up the phone to the guys in Manchester, then you most likely will have had a conversation with Craig at some point. It's his priority to make sure he's having terms back into your inbox ASAP. So we've got Craig on the call with us. Hi, Craig.

Hello everyone, welcome.

And then we've also got one of our senior underwriters, John Brown. So John, he's got around eight years experience in the underwriter role, with over half of that dealing specifically with commercial mortgage cases.

So we've got two really experienced individuals on the call with us today. So there's a huge opportunity here for everyone who has joined us to ask your questions so we can get those answered for you today. So like I said earlier, any burning questions, the chat screen should be live for everybody. 

Please do throw your questions into it. I'll either jump on them throughout the session or we'll look at revisiting them and any that we've not managed to cover off towards the end. So please do use that because that's a big opportunity for everyone. Okay. 

So with this being the second in our series for the commercial webinars, today is all about pinpointing where we can support you and how you know, the particular kinds of deals that may be causing some headaches, the areas in the market where we are seeing most of those opportunities.

And as I've said, answering those questions for you, should you have any for us live today. so plenty of opportunities for us to be able to cover it off live with you. So I thought it was well worth also covering off. So if you weren't with us for our first webinar, so our head of sales, Jez Quinn, really comprehensively give a good introduction for us in the commercial space. 

So us how our journey to launch into the commercial space, which is a really, really exciting time for us. So if you haven't seen it, it is on our YouTube channel. You can go and have a look, and I'd really recommend that you do, because it's a really nice entry level where we are in that market, our USPs, and yeah, where you would be picking up the phone to us.

And our journey into that space. But I mean, look, it's always well worth me giving you a quick summary for this for those that weren't on the call. So at West One, you know, we are the home of specialist lending. And what we mean by that is we are looking to cover all angles for you when you're dealing with your customers and looking to provide them with specialist finance solutions. 

With us having operated for over 20 years in that short-term lending space, so offering lending solutions across both our bridging and development products, the next step for us was to branch out into that longer-term market, with that starting off with buy-to-lets, moving into second charges, and now with the residential mortgage proposition as well. So, you know, naturally, the next step there was to explore that commercial mortgage space as well and looking at where are those gaps in the market, where we can really launch something into a landscape where those gaps are and we can really add value to our broker partners. So that's absolutely what we've done. And we're really, really excited with what we've launched and the success that it has had to date. So I think it's worth just summarising where we are in that market.

And there's a number of gaps that I've just mentioned where I feel like we do pick up a number of pieces of business and it's going from strength to strength, month on month, new enquiries through the door, deals turning into applications and ultimately funding. So to give you an idea on where we sit, you ultimately have your high street lenders, you have your challenger banks, and then you know, you have your more specialist lenders.

Now there's this gap in the middle where we are ultimately coming in. And where we are ultimately pitching ourselves is that price versus service area. Okay. So I was having a really interesting conversation with Duncan the other day, actually, on sort of turnarounds, average speeds to completion and why we're, you know, why we are where we are and why we're being so successful. And at the moment, one of those figures that came out.

Was that on purchases, you know, we're averaging at three months, and on refinance, we're averaging at two months. That's incredibly quick within the mortgage market space, where others of our competitors are maybe going between anywhere between maybe four to six months, maybe longer, as an average. And I'll come on to the reasons as to where we are able to shave that down.

That is a huge, huge advantage within the commercial mortgage market, particularly where you might be on tighter deadlines. So we absolutely should always be forefront when looking at those opportunities. But when I say price versus speed, you know, we're not pricing too far off where those challenger banks sit. So when we're looking at both commercial and semi-commercial, we will consider both types of property.

Or a mixture of the two. Our rates are starting in the sevens. So on our semi commercial products, we start from 7.09. And on our full commercial products, we start from 7.69. Okay. So I think everybody can agree that that is incredibly competitive, especially combined with the service level that we're producing and the turnaround speed to completion. 

Hopefully that gives you a really, really quick rundown of where we are placing ourselves in the market and why. But the pricing bit is you know is particularly important combined with that service. It gives us a really unique position that realistically means that we can consider all types of deals with a relatively competitive rate to be able to produce for you.

Combined with moving that through to completion and funding as soon as possible. Okay. So one of the ways is that we have very, very tight SLAs, which both Craig and John and this call adhere to. And I don't think we've broken it as yet. So we have a really strong 24-hour SLA in place across every key stage of our process. Okay.

Whether that's new enquiry through the door, whether that is new application, documents being returned, queries throughout the process, everything that our staff do within the Manchester office covering that commercial base is at 24 hours. Okay. So it just means we've got that constant momentum. Okay. There's nothing worse than someone going away to review something, taking three, four five days to do so and coming back with the answers for the other person to do the same, you very, very quickly lose that momentum. 

So for us, it's incredibly important to make sure that it's a continuous process. Everyone's in the no, everyone knows exactly where they're at, in terms of requirements outstanding, at which point all players within the process are at, solicitors, valuer, us, client solicitors, yourselves.

So it works very, very well for us. Something else that I think is particularly important was as if there's a few angles here. And I think when we look at when we've reviewed the gaps that are in the market and where we wanted to pitch ourselves, there are a number of areas where we want to make sure that we are adding value. So another one of those is loan size. So for those of you that are actively writing business within that commercial space.

You will know that sub 150,000 kind of area is particularly restrictive. So we've come into this market lending from 50,000 and above. Okay. So that is a particularly important space in the landscape of the commercial, commercial arena. And we are ultimately seeing a lot of business on that side of things because it is so restrictive.

So anything in that sub 150 space, lending from 50,000 upwards, we absolutely should be forefront of your mind for. That's not to say that we won't do the larger loans as well. So we will lend up to 5 million, anything over 1 million on referral. So please do clue us in for your larger ticket mortgages as well. Another area which again I think is particularly underserved in the market is that lack of experience piece.

So where we're coming in is the type of things like your new starters, so businesses, new starters or lack of one year's accounts, maybe even just first-time buyers. So it might be actually they've only ever rented for their commercial premises and now they've got the opportunity to purchase, or it might be a start- up business where they actually need a commercial hood to start themselves. or it could be that they're an investment landlord but never had that commercial property, they're very near investing residential.

So there's so much opportunity in that area where other lenders would dip out on that lack of experience piece. So absolutely we should be having those conversations if we're not already. Valuations is also a really big one for us. So for anyone that doesn't know, when we're looking at valuation and lending up leaning on the figure that we will ultimately lend from.

A lot of lenders and a lot of our competitors will lean on the 180 day. So the vacant possession 180 day figure that's reported back. For ourselves, we'll rely on the vacant possession, sorry, the market value vacant possession figure, not the 180 day. And that can make quite a bit of difference. Okay. So definitely bear us in mind for that.

I think the majority of what I'm seeing at the moment probably does fall into those three areas. They are two three really big areas for us. Craig, just to come to you for a moment. So to explain everybody that Craig's role. Craig sits front of house for us, within our Manchester office.

So he'll be so that as I said earlier, if you've not spoken to him but you do have an enquiry, it most likely will be Craig that you've spoken to in the past or will do going forward, being one of our telephone BDMs. And he fields a lot of these enquiries that are coming through. So I think it's always good to hear from you know, internal  parties to what they're seeing. But Craig, look, what give us an idea of what you're seeing on the front desk, common enquiries that you're receiving, where you maybe see those opportunities are and where we're being successful in winning enquiries. I know I've probably covered off a few of those already, but it'd be great to hear from your point of view. Anything additional there that you're seeing quite regularly.

Yeah, so as you mentioned there, Sam, you have covered quite a few of the main ones. I mean one of the biggest things is obviously the commercial market recent years seems to just be booming, so huge increase in the amount of deals, new investors entering the market. So a lot of the deals that we are seeing are new investors. And as you kind of touched on, it might just be a smaller loan size to get them started, get them onto the ladder with the commercial elements.

it could just be, like you say, with trading accounts, it might just be a new business or got a lack of experience because they want to enter this commercial space. I mean, one of the big things we are seeing at the minute, and this kind of leads on to a lot more people entering the market, is a lot of people who are coming to West One, they may be using the likes of bridging to buy a new investment property. You could be doing like a big refurbishment to self-occupy it as an owner occupier, even as investment. 

When we say obviously we are home specialist lending, we like to retain as many customers as we can. So one of the big things that we are seeing at the minute is we are turning out a lot of our own bridges. And then given we do consider a lot of the lack of experience, it's not a problem for us. 

I mean when it comes to like the bridge and exit side of things, they could only be trading for six months because they've just done an extensive refurbishment. They may not have that trading history that some lenders may require. I mean, some lenders out there may require at least one or two years trading history. We apply common sense. when it comes to trading accounts and stuff like that, we can heavily rely on projections and we will consider using 100% of those projections, whereas I think some lenders out there may be cats, they may only use the light in 90%. 

So then they are limited with some lenders, whereas we will use the full potential of that business. Another point may be the lights and first-time buyers. Again, as long as there's a common sense approach and there's some level of experience behind them, even if it's going to be someone who wants to go on their own cafe business venture is a good example.

Long as they've got some elements of industry experience, we understand they've got a level of management where they know what they're doing, they know the day-to-day business. We can then look at projections and things like that. So, not only lack of experience or less than one year's trading history, we do consider the likes of first-time buyers, which some lenders may not, because obviously it's a huge risk, but we are happy to take them on board, especially if it's investment, because at the end of the day self-funding deals speak for themselves, will rely on the leases in place. 

I mean, one of the other kind of pitfall side of things where we do see issues with other lenders is the likes of affordability, previous years trading. So you could have a property where a landlord's owned it, let's say 10 years, they have a great connection with the tenant within, and they've not increased the rent or they've increased it at a minimal rate over the 10-year period.

Now, we've had a client purchasing that property, you've got property there that is on a very low rental income. So when it comes to affordability, you could then find issues, passing the minimum stress test with some lenders. With us, again, it's all about that common sense approach. So as long as the client will draft a new lease, for example, we can rely on drafted leases. Or even if it's a full new lease, we can rely on those. obviously, we still wend on a lower off the passing rent and the market rent.

But it just kind of shows we've got that flexibility. If it's got a poorer previous trading history, if they're looking to change that, improve the situation, we'll apply the common sense. We will use the latest documents. We can use projections. So with LECLs, it is very common sense approach. We don't have the likes and minimum lease periods. It's just basically understanding the deal and knowing there is potential.

Brilliant. You've covered off so many points there and some really, really fantastic ones as well, including that lack of experience, including around valuations, including around serviceability, the option to maybe pull in a draft lease so we know what we're going to be from a serviceability point of view, what we're going to be relying on and where the income's going to be generated from within that first year. Lack of trading history, something else that we've looked at recently was vacant units. I'm assuming that's the same kind of thing when it comes to doing draft leases and getting those signed prior to completion.


Yeah, exactly that. So again, it's just the common sense approach. So if you have got like a property where it is fully vacant, at the end of the day we are lending on the market value with vacant possession, so the figures are all tailored around that approach. But when it comes to the rental income, obviously there is none at this point. The way we would approach those types of deals where it is fully vacant, we would just be led by the valuation. So for example, we'll obviously get a market rent.

That will be the rent that we will rely on. But then we'll have a look at things like the tenanting period. So let's say the valuation may say three to six months for tenanting. Even though we don't top slice on fully investment third-party tenant deals, we will make sure the client can at least service our loan whilst the tenanting period is being dealt with. So let's say it's three to six months. If our client can evidence the funds for that three to six months, they can cover our loan payments. We're happy to still proceed with those deals, knowingly, well, knowing that they are looking to tenant the property actively and we can rely on the valuation for that.


Amazing. Amazing. I think there's nothing more flexible than that. Look, that you know a great response, Craig. Thank you so much. There isn't there is no better explanation when we're saying a common sense approach. How are they going to service the loan? We can prove it via X, Y, and Z and we can, you know, the deal does work, whereas other lenders ultimately would probably dip out at that point. So loads and loads of opportunities there. Fantastic. Thanks, Craig.

Just to jump across to John, please. So when it comes to, because I know you mentioned Craig, like no top slicing. However, if it's an owner-occupied situation and we are looking to maybe use a bit of background income, John, just to jump across to you, can you give us a bit of an idea as to how that would work on serviceability? Whereas other lenders, you know, ultimately wouldn't look to top slice at all, how we can utilize that as a function on an owner-occupied basis.

To service the mortgage?

Yeah, so there's a number of ways we can do it. We can look at accountant certificate. So we're we always have the conversation with the accountant and it's using the company net profits. Any income they take from it, whether it be dividends or just a salary, and if they have a rental income, you know, that can be evidenced via SA 3 02s you know, we're taking these all into consideration when there's an application and making sure it's serviceable at that time.

Yeah, we're factoring all these. If they're not self employed and they've got a partner who's on the application three months worth pay slips is sufficient, we could take that into consideration as well.


Brilliant. Yeah, look, I think that that covers that off in a nutshell for me as well. Because look, we get a lot of queries when it comes to top slicing and fitting affordability, so where we won't consider that on an investment basis and we are looking for the rental to cover it, when we're looking at owner occupied, so the borrower's own business.

There's loads of opportunity actually to be able to make that work, as John has highlighted, via an accountant certificate, using their income that they're taking from the bus business or potentially partner as well if they're on the application. So loads and loads of ways of looking to make that work, which is fantastic. Thank you very much, John. Okay. So look, we've covered off a fair bit of basis there, although in a really, really short time frame, and hopefully there's people in this call that are already starting to think of cases where they may have had struggles in the past due to policy or criteria with other lenders and where it's kicking it out. 

Has there been, let's have a quick look, have we got any questions that have dropped in? I think I may have seen one. Let's have a quick look.

Thank you very much, Kit, for your question. So you're querying about the specialist care sector. it's definitely a big area of the market. There's no two ways about that. So C2C3B use is an area which West One support on both investment and owner occupied.

Example being portfolio landlord who has previously let his properties as C3 on ASTs, then getting change of use and letting on C2 basis, largely driven by demand, the longer-term commercial lease, higher rents, etc. so we're struggling to find lenders who will use the commercial rent being received when calculating debt service. 

Okay, so, thank you, Kit. Thank you very much for your question. So in regards to that, when it comes to that care sector, that it's a big area of the commercial market. Currently at the moment, for our lending appetites, we aren't that type of asset isn't something that we would look that isn't that is within our appetite currently. Craig, John, I don't know whether you've got anything you want to add on to that to cover off that question, but I would agree. Obviously at the minute the appetite one include the likes of C2 any kind of like Kerr facilities unfortunately, unless it's a like an office to a Kerr company, but then that wouldn't obviously have the C2 use.

We just can't consider unfortunately the properties where things are happening on site. Just to go to the latter about obviously the rent received, things like that. When they are owner-occupied deals, and this may or may not answer the question, but I'll just throw out another positive. If it is an owner-occupied deal and there is rent being paid, let's say it's opcoprocco, we will again look at the accounts and we will factor things like the rent back in, which will further increase net profits.

But at the minute, just going back to C2 it isn't something within the appetite, I'm afraid. 

Brilliant. No, perfect stuff. And you know what? It's a really valid question because look, us entering the market and people getting a feel for where we are, what we're lending on. We are seeing a fair bit of it. So we definitely know that it's a big area in the market. At the moment, our appetite isn't there on those types of properties. So, thank you very much for your question.

So we've also had another question from Joe. Thank you very much, Joe. Who do we use for valuations? John, would you like to cover that one off for us? Who are we using to instruct valuations through?

Yeah, so we currently have two panels,  we have appraisers where we can gather quotes from and we also use vast panel. So we have broad range that they can go out to on the market, you know, each have different relationships with surveyors, but yeah, the two panels that we use are appraisers and vast.

Perfect. Thank you very much. And there's possibly another question here for you, John. Thank you, Pennate, for the question. Asking for our approach on historical adverse for the client. So to cover that one off very briefly, when we're looking at adverse credit within our commercial mortgage proposition, we are pitching ourselves towards the cleaner type of client. So it's more situational, circumstances, property type.

income, etc., where you're gonna, where you will probably see the deal. When it comes to heavy adverse credit, we're not in the market for that. However, we do have criteria around historical adverse where we can accept blips and where events can be explained away. So setting that up for you, John, can you give us a bit of an idea as to where we sit on that adverse credit piece?

Yeah, depending on the type of adverse, if it is an odd payment missed here and there over the last few years and there's a plausible explanation surrounding it, you know, it's something we can consider. CCJs, you know, it's for a parking ticket and it's satisfied, it's something we can we can overlook. Where the higher CCJs that are unsatisfied are probably outside our criteria and our appetite. 

It's just about that common sense approach, if we see there is historic adverse, you know, outside the four or five years ago, if there's plausibility surrounding it and there is an explanation, and all the remaining credit is clean, you know, it's something we can consider. And it's as I mentioned, you know, if it is the odd mispayment over the last twelve, twenty-four, thirty-six months, and there is an explanation surrounding it, it's something that we can get comfortable with.

It's just at a case by case basis really. If they do have any and it's referred over to someone like Craig for terms, if they've got a copy of the credit profile, nine times out of ten an underwriter will have a look at it and see where we can get comfortable.

Brilliant. And we do have essentially two tiers on our products, don't we? For when we're specifically looking at adverse credit. So W1 and W2, meaning that we can accept when we're looking at that historic, where we would place them on our product guide. We'll make sure our product guide is shareable, by the way, post webinar for anybody that doesn't hasn't already seen it, but it's very, very clear and breaks down exactly what credits that is acceptable to us.

But that's not to say that we won't look to be flexible. So by all means, if you feel like it's you know worth a conversation, having Craig and Josh front of house and the support of our sales team as well, who I'll cover half of who's looking after what region, always worth a phone call. We'd much rather have the conversation and understand the scenario than you not pick up the phone at all. But just to give you a bit of an idea, so no CCJs or defaults within the last 36 months.

No secured arrears within the last 24, highest of one unsecured arrear within the last 12 months. And then when it comes to things like IVAs, bankruptcies, liquidations, none within the last six years. Okay. So hopefully that gives you a bit of an idea of who you need. But thank you very much for your question. Got another question here. Do we have a set of documents where we can check the price for valuation for various clients?

So I it sounds like you mean maybe like a tiering system on valuations for dependent on like property value. I believe that's what you mean. John, but don't believe that's the case. It comes down to quotation via the panels on application. Would I be right there?

Correct, yeah. So we don't they don't kind of provide us with a list of potential price ranges, it's just we'll input the data into the vast panel or appraisers. They will provide us with a minimum, usually of three quotes, and each valuation firm varies in price. So you could have lower end of 50 up to 2200 depending on the type of property and also the area and the surveillance stuff.
 
Brilliant. Okay. Lovely. Yes, perfect. So that I think that does answer your question. You've just messaged me back. Lovely. And then another question that's just dropped in. So appetite when it comes to retail units, such as fish and chips, a laundrette slash dry cleaning business. So fish and chip shops is a regular for us. Vape shops as well, they're popping up all over the place.

We've done a number of those, which I know other lenders won't particularly be keen on. There's lenders in the market that aren't particularly keen on anything that's sort of noisy, smelly, etc. we will consider those. Craig, John, did you have any comments to make around fish and chips, laundrettes, dry cleaners and where our appetite would be, maybe max leverage wise?


So there's no kind of we'll go up to seventy five percent on the likes of fishing ship shops and retail units. Your laundrettes, we restrict the LTEV slightly to sixty percent. But on yeah, other retail units we'll go up to the seventy five for purchase and seventy percent for refinance. But the only one we really kind of restrict that list is your launderettes, which are capped at sixty.

Brilliant. And that makes me think of one that we did have the other day where it was a mechanics garage with a pit. Again, a number of lenders probably wouldn't consider something like that. John, in your experience, max leverage on a unit such as that?

Depending on the condition of the rest of the unit, you're looking up to usually between sixty and sixty five percent if it does have a pit.

Brilliant, brilliant, lovely. So look everyone, when we're looking at these types of assets that probably are a little bit more niche, other lenders are dipping out of entertaining them at all, where we're coming in there is providing that opportunity to lend. It may not be at the highest leverage at 75%. However, if they've got the funds to be able to invest and we can go to 60, 65%, there's, you're in.

There's you know, the opening door to be able to help your customer because not all lenders are going to be in it for those types of assets. We're happy to assist, we're happy to support, but it just might not be at that max leverage end. So anything like that, get in touch with the guys at the office and they will always put their best foot forward on those kinds of deals. Okay. So look, I think that's been really, really valuable so far. I think it's also worth just covering off the process for everybody as well and diving into that a little bit more for you. 

So you know what to expect from us, the support available, the process, what that would look and feel like if you're using us for the first time. So I've already mentioned that one of our biggest USPs is our turnaround times and the speed at which we work. So going touching on our process should help bring that to life a little bit as well. So everything we do as a reminder, is it a 24-hour turnaround point across all key stages?

Okay. So when we're looking at new enquiry through the door, you've got our upfront team that are assisting you, Craig and Josh, and they'll be chatting through that deal, making sure they understand it as you understand it and putting their best foot forward on terms. If it's something that is maybe a little bit more unusual, we will always look at it on a referral basis. 

We're more than happy to have those conversations up front with you know people that have those decision making abilities on something that is a bit more unusual to make sure that the terms that are landing in your inbox are worth what we're putting forward, you know. So enquiry through the door, you've got Craig and Josh that are picking those up. Craig, I know that turnaround times to get into any of these guys' inbox is absolutely phenomenal. I would probably say it's second to none in the industry in terms of issuing terms and making sure we're absolutely on it so you can go back to your clients as soon as possible. But Craig, from your point of view, how like turnaround time, how quickly are you kicking out quotes?

Yeah, so very quick is my answer. so one thing we hate to see is a pile of whether it be email or a number of calls coming in, we like to be very responsive with them. So when an enquiry comes in, typically speaking, we like to come back to you within the hour. it may even be quicker if we are very on top of things, you could be having terms sent straight back to you within 30 minutes.

At its worst, you're probably lucky two to three hours. And that's probably on one of our busiest days. Obviously, we have the excuse of the 24-hour SLA, should we ever need it, but our approach isn't based around that. We like to get the work done. We're not here to just sit and chat around, we're here to get business done for you guys. So yeah, I'd say use if you've got an enquiry, send it over to us nine times out of ten, you're gonna hear that within the hour or quicker.

Very rare scenario you may go looking at the max two, three hours. But yeah, our approach is if you've got a deal, even if you've got a meeting with a client, which we get quite a lot, a meeting with the client at two PM, it's currently half twelve. We'll have full terms issue way before that meeting. But yeah, you can rely on us to speed especially when it comes to you presenting to clients, we want to obviously build that relationship with you so it makes your relationships with the client stronger. So yeah, typically within one hour is what we'd like to keep it up.

I love that. Look, we go to the market pitching 24 hour turnarounds, but that is across all key areas. Okay. So our upfront team providing terms into your inbox within an hour, the majority of your time.

It's absolutely phenomenal. And I know it because I see it day in, day out, the terms that they're producing. So sometimes it's you know, you've got to try and test us to feel the speed and the service that we are actually kicking out, so hopefully hearing it from Craig and him putting his name on the line for what he's doing day in, day out, you absolutely will try as in the next. But no, it's absolutely spot on. 24 hour SLA, but ultimately, none of the guys are sat waiting for 24 hours. We're absolutely on it.

So you've got your terms in your inbox. You've spoken with your customer. They're happy to proceed. You've got the documents. So they'll on terms being issued. You know there's a certain minimum document requirement for us to take that to application, okay. So returning those to us you've got an underwriter's allocated to that case. They will be picking up the phone and having a conversation with you and chatting through that deal. So, John, to throw you a question within that first 24 hours of a new application being submitted, let's say you're allocated to that case. What within that first 24-hour period, what does that look and feel like to the broker in terms of submission checklist?

You know, and bits like that. What would they expect to come back from you?

So it would depend really. It's obviously case by case basis, but as the underwriter will go through the whole, you know, the whole application form, the property itself. If it is owner occupied, if they're provided us with the income, we'll usually have those conversations with the accountant straight off the bat, you know, so we can get comfortable and there's no kind of delays further down the line. it's all about I think the best thing. 

For us, is if we get everything submitted day one, you know, we can give pretty much an explanation and get the valuation quotes out to a broker that quick. You know, because valuation quotes can take anything up to 24 hours to come back. Sometimes they're a matter of five, six hours. So if it's in the morning, everything's okay with the application, we can get the put quote centre to a broker after having that conversation day one, you know, and get that instructed day two. That's how quick it can be as a process.

Brilliant. So let's say all documents are returned. So brokers got it absolutely nailed down, provided all documents day one, you're going straight out for valuation quotes. I think it's a really, really good point to highlight to everybody when we're looking at opportunities and where we're how we're looking to support and service the brokers in this market. And one of the ways in which we're turning around things so quickly to funding and completing.

is at the point where you've got that valuation quote and they've paid for that, you've got that level of commitment from the borrower, we are instructing solicitors immediately, right?

That's correct, yeah. So as soon as that valuation is paid for, we always drop the client solicitors to get the ball rolling on the pre-loan enquiries. That can save you two to three weeks in legals.

Absolutely perfect. I think that's a point well made. Okay. So where other lenders would wait for the valuation to return, on which sometimes can be quite a complex, very long pagey report, and that can take maybe two, three weeks in process to have that fully submitted and back and reviewed. We're already on it when it comes to the legals. And as you'll know, the legals within the commercial space.

Is that bit lengthier when you're comparing it to residential and buy to let the likes of. So the fact that we are off the mark that bit quicker is incredibly important and what serves us very, very well in being able to fund your deals that much quicker. So definitely, definitely one to yeah remember for West One. Okay. So this is a really good point as well. Again, another topic of conversation a lot. particularly on commercial, is the solicitors that your borrower is working with.

Okay. There is a huge, huge difference that we see when we're transacting these cases over solicitors that are experienced, having transacted commercial mortgages in the past, and those that are maybe qualified for the job that don't have the experience of doing so on the commercial side.

So one of the examples that someone presented to me the other day was a £3m office block. So huge valuation report, lots of legals to jump through. But ultimately everybody was on the same page. Our solicitors can work as quickly as the borrower solicitors. And in this case the borrower solicitors were very, very experienced. And it meant that we could actually turn that whole deal around in two weeks, which is phenomenal. So to pass through legals and get that all tied up within two weeks for a £3m office block is absolutely the kind of thing that we can deliver on for you. 

You've got maybe £100k semi-commercial that is a very, very straightforward deal, but the borrower solicitor isn't that experienced, maybe takes a week at a time to review each set of enquiries that come back, and that process becomes a very, very lengthy one. 

Having us, you know, dotted all the I's and crossed all the T's, legals working very slowly but our legals that we work with they will ultimately work as quick as the borrower solicitors so it's very important that if you're recommending your borrower's solicitors that you know you've maybe done a bit of due diligence over who they're going to be speaking with. Okay. But look from there we're ultimately moving to completion. 

So happy days client satisfied and there's been payday and everybody's happy. So and that is the aim at the end of the day. So yeah, and look, that'll give you an idea of the process to round off what we've sort of chatted through in terms of USPs for us. So the touch points across enquiry, like cradle to grave, 24-hour and everything, turnaround times for enquiries, application and offer.

I think I've already mentioned it. We're with three months on purchases and two months on refi to completion. So absolute game changer in our space. Each case is assessed on its own merits. As Craig has really, you know, described very, very well in his examples, it is a common sense approach that we take. And we will look to, you know, we will look how we can make a deal work with maybe other assets or other bits of income or you know we we want to be very flexible. Criteria is a criteria. However, have that conversation, pick up the phone to the guys. Let's chat through the deal. Let's understand the deal. Let's understand their experience. Let's understand their income and see if we can make that work for you. Referrals we rely heavily on referrals for that as well. If it's not something that's A1 through our criteria, let's have that conversation. So we'll look to make a decision day one.

On referable before we put those terms out to you to make sure they are worth what we're the paper they're written on. Okay. We've touched on rates. We start in the sevens across our commercial and semi-commercial. So very, very competitive in that space. The sub 150 market is incredibly important for us. We're lending on the vacant possession figure, not the 180 day. Lack of experience is a big thing for us. And we'll look to utilize all kinds of income, anything in that kind of space. I think we've covered that all off.

And then when it comes to payday for you guys, we pay one and a half percent across all of our cases on commercial. Okay. Lovely. And because I'm a bit conscious we are running out of time, I also wanted to cover off a couple of case studies, which I think just helps bring, you know, bring these kinds of cases to life, gives a bit of meaning behind what we're actually seeing and where we're winning deals and why.

This first one that we've got up on the on the screen now. So a £266k mortgage on a complex sale and lease back deal. So look, the scenario here. So we've got an office, unit, so a commercial office property that was valued at £425,000.

The client was experienced, strong background, property professional, just purely looking to diversify their property portfolio into that commercial sector. Okay. So experience individual, but not necessarily within that commercial space. There was so the original deal was going via review with another lender who ultimately withdrew their offer.

Okay, so following receipt of their valuation report, it was deemed that it was unacceptable. the valuation report itself, the assumption of a potential 12-month re-let period falling outside of that lender's credit criteria. Okay, so the sale and lease back structure with this deal as well introduce an additional complexity and dig.

Create what was ultimately a time pressure scenario for them to be able to source an alternative funding solution. Okay. So that was when they approached us. So when we reviewed the case, we were looking at an overall leverage of around 66-67%, structured as a sale and lease back scenario. So the existing owner and tenant remaining in occupation on a 12-month lease after the sale, which looked provide an initial income stream from day one. 

So that that's a really good, again, a common sense approach to be able to review that and deem it, you know, see it as that kind of opportunity. So one of the benefits here and something that we do see fairly often is having already produced a valuation report by other means and us being able to take a view on that and whether we retype it and go via the valuers for comments.

So a key advantage of this particular deal was that we did rework a version of the original valuation report to avoid the need for a full revaluation, reducing both what was the time element and the additional cost to the borrower. So we were able to complete the purchase without incurring those additional costs, which is always going to be a bonus.

The structure of the deal provided immediate rental income while securing that commercial asset to generate long-term income and capital growth for that individual. So they were very, very happy with the outcome of that. Ultimately, not only did we save them cost, we were still able to complete within the timeframe that they had, having already explored and gone through the process with another lender. So hit the mark on that one. It was a fantastic case. Not a huge loan size by any means.

However it you know we got very, very good feedback on that one from the borrower and from the broker that introduced it.

So look, where I'll finish for everybody is understanding what support you've got available. So for ourselves, for our sales team, we divide the country up across multiple regions and you've got dedicated sales managers. So not only do you have the support of the individuals within our office in Manchester that are directly writing and structuring and handholding on your commercial mortgage deals, you also have a team of individuals supporting you from a sales perspective. 

So to quickly cover that off for you, we've got the lovely Olivia, Parit, and James that are covering across central and North London and the surrounding areas. We've also got Paul, Tom, Ali, and Abul that are covering off the city in Southwest. And again, those more southern areas.

We've got our Theo and Nicky that are covering South East London, Essex, and Kent. We've got the lovely Iona covering off Midlands, East Anglia, and our North Wales patch. Alan that is covering off South West and the remainder of Wales. And you've got myself that covers right across the north of England and up into Scotland.

We are all very much available. Our contact details are on there. They're on the website. Please do reach out to us. If anybody wants to have a further chat one on one, go for a coffee or have a new deal that you want to chat through, whether that's in the commercial space or short term. So bridging and development as well. All of us do cover those three products. So pick up the phone or email us, or if you want to arrange a time to speak or meet, all of us will be more than more.

Willing happy to have that conversation. But look, I'm cutting it really fine here. Thank you so much to everybody that's joined us. I really hope that's been beneficial and has highlighted where we sit in the market, the opportunities there, and the reasons why to pick up the phone and have those conversations with us so that we can support you on your next deal. So thank you very much. That's the end of the session. Goodbye, everybody.

So you've kind of got this gap of high street, which are relatively the cheapest pricing. Then you've got the challenging banks that are more expensive. You've got a big gap to the next price point in the market. But if you need things to move quickly, you've got this big bit of wilderness here that no one's really operating in. And that's the area that we wanted to look and feel. And we thought, how best could we do that? So there were a couple of options really that we could have gone down.

West One have done and have certainly done for some time commercial bridging. We understand commercial, we understand commercial properties and the makeup of how it works, underwriting exits, all that sort of stuff. There was that knowledge already within our business about the commercial, the market and what would have been probably easiest for us to do and would have probably been cheapest for us to do would have been to upscale a couple of our underwriters that are familiar with commercial bridging.

Launch a commercial term proposition off the back of that and launch that into the market. And we've seen that done with other lenders in the market where they've kind of upscaled the underwriters. And I think what we found is that you end up defaulting to the worst position and then that becomes the underwrite for everything. So I know lenders where underwriters will underwrite bridging and buy-to-let and they underwrite the bridging as if it's a buy-to-let when it needs to be different. So we didn't want to do that because we felt that that might impact our commercial bridging and we didn't think it was the wisest thing to do.

So what did we do? Well, we looked to the market, we looked to who can we get in to come and lead this for us? Who's in charge of the best service in the proposition? And we looked back to that landscape and the best service out there as I said was Together. So there's a fellow that some of you might be familiar with called Duncan Abraham who was been at Together for 26, 27 years, very senior figure in there. Used to run a lot of their underwriting divisions internally. We hired him and we asked him to come and set up an office for us in Manchester. Clearly they're based up North. Build a team. Clearly when somebody's been working with the business for such a long time, they'll have some really strong internal relationships. They'll have some really trusted staff.

That want to move with them, that want to come with them. And Duncan's built a team where we've got a nice mix actually. We've got a mix of new people with new experience from other lenders and other backgrounds and new to the business. But we've got a core of people that Duncan knew and trusted.

We brought Duncan in, built the team out. We've got probably now about, I don't know, dozen to 15 staff up in that Manchester office. We've just actually outgrown the most recent office. So we're gonna be taking up a new premises at some point over the next few months up there that really gives us the ability to grow that operation even more up in Manchester. But basically Duncan came in and you couldn't get a better way of building a product because what the business has said to Duncan is they've gone right, Duncan, there's a blank sheet of paper. What I want you to do, I want you to build a commercial proposition for us that is going to be really competitive, that's going to fill the gap in the market where the gaps are, that's going to do it the West One way, which is all about speed, excellence, great service, et cetera. And that's what we've done. We've got this.

All encompassing proposition that we piloted probably last summer. We launched it to the market in October and it's just been breaking records week on week and this is the first in the series of webinars that are going to bring some of our products to life and we thought no better to talk about one than our commercial proposition. So if you were building a brand new proposition

We're going to solve some of the problems with it straight away. So what are some of the problems that are in the market that I've just alluded to? Well, firstly, there's no real kind of all encompassing product that covers everything. So we've launched a product that we believe within our appetite covers everything that we want to lend on. So we're semi-commercial and commercial. We're doing investment and owner occupied. And I've got a good example in a minute coming up where we've got a hybrid of the two.

We're doing interest-only repayment. We're doing personal name and limited company. We're doing loans from as little as £50,000 I mean, talk about an underserved area of the market, commercial term and having minimum loan sizes. Well, West One have launched our proposition with a minimum of £50,000, which is fantastic, going up to 5 million. So we're kind of serving both ends of the spectrum. And that's one, for those that are familiar with our bridging proposition and know that

We regularly write checks of 10, 15, 20 million plus. It's gonna be nice to see how this product evolves over the coming months and years because we've always been a lender that kind of, we're there for the bigger deals as well as the smaller ones. So it'd be interesting to see how that all evolves.

My name is Jez Quinn. I'm sure some of you guys will already know me, some of you won't know me. So, it's fantastic to kind of electronically meet you all.

I'm head of sales at West One that covers more specialist end of the business. So, it covers bridging, development, and commercial uh terms. So, I look after um quite a large team that all will sell and support you with those products. I want to spend a bit of time talking about the business.

So, there'll be varying degrees of people on here that that know about West One and what not. But I want to talk to you about um about us. I think with recent um going on in the market, it's probably really

important now more than ever to delve into the kind of makeup of the business businesses and I think

ours is quite an impressive one. So, I would like to spend a bit of time talking about it.

West one, we're part of a group called ENRA, Enra specialist finance. So, within ENRA there's two brands. There's West One, which is the forward-facing lender arm. That's where I work.

That's what I'm here to talk to you about uh in large today. We also have Aria Finance part of the group who are commercial brokerage um again not something I'm going to spend much time talking about today but having them as part of the wider group does help the lender arm in knowing what's important for you guys and when we're designing and building products and criteria sets and things. The group is majority share hold by a company called Elliot Advisors.

Now, Elliots are one of the world's largest hedge funds, multinational, multi-billion pound, tons of diversity in their assets that they have, and they're the majority shareholder in our business. However, what's really, important, I think, is that we're still operated fully by our management team.

So, our CEO, Danny Waters, was the founder of Enra. He still chairs our credit committee, makes every single decision regarding the business that's required from him. um it's no out external influence and then obviously the management team um continue to do it which means that day today our business makes it all its own decisions. Now that's only important to know when it becomes a problem for you.

There are lenders in the market where their majority shareholders who have no day-to-day involvement make some important decisions regarding their business. Doesn't happen with West One.

So that's one of the contributing factors why our conversion rates are higher than the market average across products because when we say we want to do something, we do it. And in our history, which is 20 plus years, there's never been a deal that we've wanted to fund that we've been unable to.

Talking about us now, I mean, we've got over 300 staff across two sites. Our head office is in Watford. We now have a kind of satellite office up in Manchester that houses our um commercial term division and I'll kind of tell you a bit why that's located up there shortly. But we've got over 300 staff across the business. We've lent over 10 billion pounds since launch. I mean we've got three billion assets under management. We regularly do over 200 million a month in terms of money out the door. Um and we do that across six products. So, we've got we have a residential first charge specialist proposition for owner occupied mortgages. We have a buy-to-let division for obviously buy to let mortgages quite big in the second charge space.

Bridging is what most people associate us with because that was where we started from. We're the second biggest bridging lender in the country. We do and we've got an extensive development finance proposition that's lent upwards of over uh a billion pounds since inception about 8 years ago.

And then the newest addition to our product suite is commercial term which we launched last year. And its commercial term what I'm here to major on today. And it's an exciting product.

Now we launched commercial. The business had been thinking about commercial for some time.

I think that there was a decision to be made years ago about whether we went with resi or commercial at that time and we opted to go with resi and get that product established into the market and then and then develop a commercial proposition and as you'll know if you use west one we don't we don't do things to just be there to tick a box.

West one comes in and we always want to be we want to be a top three player in in the areas where we operate um across all products.

So, with commercial we felt that the market is considerably underserved, and we felt there was a great opportunity the market landscape for commercial. your kind of have got um the high street um banks who um you lay that are been around for a long time now like vanilla deals only get out of bed for big ticket deals very slow in the main um and that was kind of the commercial market until about till about 15 years ago when you had the launch of the challenger banks into the space now the challenger banks popped up to try and solve that problem of speed and the underserved market and again many to name and things but the challenger market came in generally speaking the challenger the bank market now are relatively niche.

They've all got their own kind of things that they like they like to do. They haven't really solved the problem of speed because we still think that they're far too um inflexible and lack agility and the speed.

I know when we were looking at this, there was examples of where a touch point for underwriting was upwards of over two weeks for someone to look. So, if you needed to send a bank statement in for them to look at that goes in day one, they'll look at that in two weeks’ time. They've got a query on it. They'll come back to you and then you reply to their query, and they'll look at that in another two weeks’ time. And it's just for us; we found there's a great opportunity there for someone to come in with good service.

So, you've kind of got this gap of like high street which are relatively the cheapest pricing. Then you've got the Challenger banks that bit more expensive. You got a big gap to the next price point in the market. But if you need things to move quickly, you've got this big bit of wilderness here that no one's really operating in. And that's the that's the area that we wanted to us wanted to look and fill. And we thought how best could we do that? So, there was a couple of options really that we could have gone down.

So west one has certainly done for some time commercial bridging. So, we understand commercial, we understand commercial properties, um the makeup of how it works, underwrite and exits, all that sort of stuff.

So, there was that knowledge already within our business about the market and what would have been probably easiest for us to do and would have probably been cheapest for us to do would have been to upskill a couple of our underwriters that are familiar with commercial bridging, launch a commercial term proposition off the back of that and launch that into the market. And we've seen that done.

We've seen that done with other um with other lenders in the market where they've kind of upskilled the underwriters and I think what we found is that you end up defaulting to the worst position and then that becomes the underwrite for everything.

So, I know lenders where underwriters will underwrite bridging and buy to let and they underwrite the bridging as if it's a buy to let when it needs to be different. So, we didn't want to do that because we felt that might impact our commercial bridge and we didn't think it was the wisest thing to do.

So, what did we do? Well, we look to the market. We look to who can we get in to come and lead this for us.

Who's in charge of the best service in the in the proposition? And we look back to that landscape. And the best service out there, as I said, was together. There's a fellow that some of you might be know might be familiar with called Duncan Abraham who was um been at Together for 26, 27 years. Very senior figure in there. Uh used to run a lot of their underwriting divisions internally. Um, we hired him and we asked him to come and set up an office for us in Manchester.

Clearly, they're based up north. Um, build a team. Um, clearly when somebody's been working with a business for so such a long time, they'll have some strong internal relationships, they'll have some really trusted staff that that want to move with them, that want to come with them.

Um, and Duncan's built a team where we've got, we've got a nice mix. We've got a mix of new people with new experience from other lenders and other backgrounds and that are new to the business, but we've got a core of people that Duncan knew and trusted. Um, and I've got a couple of couple of those guys that are on the on the call today, both in Sha and John who um will be around for the Q&A after, but Sean and John were both used to work with Duncan and have now been brought into to us as underwriters in our commercial division.

But um we brought Duncan in, built the team out. We've got probably now about I don't know a dozen to 15 staff up in that Manchester office. We've just actually um outgrown the most recent office. So, we're going to be taking up a new premises at some point over the next few months up there.

That really gives us the ability to grow that operation even more um up in Manchester. Well, basically Duncan came in and you couldn't get a better way of building a product because what the business has said to Duncan is they've gone, "Right, Duncan, there's a blank sheet of paper. What I want you to do, I want you to build a commercial proposition for us that is going to be competitive, that's going to fill the gap in the market where the where the gaps are, that's going to do it the West one way, which is all about speed, excellence, great service, etc." And that's what we've done.

We've got this all-encompassing proposition that we piloted probably last summer. Um we launched it to the market in October. Um and it's just been breaking records week on week. And this is the first in the series of webinars that are going to are going to bring some of our products to life.

And we thought no better to talk um about one than our commercial proposition. So, if you were building a brand-new proposition, um we're going to solve some of the problems with it straight away. So, what are some of the problems that are in the market that I've just alluded to?

Well, firstly, there's no real um there's no real kind of all-encompassing product that that covers everything. So, we've launched a product that covers everything that we want to lend on. So, we're doing um semicommercial and commercial. We're doing investment and owner occupied. And I've got a good example in a minute coming up where we've got a hybrid of the two. We're doing interesting repayment. We're doing personal name and limited company.

We're doing loans from as little as £50,000. I mean, talk about an underserved area of the market, commercial term and having minimum um loan sizes. Well, West one has launched our proposition with a minimum of 50,000, which is which is fantastic. Um going up to 5 million.

So, we're kind of serving both ends of the and the spectrum. And that's one for those that are familiar with our bridging proposition and know that like we regularly write checks of 10 15 20 million plus. Um it's going to be nice to see how this product evolves over the coming months and years because um we've always been a lender that kind of we're there for the bigger deals as well as the smaller ones.

So, it' be interesting to see how that all evolves. Yeah, we're lending in England and Wales. We got to 75% on a purchase. will um 70% on a on a refi. We've got rates, which is the important bit, right? So, we've got rates that are starting from 7.29 on pure commercial, 6.64 when it's uh when it's a semi-commercial product. And one of the nice little key selling points that we've got is we will class a product a security as semicommercial rather than pure commercial as long as 40% of the property is residential. We don't require it to be 50/50. We can work on 4060. So, it means that more fall into that semicommercial banding, which means that the pricing options um are better.

Uh we can look at things like first-time buyers. We can look at um by referral, foreign nationals and expats, minor credit blips, things like that. So, it's a real all-encompassing proposition. The only things that we don't we're not keen on are kind of like land related things. So, like caravan parks or car parks and things where it's essentially bit of land um pubs, petrol stations, um like care homes and schools where we're going to have a reputational issue. Very um short list of things that we're not actually going to be that keen on whereas we've got a massive list of things that we are keen on.

And we're doing it, as I said, with rates that are yeah, they're going to be a little bit more expensive than the um than the challenger banks, but the idea for us is we're going to be doing this um far quicker, far easier, and solving that problem of speed. Moving on to kind of like the underwrite.

So, one of the I mean, the key selling point with it is speed, right? So, one of the things that we're shouting about are the fact that we got we'll have a 24-hour touch point. So, you upload something or you ask a query or you send an email in, um, your underwriter is going to come back to you within 24 hours.

I mean, I can vouch for that firsthand because I've seen I often sit on calls like this and I'm involved with um firsthand with a lot of our bridging deals and we have like I'll spend half an hour on a call and if I've got a deal that I'm being kept in the loop from by an underwriter, we'll see and there'll be people on this call that have got firsthand experience of this where like the underwriter will email you and then you'll email back and then the underwriter will email back and you'll email back and I'll come sometimes come off a half an hour conversation and there's been four or five back and forth during that time with the underwriter and the broker to answer questions to satisfy underwriting requirements and it's just really quick and you like you can't copy your breath how quick it is because it's like answers coming back in three or four minutes and stuff.

Um I've seen the commercial been involved with commercial deals where I've seen that as well. Underwriters jumping on stuff straight away having these conversations. There's now there is a portal. I said there's no portal. There is a portal. You don't have to use the portal. If you want to deal with us the old-fashioned way, which is via email.

Um, you can do that. It's probably the way that when you're trying to work stuff at speed, that I would say is the best option anyway. So, but the underwriters are rapid coming back to you within 24 hours. There’re no legacy underwriting issues.

There's no like because this has been built from scratch, the underwriters have autonomy to underwrite the deals based on their own merits. So, they can work on projections. They can work from accountant certificates instead of the formal accounts. They can be flexible, not dictated to and not tick. It's not tick box underwriting.

It's real underwriting from experienced underwriters that know what they're doing, which has resulted in some real fast, stress-free outcomes for borrowers and brokers, which is great. Um couple of other highlights that I'd mention while I'm on here and Sean and John are probably chiming at the end of the call with some, but one of the important things for us is um we lend against market value um vacant possession.

So, we're not instituting a 180 day or anything like that on our commercial. So, when we're going up to

75% on a purchase or um 70% on a refi, but we're lending against the MV VP rather than the 180day, um you might find that we can lend a bit more than what other lenders can as well, which is a great position to be in, right? But um it's never as a ship. Um just probably want to draw a bit of attention to a couple of couple of nice case studies that we've had.

So, I talked to you there about the fact that we can look at investment and owner occupied. So, we recently did a deal where um there was a firm in an office block looking after taking over one of the floors and they were paying four grand a month rent. They had the opportunity to purchase the building um which they did with the aid of a commercial term loan with us for 650 grand. So, the deal went through, but the opportunity for them was there was two other floors that they could rent out.

So, we could do a hybrid of uh investment and owner occupied. So, they still occupy the first floor and then they can rent the other two floors out. So, they purchased it, went through nice and smoothly, waxing lyrical about the stress-free. I mean, I've got a quote written down here.

The entire process was straightforward and stress free. Is a note from the uh the borrower by the broker back to us. But they went into there, they rented out the second and third floors of the building, 28 grand a year um coming in, which was remarkable for the firm's cash flow.

Not only has it now generated that cash flow, but it's also um well, it's solidified the long-term future of that business in the premises with no worry about um rent increases. Um, and they've also got the opportunity to grow their equity in in the fact that they've got a long-term commercial property acquisition that they've now made, which is a which was a good one.

Um, so the fact that we can look at mixed opportunities is good to bring to life. Um, got a great opportunity here, a case study where we did something quick. So again, commercial office, I've got two, two ones to talk about, but commercial office um they needed to get this uh refinanced um before the turn of the year. So, they'd got an existing loan on there with one of the high street banks, but they'd got a business opportunity in January that they needed um the capital for. So, they needed to refinance west and pull some money out quickly. Um they did this um it was the 28th of October that we received the application from the clients uh from the broker and it was the 12th of December when we completed on it.

So, speed and certainty um getting stuff done quickly 45day turnaround there on a on a on an office refinance was fantastic. And the other one even better than that even quicker MOT Garage. So got a guy new business venture that he was raising money. He had basically a four-week turnaround at bridging speed that he needed to get the deal done by unencumbered already owned it but he wanted to pull money out of his garage to fund his new business venture that he was um had a new purchase that that he had an opportunity to go and buy but he needed to complete very quickly. We got it done in four weeks. So, four weeks for a commercial term refinance on an on an asset like an MOT garage where you've got the underwrite, you've got the valuation, you've got the legals all working in parallel with each other to get stuff delivered, it's um yeah, I mean it it's kind of just what we do at West One.

I mean, when you're when you're born out of a bridging lender, the saying I used I like to use and I mean it might be a little bit derogatory and stuff, but I talk about some of the lenders and I say but they're a bank that do bridging and that kind of to me means well that's why they're slow, that's why they're inflexible, that's why they're like um not very agile. For us t heart, we were a bridging lender. So, we are flexible, we're quick, we're um all about good service, good turnarounds, fast, agile, flexible, and that DNA is throughout our business across all our products now and certainly feel it within our commercial offering because we're turning things around in four weeks.

I mean, it it's unheard of really to get a deal to complete that quickly on a turn deal. I mean, while I talk about bridging um and commercial opportunities, obviously there it's great exit for our own deals. If you've got a commercial like deal that needs a bridge or um or whatever it is, it's an acquisition that that needs to move quickly and you need a bridge on it.

We can exit our own deals on commercial term, and you'll save the client quite a lot of money and time and hassle and um we we're going to be able to set that up and do uh a valuation that we can rely on for both products. We can do reductions in legal fees because we'll put the same lawyer on both products with us. Like you the idea is going to be getting off the bridge as soon as you can. If we can control it all in house and we can work it all in parallel, it's going to really help you um get off that as quick.

I mean, look, in in in summary, the point of today is to just give you a little bit of an intro into what we were thinking when we launched the gap, we're trying to fill in the market. As I said, it's all-encompassing. So, we want to we want to see every single deal. We want to quote on every single deal for you. the guys that you will be familiar with that look after your um for bridging from a sales perspective and BDM team uh both field and phone are the guys that are going to look after you for this product.

Um we do have additional resource that are specialist for commercial that we'll refer to and work with. So, it's probably going to be we come out, talk to you about it, um be able to answer high level questions and look at deals, but you're going to have a dedicated specialist resource within the within our Manchester office that's going to be able to get your terms out, going to be able to um answer any technical questions and run calculations, do all that sort of stuff for you.

So, we'll make sure that um after this call that they're introduced. we'll make sure that when we come and see you with our wider business hat on that we're um reinforcing the message and talking about this product and doing you the intros over to that team and yeah that's it.

I mean I think it's like why you wouldn’t want to start putting West One in the mix for these commercial deals. I'm sat here and I'm telling you that we're going to we're going to do it at a competitive price. We're going to do it at very fast speed. We're going to basically be a game changing offering launching into the market now that that completely fills the frustrations that you probably currently have where you've got you want something done fast. You've got to pay a lot of money for it.

We're going to fix that problem for you. So, let's uh let's start getting some inquiries coming

through. Now, let me have a look at the Q&As. See if we've got any on here yet.

Don't have any by the look of or maybe we have in the comments. Oh, we do. There's a couple on here. Right. So, Sean and John, please join me in uh in having a little look at look at this.

So, got a first one here. Says, "Have a case." He said, "No, but I wanted to check. The client's buying a commercial just popped up. Client is buying a commercial unit that is 225,000 and is tenanted with a rent of 15,000 per month.

My client is purchasing with no cash deposit. Instead, he's needing 90 grand on the 140 as the rest of the balance will be paid to the vendor as deferred payments. vendor will be removed from the deeds and hold no charge that affects security.

What else has popped up? Uh or he can get the unit with no money changing hands with the beauty raises agreement which after 6 months.

What do you think? I mean um essentially for I mean look I know when we like clients to have skin in the game on our other products, but John is that going to be the same for you the fact that the client's not putting any cash into this on day one is a reason why you've said no or is it something you can look at?

Yeah. So, I remember this inquiry um coming through and I reviewed it. The issue was surrounding the deferred payments would uh impact affordability quite a lot over the first you know however long he's going to defer the payments for. It would take it outside our usual affordability criteria. Um and you'd have to then take into consideration they’re like all their income which isn't an issue.

So ideally with this being a rental property, you want it to be self-funding, and it wasn't going to self-fund based on the deferred payments as well for those 12 months. Okay. All right.

Thank you, John. There you go. John's the guy that looked at it originally, so happy. Right.

Morning. I missed a bit on acceptable property types. Would you lend on licensed premises, for example, a Londis or a Nissa, etc.?

Uh, I think the answer that's no problem as long as the numbers work.

Am I right, boys?

Yeah, that's yeah, we've lent on quite a few of those types of properties and you know they're bread and butter in our eyes. You know, they're uh got a good steady income. So, happy to lend on those types of premises. Fantastic. Fantastic.

Right, just gone into the chat. So, Lily, we have a question from you.

Do you lend on hotels in Edinburgh?

Um, we only lend in England and Wales at present for commercial, but however, watch this space because, as I say, it's a new product in its infancy. So, we are making tweaks as we go and we currently lend in bridging in Scotland. We lend in resi and buy to let in Scotland. So, no doubt um that will be high up on the agenda to get us uh to be added. So, if you make sure that you're like registered for the marketing updates and whatnot, then we'll uh we'll speak to you.

DSC requirements adverse Airbnb first timers proc fees. Right. Um, do these in do these in order, right?

Proc fees, one and a half percent on every single deal. First-time buyers are fine. Adverse is case by case. Look, if you've got a story, um, do we want someone that's got like, have we got I mentioned some lenders earlier, right?

I mentioned a lender that sits kind of at this end of the market that's quite expensive. They probably have a big appetite for adverse. Um, we certainly don't.

We want our clients to be clean. If there is a small bit of light adverse that's down to a life event and you can explain it, we can take a view. Um what we've set up here is a, like a referral proposition whereby we'll come back to you quickly. Um and again the point with us is we're comfortable as I'm about to tell Chris who's asked me if we lend on children's nurseries. We're comfortable saying no quickly and that won't be one for us Chris because we don't lend on children's nurseries. Won't be a good look if we had to go in and repossess that and uh and boot out a load of children.

Um but we we're comfortable saying no. We love to say yes, but you can refer it to us, and we'll come back to you same day, probably more likely within a couple of hours to say yeah, it's for us, no, it's not.

Or this is what we need to decide. The DSC requirement. So, John, do you want to just cover this? So, make sure I don't make a make a hash of it because obviously differs between whether its own owner occupied or investment led and it then it differs whether it's personal name or limited company or I have a trial.

It's what if it’s investment, you're what 120% if it's limited company 130 if its owner occupied uh sorry if it's personal name. So yeah 130 personal 120 uh limited company and then it's the TSDI isn't it?

if it's um if its owner occupied. Do you want to just give a quick run through about how that works? Yeah, so TSDI what we do is we take into consideration the client's total income and, their secured debt. So, there are uh ways around it. We usually aim to do 50% TSDI total secured debt to income ratio.

If the client does have multiple buy to lets and that can be evidenced in the way of an SA 302 or an accountant certificate, we can exclude them. we might just include the client's personal mortgage into that, and we will take into consideration all their income.

So, if it's their trading income and if they are taking a dividend and a small salary, we will use all that income to get to our TS our total secure debt to income ratio. If it is like usually, we work on a 50% we can go up to 60 but it depends on the application. So, what we'll do is we'll review it at that time and see where we can get comfortable. If it is something we can get comfortable at 60% usually on your capital repayment we can um interest only like I say it' be a case-by-case basis where it'll be reviewed and we can let you know where we can kind of get comfortable with it to try and help the deal.

Thanks John. We got one here from Vulcan, who I can vouch for probably being one of the hardest working brokers in the industry with his late-night LinkedIn updates on his deals that he's getting through very quickly.

He says he needs to submit a training uh from premises today to pay off an existing bridging line. What's the first step? Well, look, the first step Vulcan is going to be will reach out as soon as this is done um and we'll get the info and we'll get some terms over you today and we can get the ball rolling on it. So, uh happy days.

BMVS below market values. John, do you want to cover what our approach is to um on commercial when we're someone's got the opportunity to cover a uh or to purchase a property that's below market value?

Yeah. So, we do consider below market value. Um we're always asked question the reasons surrounding it. It could be they're a long-standing tenant and you know the landlord wants a quick sale or you are happy for that tenant to take over. We'll base our lending on the purchase price. For instance, if it was valued at three 300, but they're buying for 250, we'll go 75% on the 250,000.

Fantastic. Fantastic. I'm just reading through some of these other questions.

Michael asks, "Why don't we lend on petrol stations?" Now I know um I mean we say right in bridging

that we don't learn on petrol stations, but I've done one and done it because the shop element was quite a substantial part of it. The LTV was peanuts. I mean, from a commercial term perspective, John or Sean, is there is there any leeway on that whatsoever if the deal was a no-brainer or is there a specific reason why uh petrol stations aren't uh considered suitable security?

Clearly, they're quite niche. Yeah, I think it's surrounding the, you know, there's obviously potential for contamination land also the drums beneath. There's a lot of things to consider. It's if we were to repossess, it's quite hard and expensive to have that conversion into another use usage really. So, it's not something we want to get into at this stage just due to the nature surrounding them.

Uh like I say, there's several factors, you know, the contamination of land and the drums below, you

know, it can be quite expensive. Fantastic. All right.

Thanks, John. So, there you go, Michael. That's why. But again, look, again, this is going to be an evolving proposition. So, um, keep an eye on it. Um, query on holiday lodges on a haven site. So, again, this comes back into kind of what I said for almost like a caravan site, right? So, you're putting lodges down that can be picked up and lifted down.

Um, it's a land um is the security effectively. There are no permanent structures on there. So, not one for us now. But again, we’ll see how the proposition develops over the over the coming years. But just get back into the Q&A section because I know there was a couple under here.

We're mixing between Q&A and the chat as well as I can. One from Daniel, right? Applicant looking to buy a vacant bingo hall with planning permission to convert conversion to a gym for 700,000.

Applicants are experienced landlords and will procure a tenant at approximately 70 grand per annum offering the incoming tenant 12 month rent free to allow the tenant to complete the renovations and therefore looking for a 12-month retained and six month service applicant will offer first charge over bleed once second charge over the main res exit will be a refinance well seems to like that's a bridge right I'll pick that one up after I mean in theory with that security looks like it be one that will be fine for us so um I'll pick that one up in a moment don't want to take the uh take the spotlight off our commercial term proposition, which is what we're here for today. But I'm going to make a note of your name now, Daniel, and then I'll pick that one up um afterwards. Uh right, so I think that’s all the questions that we've had that are addressed. Right.

So just have seen one more chat going. Um, PBSA loan to value.

Do you have any do you have any restrictions there, Sean or John, if you were to like if it was lending on a purpose-built student accommodation?

Uh, no. Student accommodations where we can, you know, we'll assess the security, but we'll potentially go up to your 75% on a purchase and 70% on your refinance.

Good stuff. All right. Thank you.

Guys, listen to a couple of things. I just want to thank everyone for the time like really appreciated.

I mean we've done these webinars over the years, and we end up having like you start off I don't know it's probably saying more about me than it is about anyone else but you end up with you start off with loads of people on the call and you end up and there's hardly anyone left and you're almost talking to yourself but we've held um viewership here remarkably well.

So, thank you for your attention.

It is it is noted and it is appreciated. But secondly guys, if anyone's got wants to find out a bit more, wants to pick up anything separately. The guys can set up calls. We can come and see you. We can set up a team’s call with one of the commercial guys on there and do all that sort of stuff and we can crack on from there.

Lucy's just chucked one last one in saying what sourcing engine are you on? Um for commercial, we just launched on what brick flow for commercial I believe. don't think it would come up on any other sourcing systems, would it? It's going to be about um it's going to be about your own research and knowledge, isn't it? Is that right, John? Yeah, we do have uh Brick Flow now and a lot of the inquiries just come through the commercial term email box. Fantastic.

And thanks John for picking up that message there with Vulcan.

But guys, look, thanks for your time. I appreciate it. I'll hopefully catch up with you all soon. and we'll follow this up appropriately and if you need anything else um give us a shout.

Thank you. 

Hello everybody and welcome to this special podcast from West One.

We are today talking about the Buy to let market.

There's been a lot of discussion around Buy to let in the media and a lot of discussions about what the direction of travel is for the market in 2025.

To talk about that in a little bit more detail and to shed a bit more light about what's happening on the ground, we've got two very special guests from West One to join us.

First is Matt Watson, Head of Sales South for Buy to let and Bridging at West One.

Hi Matt.

And Jez Queen, head of sales of the North region, buy to let in Bridging for West One too.

good, thank you, very good.

So yeah, as I mentioned, there's been a lot of discussion about Buy to let in 2024.

We've recently had projections from UK Finance about where the Buy to let market is going to go in terms of lending volumes.

They're predicting a flat year next year, and that's perhaps a little bit unsurprising considering

some of the headwinds we've seen, volatility in swap markets recently, we've seen some of the issues around the renters’ reform bill still to come through and a general sort of change in the sector.

But I think you guys at West One feel that perhaps some of those projections are a little bit uh pessimistic when you consider that uh lending volumes outstrip what was forecast last year and may well do again.

So Matt, simple question, what are your thoughts about buy-to-let for 2025? Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the prospects?

Thanks Chris.

Yeah, think everything that you've said is important. It all kind of plays into not just the buy-to-let space but the wider UK mortgage market overall.

For buy-to-let, I’m personally quite optimistic for this year relative to last year. The UK market overall is...The housing market overall is hugely underserved.

We've got massive under supply and over demand issues and that comes obviously into buy to that as well as the owner-occupied space. The private rental sector is a key part of the makeup of the UK housing market. So don't think that's going to go anywhere.

The rest of it is kind of just hoping for more economic stability, I think, in the macro climate.

And hopefully swap rates will be a bit more stable this year than last year.

I think that was the big turbulent factor last year, was swap rates jumping around all over the place still, albeit a little bit less than the year before. So, if we can have a bit more of a stable rate environment, gives people more certainty and a bit more confidence to transact.

Fantastic.

Jez, what are your views? Yeah, I mean, I agree with what Matt said. Mean, it's, we've seen on our own kind of...business volumes that come in in Buy to Let that when we have a period of stability that Buy to Let's really, healthy.

The unknown and the jumping around of swaps and rate changes and things all obviously slows down transactions, it makes people sit on their hands a little bit and wait, there's no question that the private rental sector is extremely important.

I think I read or heard last year it was something like there's 20 applicants for every property that

comes up so there's no shortage of well there's an under supply as Matt alluded to that it isn’t going to go anywhere and it's important to the UK housing market so I am always optimistic I think my optimism last year was proven kind of right the fact that the market performed better than expected and I expect it to do the same this year.

Yeah, that's a really, interesting point in terms of there are quite a few naysayers out there, particularly if you read the media.

You know, there's certain national newspapers that are quite quickly to quit to kind of decry the sector and to say that by to let is dead. What we're seeing is more a professionalization of the sector, right, Matt?

Is that the direction of travel here? It's exactly what's gone on over the last... four, five, six years since the tax changes from Osborne's budget.

So, the media commentary around uh landlords are exiting the sector in masse, the buy-to-lack sectors on its knees, a lot of that is what we refer to as dinner party landlords. So, it's Mr. and Mrs. Smith who are both in middle salary, kind of paying jobs, who have gone and bought a buy-to-lack property because that's their pension and they thought they could make some money out of it, but with no real intention of kind of managing it properly or growing that or building on it.

So those types of landlords, generally speaking, we have seen leave the sector because it's not become cost effective for them to keep their properties now with the current tax rules.

But at the opposite side of things, the professional side of the sector, as he said, is still growing.

We still see a huge number of purchase applications come through the doors, on a weekly basis, and monthly basis.

And the people who are doing Buy to let t as a business and doing it properly and sustainably are still there, are still active, and are still looking to do business.

Jez, that professionalization, are you seeing more of that on the ground than over your role as sort of at the coalface talking to brokers and people who are looking to borrow? you finding you're dealing with more limited companies as opposed to those dinner party landlords?

What's it feels like now? Do you notice that change?

Yeah, I do.

I mean, if you look at the statistics, think, what, 20, do we say 2023 had a record number of SPVs that were set up and then 2024 looked like it was going to break that record on the article that we published about the sector.

Yeah, it has, it's become more professional. People that know what they're doing, people that are doing it as their main source of income.

It's about buying rights; it's about finding the right yields and opportunities and the market still works for them.

As Matt alluded to, the dinner party landlords have been hit over the head with so many different changes that it's just not financially viable or as viable as it once was or as lucrative.

There’re other ways of spending your money. Certainly, and particularly at West One who are a specialist in the market, for that professional landlord with how we look at things.

We've noticed, or I've certainly definitely noticed, that it is a lot more limited company, it's a lot more portfolio landlords.

We've seen a lot of them diversify the property types and things to increase yield.

It's actively noticeable that it's less transactions in personal names for inexperienced landlords yet.

I think just to add on to what Jezz said around diversifying and different property types, that's a key theme that we've seen over the last year or two as well, is more landlords looking at HMOs or multi-leks where there's maybe young professionals or students who are renting on a room basis rather than taking a whole property.

Part of that will be down to the cost-of-living increase and inflation and everything else, meaning that people are having to look at this shared accommodation type model.

From a landlord's perspective, HMOs are a good example where they can de-risk themselves.

It's not all about yield.

So, if you've got four tenants living in an HMO and one of them loses their job, you've still got three people paying rent. Whereas if you've got a single family of four in a four-bed house and the...or misses is the main breadwinner and they lose their job, then all a sudden your whole property is going to struggle.

So, it's a bit about risk management, gives more, becoming more professionalised as a sector, it gives more choice to people that are renting.

It uh brings up the standard of the properties that they're living in. So, it's better for everyone.

It kind of removes or pushes out those slum landlords and the people that aren't doing it properly because if it's your core business and it's where you generate all your income from, you're going to make sure your tenants have a nice place to live and are happy and do pay your rent because that's what keeps your business going.

You considering that those you guys who are at the coalface doing the job and speaking to the people doing the borrowing and letting out the properties, clearly, you know, there's lots happening.

But how much do you think this sort of swirling conversation in some of the media outlets and stuff is impacting their perception of the market?

Are you finding that they're becoming a little bit disillusioned by it or they're just ignoring it and carrying on with business day to day?

Jez, what's your sense on the ground with that? I think it's the same as the dinner party landlord versus the professional landlord, that the people that aren't in the know, that are less experienced, would read the headlines and would think that Buy to let is dead and it's not working, whereas the professional landlord will take that with a pinch of salt and effectively ignore it because it is very much still very important, it is very much still open for business as a

sector and I think that the media, I mean we've seen some of the articles right about like Buy to let dead and all this sort of stuff.

It's nonsense that it's not.

It's just needed to evolve to a more professional space.

Everything that we've already said but it's very much open for business and very much important to the UK housing sector.

Are you hearing any frustration on the ground though, Jez, from people sort of saying what are the frustrations they're facing?

Because there are a lot of changes, there are a lot of, you know, we've got things like the Renters Reform Bill, which is obviously going to bring around some additional complexity, we've got volatility in terms of swap rates and stuff like that.

Presumably there are little bumps in the road that those guys are navigating.

Is there anything that they're feeding back to you directly that this is a bit of a pain point, but ultimately we're going to carry on?

Yeah, I mean to be honest the main bits that kind of impact me that I hear day to day is more the volatility in rates and he's just looking at how that impacts the income but it's almost like landlords have been bashed over the head repeatedly over the last over many years with the changes in uh tax and all the other bits and the EPC bit that was looming and that's been

kick down the street and things.

It all just comes back to the whole, look, if you've got some money to invest and you want to do this as a long-term professional project, people are still up for it and brokers are still encouraging people to do it.

If it's just a one off because I want to have one property that's going to generate me some income or more retirement plan, arguably there might be better and less stressful and

easier ways to invest that money to give you a return that won't come with the headaches that inevitably are going to come now and down the line.

But the frustration for me from or the feedback that I'm getting is more about the interest rates that have shot up. I mean swap rates have been volatile with just inflation and with even going back to like the mini budget and like trustonomics and inflation and the US presidency and all the different things that have impacted it.

Rates are bouncing around everywhere; people are sitting on their hands waiting and it's like how long are you going to wait for until you act?

And I think people have conclude that we're not going go back to the interest rate environment that we in, pre-2022 where the base rate was at 0.5 and you could pick up a competitive specialist buy to let rate with a low fee starting with a 2 or a 3 to the normal rate environment that we're in now.

So, I think people are the more experienced brokers out there have realised that and that's why transactions are continuing and the markets are very much open for business.

Yeah, that rate point is interesting, as you say, it's affecting everything, not just by to let Matt, I'm going to be unkind and ask you to dust off your crystal ball.

I won't hold you to anything. But, you know, we’ve had likes of Goldman Sachs not too long ago, predicting five rate cuts in 2025.

The general direction of travel is down, right?

Do we think? I mean, all the usual caveats about not being able to predict the future, although I am asking you to do that.

What's your thought on the rates of environment and when it might settle down into something that's a little bit more palatable?

Sure,

You mentioned Goldman Sachs. Coincidentally, was at an event yesterday who had a senior economic advisor from HSBC covering off similar kind of forecasts.

And the general perception and expectation is that rates will come down over the course of the year.

Now, if you'd asked us that question back in November, we would have probably expected rates to be a bit lower than where they are now by this point. But certainly not the sort of three, three and a half, 4 % rates that some of the investment banks are predicting in the kind of in the medium term.

Where I think it will go personally, I think you might get a rate cut in the next couple of months.

A lot of that will come down to inflation.

There's a, it looks like they're very close to getting a ceasefire agreement drawn up in Gaza, which... would be the first one since that began and that intimate that it could be trending towards a very slow, I suspect, resolution there.

You've got the Russia Ukraine stuff, which is still ongoing.

So, for meaningful rate reductions, I think you need to start seeing more stability in the wider global economy.

Now that we know what's going on with Trump, I think that that could help because he's typically very pro-business.

The risk there is that you might end up with more inflationary pressure.

So, I think by the end of the year, if I had to put a number on it, and this is just my opinion clearly, you might end up with a base rate of around 4 % by the end of 2025.

The HSBC fellow that was there yesterday was slightly below that, but they are expecting four rate cuts at some point throughout the year.

So, I think the consensus and speaking to brokers and borrowers daily, the consensus is that it will come down over the course of the year, but other than that, no one can really pinpoint it much more specifically than that, unfortunately.

The volatility you mentioned is interesting because despite that, you know, there were forecasts at the start of last year, 2024, by UK finance, where they were, you know,

expecting lending to in the buy to let sector to kind of drop quite significantly.

The actual numbers that were done on sort of new loans and Remo were much higher than anticipated.

And that is despite all the negative headwinds that you've just mentioned there.

So, if we have rates coming down to a lower level in 2025 and most experts and people on the ground like yourselves seem to think that that is going to happen at some point.

Doesn't that suggest, Jess, that we're in for a better year in 2025?

I mean, one doesn't necessarily follow the other, but it does point towards a more positive outlook, surely.

Yeah, exactly.

And hence why I've got the optimism because I think that we've overperformed last year quite significantly versus what we were expected to. And I think that we anticipated a flat year for this year.

But as Matt alluded to, it looks like, it sounds like a corner's been turned in Gaza.

I think personally, I think Trump's going to really assist with bringing an end to the Russian and

Ukraine issue and once things calm down and Rates can be accelerated down, and I mean I've been reading something this morning that some of the economists and individuals within the Bank of England is talking about accelerating down to 3.25 by the end of the year, which is Very optimistic, but look the sooner it comes down the sooner everything settles the more people are going to transact who have been waiting and hopefully that will result in an even better year than than what's been anticipated and we're obviously out there with a very strong proposition that's open for business to try and mop up and take care of people that are ready to transact.

Great stuff.

So, thinking about that and the way rates have been, what are you seeing in terms of specific products, from the brokers that you're talking to and what their borrowers are asking them to find?

Is there a particular trend that you've seen more last year that you'd expect to carry on into 2025 or what are the types of assistance that people are asking for and what are the products out there that helping them to achieve what they want to achieve?

Yeah, so I think from a product standpoint, it's really varied and landlords, as we said earlier in the conversation, landlords have diversified and gone into different property types, different areas.

There's been a lot of talk over the last couple of years about landlords moving away from the southeast into the Midlands and the north and Wales and areas with higher yields.

But there's still a strong cohort of landlords in the London Home Counties and the south who are finding a way to make it work with the traditionally lower yields in those multi-unit flats near commercial. For expats, for foreign nationals, for holiday lets, for corporate tendencies, for investor led blocks.

You name it, we do it.

And all the areas are very much open for business. I mean, we've just expanded recently, buy to let proposition into Scotland, which um is going to bring um its own business from up there obviously there will be people diversifying and moving north of the border and we're now one of the few lenders that are lending up in there from a specialist perspective but also and I know we're talking about buy to let today but one of the things we do a lot of volume in it as a lender is bridging and we see a lot of demand for people coming in buying, improving, retaining properties you can pick up a bargain if you can complete quickly some like refurb work to it to bring it up to an acceptable standard and that's where we're seeing borrowers coming in and being able to still nab a bargain and diversify and make the market work for them.

So, is that one of the places you see a lot of opportunity in 2025, Jez, for West Run borrowers?

Yeah, of course, across the piece. I think there's opportunities everywhere. It's just about doing your homework, buying right, treating it as a business. It's not your residence.

You don't need to fall in love with a buy-to-let property. You need to treat it as a business.

You negotiate hard. You get yourself a good property at the right purchase price, and you can make the deal work.

And that could be just a property that you might turn into an HMO. It could be a pre-existing HMO. It could be a property that's dilapidated and needs short-term finance, bring it up to a standard.

There are opportunities throughout and Matt and I and our teams are here to help and pick that up and make that journey as smooth as possible for brokers and borrowers ever.

That's important message, isn't it, Matt, about the optimism being there and opportunities existing. And that's why the optimism is there.

Is it a similar story down in the South to what you're saying there?

Are there any areas that you think you'll see more demand for in 2025 or is it more kind of those properties you mentioned previously?

I think from a property standpoint, it's the ones we've mentioned previously, but echoing what Jezza said, more borrowers are looking at doing that kind of bridging or conversion or renovations hype project because if you're buying something for 400 grand and spending 30k on it and it's worth 500, firstly, straight away you've got a 70k equity uplift.

So, there's equity gain there for the investor or for the landlord.

But when they boil it down from a business investment case, the return on capital employed is significantly higher because they're going to have bought at 400, but when they start renting it out, the rental yield is based off 500m, uplifted valuation.

So, it's a far more efficient use of their money.

Yes, it's a bit more time consuming for them because they'll need to go through the renovation process. There's obviously a little bit more risk involved for them than buying a finished, ready-made product.

But for those people who have done it before or those people that are doing it for the first time even and are working with a good, experienced professional team around them, and that goes for the contractor as well as the broker and the lender, there's this huge opportunity and we're positioned really well for that in that we do that kind of life cycle lending of bridging for the acquisition or even development finance for maybe more experienced people then we can transition them into a buy select mortgage, so it gives the borrower comfort that we're there right the way through and that there's an exit plan for that short-term finance.

Great stuff.

So, drawing this to a close then, is there any final messages, Jesse, that you'd have for anyone listening to this who's maybe considering what to do about their Buy to Let portfolio in 2025?

Anything that you'd like to tell them?

Yeah, I mean for me it's if you're a broker it's making sure that you're working with the right lender partners, you're educating yourself as well as you can so that you can be a good support for your borrower.

If you're listening to this as a borrower it's working and getting yourself with an experienced broker that is going to be able to point you in the right direction, that is clued up on the changes that are going to be happening, that works with lenders that are to be able to, that are open for business and that going to be able to help you with your portfolio and making life as stress-free as possible in what is already a very stressful world.

But for me it's optimistic, there's no time like the present to transact. If you wait for the right time to do anything you're die-weighing.

So, let's get cracking, let's come and speak to us at West One, we can help you.

And as Matt said, I think it's a good point about the whole life cycle and that's kind of how we've designed ourselves as a lender we can take we can take a piece of land from an acquisition through development through the development exit into a buy to let or onto a bridge to sell we can be the one-stop shop for all things financial for you and we've got a good team both field-based and on the phone that are here and ready to help ready to support ready to educate so it would be talk to us one about your buy to let stuff and your bridging stuff and let us help you.

It's a great point that Jez makes around the importance of the brokers there, Matt, particularly in sort of quite a complex environment now.

So, yeah, is that something you would echo?

Yeah, absolutely.

And I'm pleased you've led with that because I wanted to try and find a way to shoehorn this in as a kind of a finishing point- the mortgage, not just by select, but the mortgage market overall, two years ago in 2023, was 85 % and it was intermediated through brokers or advisors of some sort. And I spoke to someone recently where the, and I might be slightly out with this but that figure roughly has gone up to 87 % for last year.

And the expectation is that for 2025, that could be as high as 94%. So, 94 % of the total mortgage market is going through an intermediary.

And that just highlights how challenging the market can be, because of that volatility, because of the uncertainty, we keep going back to swap rate- as the example, but people, as in the public, including professional investors and landlords, more than ever, are now looking for advice.

And even if you're a professional landlord, you're a professional landlord, your business is operating and maintaining rental property to provide housing and accommodation for people.

You're not a financial expert and you should still engage with brokers and utilize their experience. So, I think that's really, key.

More brokers are starting to broaden their proposition as well and look at things like bridging finance as an example rather than just sticking to your traditional mortgages.

again, brokers are not going to know every lender's criterion.

Going back to the broking market, it's important that brokers are open to having conversations with their BDM, whether it's with Westone or whichever lender they're speaking to, because we're the experts in our own criteria and we'll help with those little nuances to help structure deals, to help get it right first time, to help keep the transaction costs for them and for their client as efficient as possible.

Yeah, definitely.

Well, thank you gents.

That was a useful oversight of where we see the buy to let market now, I think your point about Being having the right partners to help navigate some of the slightly trickier elements now with the change that's a foot Is a well-made but all in all optimism abides I think so Matt, thank you so much for your time.

Just thank you so much for your time.

Cheers Chris, thank you.

Thank you, Chris.

Hi everyone, welcome again along to another Property People podcast with Guy Murray and
Tom Cantor from West One.

Hi guys, how you doing?

Good, so good, thank you.

Great.

We've had a busy week with Labour setting out its new budget.

So, we thought it'd be worth jumping on quickly here and talking about some of the things
that might relate to what you guys are doing around the sort of bridging finance and
property development worlds.

One of the main things I think that has come out of uh as a kind of incidental knock on
effect from the budget has seen guilt yields rise in the short term and the bond market is not necessarily that happy with the level of tax increases that have been announced or the
extra borrowing that Labour is going to need to meet some of its objectives set out within

the budget.

Obviously, this is nowhere near the kind of level of the mini budget Liz Trusts era but it
is ticking up towards where limits where they probably don't want to kind of go to which in Has also sort of increased interest rates in the short term So I just wanted to get your initial thoughts on that.

Maybe Tom we could start there with you uh Do we think this?

Interest rates pushing up off the back of this is likely here to stay or with inflation falling and a big interest rate decision next week It could just be a short-term thing, and things might settle down to a sort of more palatable price point

My instinctive reaction is um that there's initial sort of panic in the market.

So, guilt yields have risen.

The swap rates have increased some 30 basis points in the last 48 hours, which is causing
a bit of volatility and panic in the market.

They are still forecasting, as far as I've read, ah there to be an interest rate reduction
next week when the Monetary uh Policy Committee meets.

And as far as I believe, ah there's no real change to the sort of expectation of interest
rates tapering off ah towards the 4 % mark and maybe even a tough low than that towards

the end of next year.

So, I think the longer- term outlook is a consistent with the views that were held
before the budget was announced earlier on in the week.

I think that, as you quite rightly said, the level of increased uh taxation has caught people off guard and possibly slightly unexpected, which has caused the short-term panic or uncertainty in the market.

And we've seen that reflected in the way that the guilty and the swaps have reacted to it.

But my sense is that that probably will calm down. And like I said, the expectation, I think, hasn't really changed in terms of the forward projections between where we are now versus where we're predicting interest rates to be towards the back end of next year.

Drilling down a little bit more into sort of the bridging element of that.

How sensitive is the bridging environment to these rates uh volatility?

Is it something where you see it does have a material effect or are people sort of committed to the activities that they need to be and therefore it's sort of a short-term wave that passes through.

What's the general feeling in terms of product?

Bridging is probably the least effective product out of the ones that we've got in West One.

And the reason is, I mean, it's always been designed to be a short-term product for a very specific event that people don't initially set out to want to use or to need to use.

And that is true when there's stability in the market.

And it's also true when there's instability in the market for, you know, variety of different reasons.

And I don't really anticipate that changing. There will be people in eh precarious positions on the back of the budget.

And similarly, there'll be investors that seek opportunities because of the budget as well.

Right.

So, let's not forget that.

There's opportunity for people as much as all the noise around that we just had the swap rates and the guilt yields have caused panic and there's uncertainty about what investors are going to do going forward, which we can probably touch on in a minute.

That does lead to opportunities for people and when people need to move fast to secure a
deal, they inevitably will turn to bridging because it's the quickest product to unlock those opportunities. That doesn't change. That won't change.

The reasons for people using it might change, but the essence of the product remains
the same.

Fantastic.

Just thinking then about the sort of impact on house prices, we've got interest rates ticking up, I think that's going to slow growth.

There had been a sort of, it felt like a bit of a kickstart to the housing market.

Nationwide have come out and sort of said that they're predicting that this is likely to slow things a wee bit.

if interest rates go up for obvious reasons, the cost of funding.

Guy, again, in terms of what you're seeing on the dev side of things, is there any nervousness around that sort of growth slowing or is there a longer-term picture hereof look, we expect the rates to come down and therefore the demand and with the government kind of pushing, putting its shoulder behind it that houses are developments are going to get built and people are going to buy them.

Yeah, I think obviously rates are still expected to come down from obviously spot rates. Have gone up this week after the budget announcement, but that's not to say that rates are coming down at just how far they're going to go down.

So, I don't think we're immediately going to see much of a negative effect, I think, for
house builders.

I think if anything, if you've got stock that you're selling to more of um the investor market, then obviously with the stamp duty changes, going from 3 % threshold to 5%, you know, people are going to be factoring in the uplifts and stamp duty costs into their, what they're willing to pay for the properties.

It's a relatively small margin. So, it's not going to have too much of an effect on values, but it's going to have an effect.

I imagine there's, you know, a lot of people who have agreed prices in deals, if you're an
investor, you'll probably be renegotiating the purchase price by that amount if you haven't already sort of exchanged by last month, end of last month.

Yeah, that stamp duty is an interesting point and is likely probably to be a greater headwind than the kind of short-term ones.

In terms of the house building drive, I mean, we talked before, haven't we, about this
determination to build 1.5 million homes over the length of the parliament.

And they do seem to have put some specific measures in here to try and push that on,
particularly sort of three billion pounds in guarantees to support small house

builders.

Was there anything in there that made you feel more optimistic that that target is
achievable or are we still in a kind of let's see what happens when the rubber hits the road phase Guy?

I don't think there's anything more that makes you confident that they're really going to
it. I think that target's still quite a stretch. I think what's quite interesting is just the real push on the funding for like affordable housing providers.

So, I mean, what I'm seeing in the market now is a particular lot of the larger sites for development, say, know, 100 units plus.

A lot of the interest in those sorts of sites is developers who work closely with housing
associations to build out those schemes because there's, you know, there are more government grants and funding available to make those sorts of schemes viable right now.

So, I'm seeing more action on the affordable housing side and purely private. must just go back to your earlier question, Chris.

Think. But talking about the property market is sort of a little bit misleading because what my take is from the budget and just to follow on from what Guy said is that they're potentially making it more difficult for investors to enter the market.

And there's some policy changes that are a little bit uncertain around the non-DOMs, which
affect sort of like the higher end of the market and more towards prime central London.

But where they look to be focusing on is increasing the availability of affordable housing and giving councils a bit more money to be able to go and build housing in their local areas for people that need cheaper alternatives.

They also haven't really ah impacted too much first-time buyers, which is important. Think like encouraging first time buyers to get onto the market and making it easier for them to do that is really, important.

You know, particularly because rents are probably an all-time high if not an all-time high.

So, I think when you're asking a question about the property market, your kind of must
look at it in various subsectors because they're all impacted in slightly different ways.

So, you can't necessarily give one answer to the whole sector.

It's a very good point.

Yeah, think that non-domes piece is interesting in terms of a lot of that top end money flowing in and whether that can be replaced with that focus towards more affordable housing in terms of demand.

Presumably, you know, more sites mean more opportunities to what you were saying
previously, Tom.

It's just a case of whether those opportunities will be live, whether there'll be the flexibility to let those people come in, I assume, Guy, is that fair comment?

Yeah, Mark, I think there'll be, there should be more opportunities.

There's, you know, all the planning changes that are proposed trying to bring more supply into the market.

So yeah, more money into the housing market, more supply is going to be good for uh house
builders and us as lenders and brokers because there would be more transactions going

on.

Focusing on that supply side thing then, obviously one of the major headlines, Tom, was
around the national insurance rises. And quite rightly, that's led to a lot of debate.

I mean, the contributions, there's been a significant increase in national insurance
contributions from 13.8 % to 15%.

There's been a lot of discussion just generally from all SMEs around how that can
potentially be a headwind, particularly in a time when the UK is trying to push itself

forward with economic growth and that's been flat mining for quite some time.

The construction sector full stop or the property sector is heavily reliant on SMEs I
think that's fair to say in many different guises.

So, what sort of impact do you think that might have?

From a sort of financing standpoint practicalities of getting small Contractors involved
in these things.

What's your sense early sense of what that might be if you have much?

The huge impact so if you think about what house builders have been through in the last 24
months they've faced rising cost of materials, they've faced increased labour costs and shortage of labour because of um the origins of most of the people that carry out that labour.

Rising interest rate environment has uh weakened house sales.

So, developers are of struggling or taking longer to get their equity out of sites that they've already built.

And now adding on that, their overall costs have increased because of the national insurance contribution, which means that, you know, for developers who already run on quite tight margins and run their cash flows quite closely, they now must factor in an additional cost of national insurance contributions.

I don't see how that's supporting them in all honesty, but, you know, it will do and people will adjust to it.

Of course they will, and they'll find a way of accommodating that extra cost and what that probably means is that they'll have to sell their end units for uh higher value because, you know, they still need to make an appropriate level of profit in each scheme to account for all these cost increases.

Yeah, it's a good point, Tom, around the scarcity of labour and materials.

Guy, we've seen that pushing through, I think.

It's been something that's been visible and felt.

What do you think the, is this likely to have a sort of delaying impact on the speed at
which these developments are pulled together?

Do you think that the sector is able to meet the demand of this additional one and a half
million homes that's being built?

Or are we going to have ourselves a serious issue where there's no one around to kind of
do the work and smaller employers might find themselves too stretched to be able to do

that in the sector?

Do you have any fears or concerns about that?

Yeah, I think. I think any increase in your overheads is going to put more pressure um on businesses. And as Tom rightly said, construction businesses usually run on thin margins.

And that's why there's always uh risk in the construction sector um with a lot of ums
contractors ah sadly going bust. So, any increase in your overheads is going to have a detrimental effect on the wider market. So, I don't think it's obviously supportive of building more houses.

And what you will see is, you know, they'll either pass it on in terms of pricing, um
pricing jobs, which they'll probably have to do, or it gets passed on and less wage growth

for employees.

Good to be clear, it's not just the SMEs, right?

So, you've seen in the last few months, over here, some of the biggest contractors in the country have gone bust simply because like we keep saying the margins that they run themselves to ah are very thin and when they must account for unexpected cost increases, can't support them.

So, it doesn't just impact the SMEs. I think it's across the whole construction industry.

But what you probably will find is that the developers and the contractors that run their business is the best and they keep the cost on the tight control and you know maybe they have more in-house labour and support than they do uh outsource.

They'll probably do well because there's going to be a need for there's still going to be
a need for them.

And if there's less players in the market it just helps the people that you know can play
the best.

Yeah, I think the affordable moniker that's over these one and a half million homes might be put a bit more to the test considering these sorts of additional inflationary pressures that have been put on these guys in there.

I don't want to sit here and I'm sure Guy doesn't either just be all doom and gloom about
it because there's clearly things that they're trying to do to support the growth in the housing sector.

But there's equally things that they've done with kind of contradict the policies that they're trying to implement.

You know, like I said at the start, think the short-term impact is uncertainty and, um you know, hesitation.

But once that market all settles down and the sort of initial sentiment disappears, you
know, things will go back to normal. They'll level out. People will adjust. It happens all the time.

It's just how quickly that will take place.

Yeah, we'll find a way in short.

Yeah, always happens.

Yeah.

Lastly, just thinking about sort of uncertainty a little bit, we do have a base rate decision on the horizon.

I know we talked more about sort of longer-term factors coming out of the budget being
more relevant, but there has been, know, inflation seems to have been tamed.

Is it is a good driver of demand in terms of, you know, buyer sentiment and getting the housing market moving.

there is it's widely predicted that we're going to see some kind of cut.

Do you guys think that will come considering this still?

What's your general sense?

And I'm not pinning you to the mast here in terms of making sure you tell me exactly what it looks like.

But what's your general feeling?

Are we still going to Plow ahead with the original plan A or is it going to be a bit more of a delay while we see how things settle down?

I'm think they'll cut that.

I'm in agreement.

I think they'll cut.

My stats are probably 25 basis points to be a bit more cautious. I think that okay.

Yeah, I agree entirely with that.

I think they will.

Okay.

And I think that will settle the market down a bit as well.

So, you've got the volatility that's happened this week, if you add in a stagnant inflation, ah a stagnant interest rate environment, or anything worse than that.

I don't think the market will support it. I think, you know, a cut to the interest rates next week will probably level everything out.

Need a bit more catalyst for sentiment and to get people feeling better about getting things moving.

Is that fair?

Yeah, that's my sense of it.

Fantastic.

Okay, gentlemen, thank you for that conversation.

Really, really illuminating.

Think on the plus side, do think that things are going to settle down and there's demand
there being stoked and generated by this additional call for 1.5 million homes.

It's not without its challenges as we pointed out in terms of where the money comes
from and the pricing and positioning of all of this.

But as you say, hopefully as we move closer towards 2025, things will start to settle down
and spades will go in the ground, and things will get moving and you guys will be on hand

to help with the financing and um pushing forward of all those projects.

So yeah, it just remains for me to say thank you, Guy, for your time as always.

You're welcome.

Thanks, Chris.

And Tom, thanks again.

And do watch out for, we are hopefully going to be having some kind of reaction to the
interest rate decision next week as well.

So do keep an eye on socials and West One channels for what the guys think about that.

Thanks Chris.

Thanks all.

Thank you.

Everybody, welcome along to our latest Property People Chat with Tom Cantor, Head of Bridging Finance at West One.

Hi Tom.

Hello, how are you?

And Guy Murray, Head of Development Finance at West One as well.

Hey Chris, good to be here.

Good to have you both, great to see you.

So, we're going to have a chat about the general state of the property market as it stands and get a bit of a sense of where things are going. It's been a busy period ah with lots of sort long-term and short-term things coming to the fore, which I think have made it an interesting time to be talking about property and pleased to have two esteemed guests such as yourself to do that.

Obviously, the big news, I suppose, last week was the announcement of a rate cut by the Bank of England NPC moving down from 5.25 % to 5%.

Long-awaited, I'm sure you both agree, but there is a real sort of sense of optimism starting to build about what the impact of that could be.

So, yeah.

Start with you, Tom. I'm just interested in your views. How are you feeling about it?

What is your sense of what the immediate impacts are and what we might expect to see as we kind of move later into 2024 and into 2025?

Yeah, I think it's a good question. I think that, as you said, it has been a long time coming.

I think there was a lot of optimism going into the start of the year that the interest rates would fall a lot quicker and by a lot more than they have done.

I think that the inflation prints that have been coming out month on month throughout the course of this year proven to be a bit stickier than people were anticipating.

So, yes, it is very welcome news that the Bank of England have started to cut rates, even though it was only 25 basis points.

I think that uh it's a good start.

I'll be interested to see what happens over the course of the next four or five months that we've got left of the year and whether that interest rate cut is enough to really stimulate the economy and um leads to all the things that they hope it will lead to in terms of people feeling, you know, like they've got more money in their pockets and um that now they're encouraged to go out and start spending again, which is what the economy really needs.

So, I don't think we're anywhere close to being where we want to be.

And I think there's a lot of work that needs to go on over the next four or five months to get us there.

But it is a good start.

Guy?

What are your views?

Yeah, look, I think it’s welcomed uh from my perspective. I mean, it's a change in sentiment for uh buyers looking at purchasing homes because they know that through the peak of interest rates and things are only getting better from here.

So, from like a demand perspective, it's good for demand, um which is what house builders need now because It's been a tough old period in the last sort of 18 months, I guess, with rising interest rates. Sales taking longer and being a lot more delayed. Prices down on prior expectations.

So, I think this is the of the change that we needed and, you know, talking to a lot of developers and house builders, this is really, really a great sign for things to come. And it just gives them a bit more confidence, when they're up to bringing stock to the market and confidence moving forward with purchasing new sites to start developing that the market is improving from here onwards.

What I quite liked is that sorry to interrupt Chris, what I quite liked is that they've been under a lot of pressure to start cutting rates and they're not going too hard too soon.

It felt a little bit like they're testing the water, seeing how the economy reacts. 25 basis points with a view to then m coming in later in the year with maybe further interest rate cuts.

I think it would have been quite damaging to go to drop them by too much too early and risk unsettling or unbalancing the uh equilibrium. So, it's probably the right strategy is, like I said, just test it, see what the impact is, see how everyone reacts and then plan maybe for more later.

You mentioned Tom about potential rate cut later this year. Do you think there probably will be another without asking to get the crystal ball out? Appreciate you're not on the committee, but you know, what's your sense? Do you think we will get another one before the end of the year? Or is it sit tight and see what 2025 brings us?

I think they will.

I just wonder whether the obviously the market this week was really spooked by it appears to be short term but was really spooked by the thought of America going into a recession or being on the brink of a recession. I don't know whether that will have an impact um in terms of what our MPC and Bank of England decide to do here. I think there will be more rate cuts, but I do think they're sort of a little bit led by the USA to some degree.

I think there's a thing I'm right in saying, but we'll manage to reference this afterwards that kind of they're the leaders of any rate reductions and no Western economy wants to move before traditionally before they move. So, I don't know what that impact of what we've seen earlier on in this week will have.

But I do certainly think there's probably room for further rate reductions later in the year.

How about you guys? You bullish to have one before the end of the year or slowly?

I think the markets in the last uh week or so have sort of signalled further rate cuts and swap rates have been down.

So, I think a potential another 25 basis points before the end of the year, I think would be great for the market in general and hopefully we can see that. Good stuff.

Well, yeah, I think that was obviously the kind of short-term boost to things that we, well, the most recent boost to things. But obviously we've had sort of thinking slightly longer term. We've had a change of government in the UK. Labour has come in with some bullish plans about getting house building moving.

I know you guys are seasoned experts in this field and would have seen many an administration coming in with big plans and thinking about how they're going to shake up the housing sector and get written building again.

But what is your sense about this sort of change of tack and change of gear from Labour? Do you feel optimistic about it? Do you think they are going to be able to get things moving and get us improving Britain's supply of housing stock? What's your take on that?

What is my take?

I think it's challenging. I think they've set themselves ambitious targets. You know, it's 300,000 houses a year over the next five years.

And a part of it is all well and good them saying that they want to deliver this and obviously they've got house builders that want to build those that number of houses and that will be good for everyone. I think the bit in the middle is the is the planning bit.

You know, you need to really reform the planning system because that's where it all that unlocks the ability for house builders to go and deliver that that ambitious 300,000 houses a year and now no one's really talking about how they're going to really revitalize the planning system.

So, it takes too long to uh get planning because, you know, for a whole host of different reasons that we probably don't need to go into in too much detail here, it's all well and good having the uh target and the ambition.

And yes, they've got people willing to try and deliver and help labour deliver on that promise, but you've got to get the process and the bit in the middle right first, otherwise you're never going to be able to to hit uh those numbers.

Definitely.

Guy, you're at the front line of this.

You're speaking to house builders and property builders all the time, aren't you?

What's your sense of speaking to your clients and being out there and, you know, where they're putting the spades in the ground, whether there's a sense of optimism or it's more a wait and see type feeling?

Yeah, I think there's probably a bit more optimism. You know, there's floated changes with some of the planning regulations around some of that sort of green bout areas or they sort of talking about a grey bout classification.

So, I think, you know, developers, there's potentially more sites opened to them under labour in terms of the new policies being proposed, which I think people are, you know, are pleased about. And yeah, I think generally labour have sort of said that they'll be hiring a lot more um planners to go into the councils.

I think they've said like another 300 people. I think, you know, as Tom said, if you can get more people in the sort of planning system to get planning applications through in a more efficient way, then that will help house builders.

So, I think those couple of bits are positive for, you know, allowing more homes to be built from a developer's sense. But I think also at the end of the day, what makes house builders build more houses is the demands are very demand lead.

So, um there's no point in increasing the supply of housing if you get to the end and you can't sell all the homes. So, you know, I think demand will play a big factor in terms of whether they can hit that 300,000 homes a year or not going forward.

But, you know, look, I think interest rates coming down will spur on a bit of demand. So maybe we'll see the number of new homes being completed increased from sort of, I think we've been about 230,000 a year for the last couple of years.

The only thing that might, I think, get in the way of that is if you look at like housing starts and sort of Q3, Q4, 2023 and going into the start of this year, housing starts have been well down on

prior levels just because the demand has been out of the market. It's going to take, you know, it's not, there's not a short-term fix. It's going to take a year or two to get through that. And then maybe, maybe we'll see numbers improve after that.

Yeah, it's, certainly feels like a slightly longer rate, although I think there was some news from Persimmon this week that they've increased their house tour new forecast this year from up to the Well, not increase the forecast, sorry.

They've committed to the higher end of their original forecast, 10,000, 10,500 new homes. So hopefully if there's more that feel able and willing to commit to those types of things, you might see us start to push towards that target.

But yeah, no, it's an interesting point.

Yeah.

And that is positive, right?

Because if some of them are saying that they want to hit their higher end of homes being built, that just shows you that they're seeing underlying demand increase.

if they weren't seeing underlying demand increase, they probably wouldn't want to push for um so many completions in terms of new homes.

And I think that demand also comes from the tax situation as well.

So what tax incentives are there or what tax breaks or tax cuts, whatever they want to introduce, it's not just about the planning system, but there must be, I guess, a financial benefit or financial stimulus to unlocking that demand.

If you tax people too much, either on their personal residence or as buy to let landlords, then they move out of the market and the demand drops.

Yeah, it's a quite complicated web, isn't it?

Interest rates we touched on stimulating that buy side demand, where the taxation creates too many headwinds and just giving people the space to build. It's a very fine balance.

Got to obviously strike all these things at the right level so everyone's incentivized in the same way. As we've seen over the last two or three years, if you knock something out of balance, doesn't take much for it to cause a huge impact.

You mentioned, Tom, about a phenomenon you described as Devexia. I wanted to have a quick couple of minutes on that.

What was your... How did that relate?

Obviously, that was tied to rates, wasn't it? What was your take on that?

Yeah, I think that part of the market that historically we seen a lot of activity in and a uh part of the bridging market that we sort of targeted quite hard was these development exits.

Where home builders and developers finish building schemes, often using construction finance through to a guy on his team and they wanted to unlock their equity uh that was tied up in that scheme whilst they were waiting for the uh units to sell.

They wanted to unlock the equity to go and start building something else. Over the last 18 months to two years, that part of the bridging market kind of dried up a little bit because developers weren't selling their existing finished stock as quickly as they once were.

And so, they couldn't unlock equity. The notional equity that was there to go off and invest that into a new scheme and start building again.

You know, I would hope now that we'd started to see some lenders come out in the market with sub 4 % mortgages and obviously the interest rate reductions that we touched on, whether that sort of unlocks developers being able to sell their existing stock that they'd probably been sat on for longer than they wanted to, whether that unlocks them being able to sell them.

And the ripple effect is that if they can unlock the equity that's in those schemes and go off and start building it, that kind of sparks the market back into action. So interesting point.

Guy, how did you see that from your side? Was that a major factor in what you've been seeing over last few months?

Yeah, think Tom's right in terms of, you know, sales will start to see a few green shoots there and developers that were holding stock in the last year and a half will hopefully start to see some of that transacting um down the line and you know the sort of development exit product that Tom refers to as a really useful tool for developers to allow themselves more time to um to sell these units and also sometimes raise capital um while they're selling to put into new schemes moving forward and you know for us if they've got more capital becoming available for new schemes then that's you know where um we can then support them on construction finance for the next scheme.

It's something that historically we've done well so the transition between bridging and development finance and vice versa uh is something that as a business we've done really well uh and it's a part of our strategy that we really focus on is helping developers move seamlessly from one product to the next, uh unlocking their equity or allowing them to build these schemes out.

So, I'm hopeful that now that we'll start to see that uh come back in a much more prominent way. So West1 is sort of one stop shop for the whole property life cycle is the thing.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Guy, mentioned, sorry, just to go back on grey belt land when you were talking before about where these new homes might be built.

What is the definition of grey belt and what opportunities are being opened there? What sort of areas tends to constitute grey belt?

I think it's sort of the greenbelt areas sometimes will have some sort of commercial type industrial buildings on them.

So, it's not...

Pure greenbelt, but it's those bits of land in and around the greenbelt that already have existing buildings on them.

Where you're not going to have, you know, if you're building new houses on an area where there's been some sort of existing building, you're not going to have a massive impact in terms of visually, where you'd have naturally in terms of just greenbelt.

So, I think it's to be ironed out, but the distinction is more so in the Greenbelt area, but those sort commercial or industrial type buildings that exist there now.

And is that a relatively new phenomenon or is that, I mean, in terms of targeting that as a place to kind of increase?

Yeah, yeah, it is.

So, I think later, like, identified that as sort of new policy that they want to put in and I've already talked to many developers about it and they're excited by the prospect of that, um opening some more opportunities in sort of the local areas that they like to develop in.

That does sound like a very sensible idea.

I think it does need that level of forward thinking in terms of reclassification around things and reframing of the problem for us to find the kind of solutions that are going to help the whole country.

So yeah, that's really, really encouraging.

Okay, gents.

Well, that was a useful conversation.

Thank you.

Clear that we're feeling a bit more optimistic about prospects for both development finance and for bridging and for the wider market.

Obviously, we're still early days.

There's few headwinds, as you pointed out, Tom, coming down the line, but with a rate cut in the bag and maybe more to come and house builders starting to get a bit more bullish, then I think fingers crossed, we're starting to see, we might see volume start to increase even more than they have been and start heading towards a place where we could all start to see these larger macro problems being solved in the UK.

I think so. I hope so. Well, thank you for your time as always. Always a pleasure.

Yeah, I look forward to speaking to you both again soon.

Thanks for us. Appreciate it. Take care.

In this session today where I'll be pointing the spotlight of focus on our recently launched specialist first charge Resi side here at West One.

My name is Steve Manakee and I'm National Account Manager and we start where the credit and schooling lenders stop.

What I'd like to go through during this session this morning is I'll give you a quick introduction to West One and NRAS Specialist Finance. We're part of, because of course, when you're recommending specialist lenders, particularly those of us that are new entrants into the Regi specialist space, very often your clients will ask, who's that?

So, I'll just give you some facts about our journey as an organization over the last sort of 20 years so that you can impart those facts to your customer so that they know who it is that they're taking their mortgage from.

I'll also talk about the rise of specialist lending over the last sort of 14, 15 years.

The economics events that have driven that and effectively how specialist lending has become the new mainstream.

And I'm still new to S1. I've been here for nearly 10 months. But what I've managed to do in that time is segment what we do in the first charge specialist, Rirty Space, down into three main specialisms of lending.

I've christened them our three pillars of lending. I'll talk about them in popularity order.

The first and the third specialism are like what lenders that we compare ourselves against do.

So, you would talk about us in the same breath as lenders like Aldermore, Vida, Peppa Money, TML, Kent Reliance, Kensington, Bluestone. Obviously, we do this stuff better.

And our second specialism is the one that I think makes us really, unique in the specialist space.

The session will last about 45 minutes, and you can ask any questions in the Q &A tab, and we'll pick up those at the end of the session.

So, without further ado, who are West One? Well, West One are part of Enra Specialist Finance. Enra has been around for 22, 23 years. West One as a lending proposition was launched in 2005. We were originally launched as a short-term lender, so bridging and development finance.

Nobody in the UK does more bridging than us apart from together. And we are now the largest and fastest growing non-bank lender in the UK.

In the years in between, we've launched into the second market, specialist by to let about five years ago. And we in the first charge specialist Resi are just over a year old.

We became part of the Elliott's investment group in the US in the latter part of 2022, which is brilliant from lots of different perspectives. Elliot's are one of the longest established private equity firms in the world. They've been around for 50 years.

Amongst other things, they manage and own the largest activist hedge fund in the world.

And if you're a football fan, they own AC Milan and they were one of the bidders from United early last year. So, lots of strength in the background with the involvement of Elliot's.

And from a mortgage lending perspective, one of the benefits of the involvement with Eliott's is they give us access to retail funds. So, you'll see us sourcing way better than we ever have done.

In the specialist first charge Red Seaside here at West One, our products pricing wise start with a five, which is pretty good.

And what you can have, for example, on your credit file to qualify for rates that start with a five will become clear in a little bit.

So that's just a bit of a potted history about our journey as an organization over the last sort of 20 years. So, what is it we do?

Well, the reason that we launched into the specialist, Red Sea Space, if we're old enough

um as I am to remember um when there was a real polarization between what was the old kind

of subprime lenders as they used to be, the original Kensington, GE Money, iGroup, those

sort of lenders and the high street lenders, there was a massive polarization between

those two camps. You either, most people fell into the high street world as borrowers and the unlucky few fell into subprime.

There's been a few events of note over the last sort of 14, 15 years, the worldwide financial crisis of sort of 2007 through to 2011, 2012, the pandemic, the cost-of-living crisis that seems to be ongoing.

And it's meant that the negative byproducts from those events have meant that more

customers than ever have needed specialist mortgage finance as opposed to being able to go to the high street.

Levels of defaults of CCJs and Mr. Lake payments on unsecured credit are a higher level than they've been for several years, meaning that more borrowers than ever need to go to specialist lenders because they're precluded from the high street.

It's meant that credit risk parameters um and lending criteria has become tighter than ever as has affordability and LTIs and equivalent multiples underserved borrowers such as older borrowers and those with adverse credit as I've mentioned and the self-employed need alternatives to those traditional high street lenders that they've been able to go to before.

And we've had a real kind of uptick in other economic problems like the cost-of-living crisis, a rising interest rate environment that's meant that people have relied on unsecured debt more than they ever has.

And because of the interest rates have been increasing, consistently over the last two or three years.

It's meant that that mountain of debt has become kind of harder and is becoming harder to

service for people.

So, specialist finance is very much part of everybody's talking point now.

When it used to be a rare thing for a mortgage broker to talk about specialist mortgage lending, it is part of their daily conversations.

And that's why we launched ourselves as another lender option in first charge specialist

resi.

I've talked about those three pillars of lending, and the first one, the first specialism that we have is anything credit related.

That's the title I've given it.

And it's the lending that we do that is inextricably linked to being a true non-credit scoring lender. So, there's no credit score.

There's no algorithm, no scorecard that sits in the background. We use Equifax only, and it's a soft footprint at dip stage. With ourselves, there are three metrics.

three main metrics going on in our lending decision, which is what you as the broker tells us about a decision in principle stage, what we find on Equifax and a mandated underwriter.

That's it. So, we manage and process our business manually.

All our underwriters are based at head office. There are no hybrid or remote workers as far as underwriters are concerned now, which is a brilliant and an ideal situation because it means that underwriters are bouncing ideas off each other and they're not working in this silo-based existence that they are with other lenders.

They're all based at our head office interacting in the good old-fashioned way. We are one of the very few lenders in the specialist space that offers true dedicated case management.

So, you have a single contactable case owner that's looking after your case throughout the processing journey from offer, from submission through to offer.

And that gives you continuity and consistency around two important things. It gives you continuity and consistency around what it is as a lender that we're asking for to get that case to offer.

And we're also giving you continuity and consistency around who it is that's asking for that stuff.

So, it's a one set of eyes approach to processing your customer's mortgage and it's worth its weight in gold. And those ladies and gents can be contactable in two ways.

Throughout the processing lifespan of the case, on the phone or via the interactive message sending service on the case. Everybody loves that. Everybody loves it.

So, when you're faced with a true non-credit scoring lender, you're probably forgiven for jumping to the adverse lender conclusion.

Why else wouldn't you credit score as a lender?

Unless it's to help people that fail credit score and people fail credit score because of adverse credit. It's that natural kind of stepping stone set of assumptions that you make.

Our definition of true adverse is probably the same as yours, which is one of three specific things, which is CCJs, defaults and mortgage arrears.

So, unless I tell you in its broadest sense, all the reasons why we don't credit score as a lender, you'll just walk away from this session thinking that Westone are the lender that you can come to because we don't credit score when you've got a customer that's failing credit score because of CCJs, defaults and mortgage arrears. And of course you can do that.

But what's really vital for me to explain and the way I sum it up with brokers is I say that the reason that we don't credit score is because it gives us the ability to lend to customers that are failing credit score or will fail credit score because of pretty much any wider credit profile related reason, as well as CCJ's defaults and mortgage arrears, as opposed to just because of CCJ's defaults and mortgage arrears.

As you know, the reason why people fail credit score go a lot broader and deeper. You can have first time buyers that are failing credit score because of a sheer lack of credit activity.

A sheer lack of credit activity will very often generate a credit score decline.

At the opposite end of the scale, you've got people with the opposite problem. They've got a very prominent footprint on Equifax, lots of active credit, well maintained.

But the debt-to-income ratio maxims that are factored into the scorecard with credit scoring lenders, is determining that your customer is over indebted.

They're servicing that debt well, but there's too much of a similarity between the customer's level of debt and their level of income. And they're therefore failing those threaded preset debt to income ratios.

We can help you with those because as a non-credit scoring lender, we don't have any maximum debt to income ratios that we can, we don't have a scorecard to factor it into.

So, for us, affordability is the one true factor that we look at in those situations. We go to 90%.

So whatever loan you want from us in tandem with the credit that you're maintaining in the background, if it works on our affordability model, we will lend, irrespective of what sort of similarities might exist between the customer's income and the level of debt that they own.

So those are the two polar extremes. And in the dead centre ground between those two polar extremes is maybe a different type of customer again.

This type of customer maybe has no issues with debt-to-income ratios. They've got the right amount of debt in relation to their income.

The problem for them and the thing that's driving the credit score decline is that they're just not particularly good at paying back their unsecured fixed term and revolving credit monthly.

And they've got a little bit of a checkered history of paying that stuff back on time and their credit file replicates that.

in as much as it looks a bit like a Dulux colour chart, it's got oranges and yellows and reds and greens dotted about all over it.

And we will give you lots of flexibility around helping people that have got a bit of a hit and miss history of paying their unsecured credit back on time every month.

And when you're in that situation and things start to get a little bit worse for you and you start to default on stuff, you start to pick up county court judgements and secured or mortgage arrears, and you're then falling into traditional adverse credit territory, we can lend to you there as well.

So, the reason we don't credit score goes way beyond just being able to help people that have got CCJ defaults and mortgage arrears.

What we want to be is that kind of plan A choice of lender.

When you as a broker need to plan B because you've got a customer that's failing credit score because of pretty much any wider credit profile related reason. And I'm more than happy to review credit files for you.

If you want to send me a credit file, I'm more than happy to have a look at it.

to tell you firstly, whether we can lend, and secondly, which of our products is your customer qualifies for.

So yeah, anything credit profile related and to give you a bit of a flavour as to how flexible we are and what a big appetite we've got on everything apart from our higher LTV products, we completely ignore satisfied CCJs and defaults.

Doesn't matter how many you've got, what the pounds value is either singularly or cumulatively, doesn't matter when they were registered.

If they're satisfied, we'll ignore them from the perspective of what products are your customer qualifies for.

We'll also completely ignore unsatisfied CCJs and defaults that are for no more than £500 each.

Again, no limit to when they were registered or the number of them. If they're for no more than £500 and unsatisfied, we will ignore those too.

We'll also ignore comms and utilities accounts, whether we're talking just poorly paid in terms of like on time every month or those that are physically defaulted.

If we can see that their utilities are comms orientated, they get ignored as well.

And that's on all our products, even the higher LTV stuff. So, it's only unsatisfied CCJs and defaults for more than 500 pounds each that we worry about because on most of our products, we pretty much ignore everything else.

And they need to be registered just two years ago to qualify for our best products. So, you can have effectively an unlimited number of unsatisfied CCJs and defaults that are for more than £500 each, they need to be registered just two years ago to qualify for products that start with a five. So pretty good, pretty good.

With mortgage arrears, your customer's mortgage arrears need to be registered just 12 months ago to qualify for our best products.

With many lenders in the specialist space, if you've got mortgage arrears registered 12 months ago, your customer will qualify for one of their worst product tiers.

With ourselves, you'll qualify for one of our best, for our best product tiers, which is a massive difference.

And with mortgage arrears in mind, one thing that we're brilliant with are those classic late but not missed mortgage payment scenarios.

What I mean by that is it's linked to our sort of more flexible definition of what constitutes mortgage arrears with most mortgage lenders.

If you don't pay your mortgage payment on the day of the month that you've agreed to, they'll register a status one on your credit file.

Even if you've paid that mortgage payment the following day, they'll register a status one on your mortgage account.

Our definition of mortgage arrears is a mortgage payment that wasn't made by the due date of the following month's payment. So will give you that 30 days kind of flexibility.

So if your customer's got a status one on their mortgage account and it's causing you absolute murders, it's either making you plummet from what feels like a really good tier with a credit specialist lender down to a much worse one, or worse still, if it's registered within the last 12 months, which most lenders don't like, and it's precluding lending completely, come and talk to us.

Because if you can prove that payment was made late and it wasn't missed, that status one on that mortgage account doesn't exist as far as we're concerned.

So, it can be the difference between getting the tier that you wanted or getting mortgage lending full stop. So, any of those late but not missed mortgage payment scenarios, come and talk to me about them.

As far as unsecured, fixed and revolving credit is concerned, the flexibility that we can show around the REAS activity will depend on the balance of the account in question.

So, any unsecured credit with a balance of no more than 500 pounds, we effectively ignore the arrears history and the arrears conduct.

If you've got a balance of more than 500 pounds, if you want to qualify for the best products, we're happy with status ones within the last 12 months, which is still quite flexible.

If you found yourself a little bit further down the credit curve and you're in a formal debt management plan, we don't have specifically designed scarily priced products for customers in debt management plans.

If you're in a DMP currently, you'll qualify for one of our standard products. You'll qualify for Near Prime. It's our bottom product here, but it's still a standard non-specialist DMP product.

We need you to be paying the DMP off as part of coming to us, but we will capitally raise for further debt consolidation if required.

And those two needs do come as an intertwined part of people being in a DMP now.

If you're out of a DMP for at least two years, you'll qualify for our middle product tier, which is prime, with a lot of lenders. To get anything decent, you've got to be out of your DMP for at least three years. Our maximum individual loan is 1.5 million, which is an improvement.

We changed that at the opening part of this year. So, anything credits related. If you want to send me credit files, more than happy to review them.

Whatever your customer situation is in terms of problems on their credit file, whatever the credit profile problem they've got, we've probably got a solution for it.

We've got more appetite, more flexibility, bigger reasons to lend mentality and operation, and our rates are as good as you're going to get in the specialist space.

The second specialism is the one that I think, as I talked to about at the start of the session, is the one that I think does make us quite unique, in the specialist space.

And that's where we're trying to sort of push the envelope around affordability.

If you want those bigger LTIs or those bigger multiples, you're probably going to the High Street, Santander, nationwide, Halifax, HSBC, Barclays Premier.

Those are the lenders that if you want five times or more as an LTI, those are the lenders to go to.

And the reasons why they can do that is because they want the squeaky-clean lending.

We specialist lenders are here to do the sort of lending that those lenders can't or don't want to do, either because of a credit profile issue, as I've just discussed, or maybe because of another specialist need that those lenders can't handle.

So as an example of that, being able to use an increased latest year's income for a self-employed person instead of doing an average.

The trade-off for us specialist lenders being able to do that sort of lending is that our approach to overall affordability in LTIs is a little bit more conservative.

And generally, the maximum LTI you'll get in the specialist space is circle 4.5 times.

There are one or two lenders around and about us that claim to do bigger multiples five times, maybe slightly more Lenders like Bluestone, Vida, TML. But it's all very underwritten or discretion driven. So, you don't know what the parameters are daily. So, we're trying to give a little bit of a win-win scenario.

And as much as we want to be able to do the sort of lending that those high street lenders that you get your bigger multiples from won't do,

But we don't want to have that give with one hand and take away with the other situation where we solve that problem for you, but then we kind of give you bad news in as much as we can't do the sort of multiples that those lenders can. We can do five times easily. No special criteria apply.

But if you take advantage of our flex option, which exists on our top two product tiers, Prime, Plus and Prime, there's a £50,000 minimum income requirement on the application.

But if it works on our affordability model, there's no limit to the LTI that will do.

So, it could be five and a half, it could be six, it could be more than that. It really is as simple as that.

If it works on our affordability model and you can satisfy that £50,000 income on the application requirement, there's no limit to the LTI that will do. But if it works on our affordability model, there's no limit to the LTI that will do.

So, it could be five and a half, it could be six, it could be more than that. It really is as simple as that.

If it works on our affordability model and you can satisfy that £50,000 income on the application requirement, there's no limit to the LTI that will do.

And we've just extended that OXDEFLEX option to first-time buyers, which makes total sense

to me because who's most likely to need a bit of help on affordability as first-time buyers, right?

I think the reason we can do this is because our affordability model is maybe a little bit more sophisticated than the standard income versus expenditure models that you see out in the marketplace.

We work on kind of three core metrics. Household composition, so the composition of the household that the applicant lives in. ONS data for their demographic and their net income position.

We'll stress the affordability if they're taking anything but a longer-term fixed rate, so a five-year fixed rate. But it really is as simple as that.

There's no limit to the LTI that will do if it works on our affordability model and you can satisfy that minimum income requirement of 50,000.

It's important to point out that one thing that we won't do as a lender is use your customers' bank statements and the content of them as a stick to beat them with.

Those lenders out there that talk about being able to do bigger multiples than five times,

but it's all under writer discretion, one of the classic mechanisms they'll use once the application's in as a fully submitted case.

One of the mechanisms they'll use to change the goalposts around the affordability they

promised to do at dip stage versus the affordability in the LTI they're willing to do now the case is in, is your customer's bank statements.

We don't ask for full personal bank statements. We want two months personal bank statements, but we're happy if you filter them down to showing just salary credits.

We don't need to see the rest. Brokers like that because if nothing else, it's one less barrier.

The ways that we consolidate our approach to affordability is that we're one of the few lenders that can take up to 100 % of your non-guaranteed but regular additions to your basic salary.

So classically, overtime, commission, bonus. The calculation that we use is the lower of the year-to-date figure on the latest pay slip or the latest P60.

We can do latest year's income for the self-employed and I know there's a small handful of

lenders in the specialist space that do that as well, but we're less labour intensive on it and I'll talk about what that looks like in a second. Adult children that live with you that work and are financially independent, we can factor them out of the household composition, so they don't have an adverse effect on affordability.

Our definition of financial independence is where they've got a job that gets them at

least £600 worth of net income a month.

If they can do that and you can evidence it, we'll factor them out of affordability.

We do a term of up to 40 years on REZ, which is unusual. We can also go to 85 at the end of the term, which is also unusual.

We can even kind of be guided by earned income to do that. What does that look like?

Well, it's dependent on the customer's age application and their pension status in terms

of whether they've got a pension that's being contributed to them. So, we assume a 70 - year retirement age for your customer.

If you tell us that they want to work beyond that and you want us to use their earned

income beyond the age of 70, as long as they're no more than 59 at the point of applying to us and we can see that there's a pension being contributed to, we'll basically consider that as their repayment strategy in retirement and we can go beyond age 70 using their earned income and we can go up to age 85 at the end of the term.

If they're 60 or older at the point of applying to us, we generally go up to age 70 and we'll use the lower of what their current income is, earned income is, versus their projected pension income.

But if you tell us again that they've got the sort of job that can carry on beyond 70 and

you want us to use their earned income beyond that age; we'll just do a little bit of a plausibility check in relation to making sure the job they do is one that they can carry

on doing past 70. And if that's the case, we'll happily use their earned income beyond 70.

One thing that we're good at is not going down that binary route of is the job manual, is

the job not manual? Because we try not to make assumptions based on the applicant's job title because some jobs like

an aircraft engineer sound manual, but when you investigate it and you have a proper conversation with the broker, it might turn out that the person is a consultant aircraft

engineer and just sends diagnostic information and the parts required from the office they're based at to the actual engineers in the aircraft hangar.

So that's the beauty of dedicated case management. You can have that conversation, whereas with lenders that don't have dedicated case management and underwriters just kind of hidden in the background, you don't get to have that conversation and that assumption around the job title is made.

So, we're flexible around maximum term, maximum age at the end of the term.

If you're employed, we want you to be in your current job for at least three months and

out probation. We don't have an overarching maximum uh minimum employment history period that we need you to satisfy.

You could have been out of work for two years long as you're in your current job for at

least three months and out probation we will lend.

We will also not dig our heels in on that three months requirement if you can demonstrate

continuity of employment type.

So, if you've been working for Tesco's for five years doing a particular job role and a month

ago you moved to Sainsbury's doing that same job role and you're still in probation, what's the chance of you not passing probation?

Pretty slim.

A lot of other lenders out there will dig their heels in on those three months, will look to lend based on that continuity of employment type.

We can take as a standard thing up to 50 % of a second job as long as you've had that second job for least 12 months and we can maybe even go beyond 50 % by referral. Court-ordered maintenance from an ex-partner we can use. We can also use the net position on income you're getting from background buy-to-lets.

We're pretty good with contract income generally, fixed term, day rate, zero hour.

Benefits are, we're okay with benefits, I think, because the ones that we kind of advertise that we're okay with are the true work and child-related ones. So, child benefit, working family tax credit, child tax credit, and there's a maximum age of 12 on application for the oldest child, but that's a fairly industry standard thing.

If you've got another form of income, we don't like investment income really, but if you've got another form of income that you can prove longevity of receipt on, particularly if the receipt of that income is benign, we'll think of a reason to try and use it.

So, if you've got anything like that, have a chat with me about it.

But we're pretty good around those kinds of complex multi-income situations where you also

need those bigger multiples.

I'm not saying come to us if you've got a case that you can get over the line with a Barclays Premier or a Santander, because as competitive as our rates are in the specialist space, we can't compete with those high street lenders.

But if there's something about the case that stops it from going to that lender that offers you the bigger multiples, a credit profile issue or another specialist need like latest year's income for the self-employed, that's where we come into our own.

We're okay with one year trading for the self-employed, not on all our products, but we can do it on prime, dividends for non-controlling directors we can take.

A lot of lenders won't like that because they'll say, look, you're a non-controlling director, so, you can't control the dividends you get. We're not comfortable taking it.

We adopt the same approach as we do with things like overtime commission.

If you can prove consistency of receipt, we'll use it. We never ask for accounts for the self-employed, whether you're a sole trader or the controlling director of a limited company.

The way we evidence your income is always via SA302s and the corresponding tax year

overviews. We use net profit if you're a sole trader and most commonly, we use direct to salary and dividends if you're a controlling director, but we can also on a case-by-case basis look at situations where the customer wants to use net profit and salary instead of salary and dividends.

If you are a self-employed person where your income has increased in the latest year and

you want a lender that's going to focus their affordability on that latest year, we can do that.

If the income increase is more than 20%, we'll basically need from you a rationale around how and why, that increase in income is sustainable. But unlike a lot of lenders around us, that's where we stop.

So that's what I was talking about a few minutes ago about how we're less labour intensive

as a lender. When looking at latest use income for the self-employed scenarios. If that rationale that you give us around how and why that's sustainable makes sense, we're generally quite happy. We don't ask for business bank statements as a standard thing for the self-employed.

So, a bit like we don't ask for full personal bank statements, we don't ask for business bank statements for the self-employed either. And we won't need you to provide a projection to back up that rationale around the increase in income. You can provide one, but we won't ask for it.

The third and last specialism is where we do the stuff as a specialist lender that High Street and other credit scoring lenders just won't do. So, things like pure interest only, we can do that up to 75 % LTV.

We stress interest only on an interest only basis, which you think would be an obvious thing to say, but it's not. Most lenders stress it on capital and interest repayment. And we want 150 grams worth of equity. We accept downsizing, sale of subject property, that sort of stuff, but we need 150 grams worth of equity, and we don't inflate that like a lot of lenders do for London and Southeast located property.

We'll accept capital raising for most purposes and I mentioned tax bills and businesses purposes there because most lenders don't like those. We can do applications in sole name from married applicants.

A lot of lenders in the specialist space will insist on married applicants applying jointly in all situations. We'll accept an application in sole name. And we'll also factor your partner out, the person that's not going on the application, we'll factor them out of affordability a bit like we can with your adult children if they're financially independent as well.

If you own your ex-marital home because of a divorce or a separation, we don't set a minimum ownership period to be able to remortgage. We don't need to see the deed of separation, and we don't need separate independent legal advice either.

Gifted deposits from most immediate relatives are acceptable.

We need a gifted deposit letter and we're okay if that money's coming from abroad.

As long as it's not coming from a sanctioned country and it's any applicant's UK bank account, we're happy.

One of the benefits that I feel I have over lenders that I've worked for in the specialist space before is an internal value as team. So instead of going down that subject to value as comments route all the time, what we've got is the ability, when you've got a situation where your customer's property, the one they're a mortgage and the one they're buying is one that maybe lender would generally shy away from.

Come have a chat with us about it, whether we're talking high-rise ex-public sector, those with

open deck or balcony access, flats above commercial, studio flats or houses on the annex.

Come and have a chat with me about it because we'll have a look at it, we'll look at what it is and where it is, and I'll have a chat with one of the internal valuers because they're most likely to be the ones that will know what sort of feedback the actual value will come back with.

And with a bit of luck, we can give a little bit of a provisional thumbs up on that property to give a little bit of confidence, that your customer's not spending that valuation fee unnecessarily.

If your customer's got a background buy-to-let portfolio and you want us to consider it

self-financing and out of the equation, we operate a pure self-financing approach to that.

As long as the cumulative total rent per month that you'll get in exceeds the total cumulative mortgage payments being made on the portfolio, we're happy. No additional stressing is required.

I've left until last. Even though they're the third and fourth bullet point on there because they are very interlinked. We are real specialists in debt consolidation.

When you think about the fact that we've got more acceptable capital raising reasons than

other lenders in the form of tax bills and business purposes, a big portion of the remortgages that we get daily are for debt consolidation.

The reasons why people like us are because we go to 90%, which is very unusual, not just in the specialist space, but outside of it.

We also don't factor the debt back into affordability again.

We also don't set a real sort of pounds value limit to the debt we can consolidate because

we don't have that restrictive debt to income ratios stopping us going above certain levels.

If it works on affordability and sits within 90%, it could be 10,000- or 110,000-pounds worth of debt.

We're good to go. The not factoring the debt back into affordability again is a massive one.

We pay the debt off for the customer. We don't give them the money at completion and hope they'll pay it off.

The lenders that do, the safety valve that they factor into the equation is they refactor the debt back into affordability again. Paying it off for the customer, the positive byproduct of that is that we know for a fact it's gone. And we also, unlike a lot of lenders, we won't pay or we won't charge your customer per account that we're paying off.

We have one telegraphic transfer fee of 35 quid. That covers all the external payments that we need to make. So, it's a real saving compared to other lenders. Our fast-track in-house legal service on remortgages up to 750 quid is also worth its weight in gold.

I've worked in the specialist space for two previous lenders for 15 years and I've not seen anything quite like it. It's our own firm of solicitors, which means they work for us exclusively.

The benefit of that is that your customer's case doesn't land on the same conveyor belt of business they're doing for other lenders.

They're based at our head office on the same floor as the case owners and underwriters.

The benefit of that is that communication between lender and lawyer is brilliant, and normally it's okay at best.

Crucially, we instruct them application submission stage, not offer.

The benefit of that is that by the time the case offers, 95 % of the legal work is done, which means that there's a small window between offer and completion.

As an average, since we launched, it's like...11, 12 days, it's really, short.

And that is massively beneficial to people that are debt consolidated because it means that long standing debt that they've been stressing over the long period is gone so much more quickly.

And invariably, our cashback products that give 500 quid cash back, they're most often

used in debt consolidation situations because you can use the 500 pounds contribution we

give you to pay a big chunk of the legal fees because It's not a free service, but that's okay.

Because if it was free, it wouldn't be very good, just like all free legals. That's not an exhaustive list of stuff we do on the specialist side, but it's just an idea of the stuff that we can do.

So, the stuff that we do for your customers, what does it kind of look like in the cold

light of day?

These are a couple of recent case studies that we've put together. The first one, they kind of showcase lots of things about the lending criteria, kind of unique selling points that we've got.

But these ones are quite kind of like maximum age at the end of the term. The LTIs that we can do and does sort of showcase things like the Fast Track Legal Service.

The first one is basically someone coming from another specialist lender, reverting to SVR, which is quite high and they've only got one year's accounts. So, they were being offered an SVR of like 8.5 % with their current lender. They've only got one-year accounts. It was an LTI of just over 4.5 times.

They qualify for our prime product tier, which is where we start as far as one year trading is concerned. They did go for the Fast Track Legal Service, and it took just eight days from offer to complete and we paid off all the debt via that one telegraphic transfer payment.

The second case has got a bit of everything really. It's a remortgaged case where an applicant switching from or wanted to switch from interest only to repayment, she needed to get debt consolidate as well and because she was an older applicant in inverted commas, she wanted a lender that will go to the oldest age and do the biggest term for her.

She's a teacher, 54 at the minute, on interest only. The fixed rate had expired, and the current lender was saying, look, SVR is the only option for you. We're not going to offer you another product. She wanted to consolidate debt and switch to repayment. She wanted an end date to that mortgage, but it was failing on affordability and debt to income ratios quite badly elsewhere, because of her job, she's got a pension that she's paying into. So, because she's less than 59, she qualified for prime plus, FLEC, which meant that that 5.8 times LTI that she wanted was doable because it worked on affordability.

And we also, because of her age, were able to use her earned income because she's paying into a pension.

And we did that 31-year term that she wanted to age 85. So, we consolidated all her debt. We switched her from interest only to repayment. And she used the Fast Track Legals as well. And the case took just 22 days from submission to completion. So, there was a big saving for her there. She's paying almost identical what she was paying to her interest only mortgage for the

previous lender and all her debt combined. And we're doing it now on repayment with the debt consolidated. She was absolutely over the moon.

And it's a case study that was posted on LinkedIn by our marketing team recently. Just some ideas around in, you know, in real life, what our business looks like. If you've got something that falls outside of lending criteria, come and talk to me because in a landscape where specialist lenders don’t want to do exceptions to lending policy for new business, we try and adopt a reason to lend mentality to most scenarios.

If you've got something that falls between the lines of lending criteria, if there's more

reasons to lend than there are not, we've got a starting point.

So come and have a chat with me. Those are my contact details. Put them in your phone.

Reach out to me after the session.

I'm not sure if we've got any questions. We have any questions? Don't think we have. That's OK.

That hopefully means I've done my job properly. One of the most common things I get asked is about things like service timescales. You know, how quick are we?

Because in the specialist space, speed isn't what we lenders are known for. We're quick.

You know, we're only just over a year old, so we're sort of fine-tuning the case management system, the dedicated case management system. So, you know, work with us on it.

The one thing that I'll give you is bit of free advice. When you have that first underwrite done by your case owner and they give you that updated checklist of processing sort of documents that we need to get the case to offer, upload them in one go soon after you get that checklist as you can.

Because then the case managers reviewing them all in one go and anything extra they'll

need, they'll ask for it in one go. Provide those in one go and then you've got application, sorry, valuation instructed.

And what you've then got is a case that's read to be offered subject to the valuation

report coming back with the results on it that we're all keeping our kind of you know, fingers crossed for.

If there's no further questions, thank you everybody. I hope you've enjoyed the session.

I hope it's been useful. Please feel free to reach out to me separately with any potential cases that you've got.

I hope the week's been kind to you and I hope the weekends kinder.

Good morning, everyone.

Thanks for joining.

We're going to give it a few minutes before we start properly while admitting people joining etc.

Just wanted to say thanks for taking a bit of time out of your day. There should be a Q &A questionnaire that you have throughout the webinar. So, feel free to talk them into that.

We'll come back to them at the end. The details on any cases that you want to discuss, you pick those up as well. And we'll do all that at the end.

So, what I'm going to cover today is uh both bridging and biotope of West one, a refresher of our proposition and what we're here for.

I've got one just received an email from me.

I do have some that I will be revealing as well in relation to our bridging proposition which is very positive and run through buy to let so buy to let will give a view of the proper from all ranges etc.

And bit of a up that way we sit on by to that as well.

I'm joined by Ali, who is the um telephone BDM for the region. BDM extraordinaire. So, this no doubt is the guy. Answers most of your queries while I'm out and about driving and chatting to people.

The unsung hero of our region so Ali's on hand I'm sure he'll be managing most of the questions coming back to you with answers etc and interjecting whenever he wants to.

So, a couple of minutes just to see if there's any straddlers that are due to join.

Once again, I'm going to run through bridging on Buy to Let and I've got some breaking news for those of you that have any terms ready, it's just what we're trying to do.

Today's the last day. Valentine's incentive that's run from Valentine's Day until the end of February.

So, what that was is all um signed within. The 14th to the 29th of February got entry into a draw for the chance to win one of two experience day vouchers 250 quid.

But you're wanting to hear back on from get them in, try and get them into us today. You'll still have an entry to that draw for anything received up till 5.30 this evening. The draw will be made tomorrow. So, I could be reaching out to you tomorrow to congratulate you on winning.

I think we're probably about ready to start. So, guys, thanks for joining.

I'm Jez, as hopefully you will know, that's why you've joined. I am Head of Sales North for West One in the Bridging and Buy to let area.

So, player manager for London, my team partner that's on the call, you go. I'm going to wave out.

Guys, so I want to thank you for taking a bit of time.

I want to talk firstly about because, I mean, we're about to break the record for

most bridging applications ever received by West One. But I want to take little bit for this month.

I want to take you back a little bit. In terms of bridging in general and West One's position for those of you that aren't aware.

So, the bridging space, and only two together in the market in terms of business written and completed on each month or each year. And I think with our friends over at you've got to factor in the fact that they probably consumer. So, from a broker introduced perspective, West One probably completely bridging business in the market.

Now, bridging market since 2025 was very much in London based.

West is the Mayfair postcode that's where the business was born out of that London market.

I think I don't like to use the word neglected, but Stratoconcus was never north of what we were.

And that until probably about 18. So, we want to replicate what we've done in London because we're phenomenal amount of business coming out of that London market and great support and that's been built up over the years, and which is why I'm in situ now along with Ali looking after them as per the rubbish accents.

We've got a girl that is being in situ probably just shy of 12 months and they're starting to build some real traction in the north. Southwest we are recruiting for so we're trying to someone in the southwest that is really going to come in there and make a difference and help us in that region.

And we're certainly seeing huge increases in the Midlands.

I mean the business last year is phenomenal, the record year and the start of this year has been phenomenal as well.

So, thank you for those of you that are already on the train supporting us. For me, bridging, I genuinely can sit here I could talk to any of you and say, think we're one of the best bridging lenders in the market and reasons for that. But when you look at bridging, the most important thing must be the cost, right?

Because a deal is only a deal when the deal gets done. And if a deal doesn't pay out and doesn't, your application goes in, it's just. waste of time for you, it's a waste of time for the it's no good.

And the latest data that I've been part of, which is KSTL data Q3. I believe the Q4 data was about to drop or was very recently dropped and I haven't seen it yet but I'm going back and showed that was the market average conversion was 21 % so one in five call it deals that is going to lenders end up completing.

There'll be a variety of today at the low, it'll deals not working, it'll improving goalposts, it'll be a of changes in conversion rate.

The West wants to be at 45 % so we're converting it. Now what that shows, I mean we don't, we're pretty good at sniffing out or not.

And I think that should take a lot of. We want to we want to pay. We've got great underwriters that understand the market. We've got a team that can give a deal that is yes for us.

Obviously, there's mitigating circumstances sometimes that we're not aware of day one and obviously the valuation has gone back over to business of saying yes to deals that ultimately don't go anywhere. I think an important one is to bear in using a lender that's got good conversion.

The second one and it goes hand in hand bridging rather fast. It's what people are using bridging for.

And speed is a key selling point. I know every lender will sit there and tell you that service accepted. Independent data will back it up for us. So again, the latest data that came out.

The days, because I have seen some other figures, but the most familiar with was again, I think it was Q3 last year, the average time from completion in the market bridging 58 days one for the same period was 27 days. We're average speed.

No, there's a variety of will help.

And going back to the conversion about one of the things that will not help conversion is how quickly we can complete on stuff. But one of the real key points is the fact we instruct solicitors’ day one with no undertaking from the client in most cases.

So, what that means: we do separate representation for what that's working on behalf of West One. 95 % of the time would be a firm called Graphene Legal, who we have in our office in Watford.

Independent firm but they work from the same office so it's not in house legal but it's kind of the next best thing.

Then we instruct them day one so that doesn't make anything for us to instruct our legal. So therefore, the client doesn't have any for the deal upfront, which, but the client would never anything unless the deal completes.

The deal does complete the solicitor retaining the facility anyway so there's no actual no payment from the client and for the legal you flip that on its head, that means the solicitor only gets paid if the deal is made, which means the solicitor really engaged in the process, don’t ask questions, creative when they need to be.

I'm out and about on the road and I hear, yeah, the lenders are poor people, and stuff.

I've very, very rarely had issues with our legals. Now there are a couple of additions to that rule.

We're doing a deal with Scotland because we do lending. It is a different legal system, we appoint a different solicitor and we're charging undertaking, and then it would be circumstances where we would also charge an undertaking as well as solicit were charging undertaking.

For example, things like where the clients are foreign national or something like that.

5 % of the time solicitors are instructed day one dealing sending to Ali and I was very happy if we can give you what you want, follow that straight up with forms and an application.

Sign up comes back in and that can be an electronic signature. Over to the underwriting.

Instruct solicitors and will go out for valuation quotes if applicable on day one.

And we have a direct relationship with uh a lot of value is, and we can be really wrapping with them.

I had a conversation on Monday. One that had indeed needed to be done on Thursday of next week. And it was a bit of a quirky proper.

I think it was a HMO, might have been a hybrid HMO multi-unit. At the point of the guy was we need an AVM done and we couldn't do an AVM on that because of the type of property it was we'll get it completely in notes.

We were able to go out on the Wednesday, and the instruction would have been Tuesday.

So, the value could get it covered the next day. So, we've got these relationships with valuers and again, where it is in the country, the properties, et cetera, to get the full valves done.

And we do option look at AVMs, and we've expanded something I'll be communicating around, but it's not the news that we've expanded our AVM offering a little bit, which I'll touch on when I have the information a bit more it's not one for now.

But so, speed is important. The third thing that prices important and it's probably not as well. Prices still.

Now, we've recently. To be a bit keener on pricing, we're. not going to be a market leader from a price perspective, but from the service that you get with the speed and conversion, I think we're competitive and probably the most competitive in the market.

Pricing today from 0.85 to then fall for a clean end. Top end LTV. It would be priced at 0.85. LTV was getting a bit top here, probably 0.9.

Direct competitors, your MTs of the world, your Togethers of the world, probably stack support nicely from a price perspective me would have put us in the mix, let us quote. Let us quote you because rest assured, won't you use, you get exposed to the service and head good the underwriters are. That carries a lot of weight, wanting to use this again because it's second to none from a service perspective.

What supports those three things? What supports the broadest proposition we have?

So, we do. So, we will lend on regulated and non-regulated residential and semi-commercial, non-laterally and without planning. We can be first and second on both.

And we can lend from 75 gross is our minimum, right up to £50 million plus for the right deal.

So, we've historically known many loans, but I think we've away from that and just want to be the go-to lender for bridging uh regardless of what it looks like. We will lend to any entity so we can lend to personal name, LLP, Limited Company, SPV, PLC, Trading Businesses, can lend to your charities you.

But we can also lend to it at the nationals in the UK and outside of the UK and offshore. And we're comfortable with heavy adverse. We're comfortable with re bridging. We're comfortable with refurb. We literally can look anything. Now there's got things that aren't our bag.

We don't do the finance deals where you're trying to lend against the GDV. We don't do that.

We will lend against what the current value of the property is. We can lend for that heavy refurb and towards work if that's what you're looking to do. It's a bridging proposition.

What I always want is, you see I'll tell you how good the bridging proposition is. When it comes to bridging that I would be delighted if it was a 20-million-pound loan.

I have full faith you'll want to use us again.

That's where the business has been built and that's why we do over a where we do over a hundred million pounds bridging business, and we did over a billion pounds of short-term lending in 2023.

So, the proof's in the pudding, put us in the mix, what I've got I nearly forgot the breaking news.

I'm going to deliver some breaking news now. So, where we ship loans of us was in our proposition. We'll be at 50 % gross.

Commercial and semi-commercial, all of 65 % gross, depending on if it was a particularly quirky commercial. We've been at 70 % gross across both reg and non-reg.

However, today I can reveal that with immediate effect, we now have the ability back at 75 % for non-resistant purchase. So, if you have non-reg purchase, we can that.

I will be sharing about that from the rooftop, because it's one the things that we've made. Clearly that's where we used to be in the market that are there, but I certainly know that we lose some business to some competitors because we limit at 70 instead of going to 75 so Hot off the press, 75 is back in for clean clients.

So, that is some real good news.

But as I say, put us in the mix, let us quote you, we'll find a deal that works eventually, I'm sure.

Give us a try and I'm sure you'll be very satisfied as well, your clients left and I'll come back to any questions at the end.

But it's an interesting one because where we've seen the bridging market. It's for the Buy to let.

So, buy to let essentially has nothing in common with bridging at West One other than Allianz.

So, your underwriters aren't the same, your admissions team.

the same, even as far as the ultimate management of the business is the same, they're separate and they're almost run as separate businesses within West One.

So, there's certainly some synergy between Bridging and Buy to Let and I think it was November of 2022 we decided merge the sales team and it was really when the strategy kicked off to grow our press outside of the Southeast. So, you're going to be getting a delicate buy to let underwriter than understand buy to let like on the flip side you would get a dedicated bridging underwriter on the bridging side. Let market this is what I love to do so if any of you've seen this before this is how I like to illustrate buy let market. Together in here, the high street is here.

As you go up that risk curve, increases and orders the price. So, to let your lender you know, do most of the deals but probably at the more expensive end of the market or certainly are at the most expensive end of the market.

Together the whole street's down here cheaper but risk appetite's narrow.

West One along that that scale feature about here, here and here. So, we have three propositions built into one, I mean, we want some of the business that not coming.

But if it falls out. There'll be times when we want that first bite of the cherry. We have quite we have a standard range. Really competitively, we have some uh leverage tools, which I'm going to go through, and I'll talk to you about in minute. That could really be the right option for first.

Then we have a specialist range which can keep it so competitors on that would be where you start, look at more quirky properties and things and you know the high street aren't going to touch it, so you need to look at a specialist lender.

This end of the market that doesn't have the risk appetite of a together and that are of that ilk at this end.

So, to step down, but it would be down in price as well for the quirkier deals where you're a bit. limited with lenders and that complex range plan.

Now, what underpins everything that we're doing by today?

We've been doing by five years at West One, so 2019 it was launched. Andrew Ferguson is the guy that heads it up. He’s a real respected industry figure, ex-Foundation, ex-Axis for those of you that be aware of him. He's been at West One since inception of Buy to Let. He was the guy that kind of developed it.

Ali, how have you been?

Sorry mate, I've been here since 2021, so three years nearly.

So, Ali came in when it was relatively just celebrating my two-year anniversary a couple of weeks back. So yeah, so to border that developed into.

I wouldn't say we're a major player in the buy to let space, but we're certainly able to lender for the more specialist cases these days. We probably complete around 25 million a month, about 300 years of buy to let.

It's been a bit restricted because we did have more ambitious growth plans than that. But as I'm sure everyone that's on the call will know, it's been challenging, right?

It's been a challenging time in the buy to let market ever since the kind of mini budget and the swap increases.

So, one of the pins that I buy to that proposition are specialist criteria that is specialist for us in stuff for example, score. So, a lot of people will still credit score your score depending on whether bad with us we don't credit score, we check. We use a company called Equifax and that's only credit reference agency that we use and we'll change that.

Now in addition to we don't have a minimum income, particularly lenders that are in this kind of market here will have.

So, we just say we want to see an income that's so to what that needs to be. So therefore, you have 20,000, 25,000, whatever it is, which is quite nice. Also, we can go to the Agit 18 application which is quite nice for the older borrower.

We're with SPVs, we're comfortable with LLPs, there's no rate load for them, the products are the same regardless of the mechanism that you're borrowing through.

There’re bits of adverse credit that we can ignore, and I'll talk about other things like arrears that relate to utility or communications don't factor into our credit check, if it went to default or CCJ.

And, we have a late payment, without classing it as a rear. So, for example, if somebody had a status one mortgage credit, live and the reality happened with that was it was paid back within 30 days, so the payment was made up within 30 days. That would probably kill anyone that's credit scoring particularly if was recent. So, with all, she led one instance of that, and if your evidence was powered in the 30 dyes, we'll ignore it as well.

So, that's just standard across the range. So, then we've got three products.

Your standard range is for normal flat, nothing quirky about the problem, nothing quirky about the applicants. The applicant could be a first-time landlord if they've got a footprint on the Resi.

They could be a portfolio landlord at the end, but we do a lot of portfolio and bottle that business because we have a real nice approach to it. Portfolio landlord, inexperienced first-time landlord, all acceptable, standard range.

Standard range is going to be the range that sources the best. Now, one of the tools that we I remember, getting into countless arguments with people on LinkedIn back in the early days but it seems very commonplace now is fee scale of taking a product with a higher fee and trade-off of that is getting a product with a lower now, purely a leverage tool.

I'm sure no one wants to wake up. A massive fee on the mortgage but sometimes users in the market when they've got properties they want to hold on to and they're stuck on lenders SVRs, and they've got nowhere to turn. So, we operate four stage models. So, we have a two and a half percent fee. We have a 4.99 % fee. We have a seven and then we have a market biggest 9.99 fee.

No, I believe. But I think what you get as a payoff for that is the best level in the market.

But certainly, at the most recent reprice for SWAT, a 9.99 % came with a 4.24 fixed rate for five years.

That was the best leveraged product in the market. The individual could borrow the most money on that product.

You have the option so that they all work out the same over a five-year period and roughly writes about a 5 % rate with a normal fee just steps down as the fee goes up. OK.

Pretty competitive range. There's a variety of different variable rates, there's variable rates that don't have EOS, there's a green range etc.

And one key thing that got on the specialties on the standard range to that's essentially a clean client.

Oh, I think I the Can you hear me?

Ali, give me a thumbs up. You have a W product range and then you have a W2.

product range.

So, the only difference is fully adverse credit related.

So W2 is loads more relaxed.

Now um W2, so for example, if you had a thousand-pound default five years, you wouldn't

for W1 regardless of if that was satisfied or not. That would draw you out of W1.

And do you too would like to have a Thursday last week?

So significant. Could be different in terms of appetite for W1.

I saw is Chris Corn still on?

But there are uh a few of our package of partners um that have access to a package of W3 product range. Where it only looks at the last 12 months and essentially ignores everything else over that.

It's a product that if anyone has about, we can always pick up after and there's a few of our partners that have access to that to submit the business through as well.

Now, uh specialist range that's the source is the best. So, specialist range encompasses HMOs.

More HMOs up to six beds would fit in this range. Nice bits of criteria we've got. First time landlord HMOs. Most lenders that do HMOs want you to have some sort of experience with no experience if you've got the footprint on your Resi and comfortable with that. We'll also do first time landlord on multi-unit freehold blocks.

We're talking smaller blocks and we'll six units. So, we're completely comfortable with that first.

And then we have some real nice criteria again, for us, it's just second nature, but would rule you out with lot of lenders. Things like, we're not bothered if utility is shared units.

So, most lenders in multi-unit freehold blocks will want individual separate units. We're comfortable with shared so, one electricity bill covers the whole property is fine for us.

Comfortable. Size is under 30 square meters per unit. 30 square meters or more on their units.

We're not bothered. Now, that's essentially because I've had some ridiculous ones that are like 11 and 12 square meters so again something like that, we might not fancy but where units one's five two that are 25 and one that's 22 fines, we'll have no issue with that at all.

Of course, if you run it in any day. But an add-on to multi-unit 3L blocks, can also look at multi-unit leasehold blocks, comes along sometimes. We can also look at broken free old as well, so where you'd have a multi-unit frail blob but some of them have been sold off as you've got at least two lefts on the free, we would be fine to take a look.

That's all nice. We'll do flats above and probably next to commercial, including smellies as we call them.

So, by smellies I'm talking pubs, restaurants, takeaways, lawn, director addresses, length.

One of the great things is and again, one of the analogies I like to use for people are other lenders will say, I've got a property that is two doors down from co-op that's open till 11 p.m.

You speak to another lender, the BDM will go, 25 % on that, problem.

And it comes to VAL, VAL comes back, the VAL comments that there's a co-op two doors down.

and that it's either not suitable security or the lender then retrospectively decides to pay back the deal to a lower LTV.

We'll raise your hand, who's had an example like that? Would be a fair few hands up, happened at West One?

There you go, got a hand up from Andy. Thanks Andy.

That would never happen at work, I'll tell you the reason. Because of internet abridging that we do, we have a team of employed value and their support with some of our Buy to let transactions.

So, one the things they would support us with, and again I can see some names that are on here that we've done this with, but we would refer we'd say but here with co-op two doors down what will come back and they'll say 3 % land to buy.

That's 70 % going to...won't get retrospectively downgraded.

No listen doesn’t get me wrong it still needs a vertical valve, in and check that structurally the property is okay, that the mental demand in the area is sufficient based on their expertise.

I'm going to comment on is there’s two octaves down and therefore this isn't suitable security.

You know that we've already agreed to be comfortable with it, so you won't get a retrospective downgrade on your LTV based on that.

Yeah, I mean typically the rough rule of thumb is we'll probably be 65 if it's a smelly but there's always a conversation to be had.

I live in West Brom for those of know that there's no chance in hell that we're going to talk about

on the high street at more than 65 % LTV.

Not that there's anything wrong with West Brom High Street. That's where I was brought up.

we wouldn't be over 65. But if we were lending on a beauty store or a posh restaurant in, I had to look at a higher LTV.

That's why it's important to refer them in and let's take a view when it's warranted.

And the last thing on uh corporate tenancies, corporate tenancies, sublet agreements, kind of rent-to-rent schemes, whatever you want to call it, guarantee where there's a third part in the and now that could be housing association, be the authority, could be a charity, could be Serco, it could be just a limited company.

Regardless of who or what it is, we can look at it. Now, there's a couple of bits that we need to check. So, to make it forgivable, the term of the agreement is more than five years.

There needs to be clause in favour of the landlord so the landlord can end the agreement by serving notice up to a of six months.

So, three-year agreements.

Then the next big thing, who's in it? So, we're not ex-offenders. We might take a look, but generally ex-offenders are one we stick with. The asylum seekers we can get comfortable with that.

There's a variety of different things and you can vulnerable tenants here from to drug rehabilitation to victims of domestic abuse.

We can look at all of them. The key for us is the copy. So, if were children and they needed around the clock, that's not one for us.

If it was people, like disabled people, was a glorified care home essentially and there was staff there and that wouldn't be one for us.

If there's carers that visit occasionally or social workers that would visit occasionally, we can take a view about these sorts of agreements and what we can look to end on them. That's essentially the specialist writing. The great thing about the specialist writing is that exact same thing and, it has a W2 product range as well.

W2 product range exists for the specialist range also. This is the range that's a bit more at this end of the market.

So, this encompasses everything. Holiday lets, so holiday let and Airbnb, that has its own product.

The biggest challenge now with holiday lets now, for us it needs to normal IST rental, which can sometimes be a bit of a squeeze. I don't use a seasonal average. But the good part, we're comfortable with first time landlord.

So, first time landlord doing Airbnb is quite rare and, we can do. And I think with the young specialist Lender that will allow you to do this. To know there's a couple of regional building societies that will, but obviously they'll be considerably stricter. But we can do multi-unit 3L blocks as Polar Deletes where they're rented unit by unit which is quite a nice feature.

So, about that in modern Polar Deletes look at first time buyer, first time landlord.

This is the only product we have that has a of £25,000 income is required for first-time buyer, first-time landlord.

So, introduce a minimum age here of 25, whereas our standard minimum age is 21 - 25 grand.

25 years old, needs to be employed, but we can do it first time buyer, first time landlord.

and we don't, there's no requirement for a Resi or anything like that. Clearly if it has an inkling of more questions, but if we're completely, it's not. Then completely we can take a view and just and just do it.

Then we have a product that caters to large HMOs and Mult uniform blocks. So that takes over at the specialist range which limits it to the product says 10 by 10.

This is where we start to look commercial valves instead of just bricks and mortar as we would do with the others. Now we do ask for these to be referred in.

So, we can look at the property because again we've still got roll shutter doors in downstairs because it's been very poorly converted from a shop like that, I'm going to want to be 75 % on, but look at a large, big house that's now like an eight-unit, multi-unit or something.

It would be fine at 75. We'll have gotten Castanile over them before they come in.

And then the big one where we write a lot of business on is expat and foreign national products, two separate products, two separate approaches, but a couple of similarities. So, we use the financial action task, grey list and blacklist to ascertain whether where the person is from or living is acceptable or not. So, if you're from or living in a country on the grain, we lend to you.

So, you need to be uh in a country that's not on those lists. The one exception to that rule is the fact that the United Arab Emirates are on the grey list, but we can look at lending. So again, it's more plural.

The other thing that the two are in common is that we see a UK mortgage credit footprint. So, we won't do a first-time buyer. We want you to have a mortgage credit footprint. We do have the ability to take a view if you own a property in the UK already. But we generally want that to be couple of years at least that you've owned it.

Someone brought it on a bridge six months ago and it's the only one that they've got. That isn’t for us. If I had one here, generally we want a mortgage track record or we want some ownership with a bit of tenure. Foreign national limited 65 % LTV and to UK based SPV on foreign national.

We can go to 65 % LTV, and we can lend both to personal non partnership and limit company SPV.

That's the whole product range. There's a couple of bits that I just want to cover.

So, 90 grand is the minimum property value that was relatively recently reduced from five. So, 90,000 is minimum property value. On bridging to add the minimum property values 150 so it is separate. Boiler lids and I call it the best of both, and I always think of Holvis when I do it, a lot of lenders, particularly lenders that are this. We'll do one facility covering properties. So, 20 properties, facility covering all 20. And nice and easy, but very restrictive for the. For the borrower.

So, there are permission, they might need new valuations done, with the way we do it, we do individual loans across the facility. So, there's 20 properties, we do 20 loans.

Now, the best of both, comes in because from an admin perspective we treat it as one deal.

So, you would only key one deal, we would replicate it all, background for you, will have load documents on one deal. And that's fine.

Ali's throwing me off because he's moving around the office. But you would essentially have one deal to do, but it's great uh deal of maintaining that flexibility for the client.

West1 don’t stress the background portfolio, and we don't have any address under our things like cashflow for cash and liabilities, business plans. We don't need any of that. Just need the portfolio spreadsheet. We can use yours with all the information's there. Keep one deal. We replicate the background. For borrowers and brokers that support us on that.

That's it, I want to open the floor up to Ali if he's got anything to add or see if there's any questions around the room that I can cover ahead.

Do have any questions?

The question the Q &A is empty, so yeah, the floor is open to everyone if they want to ask any questions. Happier to answer them.

Cool. I mean, there's no questions, we can go on in guys if you do have any or have any cases that you want to discuss, Ali and I are around.

If you want me to come in and come and meet you or the team and discuss in uh detail with any of your colleagues that you think would be useful, boil me a cup of. And yeah, thanks for taking the time out of your diaries guys and thanks for joining.

I hope you found that useful. And remember, 75 % unregulated purchase, clean client.

No, so if you need any terms. I'll hold it, Jeff. There is a question from Javed. He's asked, landlord with no Resi and let to housing association remortgage. So, landlord with no residence remortgage mortgage on the buy to let so therefore they've got a mortgage track record so that would be fine.

We'll come down to the agreement so like I said you've got to have a term no longer than five years and there needs to be an orally the agreement over we'll review it and see if we can do it but in principle yes that's.

Any other questions before we? Cool, right guys, we'll let you go on time. So, thank you all for joining.

If there are any other questions, call me email. And thanks for thanks for being here today.

Cheers. Thanks everyone. Cheers.

I think firstly uh we've seen large numbers of borrowers taking out product transfers during 2023 UK Finance reported that number of around 219 billion so a lot of those borrowers if they do have further borrowing needs would find that a second charge could be the most suitable solution for them if they want to look at raising further funds for things such as Home Improvement step consolidation pretty much any legal purpose that's where again a second charge will help protect their first charge mortgage Bally if they've got a preferential deal if we look at borrowers who've got interest rates of sort of 2% sub 2% clearly, they're going to want to retain that rate for as long as possible so that's certainly one Trend we expect to see from a second charger perspective;

Another trend that could well be something we see more of its customers who have been thinking about moving home feel a little bit uncertain still about the housing market so instead May op to improve their own home by taking out a home improvement loan again something that a second charge really does lend itself well to um and then thirdly clearly for some borrowers taking a debt consolidation loan can really be a lifeline at this moment in time where it just helps to reset finances particularly where we're seeing borrowers experiencing payment shocks if they refinance onto a higher mortgage rate.

With the right advice and in the right circumstances debt consolidation obviously is something that we do expect to remain prevalent within the second charge market I think the challenges for 2024 are probably around affordability still.

I think is still going to be a challenge for some borrowers what I would really say to anybody thinking about further borrowing is don't assume that every affordability calculation is the same because it really isn't so for example as a lender, we will look at various income streams we can look to see whether somebody's earning regular bonuses and overtime to see whether we can take a percentage of that income into account I think the key thing is the loan affordable over the term considering different complexities of way people are paid or earn money and self-employed is a great example of that so that's something I think is still a challenge but it's not unsurmountable and with the right advice from a really good professional mortgage broker that's certainly something that could still provide many homeowners with access to finance when they really need it.

So, I think in 2024 what we are starting to see for sure is more intermediaries engage with us as a lender wanting to learn more about our second charge product range probably more than I've seen certainly the last two or three years and I think the reason for that is because lots of intermediaries now recognize the fact that we're all working in a changing economic environment customers’ needs are changing all the time and smart brokers obviously want to adapt their business model to suit the changing circumstance of their sort of core clients.

I think that we'll start to see more intermediaries engage with second charges as they recognize the benefits and how important is as a product particularly at a time where we're seeing you know big uptakes in in product transfers over remortgaging and for high street customers so that's certainly something that we expect to be a growth driver through 2024.