There's no business like snow business




.

There's no business like snow business

Brrrrrrr!!! Or should that be ‘Grrrrrrrr!!!’? Love it or loathe it, it's SNOW joke. Fading into my distant memory I see a post woman, bright orange high-vis coat, rabbitting away on her mobile, delivering our mail... It seems like ages ago – well, we ain‘t seen her since Saturday the 27th November!

So it was time for some action, I drove down to our local post office, queued up until I got to the bespectacled old dear behind the counter, and in my best old Etonian voice asked her if she had any idea of when we might start receiving post again. Her curt response was: "How would I know? I haven't a clue..." Mmm, I thought, so gave her an equally curt response to the cackles of the local blue rinses stood behind me: "Well love, I'd better go and ask them in the chippie next door then..."

The old girl chuckled and said that the pick up vans hadn't even collected the post bags since Monday – four days ago.

The world's gone mad: schools shut, roads closed, airports locked, trains not rolling... yet our Gert (who is approaching middle age) dug her little green Corsa out of about 18 inches of the white sticky stuff and set about her daily routine like nowt was any different. Only gripe I had was when the screech of her pit shovel outstripped the football commentater in decibels – calm down, lass!

On a serious note...

This week should have seen three lots of clients’ paperwork arrive, and three cheques made payable to the brokerage, but as each day dawned there was no sight of our lovely post woman. I was hoping to put another three cases into the system, get research done and keep plenty of cases running throughout Christmas - gearing up to start the New Year with a bang.

The first of these awaited cases is a 2nd charge regulated bridge: this guy bought his main residence a few months ago, below value, and did extensive refurbishment, enhancing the value to £400,000 – a £225,000 residential mortgage is the first charge. He requires £40,000 for a few months to complete the build of an overseas property in Cape Verde, (where's that?), so he is looking at a 66% LTV.  He is fortunate enough to be able to afford the bridging loan set up costs and fund the monthly interest.

So any bridging lenders reading this, get in touch, this is a quality client needing a chuck-out financially. I expect to be inundated by Tuesday lunchtime when you lot read this, although Monday will have seen my own research take place.

The second case is a straight-forward residential remortgage to get a better interest rate than the high rate the client is currently paying. This is a rare one, as I've not done a residential remortgage for a couple of years, to be honest I find it boring, time consuming, and often costly to my business.

The third one is the resurrection of a small development finance case, so if you are a development lender, who's prepared to lend for a project in Whitchurch, Shropshire, this may be for you. Commercial First need to be taken out at a cost of £102,000, about £50,000 for the development, against an overall GDV of around £300,000, so another tasty case.

So, I’ve got plenty to be getting on with, amid all the shovelling, and so over and out for another weird and wonderful week – and let’s hope the next one brings us a few more completions and a few less inches!

Bob Havenhand [email protected]

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