Well, the Blog was looking in danger of being beaten back this week by the dreaded Man Flu, but being a man I fought back valiantly as men do, and here we are.

  The daily grind...   I have once again been asked by a new client to provide a “war chest facility”. The client has an unencumbered £250,000 commercial property. He wants to utilise that property to raise cash to purchase below market value investment property's, do the property's up and then sell on at profit, or if a sale struggles then slap a BTL mortgage on the property.   The first hurdle, as far as high street term products go, is that the property itself doesn't generate a great deal of income. Add that to the general lethargy of the High Street lenders to release funds and it makes it a difficult one. In fact in a very similar case recently I struggled to get a lender to offer the “war chest facility.” Only Lloyds had any appetite at all on that case, although that was a large mixed-use commercial, not just the one commercial property as this one is.   As I do quite a bit of bridging I get many e'shot's and various other forms of advertising and marketing by bridging lenders, and one that recently made me sit up and look was the “Open Bridge” from Bridgebank Capital, great when an exit is hard to get proof of at that point in the process.     Today I got another interesting one from West One, the 18 month bridge with no exit penalty attached to the product. West One already have 12 month Open Bridging and their starting loan size at £25,000 fits almost any client, so if the high street commercial lenders want to continue playing hard ball these bridging lenders will quickly fill the gap, and I feel that the short term lending market is buzzing right now, partly due to the apathy of the long term lenders.   Those recruitment agencies still searching for fresh meat...   Now that the new year is well and truly under way, another beast has raised its head, it appears the recruitment agencies are trying to earn a crust by mopping up old CV's and job hunting applications from recruitment sites.       Last week I mentioned that I'd been approached by some company... well after 18 months of no approaches, I've now been contacted no fewer than 5 times in the past week with offers of greener pastures. And once again one of their main areas of approach is to attempt to belittle the current regulated company that I'm attached too. They seem to know things about the company that I don't know, I mean I'm only contracted as an AR to my present company, why would I know anything about them.   Oh, do you know?!...   “Do you know,” they tell me, “that advisers are leaving your company in droves... your company has no funds, they don't pay out commissions, they are extortionate in their fee structure.” The list of faults is seemingly endless and it seems the only people that don't know are the guys like me that are actually on the inside and getting on with their daily work. I'm not aware of any internal problems, and it really gets to me that instead of selling the benefits of alternatives they stoop to pull down where I currently am. Not a great way to gain my confidence in what they have to offer.