🏠 How Together Helps Property Investors Source Deals in Days, Not Weeks with Amy Morgan

Welcome everyone. Welcome to another deepfinder corner. So this is your weekly Props talk show brought to you by PropsFilter, hosted by myself, Guillaume Black, your favorite Frenchman, CEO and co founder of PropsFilter, the UK's is related platform to find deals and as you know we are on a mission to empower our members to do another thousand deals and thousands of deals. I think we are more than 4,000 this year now thanks to the Props Filter blueprint. And the purpose really with these defined corners is to give you more and the best of the available resources by inviting expert guests who will share with you the latest, most current strategies, tactics and secrets, what actually works right now in terms of finding and making deals and the reality of systemizing and running a high performance business in property. So it really is my pleasure to introduce today Amy Morgans of today's Different Corner. So Amy brings eight year property sector expertise with her role as BDM at 2gether's commercial team so 2gether Finance. So they are one of the biggest, if not the biggest private lender out there. They have crazy loan facilities and they can complete on your deal super fast. And today we're going to talk more about focusing on auction finance and it's very, very relevant to this part of the year because you might be able to agree deal pre auction, post auctions, things that fell through just before Christmas and these guys can literally like get it agreed in 48 hours. Right. So she started her career in conveyancing, let her transition into the finance world through residential mortgages with some estate agencies and now she spent three years looking at commercial lending and read the specialty and the things we're going to talk about today. So every day she supports investors, developers, business owners. We've got like crazy property ambitions to make it real. So really, really happy to have you here and with you know, with together as well. So we're going to talk about how fast flexible finance can give you a competitive edge and really they all together made their money basically they grew over the last 40 years basically by being really fast and helping you bridge at auction and get get your money really quick which makes or break the deal how together different from other lenders they are, you know, they've got a property background, they understand your property challenges, they can be flexible, use common sense and all that. They'll understand, you know like complex referrals, no standard purchase, they'll fund quite a lot and quite fast is the truth. And I'm sure we're going to talk about the power of a dedicated bdm so someone you speak to and speak with within the lenders, people understand your portfolio, understand your strategy and we want to help you streamline your career, save you time, ultimately reduce the stress and help you scale faster. So we're gonna have lots of real world insight, experience and case studies that Amy is going to share from her experience, the investors, the developers she's work with across convincing residential, commercial finance, as well as all the people she interacts on a daily basis building and growing their portfolio quite fast. And then so how do you position yourself to win more deals practically? Or do you go around leveraging the right finance, right finance partner to move faster, think bigger and outmaneuver a lot of the competition in this market, you know, so don't be. The big idea when we, when we spoke with Amy about this was to get you from whatever you are, wherever you are stuck with some deals to be closing lots of deals if it's auction, pre auction, outside, you know, whatever the circumstances, to give you another option of our exit basically to, to make these deals. And as I said earlier, it couldn't be at a better time of the year to have this talk because it's really, really relevant. Any auction sales that falls through, any auction sales that doesn't reach the reserve price, when you go and speak with them after the auction, like they definitely want to get rid before Christmas. Right? So together can make this happen. So I've talked enough. So very much looking forward for your talk, Amy. So over to you. Thanks so much.

Thank you so much, Kim.

Thank you.

Thank you everybody for joining. I'm sure you've got sort of an overview as to what I'm going to discuss today. I just want to point out that I haven't done many presentations in the past, can lend money, I can sell deals, but I'm a bit of an introvert in a way, I like to say, an extroverted introvert. So please bear with me. I have also had a massive Christmas dinner just before this call, so it might be in a bit of a food coma. But I will run through everything with you as to what we can offer as how we can help with your property journeys. I'll start off by sharing this screen, so I hope this goes well for me. So we want the presentation window. Perfect.

I had it for a second.

Have you got it, Kim? Is that right?

It came for a second and then left again.

Okay, sorry, let me try again. Are we on now?

Yeah, if you go presenter mode, then it's all good.

Thank you.

Absolutely perfect.

Yeah and like I said earlier, there are, we're creating a link between our two buildings at the moment. So if there's any loud drilling is the building works going on, I do apologize but there's is one of the only rooms I could get. So I just want to start off by introducing myself. So I'm Amy Morgan, I'm one of the business development managers in the commercial team at Together. So I'm sure you all know from Kim's introduction how to get a work. We're a specialist lender, we're based in Cheadle in Manchester. We've been in the industry for over 50 years now. We help sort of in any scenario whether it's, you know, residential mortgages, commercial finance. We offer a range of products which I will come on to later but we offer, you know, your bridging, your buy to let your commercial products, your land, your residential, you know, bridging and longer term products as well. We do also offer, you know, first, second charge mortgage products. So in terms of my sort of experience, so I've been in the industry for eight years. I started off in conveyancing when I was 18 years old. I was working in a conveyancing firm in Altringham in Manchester and I suppose that was where that was my first steps into the property world and that's really where like my love for the industry did begin. I was studying like a part time law degree. I never really wanted to go to university but I wanted the experience, I wanted the qualification. So. So at the time I started doing a law degree alongside working for the conveyancing firm. So I spent around three years there. I did really enjoy it. I got a lot of experience under my belt working within different teams. I got the gist of how the property buying journey goes from start to finishing as well as sort of like your refinance applications, et cetera, et cetera. And then it was at that point where I moved into an estate agency in Stockport, in Manchester and that was where I actually went into finance. So I did work in the mortgage team alongside mortgage advisors for an estate agency and it was there where I gained a. I got my mortgage qualification. Essentially they put me forward to qualify as a CEMAP mortgage advisor. It was kind of at that point where I decided maybe I do need to let go of the law degree. Maybe that was something I initially wanted to do but I suppose property is really where, you know, my heart is. So I qualified as an advisor there. Unfortunately I didn't get into the advice route because it was in, it was four years ago. Interest rates went sky high. They made lots of obviously like redundancies within the firms. That was where I thought well they didn't redundant luckily but they put me through as an estate agent doing you know, viewing reps. I worked with, you know, the lettings team for a bit. I did sort of sales as a negotiator within an estate agency and I suppose although at the time it wasn't great in the sense of it wasn't finance, it wasn't what I wanted to do. It gave me that experience of seeing property from all angles. So I've seen this, the conveyance inside of it. I've seen you know, what an estate agency is like in terms of selling property and then now I work within finance and obviously helping investors get to where they need to be. So it was at that point where I then obviously I moved on to Together. I've been at Together now for three years. I started within, well I'm still in the auction team but I started doing sort of processing for six months or so for the auction team and it was there where our director Scott sort of said to me okay, you're going to be one of our business development managers. We see you've got a sales head and, and let's get you into that. So in terms of my role within the team at Together so I, I am in the auction department. I do focus on auction deals but obviously you know, in terms of our team we're out and about, we're going to auction events but we also do a lot of networking so we attend obviously the property filter event. We attend a lot of networking events across the country. So that's where we do pick up, you know, relationships with customers who aren't necessarily auction customers. So you know we, we do have that sort of portfolio of customers from different areas. So in terms of just a bit of an introduction to together, I'm sure most of you know who they are but it would, it does surprise me sometimes for how big we are. I do go to some events and I say oh we're for together and some customers don't have a clue. So I will, I will introduce you properly to how we work. I didn't really know much about Together to People Fair before I joined. I didn't really realize how big we actually are. So we're the largest non bank lender in the country. We've got a current loan book of 8 billion. We do roughly 300 million a month which is across around 1,500 transactions on average. As I explained earlier, we do, you know, you regulate transactions. We do unregulated, so a mix of, you know, your commercial and your residential. We do have, you know, we're known for our flexible criteria. So essentially we like to say we've got a common sense approach to lending. It's not just a case of where it ticks a box. We have underwriters who are committed to the process to, you know, really look into a customer for who they are. And essentially, if we can see it as, you know, the deal makes sense, it's essentially affordable for the customer. We've got a clear exit strategy. We will do all we can to make the deal work. We don't just look at it, you know, like the banks do, in the sense of if it ticks a box, yes, if not, no. So in terms of, you know, together as a, as a lender, I suppose for me, the only way I can describe it. So we've got 800 staff across the one office which is based in Chesil in Manchester. I remember when I first walked in, I genuinely felt like I was in like Wolf of Wall street. Like there's nothing like it. Everybody is just running around on the phone trying to get deals over the line. You know, whether it's myself and the sales team, like battling with underwriting, or we're running to our valuations team, you know, our internal solicitors, just to get all the advice we can to make the deals really work. But one thing that did stand out to me is everybody just has the same ambitions. Everybody is so friendly. You know, I've never really met a single person at Together who isn't there to do the job and get the job done. You know, we're all committed and we all essentially just want to lend money in terms of, again, going back to our products. We've covered 20 of the bridging market at the minute with a, you know, with a go to for auction lending. We work with majority of the auction houses across the country and, you know, we do. Oops, sorry, I didn't mean to do that. We do grow, you know, year on year. We've got long term ambitions to keep on growing, keep on developing. Which brings me on to this year. We have invested 77 million into a nexus project and essentially we've got colleagues all from different areas across the business who have been seconded to work on a project which is all about transforming the way Together work, the way our systems work, how we can streamline the process for our customers. For our brokers and that is a three month project at the moment that we're working on with the long term goal to roll this out by the end of next year and it'll hopefully help us towards this five year plan which we have, which is to grow our current loan book to 13 billion and to fund the 468 million a month in comparison to our roughly 300 that we're doing at the moment. So yeah, in terms of together we have been known in the past as people would say, oh, lender of last resort. But essentially we're not with a lender of first resort because if anybody, you know, if you're buying any property, you need a lender who's going to, you know, be stood right by your side, do everything they can to make the deal work for you, you know, that that's, that's what we do best and you know, if it's right for the customer, it's affordable, we've got that clear exit strategy. We will try and find a way to wait know a way to make that work for you. So now essentially, auction team I'm in, just want to give you a bit of sort of understanding as to what I do day to day. So we obviously we're working with a lot of customers who are under pressure. So if you've met any of us from the auction team, you'll see we're always running around with stress, we're pulling our hair out. I feel like people in the office kind of keep away from us a bit. I think one of the ladies on my team at the moment is, said she's going to put a barrier up so nobody can come near us because we just need to sit and we need to focus and we're just constantly on the phone doing everything we can to get everything over the line. So in terms of my team, we fund roughly 30 million a month. There's six BDMs on the auction team and yeah, we do 30 million between us and obviously we've got Scott to head up our team. Terms of our sort of criteria, again, we can be flexible. Any properties you see at auction and you look at them and think no lender is going to lend on that. I can guarantee we probably won't. Like we would, you know, 99% of our cases, we can sort of do the pre approval. We can give you an idea of what we'd lend based on what we can see and if there's anything that we are unsure of, we can speak to our internal teams, we can speak to underwriters, we can speak to our valuations team, we can speak to our legal team and we can get that advice to obviously give you that confidence to go ahead and bid the 1%, which I've mentioned is anything that your solicitor would need to then check. So we say to customers, I'm speaking to my customers day in, day out, and I say we can give you the confidence to go and bid on this property, but obviously you've got that legal pack that you need to review, that I can't review. So as long as you've got your solicitor to check over everything, you're happy with everything within that, then I can give you the confidence to go and make a bid at the auction. So yeah, as part of the pre approval process, we do have a decision principle sort of process set up, which I will come onto a bit later on. But, but essentially I have customers coming to me saying, I'm interested in this property. We complete a decision in principle online. So that's where we do the soft credit check, we do affordability and then that's where we would say based on valuation. So if it's commercial, we may need a full valuation, might need to allow you to go out, but if it's residential, we can do a desktop valuation before they've even gone to the auction, give you an idea of what the desktop comes in at and then we can confirm based on the maximum bid, whether we're able to pay pre approve them before they actually go in the room and make any bids on the day. So yeah, we have partnerships with majority of the auction houses across the country. We are the biggest auction lender in the market. Like I say, we can deal whether it's commercial, semi commercial land, residential, even if it's not for investment, if you're buying to live in at auction or residential. So you can help with that as well, just because of obviously this speed of how quickly we can work. A lot of, you know, your high street banks, even some specialist lenders, you know, they will struggle to get completions through within the 28 days, but that's where we can step in. We have funded cases within 24 hours before and obviously we've got that initial process which just sort of streamlines it because we are able to pre approve you before you go to the auction, which, you know, essentially gives you the confidence to go and bid on the day. So our team is headed up by Scott, our auction director. I'm not sure if any of you have met him, he has been working an auction for around 20 years. People do refer to him as the Mr. Auction. Over the years he's developed so many relationships with so many auction houses, so many customers, investors, developers, brokers. He really does keep his team together and he's the reason, you know, we're in the position we are today essentially. And we're, we're working with majority of these auction houses that we do. And in terms of how, you know, our team actually go out and interact with these auction houses, we have a lot of it obviously is online nowadays, but we do have a few auction houses which are in the room. So we have one in London. So Bar Marcus, which I've attended previously, we've got, you know, the auction house franchise. So there's a few, you know, live auctions that are taking place and we are on there, you know, on the stand on the day, pre approving customers so they can, you know, it does give them that confidence to go and bid. So these are some of our auction partners that we have worked with. I'm sure, you know, if any of you have bought auction, you've probably used them before. But yeah, they do directly refer to us as well because we do have that relationship with them. They will, you know, give us a call if there's any customers looking for finance or if there's anything tricky that they've, you know, they've been let down by the lender they use. They just call to myself and the team and we can pre approve them or if they've already won it and they're in a tricky situation, we can get it progressed through underwriting. And in terms of, you know, our underwriting process, we typically, we get the case underwritten within 24 hours, go straight to the customer solicitor, whether if we're doing a purchase, loan amounts under 500,000, we can do dual representation. So we don't charge lender legal fees. It is just direct with the customer's solicitor. So obviously that speeds up the process. No valuation costs if we're doing desktop valuations, no broker fees if you're coming to us direct. So, you know, it is a really streamlined process from start to finish, which is obviously one why we've got so many auction houses. We've got so many customers that buy at auction and use us and even bro, a lot of brokers who refer to us as well, it's just, you know, where they used to be the same where the bank says no, we say yes. And essentially that is what we are. We're a lender who can just, you Know we take a common sense approach and we can get the deal done within the time frame. So here's some of our products that we do offer which I covered earlier. So obviously we've got the bridging products, whether that's residential or commercial, we've got our buy to let products. So the longer term they're between six and 30 years, we do them, we offer them on first charge or second charge. We've got our homeowner business loans. So essentially if a customer's buying a property, for example, they've got a mortgage on their home and whether that's with us or another lender, we could put a second charge on the home which is a long term product to raise further funds for business use. We can do it as a first charge as well. But there is certain criteria towards it. You know, it depends on whether it's own personal owned company. Depends on. Obviously it's a bit tricky when it comes to the home because it is subject to sort of like regulation. But like I say we've got a regulated team so you know, they can step in if you know it is a regulated product that the customer might need. We do help in social housing scenarios. We deal with, you know, a lot of customers doing year serviced accommodation, we do HMOs, you know, all those sorts of areas. I've done one quite recently as well for a customer. We're let down by a bank. He's doing it as a holiday. Let's. We've managed to put it on one of our standard buy to let products on standard rates. And yeah, he's, he's really, really tough with it because he's been struggling for weeks and weeks to get it through and we've just managed to get that one a proof of underwriting because he did get a bit of a lower valuation from another lender. But we were happy to proceed on a desktop on that one. And obviously I will come on to case studies later but that's just prompted me. We've got our commercial term products so again between six and 30 years they're the longer term products. But we do also have the commercial bridging products as well. If you're buying a semi commercial property, buying commercial, you're buying land. You know, we do have the options to help in those sort of scenarios and we do offer second charges as well on commercial property where we look at development finance. So we do have a development team within the company in terms of, I will be honest, they do have quite specific criteria. We don't necessarily have a huge appetite for development. You know it does, you know, there are certain criteria surrounding it but the team has grown year on year. I just don't really have much experience in that, I will be honest. So you know, if there are any development queries I can certainly refer it on. But yeah, in terms of myself, when I have customers going to me saying I need funds for refurb if they've, you know, if they have properties in the portfolio with equity in, we can offer cross charges if you did need to raise further funds for the refurb. It's just not as straightforward in terms of like, you know, lending on GDV etc and that's where our development team would come in. So it is something we can look at. You know, if there are any queries on that I'm more than happy to refer anything on. But yeah, so residential mortgages, again long term regulated. We deal in right to buys, we do shared ownership and yeah, that's just a sort of overview. In terms of our products, we do lend in more property related scenarios than any other lender due to that flexible criteria that we've got. So this is our loan book at the minute. So as I said earlier, it's 8 billion currently. And this is the split across, you know, your bridging, your buy to let commercial, your residential and second charge mortgages and your development. Like I say, we don't necessarily have a huge appetite for development but we are looking to grow the team focusing on development deals essentially. And as I mentioned earlier, we are currently at 20% of the bridging market. We are really competitive when it comes to bridging. So in terms of what we do, I suppose I've probably covered a lot of these points already but in terms of the flexibility of our, you know, how together work, we do the dual representation with your solicitor on purchases. You know, a lot of lenders are going to require their own solicitor. They charge you hefty lender legal fees. You know, it can slow down the process because you've got different solicitors talking between themselves and then talking to our underwriters. Whereas with us, you know, if the loan's under 500,000, your solicitor has, you know, two SRA approved managers within the firm they can act for together on dual representation. So essentially our underwriters review your case, they tick all the boxes, they're happy. You pass it over to our, to your solicitors, they send the instruction and then it's just down to your solicitor to get all your documents back. You Know, you sign loan agreement, etc. And send it back to our underwriters and then we release the funds. So it really does streamline the process. It speeds it up. Obviously it saves you money, but it also saves you time as well. And I suppose that is sort of vital, especially in auction, you know, auction transactions, or not necessarily auction, but in any sort of scenario where you're under time pressure, you know, I don't know, you've seen something on the market, the vendor wants to move quickly, you want to be in a position to move fast. Like I say, with funded cases in 24 hours before, as long as your solicitor can work quickly, you know, that's, you know, we can help you get that through. So in terms of, sorry, I think I've gone past where I was up. So yeah, here we are. Computer says no. So again, we're not, we're not like the tick box lender. We have a common sense approach. We've got the, our internal teams who can help us. You know, we, I have certain scenarios where, you know, know we've got evaluation on file, customer thinks the property's worth more for whatever reason the algorithm might be affecting it. I can just pop over to our valuations team, I can say, can you look at this property for me? They'll look at comparables, they'll review the full valuation report and then we just take a common sense approach, we take a view on it and we say, okay, this is what we're going to do. You know, anything outside of criteria, it's not necessarily that it's a no. I mean we do have, we do have our criteria in the sense of, you know, we've got a minimum loan size, we've got a maximum loan size, but there are, there are, you know, certain routes that we can go down. If we do need to take a view, you know, as we want to lend money, essentially we want to make the deal work for you, we want to support you on your property ambitions, we want to help you grow your portfolio. So we will always find a way to say yes and we will take a case, you know, a case by case approach, approach to do what we can to make the deal work for you as long as we can get comfortable. You know, it is very rare that we would say no. So here is what I mentioned earlier in terms of how we work as part of like pre approving how having somebody like myself as a bdm so, you know, structure your deals for you, get them through to underwriting, fight your corner, essentially, if there's anything that, you know, we are a bit trick, you know, we're a bit stuck on. So we start with an initial call, we can get a pre approval done in literally in minutes. We have a pre approval system on our website. That's where it will do, you know, your soft credit check, your affordability assessments, your desktop valuation, if it's required, you know, if it's residential and then that's where I can sort of pre approve you based on your offer or your bid or even if you, you've got a property in your portfolio that you're looking to like refinance with us, you want to pull equity out or we can do the desktop valuations and then we can give you an idea of what we can lend. So as one of the business owner on the auction team, you know, I will structure your deals, I will, you know, give you an idea of what documents we'd need. We'll send them through to our underwriting team and then that's where they review the case. It is done within 24 hours. It is with my, my team as well. In terms of obviously us being auction, we do get a specialized process with underwriting. You know, the, the, they do look at it as this is an auction deal, you know, it is time sensitive and even if it's, even if it's not necessarily auction but you've got a deadline to meet, you know, you've got the vendors waiting for the offers, offers on the table, you know, we will always prioritize based on your completion dates. Then that's where obviously it goes to your solicitor, they send everything back to us. One, you know, with the report and title, you sign documents and then we will essentially release the funds to your solicitor for you to complete. So we'll go on to our case studies. So this is one of my customers. So she had bought a property at auction, a two bedroom flat, it was in Halifax. She bought it for 48,0001 of the auction houses that we worked with. So one of our auction partners, they referred her details across to us. So I gave her a call. She, she was a bit stressed. She had a massive, you know, she had a huge portfolio but she had never bought an auction before. She only had 15 working days to complete. It's like we say, you know, when you're looking at, oh, it's a 28 day auction that can tend to take into account weekends. If you look at the actual working days it can be quite, quite short. It's not a problem for us. I was able to do a pre approval for her. We were only able to lend at the 75 loan to value. What she wanted to do was she wanted to do some works. Oh, sorry, I've gone off. I thought there was another point there. She wanted to do some works to the property and then she wanted to rent it out. So that was where we were able to offer a bridging product. So with us it's a 12 month loan. There's no minimum term on our product. So you're literally just paying the interest for each month that you're in the facility with us if you were doing the service product. Or we can also offer a product where we retain the payments as well. So in this scenario, she opted for 75% loan to value and she wanted it on a 12 month bridging loan. She did say that her intentions were to, you know, do some light works. She probably wouldn't need the bridge for the full term. She may be exiting maybe month, three, month, six. Like I say, no minimum term for us. So you can refinance and redeem at any point. So we got that one reviewed by underwriting. It was underwritten and instructed to a solicitor in 24 hours. And then that was where she was able to, you know, work with the solicitor, get everything back to us and we were able to get the completion through within the deadline. Like I say, she had 15 working days. There was a lot of pressure from not only, you know, in terms of her saying, we need to get this through, there was a lot of pressure from the auction house. But, you know, we were able to give her the confidence from that pre approval that we were able to do it. And we got the case instructed to solicitors within the sort of 24 hours in the case, funded within the deadline. And since then she has come back to me, she bought a further two properties within that same block and then in two months, yeah, she managed to add six properties to her portfolio. And she's honestly, she's so active now, she's so, you know, she's all over auction. She's looking at every single one. She's not just working with that auction house, she's looking at every single auction house that she can see within the area. She's calling me, can you pre approve me? Can you do a desktop for me, let me know if this comes up in line with my bid. And yeah, she's just really keen to sort of grow a portfolio even further. But we gave her the confidence off that one, you know, initial purchase and she has really sort of grown with us and obviously she's, we've got that streamlined process now for her. We've got all of her details. It is literally just a case of this is the property, this is my bed, what can you offer? We'll do the desktop and we get it through underwriting. So here was a. The second case study that we're doing. This was, this was actually carried out by one of my colleagues. So at one of our auction houses had referred, again referred a customer to us, they were under pressure, they bought a commercial property at auction. I know I did mention earlier, commercial property we do need valuations on, but I did also mention we are, you know, we take a common sense approach to lending. We can find a way to make a deal work in certain scenarios. We don't necessarily have to stick to our criteria. And in this scenario, the customer bought a property at auction for 310,000. They did have a lot of money in the deal and they were willing to put 50% in as their deposit. Obviously we look at around 65 to 70% on commercial properties in terms of our maximum loan to value, but they were, you know, they were wanting to put 50% in. So we reviewed this with our internal valuations team. They, they didn't have, they were under a lot of time pressure. Essentially the, the seller of the commercial unit, they had quite strict sort of availability in a sense, and we were struggling to get in for evaluation. So in this scenario we did manage to refer this across to our internal valuations team. We showed them the property, we said, this is what we're working with. The customers paid 310, they've got a 50% deposit. Is there anything we can do? And between our valuations team and our underwriting team, they put their heads together, they were willing to take a few and they were happy in this scenario due to obviously the amount of funds the customer was willing to put in that they were happy to proceed with no valuation. It was also on the basis, you know, there was a strong lease in place. It was a coffee shop, I believe, but it was with one of the high street chains. So there was a five year lease in place. You know, we could see it was affordable. The customer did have experience in, you know, running commercial property. So on that basis we were able to take a view in this scenario and we were able to offer 50% with, you know, the no valuation, again, dual representation. And we managed to get this one funded within the time frame and that was on a bridging product as well. Just for just speed. And then the customer said they were going to weigh up their options in terms of like, refinancing onto something longer term, whether that's with us or, you know, another lender. But they did just want to put that on a bridge. They had that sort of time to weigh up their options and sort of just, just get it through. So this third case study example, it was another one of mine, it might be a bit clunky, so I'll try and explain it to you. I'm sorry, I'm aware I've made these points quite worthy, but essentially one of my customers, they were looking to buy a property. They bought a property at auction with me. I helped them purchase it, we gave them 75% and they wanted to do the works and then they wanted to put it back on the market and sell it. It was a new investor, it was the first purchase that they'd done. So they wanted to buy the property, do the works, get it on the market and then once that sold, go on to a, you know, another purchase. They said they just wanted to do the one for that year and, you know, see how that goes and then come back to us. They, they did change the mind. They. Well, I checked, I called, I called him, I gave him a call, I said, how are you getting on? How was the, how was the project? He said it was back on the mark, it was on the market. Now he's done the works to it. He told me how much he'd spent. Show me the before and after pictures. And he said he'd seen another property that he was interested in at buying an auction, but he was just, you know, he knows if his property is going on the market, it could take a few months to go through. So what we did decide to do in this one, we were able to provide a pre approval for the property he was looking to buy at auction. So it was another residential property. I did review it. I said we could look up to 75% on the one that you purchase him. And he said, well, I don't have my deposit, I don't have my funds for the works. What am I going to do here? So we looked at the property that he'd initially done the works to, which was on the market. We discovered how much he'd spent on it. We did a desktop valuation to see the new end value as to essentially what it's worth, what it's like, listed for. And then between myself and underwriting, we were able to offer him 75% on his purchase. And then we were to able to raise the further funds against the first property which he'd done the works to brought up to the standard of basically what it was worth on a desktop valuation. And we were able to provide a bridge which was cross charged against the two securities. So it enabled him to, you know, buy this other property. Property. It pulled his funds out of the first deal. You know, he wasn't having to wait until he sold it. He was able to pull his funds out to use for his deposit, use for his works and then he was able to, you know, essentially complete on the second while he was waiting for the first to sell and then he'd just redeem and again we managed to do that within the 28 day, you know, the auction time frame. We did have the first charge in this scenario but we do this day in, day out. You know, I have customers coming to me, similar situation. They've bought property, they don't have the, you know, the short on the deposit or the short on the works. And if they've got any properties in the portfolio, any buy to lets even the home, if they've got a first charge on the home already, we can take a second charge on a customer's home and we can do these cross charge products to just, you know, enable you to essentially, you know, you secure your deals quick. You've got the, you've not, you've got the funds, you're not having to wait for things to sell or refinances to go through. We, we will just look at it as, we'll do a desktop valuation on this, we'll do a desktop valuation on that. We look at your first charge balance and if the equity is there, we're able to cross charge and we're able to give you essentially what you need, whether that's 100% of your purchase price, you know, your purch price plus your works, whatever they that may be. You know, you're not having to wait around, we can assist. Oh, so we've come to the end. Sorry if that was really quick. I am aware I speak very quickly. Some of my customers do shout at me for it but this is again like if I can help you with anything, I can provide a pre approval. If there's anything you see, you know, it doesn't have to be auction. If you see something on the market, even if it's something as you know, cash buyers only, a lot of the time it's not cash buyers only, it's bridging and it's together and we can help. So it doesn't necessarily have to be auction. You know, if you've got a private sale, you know, you spoke directly with a vendor or you see something on the market and you want to stand out, or it is what you may think is unmortgageable. We've learnt in scenarios where, you know, the roof's falling off, there's Japanese knotweed, there's fire damage, essentially we may lower loan to value, but essentially, if we can see that it's got potential, it's got a clear exit strategy in place, it's affordable, we can step in and we can help. And as a sort of like, property filter community member, we are willing to offer you exclusive rates. We do reduced arrangement fees. So I have set up an inbox just so we can obviously track any referrals. And also I can, you know, give you these exclusive rates. I can give you these reduced fees. So if you do, you know, want to make note of that, any referrals that you send over to that inbox, it will be monitored by myself. So, you know, I'll be your point of contact. I can take anything forward for you and I can also, you know, help structure your deals. I can look at your portfolio. I can look at anything you're interested in purchasing. You know, we. We can. We can make it work together and get it through underwriting quickly. So we'll go on to the Q and A. I don't know if I need to. Do you want me to come back to you?

I'll help you. Yeah. Thanks a lot, Amy. That was very. It's very interesting and thanks a lot. I'm sorry, I've got a bit of a funny background and this hotel. Right. But.

Oh, it's okay. Do you want me to come back?

I'm here with. No, no, it's all good. It's all good. Making fun of. I'm making fun of my own butterfly background here. So. And don't worry, don't speak as. As quick as everyone's favorite Frenchman who speaks way too fast with. With a. With a horrible accent. So don't worry about it at all. So that was really great. Thank you so much. And I will point as well, you know, inside the community you've got. So thanks for setting up the actual propsfeeter email. That's really great. And just to share inside the community in your sort of partners and offers, etc. We've got this thing. We've got this thing with. Together as well in here. And the idea is you get A discount on your arrangement fees, you know, which could be in the thousands, you know, so email Amy through this, the email she, she shared or go through this. And basically you get, it's like 25% off your, your, your, your rates, you know, which is really, really great. And so you get discount on fast money, which is really awesome. So, so yeah, I'm really glad we got to present that. Thanks a lot. On questions, you know, I was asking about typical LTVs, but actually you kind of answered the question because it depends if you can cross chart it with some other place. But if not on like a typical bridge, what would it, what would it be normally for like an auction purchase.

So in terms of loan to value, so we can do on residential property. So if you're buying a house, it doesn't have to be auction, you know, anywhere 75% is the maximum and it's 70% on a refinance. And then in terms of commercial, we've got between 65 to 70% on fully commercial and then semi commercial maximums. 70%. And that's the same for if you were doing it on a short term or a long term product.

Okay, yeah, cool. Yeah. Which is quite normal actually. But then you can top this up with if you've got equity in another property, which is cool.

Yeah. And we, we have also changed criteria recently where we can do buy select refinances up to 75% as well.

Okay, great questions on what sort of interest would it be dependent on the, dependent on the product? Depending on the, on the deal.

Yeah. So it depends on loan size. If you're looking at a bridge, the rates do start from 0.79. We have a 2% arrangement fee which is included in the loan. Obviously when I say it starts from 0.79, it can depend on loan to value. But that's the sort of like bottom line for our rates. A lot of customers do come to me and they say, you know, I've been offered this or the rate by this other lender, they're cheaper than you. And what we say is send the quote. If you've received a quote from elsewhere, send it over. Because we will, we're confident we will beat it. Because how we view it is you might be getting a 0.77 rate from another lender, you might be getting a 0.89 from us, but they're charging you broker fees, they're charging you lender legal fees, they want you to get a valuation. Whereas with us we're happy to proceed with no Lender legals? No, no broker free desktop valuation. And if you actually look at the overall cost of borrowing, we do work out the cheapest in the market majority of the time and especially, you know, if it's a bridge and you only pay the interest monthly, we do work out the cheapest.

Yeah. I've paid more than 0.79 on my bridges before, so it's great question as well on do you do. So those together do. Together do day one remortgage for severely severe undervalued acquisitions. So you'd bridge it really quick and then pass it to a term product review or go straight to the term product or Sorry.

So when say. Say that again.

So day one, same same. I think it's same dairy mortgage where you could basically, basically do you lend on the end value or could you lend on the end value rather than the purchase price and could you structure it with. You get a bridge on the something that is because it's really cheap and then same day or next day you can exit. Exit it to one of your term products because there's no, no work needed.

We, I'll be honest, we do have quite specific criteria when it comes to lending on market value. So we do want customers to have what we call skin in the game. We want you to have money in the deal. You know, if you bought it for a hundred ousand, you had a seven, you had a 75,000 loan against it and then, you know, the next day it was oh well, I want to lend off, it's worth 200, I want to lend off that. We do see it as, you know, you. If we're going to then go against the 70% of the 200, are you going to have any, you know, money in the deal? You know, if you've done works to it, certainly we can reconsider. But to answer your question, it's. It's not a yes, but it's not a no. It is just subject to, you know,

deal and just for, for everyone to understand. So if you go back in the days of people used to get 125% mortgages on and then same day, same day refinance. So they'll buy BMV refinance same day with some schemes and that used to be running, you know, 15, 15 years ago and then they're like thank you. So then I. They now get 25, let's say they get 25 grand on top of their loan and they're like thank you very much and they run away. You know, it's like, yeah, reposition if you want. I got a, I got the 25 grand, you know, so it's why the lenders are quite careful with this scenario.

Yeah, we do, like I say, I mean, we do, we do take on a lot of risks. We are, you know, we're specialists, we've got very flexible criteria. But we, we do sort of want customers to have skin in the game. You know, if you've owned over, you know, a year and a half, two years, then yeah, of course we, you know, we would lend against your market value. But in the sense of like, in the sense of like day one remortgages, we don't really offer them them, to be honest with you.

And then, yeah, and then you also mentioned about the. Because the thing we were working with the likes of you as a BDM is then there's a relationship. Right. So once I'm done, a deal with you, another one with you next month, next year, and all of a sudden there's, you know, I'm sure you, you know, you, you know, you're able to do stuff, right? It's often the case.

Yeah, exactly. And I suppose in terms of our bridge, you know, we, we can help you buy it. You can pay us off at any point. So if you do have, you know, that lender that's willing to offer you a day one mortgage, of course there's no, you know, there's, there's no, you know, commitment for you that you have to save for the bridge for the full 12 months. There's no minimum term. You're literally just paying us the interest that you're in the loan. But of course, yeah, we, we can lend on market value. It's just, it is generally a case by case basis.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. Question. So two questions on do you do like. So we talk about interest, but do you do other types of lendings where someone mentioning. So I'm not a specialist in this, but about Sharia compliant bridging, where I guess it's profit share type thing. Do you do stuff like that?

Yeah, we don't, unfortunately, no, we don't within together.

Okay. You're busy enough having 20, 20% of the bridging market, right. So, yeah, fair enough. It's funny when you say 25, 20% of the bridging market and bridging is 25% of your book, so it means like your book is like the bridging market.

Well, yeah, yeah, it's huge.

Huge. Huge. Okay, awesome. And so AJ just confirmed there's no, early, early fees from coming off the bridge. Yeah.

So if the loan's under a hundred thousand, there is an exit fee, but it is just one month's interest payment. You'd pay that whether you exit month one or month 12 is just applicable on all loans under 100,000. But any loan over 100,000, there's no exit fee. You're free to exit at any point.

Yeah, makes it awesome. And then Ian is asking, you know, very interesting and by the way, lots of very good feedback in the chat here. I wonder if the, if you do this outside the UK as well. I think Ian is in the Netherlands, so I don't know if you sort of land on other projects outside the uk.

Yeah, yeah, so sorry, I think I completely missed this point. I did have a section where I was supposed to say to you, we do, we'll enter, you know, we can, we'll lend to individuals, but we do also lend to companies. We can lend to customers overseas. We do also have like expat mortgages as well. As long as the securities in the uk we do have overseas clients.

Yeah, okay, okay, obviously clients, but, but not, not lending outside the uk, Right.

No, no, sorry, this. Yeah, the security has. To the uk. Yeah, yeah.

I don't know. I don't know any lender in the UK really who does. We do stuff like that other than private equity firms. Big stuff. Okay. No, that was really awesome. So, so just to confirm you, you would also lend to non UK nationals as well? Yeah, as long as it's within a UK limited company.

Yeah, yeah. As long as the securities in the uk. We do, yeah. And we, we don't necessarily need income proof as well. So say a customer's overseas or even, even if it's a customer who. I don't know. They've got tricky income streams. They've not. They've quit the job to then go into property full time. They can't provide the rest. A302s for whatever reason. Obviously that's where we can step in. We can do retained products so there's no income required, you know, or even if the customer is overseas, they, you know, they want to retain the payments. That's the way we'd get comfortable. If we can't see, you know, they can service the loan. That's where we can offer a retained product where we did up the interest up front. Front. We can also on service products, if say customer was buying a property to rent out, maybe they were sort of short on their income on paper. If they, if we can see based on the condition of the property that they can rent it out within the first four weeks. We can take the projected rental and we can add that to their income and we can use that for the affordability as well.

Awesome, perfect. And what was the email again? So it was propsfilterogethermoney.com. yeah, yeah. And that kind of goes straight to you, is that right?

Yeah, yeah, that'll go straight to me. I've set up the inbox so it'll just be myself and the team monitoring it.

Okay, awesome. Yeah, thanks so much. Have you got any sort of closing sentiments around what you see your clients do right now? Do you find that there's, you know, are you expecting to be really busy for the next 10 days? Because also people will be closing deals before Christmas.

Honestly. Yeah. So the build up for Christ, Christmas is always insane because everybody, you know, needs everything for own time. I'm seeing a lot of the minute where we're struggling to get valuations booked in because of the Christmas period. So I'm having to go through a lot of approval process at the minute to get, you know, commercial case approved without valuations. But yeah, I know it is a really busy time of year. Another thing I wanted to point out as well, I think I might have missed a complete section in my brain that I was supposed to mention. But in terms of our criteria, we stand out from other lenders. Our minimum loan size is 26,000. A lot of lenders, they have 50,000 minimum loan size. So especially if you're buying at auction, you're buying low value properties. That's where we've got that minimum loan size of 26,000. And again, it's not to say if the loan was under 26,000, we couldn't help. We will always try to take a view. We have lent to customers before outsider criteria, but that is the minimum. We can also lend on, you know, multi unit blocks. We've got properties with low leases, fire damaged, you know, we can do portfolio refinances. There's a lot of areas and I suppose the only way I can really cover it is if you think, oh no, who can help? It'll be together. Or oh no, look at this, I need cash. You probably don't. You probably just need together. And if you've got properties in your portfolio already, you, you don't know what to do with them. You're thinking, how can I pull this cash out? Just give us a call, we'll look at your portfolio and we'll come to

a solution that's great. And then I think most people don't realize I always talk about deals are made, not found. And if all you know is how to stack a deal with a buy to let tenant, most of deals won't work. And then if you have to buy with a normal mortgage on a buy to let but then as soon as you start to bring, you know, now, now most people will know how to stack a deal with. As an hmo, as an essay, as a commercial conversion or now there's lots of structures with sported living, etc. All of a sudden you've got lots of different exits and lots of different ways of adding value and making money. But how do you fund it? You know, like so, you know, if the deals, if you can get a deal agreed within a couple of days and get people paid in a couple of days, you know, this comes at a, at a sort of a premium for you, right? So therefore you, you can get, you can get it at a discount, you know. So this will allow you to do more deals, you know and you know, because together lend their own money. Like literally they, you know there's, there's a few famous people into you like Kirsty and a few people like are known to be like running around and signing loans in, in like a matter of hours and days, you know. So that's, it's how you make deals. You know, if deals are made, not found, you know, you know speed, you know money money like speed, you know. So this is really the secret weapon for you guys. So there's the, the email down there. Drop drop Amy, an email or fill the form. I can't remember. We set this up thing here so you get pre approved for when you go hunting for deals. Have a look for any sales for and through pre auction, you know like post auction. Anything that's been on auction multiple times. You can see all of these on props. Filter any auction properties that's been here for months, you know, go and speak with them. Say hey are you still trying to. We'd be happy to look at agreeing a deal before Christmas and you could almost have enough time to go and complete on this. Right? So here you go Amy, thank you so much. Really appreciate you joining.

Thank you everybody.

That was super useful, really valuable. So thanks again and looking at speaking with you. Speaking soon.

Thank you. Yeah, I'll be on soon. Thank you. Thank you very much.

See you guys. See you everyone. Bye bye Bye bye.