Deacon’s Diary – Scotland and 2013

Firstly, may I wish you all a belated Happy New Year!

It has been some time since the last Bridging Life – as Christmas and a baby daughter have taken over somewhat – but we’re fully back on track now and raring to go in 2013.

So, what’s new?

The biggest news to come from Masthaven Towers so far this year is that we are now officially lending in Scotland. We took the decision some time ago to start lending north of the border again and have worked closely with several quality brokers and solicitors to get everything in place for us to do so.

Our reasoning behind the move was simple: Masthaven has a desire to be the number one choice of bridging finance lender for UK introducers, a position that can only be attained when you lend throughout the UK. There are no hard and fast numbers (to our knowledge) of bridging deals that are completed in Scotland, and thus it is always difficult to gauge what sort of figures one could expect. All we know is that even though we did not lend in Scotland previously, we still received numerous enquiries on a weekly basis for loans transacting north of the border.

The product is, to start with, a very simple one. We will lend on a first-charge basis only for FSA and non-FSA regulated residential purchases and remortgages with up to 70 per cent LTV. When we have more of a flavour of the market we will consider adopting our full suite of products to include second charge bridging, renovation and refurbishment products, commercial and development bridging loans. Watch this space!

2013 will also be a year of change: there will be an office move as we are simply outgrowing our Princes Street home. Masthaven Secured Loans has had a very successful soft launch and we will be looking to grow this proposition in the near future. When you combine this with the success of our bridging operation, you suddenly have a very full office! In an ideal world we will all be in the same large open-plan office, as there is a lot of synergy between the two businesses and they can look to grow together in the years ahead.