By Alicia Barlow
PIP Manchester started with a bang this month at the incredible new temporary venue Bredbury Hall.
The room was bustling, with even more members back in the room now that the summer holiday season is over. Our members were ready and raring to go and to soak up the
Speaker 1 Alex Wilkinson
Alex kicked off proceedings with her thought-provoking presentation surrounding technological advancements in the North. Particularly interesting was the scale of Manchester’s economy £63.8Billion; making it larger than Croatia and Lithuania!
Manchester has so much funding heading its way for Landlords. Alex discussed the early stages of the Good Landlord Scheme which is the new initiative from GMCA overseen by Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham. The scheme will approve the utilisation of up to £1.5Million over three years from Greater Manchester Housing Investment Loan Fund to improve and support “Good Landlords” to provide quality housing in the local communities.
Even more excitingly, Microsoft has identified Manchester as a key location for their development. They want to create even more jobs for the local economy; jobs bring people, people need housing… that can only be a good thing for Investors here! Watch this space!!
Speaker 2 Pinder Singh Dhaliwal
Pinder (Falcon Insurance) one of our Sponsors, reiterated the importance of not only having the right insurance product; but the right Broker! Dealing with complex claims, speaking to Insurers, understanding the technical language and the potential pitfalls that Insurers are looking for is something he is proud to offer his clients. The biggest takeaway today for Members was ensuring if you are leasing to a Charity or for Social Housing, that your Insurer is aware of the tenant profile of the Sub-let in place in your property; this covers you for all eventualities.
Speaker 3 Luigi Newton
Our second Speaker of the day was Luigi Newton; a driven HMO Investor from Nottinghamshire. Luigi candidly spoke about his experience in property, the good, the bad and the ugly! His approach to Joint Ventures has not only enabled him to scale quickly but his attitude towards his Joint Venture Partners was extremely impressive.
Luigi wanted the members to takeaway his biggest consideration when working with Joint Venture Partners and that is to work with people who understand and have experience of property. It certainly makes the ability to transact, develop and scale much less stressful and time consuming.
Speaker 4 Kirsty Rodgers
Kirsty Rogers (Together Finance) one of our Sponsors, explained how bridging has continued to be their hot product in the current climate. They will be however moving away from any longer-term lending in the future.
Discussing a case study whereby they were able to support a client in a complex Auction purchase, with a 70% LTV within 30 days is something Kirsty is proud of this month.
Speaker 5 Craig Beesley
Finally, our favourite mortgage broker Craig (The Mortgage Consultancy) another of our Sponsors.
Craig likes to warm up his audience so we started with a quiz.. most of the guesses were no where near! We were equally impressed when Craig admitted he didn’t know the answer either 😊
Craig’s opinion of the market is that volume of transactions is still high; however, with rates rising, more investment opportunities will come along which have sales fallen through or require quick sales. We as Investors need to be ready to capitalise on the opportunities when they come along!
His opinion is that lending rates will continue to increase disproportionally in the short term compared to the bank of England base rate; currently margins are much higher than we’ve experienced in recent years c.0.5-0.75% and are now in the region of 1.8%-2%. Putting that into context, we as Investors have “got drunk on the low interest rates” and now we need to adapt sensibly to a more volatile, higher interest market.
Overall, this was a day full of data, investment knowledge and critical thinking ideas that we can all benefit from!
I’m thoroughly looking forward to next month’s meeting already 😊 If you want to0 join ups in Manchester or at any of our meetings (or even virtually) you can see our membership options HERE
Alicia Barlow, Joint host of PIP Manchester and Owner Rose Alexander Property
