How to Finance Creative (and More Complex) Deals With Ellie Broadhurst

[upbeat music] Hi, Ellie, great to have you back on the show.

Hi, Andy.

Nice to be back.

Thanks for having me.

It's been a little while, and I want to get a sense check on the market, interest rates, what's happening with values, all of that jazz that we usually catch up on.

But for our listener today, what I want to do is also just frame something that I put to you recently.

Mm-hmm.

There's no doubt that it's a bit harder at the minute to try and force capital value through our HMO projects and then recycle it so that we can reinvest that surplus.

And what I'm finding is a lot of our community members and my clients are asking more and more so about more complicated projects, bigger projects, projects that naturally carry more risk, but need to be approached in a very different way.

So I asked you if you had an example from a lending perspective as well, and I thought it would be good to talk about this today.

I know you've got a great case study to share with us, so we're going to have a chat about that today because I think there's a lot of people exploring these slightly more complicated projects at the minute.

But before we get there, Ellie, let's just get a sense check on what is going on.

Tell us what the market looks like at the minute.

Well, it's been a really strange time, hasn't it? There's so much uncertainty in the world, which doesn't seem to be settling down.

But yeah, it has been a little bit up and down.

But like I was just saying to you, it's... there's not really any kind of progression up or down.

It just seems to be rates are changing, and I think a lot of the time it depends on when lenders are going out to their funders for money.

So is it a good day? What's happening in the Strait of Hormuz on that day? That kind of thing.

So we've had some lenders reducing rates.

Shawbrook have actually reduced their rates quite considerably.

They're now, like, under 6% for kind of your regular HMO-type business, which is really competitive.

So we've seen some rates come down, we've seen other rates go up.

But then also we're seeing a lot more products on the market, and that is always a good sign.

So when funding is more expensive and getting funds is more tricky, you'll see that lenders will really reduce the number of available products.

So you might only have a five-year fixed product with, like, one fee option.