Shine On...

Jonathan Samuels - 15 November 2010

It's hard to believe that we're already half way through November. Before you know it, we'll be tucking into turkey, squabbling with relatives and dozing off to Moonraker - for the 30th time. In the meantime, it's business as usual and all the more so at Drawbridge Towers.

Last week, we attended the 2010 Mortgage Business Expo, which was a rip-roaring success. Our very own marketing guru, Mark Posniak (OK, maybe 'guru' is taking it a bit far), thought it would be good to do something slightly different than hand out the usual corporate tat - brollies, pens and the like.

So, we set up a shoe shine service and had everyone's shoes polished instead. It certainly got people talking and we had no end of industry luminaries, including Anna Ruddock, Mike Lawton and Chris Fairfax resting their pins in what was a hard but productive day. The only person who didn't take advantage of the shoe shine service was Mark. Apparently, wax is no good on Jimmy Choos.

In other news, we are pleased to announce the hiring of industry-respected figure, Graham Macaulay, as Credit Manager. This follows on from our recent appointment of Martin Gilsenan as Relationship Manager. Graham is joining us from Link Loans, where he was Senior Underwriter.

There's no doubt that this is another major coup for Drawbridge and further underlines our goal, which is to hire the best in the industry and be the lender of choice within the short- and medium-term finance sector. Graham brings to the table a wealth of lending experience, particularly on the bridging side, and will fit perfectly into the growing Drawbridge team.

In separate news, today saw the publication of the latest Rightmove House Price Index. Rightmove says that new sellers cut asking prices by 3.2% in November, the largest decline in asking prices since December 2007. Rightmove claims there's dearth of first time buyers and buy to let investors at present, and it's this that is applying downward pressure on prices.

We'd agree with the former but from where we're standing there is certainly not a dearth of professional portfolio investors and landlords, who are seeing real opportunities in the current market. For these individuals, who make up a large percentage of our clients, the more volatile the market, the greater the potential yield and the greater the potential for capital growth.