2009 wasn’t all doom and gloom, says Guy Garrard, head of business development at Tiuta
Looking back at 2009 it’s probably not too far from the mark to say that the beginning of year saw many firms not looking forward to the year with any great relish, especially those in the mainstream intermediary market. Fortunately this wasn’t so much the case for firms operating within the short term finance sector as demand had remained strong. Of course wholesale funding issues had also affected this sector but when compared with the mainstream market, specialist short term providers entered 2009 in relatively good health.
At the beginning of the year however an early fear emerged that without sufficient access to bridging finance many distressed sale properties would only be sold to cash buyers, therefore potentially reducing the number of buyers and having a serious impact on prices. To help bridge this gap there were calls for the government to compel one of its newly ‘nationalised’ lenders to provide increased funding to the short-term market or risk prices for distressed sale properties falling. To an extent these fears were allayed somewhat as lending restrictions eased gently over the year, especially in the second half, and some degree of funding was reintroduced into the markets though not necessarily from these ‘nationalised’ lenders.
The Summer months saw a few changes at Tiuta including the appointment of yours truly and towards the back end of the season former joint managing director of Preferred Mortgages George Patellis took up a consultancy post with the company. Subsequently he was appointed as CEO. Tiuta also ensured it was kept busy by launching several new products including going into the secured loans sector with packing partner Savills Lending Solutions.
October saw the unfortunate demise of bridging lender Link Lending. This sad event was not however entirely indicative of a lack in demand in the market. Indeed, short term finance specialists continuing to place a great reliance on consistently prudent underwriting, ongoing interaction with intermediaries and access to funding continued to move in the right direction.
November was a particularly exciting month for Tiuta as we successfully launched our first buy-to-let product. We, along with many other short term lenders, have made no secret in the fact that we are looking at areas of longer term lending. I expect that other short term lenders are increasingly looking to the buy-to-let, secured and commercial markets with renewed interest and, provided funding is in place and available, these are certainly areas to look out for in 2010.
December was quite simply Tiuta’s best ever month, smashing all previous lending records.
One of the biggest ‘events’ of the year was the release of the Mortgage Market Review (MMR). In response to this the Association of Short Term Lenders called upon short-term lenders to join together for a co-ordinated and comprehensive response.
Commenting on the MMR, Adrian Bloomfield, chief executive of the ASTL, said: “The discussion paper sets out proposals on many essential matters including capital adequacy and the entire manner in which short-term loans are sourced
