In a week that it was announced that the UK economy has crawled out of recession it is worth taking a moment to think about what opportunities exist for commercial mortgage brokers at the moment.
Are you planning to take on more new staff in the early part of 2010? According to smallbusiness.co.uk there are quite a few of you out there who are planning to increase your workforce.
Might seem hard to believe but despite all the recent bad news a significant proportion of people in the UK still say they want to start their own business.
Of 2,121 adults surveyed, some 17 per cent want to launch a start-up, according to social enterprise organisation Enterprise UK. The body predicts that if one in ten of the respondents realised their ambition, it could create 1.1 million extra jobs.
The Small Business Finance website has reported that inflation has started to creep upwards.
Consumer Price Inflation (CPI) annual inflation, the government’s target measure, was 1.5 per cent in October, up from 1.1 per cent in September.
The Independent has reported that the commercial property market is showing signs of life. Granted that coming from a very low base line any improvement is going to look significant. However good news is good news.
Anyone who has a Commercial Mortgage will (or should) be familiar with LIBOR. So they should also be quite pleased that LIBOR has reached a record low.
LIBOR is the rate which determines the cost of most commercial mortgages and many other forms of borrowing. The rate coming down may bring good news in that interest rates on mortgages and other loans may follow suit.
Whilst helping a friend work out the costs involved in raising a commercial mortgage recently I suggested that they use a commercial mortgage calculator. It turns out that this simple piece of advice actually involves a lot more work.
Some confusion exists as to what a buy to let commercial mortgage actually is. Some brokers and lenders used to regard residential buy to let mortgages as commercial propositions, leading to a mindset that all buy to let mortgages were commercial in their nature.
A fast commercial mortgage is easy to get but be prepared to pay a little extra.
Competition among financial organisations and banks is the main factor that in recent times has led to commercial mortgages becoming much easier to obtain. Difficulties traditionally associated with a poor credit history once meant that an application for a commercial mortgage might well have been rejected.
There are an estimated 5.2 million commercial properties with in the UK with the total size of the retail, office and industrial stock presently estimated to be over £610 billion. It may surprise you to find out that 52% of these commercial properties are investment stock. The remainder are obviously owned by owner-occupiers, mostly using a commercial mortgage to pay for them.
