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A lovely mixed bag this week… I love it when I embark on my new weekly journey and it involves the odd BDM meeting. These meetings contain brand spanking new clients to get in front of, and a spread of work involving various types of finance. In addition, there’s the excitement of the first real week in my own business, having severed my ties with Citri, along with the regulated world.   Weight off my shoulders…   “Weight off my shoulders” is an understatement in this case. Although my notice went in on the 28th it took a week to get into my own set up, but now it's all systems go, licences sent for, computer lined up, business cards sorted. However, the easiest thing is my back office system, thank God for the online Mortgage Keeper system that just moves on to any computer, full client records and files with it, so no client files to try copying.   A busy week started on Monday with that scenic journey over the Pennines to Manc land, land of the baggy trousers… they're a strange lot those Mancs! Jim Royle and Co are bang on the button (mind you isn't that where most of the bridging lenders ply their trade?) I'll give em' what's the story morning glory.   Life’s a breeze…   At just £17.20p for a return ticket, from my little station just around the corner from where I live, changing at Doncaster, and on through Sheffield to Manchester, life's a breeze. All credit to British rail, cheap as chips; I nearly threw a dizzy fit and went first class, no hassle with driving, no hassle with parking, picked up at Manchester Piccadilly by the introducing broker, mmhh!! Piccadilly that must be the Yellow Line. To round up a thoroughly enjoyable day I thought it only right to pop into the Waldorf for a couple of bevvies before going back to civilisation. Let the train take the strain I say.   Lloyds lead the way…   The Manchester clients are purchasing 14 bed HMO’s and terms are already on the table from Lloyds. I'd like to give credit to Lloyds this week as they've offered indicative terms on three new cases for me this week. The HMO and a commercial, which incorporated a HMO above leased offices on a refinance to raise capital, and finally an auction purchase of a retail unit with a flat above. Lloyds are leading the way in my business as far as high-street lenders go.     There’s a much more complex case that I've been working on for a couple of weeks, it's Handelsbanken, who have come up trumps, in this case the only other lender with any interest was once again Lloyds. The case initially looked straight-forward, an unencumbered commercial unit valued at £400,000, fully let on good covenants, apart from the lease on the main tenant, that's only 3-years to run.   Raising £200,000 to fund the deposit on a new BTL acquisition, plus the funds to complete a self-build development should be easy enough. However, we all know it isn't that easy on the high street, the clients had already been unsuccessful with Barclays, and the lease removed Santander from the equation as well as Santander's insistence on applying their stress testing to the whole of the portfolio, as opposed to just the security property offered.   First class all round…   Lloyds once again offered indicative terms, but Handelsbanken were in my mind the best option, they looked holistically at what was best for the clients, and to my delight raised the loan to £580,000 by taking in two other property's. It was their holistic view to working with clients for the longer term that swung it. The clients came out of the Handelsbanken meeting extremely happy, as I would with a rate of just over 2% above LIBOR. The overall fee of 1% was also extremely competitive, and with 0.5% built within that 1% for yours truly, the client's really got a first class service, a first class lender, and a first class product offered.   Finally, the Blue Peter badge goes to…   My final bit this week is a Blue peter badge to Lloyds commercial, their criteria of only taking the rental assessment from the security property is going to get them a lot of the business around. Most customers who build investment property portfolio's tend to have a proportion on normal residential BTL, products where the lenders have used the simplistic 125% coverage rule, based on % only, but when that comes to a commercial lender it falls out of bed when stress testing is applied across the whole portfolio. So, well done to Lloyds for removing this unwanted obstacle.