1. Cash is King but why not to use someone else’s money instead and grow Grow your serviced accommodation business.
As the saying goes, “Cash is King”. If your serviced accommodation business runs out of cash you can’t pay your costs , wages or bills and can’t grow youe services business accomodation, it won’t be long before you have to stop trading. When it comes to buying the goods and equipment your business needs to operate. some people still work under the policy of “if you can’t afford it, don’t buy it”, which is one way of doing things.
Another school of thought is this – why would you spend your cash reserves on refurbishing your property, when :
a)the goods depreciate rapidly, meaning the value of your assets reduces the second you pay for them.
b) you can use someone else’s money instead.
Yes you do have to pay interest on the money you borrow, but you will keep hold of your cash which you can use to invest in other parts of your business that are going to give you a bigger return. you will have a pot of valuable cash in case of any slow periods or for a rainy day.
Here’s how it works in practice and grow your serviced accommodation business – you could either spend £50k of your cash refurbishing a property paying for furniture, kitchen goods, carpets and soft furnishings; OR you could put the refurbishment on a 5 year finance agreement, such as a Lease, Hire Purchase which isn’t secured against the property, and use the £50k cash as a deposit to buy another property with, meaning you would then double your income.
How long would you have to wait for a second property by taking the profits from just having one? Having the ability to use a separate finance facility which is not linked to the property or its mortgage, allows you to free up the cash you would have spent fitting it out, otherwise.
2. Try Alternatives and grow your serviced accommodation business.
In the last 20 years, there has been a gradual rise in the “Alternative” finance market. You may see the occasional TV advert or Facebook post but in general most of the lenders behind this movement have chosen to go under the radar. They don’t advertise in the news, radio or on TV, and they don’t spend large amount marketing on social media on the internet. This is because they have a ready-made group of people to bring business to them – Brokers.
And so why would they spend money on advertising when they don’t need to? Brokers are not directly employed by the lenders – they don’t need to have an employment contract and don’t need to be paid a pension. More and more lenders have come into the finance market in recent times and their first port of call is to announce their arrival to the broker market as they realise the benefit a broker can bring to a transaction.
They can pre-screen everything, collect the right information and deal with the customer every step of the way, whilst the lender sits and waits for all the correct information to arrive on their desk so they can come to a decision on whether to lend or not, and pay out the cash to the relevant parties, if they have given an approval.
Since the financial crisis of 2008/9, we have seen the major High Street banks pull back from lending to Small to Medium Sized Businesses (SME’s) in the UK. In some cases they are paying Challenger Banks to take customers of their hands – perhaps they became too big? There was too much risk lending to all of these SME’s for low-value assets, and for unsecured loans.
In many cases, the High Street Banks are now taking a month to come back with an answer or initial feedback on a loan application before asking for more information and coming back in another few weeks with a decline or an acceptance with onerous conditions, which is basically the Bank saying it’s a decline but they’ll do the finance if you accept something crazy – it’s a tactic used to let businesses down gently without saying a direct “No”.
Quite often the acceptance conditions make the finance “approval” completely untenable. I know this through first-hand experience, as many of my customers have been through exactly that experience. And in the main, I have benefitted from the High Street Bank’s lack of appetite with these clients. They are happy lending against Cars and Machinery, which have a decent resale value, but anything outside of that is not given much of a chance.
In the Alternative finance market there a number of specialist lenders that will finance low-value assets. They are willing to take the risk as there is a large market out there for customers looking to finance furniture, IT equipment, software, and the entire costs of a refurbishment/ fit-outs of a business premises.
The focus moves away from the asset that’s being financed, to the strength of the customer lending the money and their ability to repay the loan. This means an established SME trading for 3 years or more can get funding at reasonable rates, not too distant from the banks rates, with a decision in roughly 1 working day. That’s a far cry from the month you wait with a bank. And what’s more is the broker doesn’t charge a fee to the Business borrowing the money – we take our fee from the Lender. So it’s a win-win-win for everyone. The lender gets the loan, the broker gets paid for sourcing the loan at the best rates possible, and more importantly, the business / customer gets the finance for the refurbishment and keeps hold of its cash.
This offering can also be extended to Start-Up companies and let them grow their serviced accommodation business – those business trading between 0 and 3 year. Once you have filed 2 sets of Annual Accounts at Companies House it is generally considered that you are no longer a start-up business, in the eyes of the underwriters at least. There are however some differences – interest rates for start-ups are higher because of the perceived extra risk to lend to them – there is no trading history and therefore no historic data to base a finance decision on.
On top of this, the lenders will always ask for Personal Guarantees from the Directors, and they will need to be home-owners, to show there is some wealth sat behind them. As mentioned before, the finance is not secured against a property so just because they want the Directors to be homeowners, there is no direct link between the refurbishment finance and the Director’s properties, on the Personal Guarantee. All it states is this – should the business not be able to make the finance payments for whatever reason, the Directors will cover them with their own wealth.
The process to get a decision on the finance is a straight forward one. At first we provide our clients with a quote that can have as many options as they want – Lease, Hire Purchase or Unsecured Loan; anything up to 5 years. The goods being financed can be anything you buy for your business. If you want to go ahead and grow your serviced accommodation business, we ask for some basic financial information – generally a full set of Annual Accounts and some up-to date trading figures for the current trading year, if available.
If it’s a new start business, we will want a business plan with financial projections and maybe some bank statements. We will then write our proposal our present it to the underwriters with the best interest rates – we will always go to the lender with the lowest rates, first. If we get a decline, we can go to another lender, if it’s approved we can then write the finance agreement for you to sign. Then we will get an invoice from the supplier of the refurbishment goods – these invoices will only be paid with your authority.
The day they are paid your monthly payments begin. If it’s an unsecured loan, the cash will go directly to your business account and you will pay the suppliers yourself – but remember Unsecured Loans will always require Personal Guarantees from the Directors; whereas Lease & Hire Purchase generally don’t. This will all come down to each individual case and the financial strength of your business, and the view of the Underwriters, but it’s not a pre-requisite with a HP or Lease, like it is with an Unsecured business loan.
If you would like to discuss financing the refurbishment of your Serviced Accommodation, Property Developments, Hotels, Offices, Pub, Café, Restaurant or any other types of business, feel free to get in touch. We have a panel of over 70 lenders to finance all types of equipment, and another panel of over 130 lenders for all forms of Property Finance.
I hope to hear from you soon
Best regards,
Billy Walker
Managing Director
Source Asset Finance Ltd
M: 07956 045421
T: 020 3816 0396
This is a guest blog post for zeevou’s Blog.
