The Week That Was

Activity Charts – Week 15 (6th April to 12th April 2021)

Well; It’s certainly been a week for goodbye’s as the Royal Family and nation bid a fond farewell to Prince Philip at the weekend; also, those poorly paid footballers of the top six Premier teams decided they wanted to say FU to the FA in wanting to join the grotesque European Super League , and FINALLY, Mourinho got his marching orders from Spursie FC …….. and amid all of that we wait to see if Kate Fleming may also be a goner after the climax of this week’s Line of Duty!

Nice to say a big “hola” then to this week’s figures on the mortgage side of the business with a very super-league-esque £29,752,335 worth of lending completed in Week 15 across 97 cases.

Our own ‘’Big Six‘’ meanwhile was led this week by Dominic Willett who was out on top with £3,445,957 of lending across 6 cases, followed by Nick Harris with £2,265,878 of lending across 8 cases and Sarah Norman with £1,657,998 across 2 cases.

Unsurprisingly with his figures this week, Dominic Willett also wins the “Big Time Barry”Award with his £1,248,999 deal with Barclays/Woolwich (yes…Barclays !!! ☹) and runner-up was Alex Cast with his £1,021,499 deal with Platform.

Then sterling performances also came from the ever-consistent Sean McGeough, Zak Abdul-Karim, Rhys Forrest, Eva Alonso, Paul Varney, Mark Nathan and Ajay Sharma. A special word for Rhys in there….he’s only been with us 7 weeks and he’s already done almost 40 cases ; We’ll toast those figures with some irn bru and prosecco next week in Edinburgh, Rhys 😊 hic,

On the lender side you completed the greatest number of deals this week with Santander totalling 16 across £4,595,042 of lending.

Protection – Week 15

You had a super week on the protection side of the business with 33 deals completed of which Kevin Gronow secured 12, with runner up Zoe O’Hara securing 5.

Sophie Evans also flew the flag for Swansea and Wales with 4 more deals <not long now Sophie till we drink The Mumbles dry!)

Jo Zeff secured this week’s highest policy amount for her deal totalling £700,000 with L&G and Pete Chappell was runner-up with his £637,500 deal with Aviva.

On the provider side you completed the greatest number of deals this week jointly with Royal London and Aviva totalling 6 deals each. In Pete’s words , Royal London are Presently ‘’a class act‘’ ….. so they are well worth a look. The one to avoid is apparently AEGON?! ☹

Birthday’s and other Parish Notices

Many Happy Returns to Ruth Ward who will be celebrating her Birthday tomorrow, Ajay Sharma on the 22nd and Mark Nathan on the 23rd.

Management Notices

The nature of our weekly reports are such that they are always a week in arrears, and your post Easter activity was exceptional.

That said , my own Zoom calls with circa 40 of you yesterday revealed that this last week has seen a curious lull in enquiries.

Walt and I raised this with Santander this morning (who had experienced the same thing) but who had some promising predictions for those of you who were perhaps concerned that the ‘’party was coming to an end‘’ so to speak. It isn’t.

Santander‘s own data revealed that much of the country quite simply took a huge breather last week as Lockdown was eased. Routine matters and house-hunting etc was essentially put on hold, especially amid the good weather.

Folk have also put back the urgency of earlier Spring engagements and they expect the next 4 – 8 weeks to be busy again through to June . Furthermore they are now predicting a £280 billionmarket this year! (this is considerably up on their January forecast of £210bn). So as I always say ….. a week is a long time in the mortgage industry; try not to be dis-heartened if you have gone quiet. It won’t last, and much of it at the moment is due to stock shortages. Once more people come off Furlough (and have their jobs secured by what appears to be a very strong economic bounce-back), it will get a fresh kick-start again, especially with June 30th on the horizon too.

Outwith that;

1. Barclays continue to disappoint; avoid if you can.

2. Conversely, Accord, Coventry, Platform, Hali, HSBC are scoring well.

3. < Cov last week did an Offer for Jaime Lines in FOUR DAYS, and Hali did likewise for Lee Power >

4. As are MT Finance; if you haven’t tried them , please do . good old fashioned equity led / ‘’is it a good property in a good location‘’, led lending 😊

5. On a similar vein, Alan Mudd (stylishly pictured above .. !) has been very complimentary about Investec’s ability to underwrite complex or quirky cases.

6. May 20th is the next/Lockdown-emerging London meeting; Pauli O will be celebrating his 50th that day too (he is 50 the day before! 😊)

7. Fingers crossed for our 10 spursie brokers + carrie …. Beating Oilchester Citey on Sunday would be quite neat with Moaninho gone, and Harry and Sonny won’t have to wait till they are 41 to win a pot…?

8. And Finally …

CONGRATULATIONS to Zak’s son Louis , aged 12 and an avid golfer.

Aged 12 ….. but he shot an astonishing 79 at the recent British Qualifying school and will now be flying to San Diego in July (hopefully!) for the World U 13 Championships!

His mother clearly has very strong sporting co-ordination and hand-eye skills 😊 & Given that messrs Westwood, Poulter and Casey have played in over 200 Majors, and are yet to win one, there is hope yet for English golf!

Well Done Zak, the Dad.

…. Those 40,000 miles of driving the boys to Timbuktoo will all be worth it mate when he dons that green jacket in 2031! (… Can we sponsor a shoelace or a tee peg perhaps? Please don’t forget us, Zak! 😊😊 ….)

Have a great week all,

😊