Husband and wife team, Joe and Mhairi (traditional gaelic name – pronounced Vaari) are a young professional Glaswegian couple with a passion for the outdoors. Whilst out and about exploring Scotland in their motorhome one day, they came across a stunningly beautiful cottage in Gartmore, Stirling, which was for sale along with an attached successful luxury holiday lodge business called Dreamcatchers ……..and a dream was born!
Joe and Mhairi both have busy full-time careers and, despite having no previous business experience aside from the letting of their own investment properties, they had vision and approached their personal bank for support with purchasing the cottage and business. Unfortunately their bankers could not help them with the finance they required but, having a very close working relationship with us, made the introduction for us to identify the finance they needed and support them with the purchase.
Whilst Joe and Mhairi negotiated with the vendors, we immediately got to work assessing their personal and financial information and researching the market for the best and most suitable solution to help them to achieve their ambition. We quickly realised that the business and the cottage needed to be two separate financial transactions and we worked very closely with Joeann Johnson, Independent Mortgage Advisor, to ensure the commercial mortgage and personal mortgage transactions were as smooth and simple for our clients as possible. In order to raise the contribution they required, our clients also needed to remortgage their existing BTL Investment properties which added a further layer of complexity and meant the overall transaction required the completion of three different product types! No problem!
Having identified a lender with an appetite to lend 70% LTV for the purchase of the whole trading business, we submitted a comprehensive commercial mortgage proposal via the lender’s dedicated Broker Channel, and within 3 working days a Relationship Manager had completed an overview and submitted to Credit! Our support and service did not end at this stage however – we remained in constant touch with our client’s Personal Mortgage Advisor and all parties involved in the various transactions including the selling agent, the lender Relationship Manager and the client’s Solicitor – conscious that, under Scottish property law, a sale can potentially become legally binding at a much earlier stage than under English law. It is fair to say there were challenges along the way, but staying close to the key people ensured these were dealt with quickly, efficiently and collaboratively.
Another notable difference between Scottish and English property law is the speed at which things progress…….fast forward only 4 weeks and our clients became the very proud working owners of their own gorgeous 5-holiday lodge business in the beautiful Stirlingshire countryside! https://dreamcatcherscabins.co.uk/ (Insta: @dreamcatcherscabins – give them a follow)
At FundingRound our priority is customer service, providing the highest level of service and support our clients need to realise their goal, and it has been a pleasure supporting two young, ambitious, hard-working people to achieve their dream – we wish them all the very best in this exciting new chapter!