Property Matters - Episode 2 - Paul Mahoney

Описание: Stephen Galpin:
Hello. I'm Stephen Galpin. This is Property Matters. With me today is Paul Mahoney, CEO and founder of Nova Financial Group, and we're going to be talking about finance across the property market. Welcome, Paul.
Paul Mahoney:
Thanks for having me, Steve.
Stephen Galpin:
Good to see you. Seems a long time since we've done any of this. Doesn't it?
Paul Mahoney:
Yeah. It has been a while.
Stephen Galpin:
Anyway. Here we go. Paul, I'm very keen to understand what the effects of this pandemic are going to be, or the effects of coming out of it into, really, a new world. Your industry covers people borrowing money for buy-to-let, for mortgages, for commercial purposes. What do you think is going to change?
Paul Mahoney:
Well, I don't think anyone has a crystal ball so far as ...
Stephen Galpin:
That's what you're here for.
Paul Mahoney:
So far as actually what's going to happen. Obviously, it's caused a shift in the market. It's forced all businesses to reassess. Any businesses that could keep operating throughout the lockdown did, but predominantly from home. My business, for example, we had a 30 person office in the city that's been empty for four months now.
Stephen Galpin:
Four months now. Yeah.
Paul Mahoney:
We never would have had the whole team working from home, and we were forced into it. We've discovered, actually, it works quite well. So, we'll probably keep doing that until the end of the year and then we'll keep our space in the city, but probably operate between the two. A bit of working from home, a bit of working in the city. I think a lot of companies are in a similar situation to that, and therefore ...
Stephen Galpin:
Is this going to cause a virtual office explosion?
Paul Mahoney:
It probably will. I think it probably already has, to some extent. Anybody who could have got out of their office space probably has. Because they're not going to want to be paying for it whilst it's not being used. But it, obviously, still makes sense to have a city address. So, I would've thought that it probably already has caused a bit of an explosion and that. Yeah. I think that will continue. More people will work from home. I think there will be a progression back toward the norm at some point, but I can't see that really happening before the end of the year. Until COVID-19, hopefully, is well and truly behind us.
Stephen Galpin:
What's the mood with investors, people who would've regularly come to you for buy-to-let information and advice and, ultimately, finance? What's the mood?
Paul Mahoney:
Surprisingly, it's been quite upbeat, I think. When all this started to come around, we thought it was going to be dead, but it hasn't been. Obviously, I've thought about this quite a lot. So, I think part of that is more people have ha more time on their hands. So, they've also got the opportunity to spend some more time with family and have a bit more freedom. So, I suppose that has led them to think, "Well, how do I create more of this? How do I better utilize my money? How do I not work 60 hours a week for somebody else, and actually put that money to work so I can improve my financial position?"
Paul Mahoney:
A lot of the conversations we've had have been around that. They've had that bit of taste of not necessarily freedom but more time with their family, all that sort of thing. So, I think a lot of that is going through a lot of people's minds. Yeah. Interesting, we were just talking before the show, but so far as a lot of the property that we're involved in, a lot of our clients are passive investors. So, they're looking most at new build and off-plan type properties because they tend to be lower maintenance and all that sort of thing.
Paul Mahoney:
April, for property transactions, was one of our busiest months. Well, was our busiest month for the year so far. May was close, very close. June was also very busy, and now July's been busy, as well. So, people are definitely still buying property. They're being given more reason to buy now given the stamp duty concessions, or the holiday they're calling it. So, that gives pretty well everyone a saving on stamp duty, aside from if you were buying a home under 125 grand, [crosstalk 00:04:41] I think it was. So, yeah.
Paul Mahoney:
There's lot happening. It's been quite positive. The property market, certainly since lockdown, has ended, has bounced back really quickly. You mentioned about finance. There was a lot of negative media. Well, not negative media, misleading media, I'll call it, around lenders withdrawing from the market at the start of lockdown. That was because, mostly, from what I've read, it was around Barclays and Lloyds were throwing product, sort of juicing their loan-to-values. I was getting lots of questions. "Are lenders withdrawing from the market?" That's not what we were being told by lenders, just that things were on pause because they couldn't do surveys...

See the full transcript on our website: www.nova.financial