Category Archives: Richard Butler-Creagh
Richard Butler-Creagh & Henley Finance Ltd
Richard Butler-Creagh has been in the bridging lending business for many years. He became involved with this sector through his experiences in buying and selling his own properties. He soon realized that the most important part of this process was to be able to have the availability of good financing.
“This was always the most difficult part of the process. After being frustrated by the high street banks who found it difficult to turn things around quickly, I soon ended up using bridging lenders myself.”
Richard Butler-Creagh, 2017
He came to the conclusion that this was a business that he understood and that from a successful few years in buying and renovating buildings with his own team – to building up a rental portfolio of properties in London, he found that, not only could he value the properties very easily, he could also estimate any building works that needed to be carried out. After a lot of consideration, he set out to form his own bridging company.
Nowadays this is in the form of Henley Finance Ltd. It provides fast lending facilities and has a proven track record for efficiency in carrying out the due diligence process which is the most important factor from a legal point of view. Once the potential Borrower’s identity is established, not only does Butler-Creagh and his team look over the proposal but have their own experts including, planning consultants, solicitors, surveyors etc. available to ensure that the project that is being financed, runs smoothly. This is monitored throughout the duration of the project.
One of the key features that Richard Butler-Creagh has built the company on is the repeat business. At Henley Finance Ltd costs are kept as low as possible in the belief that if their borrowers make money, they return with more projects to fund. As a result, they have never advertised and all business is from word of mouth.
Richard Butler-Creagh
Short-term deflation is welcome relief
by Richard Butler-Creagh
With food prices dropping at the quickest rate in eight years in January, combined with further falls in the price of vehicle fuels, consumer price inflation is likely to move to a new record low in January, edging the UK economy closer to deflation, as such it looks increasingly unlikely the Bank of England will raise the base rate in 2015. The Centre for Economics and Business Research said: “The headline rate of inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, fell to just 0.5% in December.” This is welcome news after the last couple of years of steep inflation, as high as 10% when taking into account the steep rise of fuel and food, according to some indicators. Savers have been worse off with the inflation eroding their accounts and making their hard-earned worth less by the low interest rate.
There are other indicators that the slow-down is slowing down. Banks are cautiously making funds more available to borrowers. Barclays have shuffled into the lead enticing buyers wanting to fix for five years, with deals starting at 2.29%, a cut of 0.1% from a week ago. First Direct has also shaved 0.2% off its five-year deal with a 2.59% fix until 2020. As usual these are for lenders with large deposits, normally 30% or more, but it is all suggesting that the market is heading for an increase in activity. When choosing a lender based on these 0.1 or 0.2% differences, remember to blends in the arrangement fees as they can alter the overall rate.
House prices still managed to increase last month with figures from Halifax showing that it jumped an incredible 2% taking the average to £193,130. This could be due to the reform of stamp duty producing a temporary wave, a spokesman said.
Richard Butler-Creagh
Property bubble
One of the largest house-builders in Britain recently dismissed fears of a housing bubble as it reported booming demand for its new homes. The House builders revenues jumped 21% last year after it sold nearly 12,000 homes and that is with sales 30% higher in the second half than the first. One of the rival companies also have record profits for the six months to the end of December so it seems that the industry is starting the new year in a really bullish mood. all this came as figures from the mortgage lender, Halifax, showed house prices had dipped 0.6% in December but are still 7.5% higher than a year ago.
The whole of the housing market has had a remarkable recovery after many years of stagnation boosted by increased mortgage lending and assistance from the state-backed schemes such as Help to Buy. Many people think that the revival has fuelled a housing bubble and this has caused the Bank of England to scale back the funding for lending scheme so it no longer applies to mortgages.
Some of the large house builders say they don’t think there is a bubble, they say they cover the whole of the country and think the pricing is stable across the board.
I think the main thing is that if wages increase inline with house prices there should not be a bubble, but as we know this is not the case so people buying property when interest rates are at record lows, it would not take much of an increase to make things very difficult for a lot of new home owners who are pushing themselves to all time highs in prices. One thing is for sure interest rates can only go one way at the moment, so as I have said in the past it is a good time to fix a good rate with your lender.
Richard Butler-Creagh
Richard Butler-Creagh 