00:00Today on Yahoo Finance Future Focus, we are joined by NS Global CEO Isla Robinson to discuss
00:11the problems in accessing mortgages for first-time buyers seeking to gain a foothold on the property
00:16ladder and also for high net worth individuals.
00:19Isla, welcome to the show.
00:21Thanks for having me.
00:22Good morning.
00:24What's the most important piece of advice you would offer somebody seeking a mortgage?
00:27So, two pieces of advice.
00:29Number one, don't only speak to your own bank.
00:32So, lots of our customers go to university or they get their first bank account and it's
00:36with a high street bank and it's really easy to go to your bank and ask them what they'll
00:42do for you.
00:43And that's what 90%, 80% of people do when they're buying their first property.
00:47There are hundreds of lenders that exist that help first-time buyers, international buyers,
00:52high net worth people.
00:53We work with three or four, 500 lenders from across the world.
00:56So, if you speak to your own bank, you've got a 1 in 500 shot of finding the best mortgage
01:01for you.
01:02And then the second piece of advice is be organized.
01:05To get a mortgage in the U.K., lenders work on effectively a binary decision-making process.
01:12So, there's 100 data points that they have to ask and you need to get a yes on 90 of
01:19them, your age, your income, your deposit and so on and so forth.
01:23So, you need to get your documentation and your paperwork together in a way that allows
01:27the bank to answer those questions.
01:30Would you say it's better to own, whether it's property or intellectual property, than
01:35to hold cash?
01:36I think so.
01:37Wealthy people buy property.
01:39That's a fact, okay?
01:40And they buy it because it's a good investment, it's a safe place to put their asset, it's
01:44something that they can talk about and enjoy and everything else.
01:47That's why property is bought.
01:49Now, when interest rates were very, very low, it was very efficient to buy a property with
01:55a mortgage.
01:56Your interest rate would be 1% or 2%.
01:59And with that cash, you can hold it in stocks or shares or your business or in crypto or
02:03anything else that would produce a higher return.
02:06And then net of tax, your income would pay for the mortgage.
02:10So, that's quite straightforward.
02:11Now, you need to take into account your tax rates, where you are in the world, the cost
02:16of servicing and everything else.
02:17But generally, in a low interest rate environment, and where you can get high returns, taking
02:22a mortgage is a good idea.
02:23Are there any other alternative investment approaches towards real estate investing?
02:29I've read that there's such things as real estate investment trusts.
02:32Could you give us some more examples of this?
02:34Within Ennis, we can finance practically anything, and we have done over the years.
02:40So, real estate is the obvious one, okay?
02:43So, mortgage broker, that's a concept that's well known.
02:47We arrange finance against businesses, so corporate finance, which allows money to be
02:52put into the business, which the owners can then extract in efficient ways.
02:57We've arranged money, we've arranged loans against liquid shares, so kind of securities
03:04on the stock market.
03:05We've arranged loans against crypto, which at the moment, it's good.
03:09You know, 12 months ago, it was a little bit harder to do that, given the volatility in
03:14that asset class in particular.
03:16But then further, cars or boats or, you know, a couple of weeks ago, we did a loan against
03:23some blood stock, which is horsies.
03:25Okay.
03:26Can you use Bitcoin as a collateral to borrow against in the UK?
03:29You can, yep.
03:30Okay.
03:31So, Bitcoin is an asset class, and one of the underlying features of Bitcoin is it's
03:36a secure, it's on the ledger.
03:39Everyone knows where it is and how it's owned, and it can't be moved, so it is a security,
03:44and that makes sense.
03:45So, there's lots of lenders that will lend.
03:48Some of the big crypto houses, like Galaxy and so on, will lend against crypto.
03:53There's a growing number of Swiss private banks that will lend against crypto, and there's
03:58a lot of alternative or secondary lenders that will as well.
04:02So, if you look across the whole lending landscape, there are ways to borrow against crypto.
04:06Do you foresee a time when maybe we could have Bitcoin-backed mortgages in the UK?
04:10Because I think they're happening in the US.
04:12There's a lender in the US that does already.
04:15We're familiar.
04:16We've been kind of tracking their progress.
04:19People have made substantial sums in crypto, and they use the proceeds of that to buy property.
04:25We were talking this morning, the average age of a 20 million plus buyer in London at
04:32the moment has reduced from 60 10 years ago to 40 today, and a lot of that is fueled by
04:38crypto or other kind of new ways of earning money.
04:43There's lots of other ways of making income now, other than sitting at a desk, you know.
04:47I don't sit at a desk.
04:48I run a couple of companies, and people do make their income in less traditional ways
04:53now, and I think that- And lenders are catching up with this?
04:56Lenders aren't catching up quite as quickly as you would think.
04:59So, I think if you walked into a high street lender in the UK and said, I make my money
05:06through the gig economy, some freelancing, I do some trading, I own some crypto, they
05:12wouldn't understand what you're talking about, and they would probably just ask you to leave.
05:16Okay.
05:17So, we had a client a couple of years ago that had a very wealthy customer from a very,
05:24very prominent background, and his assets were property and businesses, and he had two
05:31things.
05:32One was some Ether, Ethereum, and the other one was a holding in a Dutch porn website.
05:39Okay.
05:40The bank didn't have a problem with the porn website.
05:42They had a problem that he had some crypto.
05:43So, that's how lots of lenders still look at digital assets.
05:47Eileen Robinson, thanks very much for coming on this week's episode of Yahoo Finance Future
05:51Focus.
05:52Thanks ever so much.
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