Sometimes a failure can become an opportunity!

Let me explain…I have a number of properties across the UK and one of which is in a seaside town. Up to a year ago I had been renting it out as a buy to let and then the market seemed to turn. I’m not sure whether it was due to the agent or that there were no tenants around, but the property sat on the market for several months.

This was quite frustrating I will say because, as a property owner, there is nothing worse than having an empty property, so something had to be done. I will admit that it was my partner’s suggestion to venture down the holiday letting route, which is what I did.

The funny thing was, the first company I approached, which was by recommendation, they said they would not take my property on, as it was in the wrong area for them!

Not put off by this I made steps to find another holiday letting company and chose the one I am using now due to a good Google ranking – I thought if I can find them easily on the Internet then others would too. They met me at the property and we went through what each room should have in it in terms of furniture and what remedial things needed to be done in order to suit a holiday letting.

I then proceeded to spend somewhere between £5,000 to £10,000 on furniture and fixings. At this stage I this property had been vacant on the market for what had now become eight months. I wanted to catch the very fast approaching summer season, being that it was now mid May. This I did and the property was let out constantly for the whole of July and August and then since has been let extremely well with the current year looking very good too.

So the message in this article is that by thinking sideways and not accepting a failure and being prepared to spend a bit of time and money will see you through in the end.

A £400m rights issue at Bradford & Bingley (B&B) has closed, with analysts expecting that some of the deal’s underwriters will end up with shares.

Shares in B&B were trading at 55.25p when the deadline for the cash call finished on Friday – just above the 55p offer price for existing investors.

The take-up is forecast to be modest – though higher than the 8% seen last month in a rights issue by HBOS.

B&B, a buy-to-let loans specialist, has been hit hard by the credit crunch.

It is not expected to reveal how many shareholders took up the offer to buy extra shares until Monday.

The rights issue was underwritten by banks including Citi and UBS, along with HSBC, Lloyds TSB, HBOS, Barclays, Abbey and the Royal Bank of Scotland.

WHAT IS A RIGHTS ISSUE?
Companies issue extra shares to raise money
They are offered to existing shareholders, usually at a discount to the current share price
Shares are offered in proportion to existing holdings, so if you own 10% of the old shares you are offered 10% of the new ones

Rival cash calls

B&B’s rights issue has been restructured twice. The bank first announced an attempt to sell shares at 82p in May. Then, as trading took a turn for the worse, B&B announced it had decided to sell a 23% stake in the firm to Texas Pacific, but the private equity firm later backed out.

Earlier this year the Royal Bank of Scotland raised £12bn from its shareholders with a strong take-up in its rights issue.

Meanwhile Barclays has secured £4.5bn in new funding from a range of foreign investors.

Barclays announced last month that 19% of its new shares had been taken up by existing investors.

News reported by The BBC