"Mortgage Companies Won't Touch This!" | Dragons' Den

Sarris was very good with us, wasn't he? Yeah, we get along great, let's pay that money back, but that's Bob's way of saying if we do

this

and I said God and everything, and then you know no, we talked about it. Look, we're a bit of an old switch. I have the back a little bit to the back and to your right, okay, thank you, thank you. you for fifty thousand pounds for 10% of the deal so we're a bespoke design company specializing in natural buildings and they're made from only natural materials so it's hard to get the guys involved in building in the kind of thing we do because it's so different, so we came up with a couple of new ideas, which is to do prefab straw buildings and make tiny houses like

this

beautiful one here, so prefab store bills we think are what should be used for developments and with prefabs we can build 24 houses very quickly tiny buildings like this can be an office in your garden there could be an artist studio but all can be done in a workshop and with the right investment we can build high quality healthy homes and together we can change the face of construction.

Is it possible that we can go and have a look? For sure yes. Oh, we would love you too. You really feel it once you're inside a constructive discourse from natural entrepreneurs Barbara Jones. and Eileen Southern Life is very strong, they are offering 10% equity, sorry no room for a £50,000 cash injection. I am claustrophobic to help build your company by designing environmentally friendly houses made from straw and natural materials. I just found something please do it Tuka Suleiman already got interested and it looks like Peter Jones come on Eileen has a connection to the straw house wannabes I have a beautiful mother named Eileen fantastic I hope I'm a reflection of that So you're going to design prefabs , that's right, we were working in the market. footage and people can have an extra room without moving well how much would this cost? $14,000, this would cost you fourteen thousand pounds. you submit tell me about ten years old you know when you were twenty he liked it he almost liked it better they didn't start out as a carpenter and cabinetmaker i love my job i trained in the 80s in the traditional way with concrete and dripping things in tubes but i did a course of two days on straw bale building Wow that absolutely changed my life and I knew this was the thing to do and then how did you beat it? she was looking for a business partner mmm and she wanted my daughter but she was already busy and I told her I knew she wanted the bigger, younger model but she got me yeah so in the last 12 months, what does that look like for the business?

How many contracts? What did that generate in sales and revenue? gross profit is something like thirty-nine thousand six hundred your net deficit of two thousand and you have any contracts where are you right now? So we've got about four or five different tracks right now for prefabs and two or three for the small buildings and that's without doing any publicity which looks fantastic the way I'm surprised it's built out of straw being a dragon if i got tim inflated i'd bring him down for the brick company a featured product keeps an unusually affable peter Jones agrees for now, even though the business posted a deficit.

Jenny Campbell built her fortune in banking. Does she see a firm financial footing for the investment? even yes woman builder and woman of achievement so well built it's great to see that just by concentrating on your twenty four houses you can build very fast which means really fast so lets say a normal old fashioned house would take four months to build get built build mm-hmm this can take a month of the build process ok so what does that do to cost them in their modern housing development? a hundred and twenty thousand but if we were making fifty of them and we could match a hundred and thirteen thousand then it's about the same money but it's infinitely better quality and they're much more thermally efficient and have vision mm-hmm and if we can get that message across of people will want these houses because they are good for you Barbara Eileen I would like to understand what the challenges are to really grow this is the fact that it must be the construction

companies

that need to be on board are the

companies

that I have to go to the developers, but a developer has a whole team, why would they go to you?

Can I ask that question in a second? the UK then you go to Barbara Jerry's because she has it all here, she seems to be the most experienced person in the country, am I right? She is the well known puppet vine. I can answer first, but when you get there, Ken may also pitch, but will the dragon carry the track record in green investing and be just as enthusiastic? You know you don't need to tell me about the beauty of building with those natural materials and the qualities of building with straw but it's been around for a long time and one of the first problems and I don't know if it's Mortgages are gone.

Most

mortgage

companies won't

touch

houses built with straw. I don't think it's fair to say that, but you can't call a comparison site and get a quote. The Green Building Society has always offered

mortgage

s for thatched houses. but we haven't tried to get all the major mortgage companies to deal with insurance. None of the big insurance companies will insure these properties. We have had a construction zone that we work with which is a Self Builder Insurance Company. National Farmers Union yeah those are kind of diff what you're going to get if you're going to implement this you can't mortgage it and it's very hard to ascertain what's the actual prefab it's basically for three b2 timbers in the corners with a backboard on top and a board below and the straw is from the big round bales so it's a brick of straw yes exactly that's all made in the factory but we don't have this factory the factories in Lithuania Oh I misunderstood which i thought you were going to make his ex is still designing yes ordering from a factory in lithuania yes then arranging to build it yes in the uk this is the shape of his new business thanks for the revelation The fact that the manufacturer of the manufactured homes is not included in their offer leads the entrepreneurs to their first hole in the den.

Can they get back on solid ground with Taz Levani? Meyer really what they have done and I think the industry needs to change, but focusing only on design as an agency is not going. To give it that uniqueness, just as a thought, I really think maybe there's something between everything green and non-green, maybe you'll create some panels that are a mix and have your own proprietary panels that you could sell to developers. I think it's a combination hazard given barbara ii assad's heart attack, do you know what your study is? a Levani investment from Forte makes the rest of the den see benefits in partnering with the prefab designers I love this kind of thing and I think it's beautiful I'd also love what you're trying to do I'd buy one of these properties you know?

I would come to you no doubt about it but as a company I'm not going to get a decent return on investment and I think your numbers prove you can see this is going to be a slow build so I'm going to wish you all the best in your way, but I will not reverse. I'm out ladies I can feel your passion for wanting to create revolution. I want to call them eco-warriors in the best sense, but they know the mortgage. the market isn't quite there the insurance market isn't quite there you have all these barriers before you can even get past people's mindsets i admire your crusade yeah i'm not sure we're going to get there this decade for that reason i'm out , thank you if I had to build an extension or a thatched house.

I know you are the person in this country. He has more authority than anyone. Thank you. However, you are only here presenting a business design that does not. it's interesting for anyone unfortunately I'm not going to invest and I'm taking a huge hit as Barbara's biggest fan does a surprising u-turn and abandons the straw investment only Deborah Medan left will she play house and put her cash? I'm a little disappointed that it's not about creating a pre-made business in this country. Can I say that when the market supports it, we will have our own factory here, but at the moment we are still in the design phase. unlike all the kit and kaboodle we have to start somewhere and if we don't get this marketing opportunity this to the people we will never get to the stage where we have enough apps to build our houses and have the factory You know what I mean it's like you don't know what you're doing here today I know what you're saying I know but you're not at the stage where I want to be you want to be itself that's the thing yeah I love it what you do and i love that you're doing it with your heart thank you but it's not enough right now so i won't invest i'm fine thank you Deborah Medan feel the love but it doesn't feel like a deal unfortunately Barbara and Eileen must leave the den without investing in anyone with the name of Eileen do you want to put your money behind yes yes but the couple refused to be bummed it would have been wonderful to come back with some money but it hasn't been Bad experience, we don't go out much so I hope you don't.