BREAKING NEWS – 5 top stories 08/02/2021

NATIONAL RESIDENTIAL LANDLORDS ASSOCIATION CALLS FOR REDUCTION IN SDLT

Ben Beadle the reactive and sensible voice of lettings, and CEO of NRLA, has asked that the government look again at removing the additional tax that Landlord’s pay when buying investment property. Citing it increases rental prices as its cost has to be mitigated, also it stops some from entering the arena which means less stock for tenants and higher rents for all.

He recently stated that, ‘a tax on developing new housing is completely nonsensical at a time when more is needed. Supporting growth in the private rental market, alongside all other housing types, would provide a significant boost to the economy in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.’

BOOMIN SIGNALS INTENT TO LAUNCH

The new property portal Boomin will soon launch according to information released, and it will be a full-scale media campaign across all of the media, so get ready for those television and radio adverts.

Boomin has scaled quickly, by building a large elite sales force comprised of some of the biggest hitters in real estate, who have secured many key agents. Plus of course their large tech team has been diligently been developing for a long time the ‘new’ portal that generates revenue for all. The one factor that is missing is traction by the general public, and this will be tested by the imminent launch.

HOUSING MARKET SLOWS DUE TO SDLT UNCERTAINTY

As predicted new instructions coming to the market are now extremely rare, with seven weeks to complete a purchase 95% of new sales will not hit the deadline, so canny vendors are sitting and waiting, not wanting to instruct until the Chancellor does, or does not do something.

With agency carnage due if nothing is done about a hard stop date. And agents then having to renegotiate 15K, or 30K or more in a chain, being the respective component amounts that buyers would lose out on, the market now moves to a vital phase. Many think the Chancellor will wait until the 3^rd to announce or not announce something/nothing, in the meantime sales will drop as without inventory no one can buy or sell.

RIGHTMOVE – MORE AGENTS REPORT A HIKE IN THEIR ANNUAL CHARGES

We are getting more agents contacting us saying that despite inflation running at 0.5%, and Lockdown 3.0 they are receiving correspondence telling them that their fees to Rightmove are going to rise. The feeling of anger and resentment felt by some, not all agents over this action is starting to gain momentum, it will be interesting to see if the ‘Say No to Rightmove’ movement becomes a vocal critic once more, and the share price suffers, as it did last year.

HAYSTO LENDING PLATFORM HELPS OUT SELF EMPLOYED FIND MORTGAGE SOLUTIONS

The pandemic has made mortgage lending a more difficult proposition. But, according to research organised by Haysto a mortgage platform who caters for self-employed and company directors and the type of people who do not fit neatly into the PAYE tick box, as many 16% of these fail to get mortgages even though they may earn a larger amount annually.

Perhaps it is time with WFH and more people than ever before ‘working for themselves’ that lenders start to look at the new way society is going, especially with the huge amount of redundancies caused by the internet decimating overnight huge traditional safe business employing tens of thousands.

If you have a view – please let us all know by emailing me at [email protected] – Andrew Stanton Executive Editor – moving property and proptech forward.