BREAKING NEWS – 5 top stories 15/02/2021
NAEA PROPERTYMARK YET ANOTHER SURPRISE RESIGNATION
The NAEA Propertymark president Kirsty Finney has resigned from her position, this follows a long line of departures from the Propertymark family in recent months, the CEO Mark Hayward left and then returned with a new title – Chief Policy Advisor, the Chair left and of course David Cox the former CEO of ARLA Propertymark left and then joined Rightmove.
Given that Kirsty Finney was only in post 6-months, maybe someone should take a closer look at what is happening on the inside of this organization which alleges it is the guardian of the estate agency sector in the UK, as it certainly is not a role model of stability with regard to who is running it.
SMART MONEY SAYS SDLT HOLIDAY WILL BE EXTENDED UNTIL MID MAY
We have heard from industry insiders that momentum is building for a six-week extension past the 31st of March, as the new dead stop date for the SDLT holiday scheme. Mandarins in Whitehall allegedly have been crunching the numbers and sticking their fingers in the air to judge a solution that Rishi Sunak can unveil soon. Though nothing is certain in this pandemic world.
COUNTRYWIDE PLC SOLD TO CONNELLS – THE DEAL IS DONE
Over 99% of shareholders voted to accept the Connells (Skipton) offer, making it now the largest agency in the UK.
PROPERTY.XYZ SPECIALIST INVESTORS PROPERTY PORTAL REALLY TAKES OFF
According to Rob Jones, from zero users in August last year, the site www.Property.xyz is now seeing use by thousands of new users daily. He says that Property.xyz has also seen a marked recent uptick in users of its data rich property platform.
It is following in the footsteps of Zoom, the video conferencing app, that went from 35,000 users in February 2020, to over 1.65M users in November 2020, as people in the UK needed to connect and do business in a new way.
‘In a similar way, the huge community of investment buyers who look to source property as their ‘day job’ found themselves in need of a new solution to find property during lockdown 3.0; and Property.xyz has proved to be a site they are increasingly adopting.’
DATE EXTENDED BY TWO MONTHS FOR HELP TO BUY NEW HOME BUILDS
Though there was a cut off the 15th of December 2020, by which date anyone who wanted to use the old Help to Buy scheme with a 20% government backed deposit must have applied, they all had to be in their completed home by February.
This timeframe was then extended, and now it has been extended a second time to the end of May. To give builders time to finish building the homes that people in the old Help to Buy scheme want to live in. If the SDLT holiday stays at 31st of March or goes to mid-April, this could mean some in the scheme will need to find the SDLT on these purchase.
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