Agencies & People
News covering the businesses, activities, people and personalities in estate agency and letting agency and wider residential property industry.
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Moore Allen and Innocent’s £1m half hour
Charlcutt Barn near Calne was one of the highlights of an auction in Cirencester on 30th March, when nearly £1 million worth of property was sold in under 30 minutes by auctioneer Roy Bowyer of Moore Allen & Innocent.
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Watch out for increased high street agent fees following ban, Upad tells landlords
Online letting agent Upad has warned landlords to watch out for traditional high street agents who increase their fees to them in a bid to recoup lost revenues following the fees ban. “Landlords should look at ways to negotiate with their letting agent and be vigilant to agents trying to increase their commission or other fees, as they look to flesh out their profits following the ban on tenancy fees,” he says. The warning comes from Upad’s CEO James Davis (pictured, left), whose company has also published research today that shows a fifth of all landlords are likely to increase their rents to recoup the extra taxation they will have to pay this year as the new Section 24 rules kick in. The National Landlords Association has already highlighted how over half of all landlords will be pushed into a higher tax rate by the new rules. These rules, the first wave of which were introduced on April 6th this year, reduce the tax allowances landlords have been enjoying. The research also calculated that 13% more of landlords’ profits will not be taxed over the next 12 months as the new rules take effect. How much relief landlords can claim…
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Letting agent sentenced to 26 months in prison following £92,000 fraud
A letting agent who ran a franchised branch closed down in 2015 after police were called in to investigate financial irregularities at the business has been jailed for 26 months for theft and fraud. He has also been disqualified from being a company director for five years. Thirty-six-year-old Peter Bell (pictured, left) was jailed at Northampton Crown Court earlier this week after pleading guilty to 11 counts of theft and four counts of fraud while running his branch of Enfields in Northampton on Mercer’s Row. His letting agent branch of the franchise network was closed overnight in August 2015 after Enfields directors were informed of a complaint against the business to police in Northampton. It subsequently transpired that there was a £92,000 gap in the branch’s finances which he had defrauded from an “untold” number of tenants and landlords across the city. During the investigation it also transpired that Bell and his former partner Rebecca Kirton had used tenant deposits and landlords’ rent to finance a luxurious lifestyle including an expensive rental property, leased luxury cars and holidays, including a trip to watch the Monaco Grand Prix. Kirton was also sentenced by the judge after she pleaded guilty to five…
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Belvoir results reveal 19% revenue boost from Northwood purchase
Latest financial results from Belvoir, the UK’s largest franchise network, reveal that its recent acquisition of rival Northwood helped it boost group revenue by 19% during the first quarter of its financial year. Revenue from its franchise fees increased by 5% including an 8% rise in lettings fees but a drop in sales fees of 4% when compared to the same period last year. This, the company says, was caused mainly by the rush by investors and prime property owners to complete before last year’s Stamp Duty tax deadlines. Newton Fallowell This year-on-year reduction was more pronounce within its 31-branch East of England brand Newton Fallowell where the sales fall-off was 13%. But for investors, the galloping speed at which the Belvoir group is growing overall helped mitigate these sales reductions – Belvoir says its growth in sales was 33% as its rolls out sales across the UK. Revenue at Belvoir increased by £700,000 driven mainly by the Northwood acquisition although the franchising of six formerly corporate-owned offices has cost £200,000. “The Group has seen a healthy start to 201,” says Chairman and CEO Mike Goddard. “The Board has been working closely with franchisees providing the support they need to…
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Belvoir reported for ‘misleading’ tenant fees
Belvoir, one of the UK’s largest agency franchise operators, has been reported to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) by a prospective tenant for not displaying its fees fully. The member of the pubic complained about the ‘tenant fees’ section of the company’s website, which they said did not include full details of the extra inventory fees and check-out fees it charges tenants, and that therefore it was misleading. “We contacted the advertiser who agreed to add the missing fees,” the ASA says. It is not clear whether the ASA received a complaint about the company’s main national site or one of the individual branch fee pages. Prospective tenants But many of the company’s franchisees now run copy warning prospective tenants that “due to the recent ASA ruling regarding tenant fees, please find below a full list of charges which may apply to a tenant by Belvoir”. These include its Newcastle Central, Wigan, Wellingborough, Wirral, Birmingham Central, Coventry Central, Camberley, London Central, Sleaford, Harrogate and Portsmouth branches. Belvoir has 150 branches across the UK including a head office in Grantham, where the business was started in 1995. The company also acquired rival Northwood, at the time the largest remaining independent lettings…
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The Property Ombudsman expels agents in Essex and London
Two letting agents have been expelled from UK’s largest dispute resolution service The Property Ombudsman (TPO) scheme following shocking complaints from client tenants and landlords. The agents are London Corporate Apartments Ltd based in Aldgate in London and Letting Solutions Ltd based in Essex. Ombudsman Katrine Sporle (pictured) has revealed details of the two cases, both of which highlight the difficulties of policing agents which either refuse to cooperate with dispute resolution schemes such as TPO or which fail to keep adequate administration or financial records. London agent Cricklewood-based London Corporate Apartments (LCA) has one director – Manchester-based Khaled Abed-Alrazek – whose company was reported to TPO over a disputed deposit. The complainant disputed the deductions made from their deposit and complained it had taken a long time for the rest of the deposit to be returned to them. Complaints of a similar nature are to found online about the company, including several damming Google reviews. TPO reviewed the complaint and found that the agent fell short of the standards required of members and instructed LCA to pay an award of £340. This LCA failed to do so and the company has now been expelled from TPO for two years. “Refusing to fully cooperate with…
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Winkworth launches four new offices
Winkworth Franchising is launching four new franchises in Cheltenham, Kingsbury, Milford-on-Sea and Brentford...
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Winkworth returns to franchise expansion in 2017 with six new branches
Winkworth is back on the franchise network expansion path after a two-year hiatus, the company has revealed with at least six opening this year. This includes one already open for business, two to start up over the next fortnight and a further three to open later in the year including several in South West London. These openings include an existing franchisee from Sway in Hampshire who is preparing to set up shop in Milford-on-Sea, while an existing 22-year-old business in Kingsbury, North London is converting to Winkworth, and due to open next week as well. Also, the company says it youngest franchisee – at 27-year-old – is about to open up shop in Cheltenham after spending several years working at its Dulwich, South London branch. He is Tom Mayfield (pictured, left), who before joining Winkworth worked for Carter Jonas. “We have been concentrating on portfolio management as franchisees retire, and we’ve been dealing with that by selling both within the network, but also outside it,” says business affairs manager Gina Piper. Franchise manager “But now we’ve also hired a new franchise manager, James Campbell (pictured, right), who has a strong lettings background.” Gina says Winkworth has seen increasing share of its revenues…
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Foxtons revenues down by 25% during Q1
Foxtons revenues across its three core areas of business fell during the first three months of the year compared to the same period of 2016, the company has revealed. Commission from sales sank by 44.5% from £20m to £11.1 million, lettings revenues were down slightly from £15.8m to £15.5m and mortgage broking fees fell by £500,000 to £2.1m. The company says the dramatic drop in sales revenue has been created by last year’s rush by landlords and second homes buyers to buy properties before the Stamp Duty increase deadlines. This has left a sizeable hole in its first quarter 2017 group revenues which dropped by 25% from £38.4m last year to £28.7m. But Foxtons’ board says this was “expected”. Sales commission Similar reductions in revenue particularly from sales commissions reported in its 2016 accounts were said by Foxtons chairman Garry Watts to be caused by a substantial reduction in transactions in London, driven principally by rising house prices, stamp duty changes and the EU referendum. The results have pushed the company’s strategy off-course somewhat – it’s stated aim to investors for some time now has been to target “higher-volume, higher-value residential property markets within London”. Its shares on the London…
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YOPA claims hybrid agents will handle 50% of sales by 2020
Online hybrid estate agent YOPA has announced that it has raised a further £15 million from investors including the Daily Mail’s parent company DMGT and Grosvenor Hill Ventures, the investment arm of Savills. The company has also made some punchy claims within the statement accompanying the news of its Series B funding, which follows the £16 million investment Savills made in the agency in June last year. This includes that its market share is increasing rapidly and that hybrid agents like it and Purplebricks will handle 50% of all sales by 2020. YOPA, whose founders are Daniel Attia, Andrew Barclay, David Jacobs and Alistair Barclay (pictured LtoR), also claims that the hybrid agency is one of the “country’s top three agents for successful property sale” based on percentages of sales agreed against listing data from Rightmove data. YOPA has a national network of 75 local agents who work exclusively with the company but are freelance not employees, plans to use the new investment to double the number of agents working for it by the end of this year. “After a strong first quarter of trading, we are delighted to have closed our Series B round of funding,” says Daniel Attia, co-founder…
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