It’s like an Ealing comedy gone wrong!

Any fool could have deduced that trying to ensnare the worldwide wealth of rich non-doms, is akin to catching beads of mercury on a glass surface.

Whilst a Winnebago will get you around, nothing is more mobile than a wealthy person being harangued by a daft piece of asphyxiating fiscal legislation, which is relatively easy for them to avoid, by leaving the country.

One reads this fatuous nonsense that non-doms will ‘take the hit’ and remain in the UK, paying all their taxes here, including their worldwide wealth, and the government will receive £6billion for the privilege. Hello!

Wakey, wakey, Rachel

Wakey, wakey, Rachel, say goodbye to Noddy and Toyland and come and meet us on planet Earth.

The Chancellor is so naïve that in the recent Spending Review she has already allocated the receipts for this taxing idiocy, before she has received a penny.

Statistics show that non-doms are fleeing the country in droves and probably total 10,000 in number to date. This is less a trickle and more a torrent.

Wealth of Nation going out the door

Going out of the door, is the wealth of the Nation, particularly when this includes stalwart anglophiles and titans of their own respective industries, such as Lakshmi Mittal and John Fredriksen.

These individuals and their families paid fortunes in Stamp Duty and lavished this country with their riches, whilst here, in the form of employment and conspicuous consumption. They have also invested copious amounts of money in a variety of businesses, employing many British personnel which benefits all of us in this country.

‘Kicking the rich’

If she could have got over her political obsession trying to grandstand the left wing of her party by ‘kicking the rich’, she could have been bold and courageous, charging the non-doms £250,000 each, per annum, to stay here and be part of our future.

By simple reckoning, excluding all the benefits from VAT, Corporation Tax, PAYE, Stamp Duty etc., it would equate to some £2.5billion alone in direct Tax receipts and probably more like £5billion in total, which would certainly go a long way towards funding the NHS.

Instead, the long-predicted exodus is happening, and Italy, Portugal, Monte Carlo and Dubai are the direct beneficiaries of this foolhardy pursuit.

Fast lane’ tax arrangement

When socialistically based European countries create a ‘fast lane’ tax arrangement for non-doms fleeing from the UK, you can assume that they are not idiots and they want their share of this bounty, even if the stupid British government doesn’t.

Ladybird version of action and re-action

Goodness knows how long Reeves and The Treasury had to plan and predict the outcome of these tax changes. A child could have worked out what the repercussions would be, using a ‘Ladybird’ version of action and re-action.

By the look of things, this dynamic duo (??) with the Winter Fuel debacle and by reconsidering amendments to the non-dom Tax fiasco, are going to do more U-turns than a dodgem at the fun fair.

Having heard the Chancellor today trying to make a quasi-plausible job of carefully ‘applying lipstick to a pig’, I wear a wry smile, since the ‘Devil is in the detail’.

£39billion over the next ten years, for affordable and social housing, at first sounds like a laudable objective, and certainly is a humongous amount of money. If my maths is correct, this is £3.9billion per annum and Reeves, with a bit of luck, after four years will not be in charge of the Exchequer’s purse. Continue reading →

Let’s face it, estate agents are pretty clueless when it comes to closing a complicated deal.

Fermat’s Last Theorem

Whoever said ‘Home is where the heart is’ has never been an estate agent. Statistically, six out of every ten potential transactions can be closed, if you speak English (and possibly, if you don’t), as they are usually relatively straight forward.  These deals are the equivalent to a football game with just one team and no goalkeeper.  A low effort, easy-peasy, ‘slam in the back of the net’, exercise.

The balance of the four out of ten, in order of progressive difficulty, is where the game becomes elevated in complexity, to ‘12-dimensional chess’ or Fermat’s Last Theorem.

‘Duracell Bunny’, digging holes

Most mortgages last longer than marriages these days, so there is a lot at stake. The canny agent therefore needs to slightly alter the ‘software’ of the mind of buyer and seller, to get them out of their own way and like a ‘Duracell Bunny’, stop them digging a hole for themselves.

Unfortunate dose of Ebola

Most generic estate agents will try to negotiate the transaction by email or telephone, which, let’s face it, are 2-dimensional mediums.  They steer away from interaction between the parties like an unfortunate dose of Ebola, in-order to avoid confrontation.

At Glentree, however, we do things differently and we offer a unique facility that we call ‘strategic meetings’ which are designed to close the last 10-15% of the journey in-order to strike a deal.  We call this ‘no man’s land’, as it is the most difficult terrain to traverse.

It’s not for the faint-hearted – orphans and widows should not apply!

Plagiarists of the industry, please look away, since after 50 years of ‘being in the saddle’, here are a few of my hot tips.

1. All decision makers must be at the meeting, which should take place in the grandest room of the home to be purchased, so that the ‘emotional juices’ of the buyer can be evoked.
2. It is a pre-requisite that the buyer can afford at least 85% of the asking price of the property, since the strategic meeting will hopefully close the rest of the gap with the seller’s acquiescence.
3. The meeting should have no end stop, until terms are finally agreed. Late afternoon is best, particularly if there is a generous helping of alcohol served as refreshments, which certainly helps to ‘numb the pain’ of the process.
4. When all the parties are sat across from each other, the agent should keep quiet and allow a preamble between them during this important moment of ‘getting to know each other’.
5. At the appropriate time, the agent should set out methodically where both parties stand, financially speaking, and then encourage the purchaser to increase their bid and let the natural flow of conversation take place.
6. Usually, the last 10% of the journey is the most troublesome territory, when the parties invariably get stuck on two financial figures with a gap between them. Then the agent should take the buyer out of the room, to talk in private, Agatha Christie-style, in order to do work on their mindset.
7. Then the agent should return to the main room where the property owner is still sat and commence a reality check by setting out the pattern of marketing events and the territory of any offers received to date. The idea being, to try and get them to feel comfortable with the middle ground, between the offer that was submitted by the buyer and what they considered is the minimum to accept, even though they may have rejected this figure in conversations before the meeting.
8. It is important for the agent to encourage both parties not to ‘lose the ship for a ha’p’orth of tar’ and to seize the moment to strike a deal. This drama, created artificially, is one of the most important facets of the process and is a bit like a quasi-auction. ‘Without heat and light, you will never get fusion’, is my mantra.
9. The agent may need to shuffle between both rooms several times, after which the buyer should be re-invited to the main room, in-order to finesse the last increments of the terms.
10. Once the deal is agreed in principle, and before the ceremonial handshake (which should be addressed as a ‘moral contract’) the agent should set out methodically exactly what is to be included in the price of the property and the approximate timing of exchange and completion. This is so important to eliminate any unfortunate presumptions, since once the price has been agreed, it is impossible then to introduce new items to the deal.
11. All parties then shake hands, and this deal, in principle, should hold together until physical contracts are exchanged between the lawyers.

Although this formula may seem quite straightforward, it is easier said than done.  The agent needs ‘big cojones’ in-order to control and direct the meeting, particularly where there are strong characters involved, with well entrenched opinions.

Trump, eat your heart out!

Often there is no substitute to this process and that is probably why Glentree have an unprecedented 80% success rate, on the deals that they regularly put together.

I have personally closed transactions like this from £1million up to £100million (in a few cases). It is a tried and tested formula which works like magic for us, if you know how to administer it.

Am I worried about giving up the secrets of my trade, honed over 50 years?

Not really, and if you will forgive any unintentional self-aggrandisement, metaphorically speaking, would Rembrandt be worried if he were shadowed by an art forger who went to the same art shop and bought similar brushes, colours and palette knifes and then used the same muse? Could it possibly end up as a notable masterpiece, or more likely a version of ‘painting by numbers’?  Less Rembrandt and more ‘Hertz-van-Rental’ I would argue!

Mr. Trump, eat your heart out! This formula could work as easily for politics as for property, if you follow the rules.