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Feb 4, 2025 | 
thenegotiator.co.uk | Charlotte Flake |Adam Walker
A friend recently asked me to give his son some advice about a career in estate agency. I did my best to help him but in the process of doing so I realised that it would be almost impossible for him to do what I did when I started. I took my first estate agency job in 1980. I was given a tiny basic salary and a generous commission package which enabled me to quadruple my earnings in my first year. I was made a branch manager after 13 months’ service and a partner less than two years later.
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Jan 9, 2025 | 
propertyindustryeye.com | Adam Walker
Adam WalkerA great deal has been written about how changes to capital gains tax (CGT) in the last budget will prevent farmers from handing their farm down to their sons and daughter. However this change to tax laws will also prevent people from handing down other businesses to their families like estate agencies and this has hardly been covered in the press at all.
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Dec 7, 2024 | 
thenegotiator.co.uk | Charlotte Flake |Adam Walker
This has been a truly extraordinary week for mergers and acquisitions activity in the lettings sector. On Monday, the private equity investor, ICG, spent £450 million buying Lomond Group. Just 28 hours later, they bought the largest remaining independently owned letting agency in London, Kinleigh Folkard and Hayward. KFH is an extraordinary business. I undertook a lot of training and consultancy work for them in the 1990’s.
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Dec 5, 2024 | 
propertyindustryeye.com | Adam Walker
Adam WalkerThis has been a truly extraordinary week for mergers and acquisitions activity in the lettings sector. On Monday the private equity investor ICG spent £450m buying Lomond Group. Just 28 hours later they bought the largest remaining independently owned letting agency in London, Kinleigh Folkard and Hayward (KFH). KFH is an extraordinary business. I undertook a lot of training and consultancy work for them in the 1990’s.
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Nov 28, 2024 | 
thenegotiator.co.uk | Charlotte Flake |Adam Walker
The week after the Brexit referendum vote I lost every single business sale in my pipeline. It was heartbreaking, months and months of work all came to absolutely nothing. However, after 32 years of selling businesses, I have come to realise that these rollercoaster ups and downs are all part of the job. The value of a residential letting business recovered quite rapidly and we were able to put most of the deals back together again, albeit at reduced prices.
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Nov 14, 2024 | 
thenegotiator.co.uk | Charlotte Flake |Adam Walker
Almost every week we read about letting agents who have had to pay enormous fines for a compliance mistake, but if my experience is anything to go by, a great many letting agents are still making elementary compliance mistakes. So what are the most common problems that I am seeing? The first is failure to register for AML. Currently, most letting agents do not have to register because AML only applies to properties that are rented for €10,000 per calendar month (approximately £8,500).
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Nov 7, 2024 | 
thenegotiator.co.uk | Charlotte Flake |Adam Walker
I was worrying about the Autumn Budget for months. The Government was initially threatening to increase the tax that people pay when they sell their business by 450%. Had this happened, I would never have sold another property business again!Fortunately, the Government realised that such a move would decimate the amount of Capital Gains Tax (CGT) that they collect so their final decision was to increase the rate for asset sales by just 4%. This is survivable.
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Oct 19, 2024 | 
thenegotiator.co.uk | Charlotte Flake |Adam Walker
It is fairly rare for me to approve of a policy promoted by the Labour Party, but I do agree with their recent announcement to allow employees to switch off and opt out of being contacted by their employer outside of normal business hours. I think the need to be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, has done enormous harm to peoples’ well-being and productivity.
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Aug 9, 2024 | 
thenegotiator.co.uk | Charlotte Flake |Adam Walker
There have been a number of articles in the press recently that suggest that Labour might align Capital Gains Tax (CGT) rates with income tax rates. This would have a catastrophic impact on landlords who wish to dispose of an investment property or business owners who wish to retire. At the moment a higher rate tax payer who sells their business pays tax at 10% on the first £1 million of the sale proceeds and 20% of the balance.
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Jul 12, 2024 | 
thenegotiator.co.uk | Charlotte Flake |Adam Walker
Hardly a day goes by without another article about how AI will affect our lives but how will it affect those working in estate agency and the wider property sector? In the long term no-one really knows, of course, but in the short and medium term we are already seeing clues about its likely impact. The first thing it will do is to drive costs down. I recently sold a large lettings and block management business with over 10,000 properties under management.
