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Written by rosalind renshaw

UK estate agents who sell overseas properties face a regulatory clampdown.

Sales by agents of overseas properties with ‘guaranteed’ rent schemes could be outlawed by the FSA.

The warning has come from property lawyer John Howell.

He says that if the FSA deems such sales as being ‘regulated activity’, then only registered independent advisers would be able to sell such investments.

The founder of Howell & Co says that the FSA has already written to two of his clients in Egypt and Cape Verde.

The FSA has outlined to them its concerns that their rental management offering makes their offer an unregulated collective investment scheme (UCIS) and therefore only eligible for sale in the UK through IFAs and not agents.

Sales of overseas properties with rent guarantees in place to UK investors are extremely common. They were also prevalent at the height of the buy-to-let boom within the UK, but many schemes failed to deliver on their guarantees and went bust.

The full story is here.

https://tinyurl.com/66b7qe8

Comments

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    FSA really do know what they are doing dont they allowing micky mouse financial products being sold to the great british public over the years.

    • 09 June 2011 14:50 PM
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    @Anonymous Coward

    …….you have to say the following wiv a bit ovva sarf lunden axent……

    ‘Cor look at that Shirl’ a tasty little holidey ome for uz and when we and the kids aint usin it we can rent tha bugga and itll pay for itz self, wallop! Lets ave one ill remortage the harse and well ave it for bangers and mash love’

    ……that is the conversation that happened quite a lot in the past and it wasn’t being had by savvy investors

    Jonnie

    • 08 June 2011 15:13 PM
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    Is it just me or does RENTAL GUARANTEE = DODGY RENTAL INVESTMENT?

    Call me cynical, I suppose...

    • 08 June 2011 10:25 AM
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    Ive always found that the agents that do the foreign stuff from here (rather than the ones that are actually based in whatever over crowed, high rise, flea pit they are flogging the normal poverty spec ‘apartments’ in) always seem to have whiff of half arsedness about the whole thing

    It never seems to be a long term runner, after a couple of ‘exhibitions’ at the local Holiday Inn they seem to realise it’s a waste of resource and they were stupid to have taken their eye of selling houses in the town they are actually in and bin it off

    ………………..in short does any one still actually do this, I thought the internet and the pointlessness killed it off and people dealt with agents in the country they wanted to buy in??

    Jonnie

    • 08 June 2011 10:11 AM
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    ......because the FSA really do know what they are doing dont they allowing micky mouse financial products being sold to the great british public over the years.

    From endownment policies that wont even pay off a mortgage let alone achieve the pie in the sky predictions sold to naive FTB's, pensiosn schemes so badly managed that they are worth in many cases less than what has been paid in to allowing unscrupulous institutions to bleed our banking system and buliding societies dry.

    FSA = toothless poodle for global financial fraudsters

    • 08 June 2011 09:37 AM
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