New Property Portal - But Not For Some

Well after a quite couple of weeks, we return with some relatively positive news for the overseas investment property business, at least for buyers anyway.

The NFOPP is extending its free to list portal to overseas agents. For those that aren't aware, the NFOPP (National Federation of Property Professionals) are about as close as it gets to some kind of regulatory body for the property industry. Individuals have to qualify to become members, and adhere to codes of practice. They can be investigated to a degree and so on and so on.

Spending some £400k on the venture, (which can be seen at PropertyLive.co.uk) this will no doubt be an attractive business tool for the industry, providing relatively cost free marketing in what is currently a very tough market place. The requirement to adhere to ever tightening rules and regulations regarding the sale of properties, as well as the management and safe keeping of deposits is welcomed by the consumer and investor also.

Whilst the NFOPP maintain the portal will always be free to members, the main commercial benefit to them will be members, in turn hopefully tightening up on the scam merchants and general con artists out there.

Sadly though, the portal will not be all encompassing on a global scale. The NFOPP have placed a few restrictions here and there. Although members of the NAR in the USA will be able to list, as will members of the CEI (Confédération Européenne de l'Immobilier: European Confederation of Real Estate Agents), much of the former communist block will not, and neither will much of Africa and Asia. Hopefully this will change as time goes by. The most noteable restriction though according to trade source Globaledge.co.uk is our friends at MRI. The NFOPP have apparently said "There will also be no place for MRI Overseas Property who recently “left” NFOPP after it accused the association of “being used as a platform for libelous comments against it”"

Now one has to wonder whether Macanthony Realty has wheeled the lawyers out over that one, or proceeded to grill everyone they know in a vain attempt to have the comment removed from the search engines by threatening all and sundry with law suits in the hope of striking lucky, as they did with us a few weeks back. We also have to ask the question, (despite not being connected at all, being completely independent etc etc) whether DCC International Property or Solutions Overseas will have the same "restricted from listing" applied to them?

We would like to thank everyone for there comments and emails of support after the removal of our postings in recent weeks. We would also like to apologise to those who were contacted with very heavy handed e-mails by a certain company. After much discussion, we should be in a position soon with some friendly lawyers who are happy to check our articles prior to publication, to establish if we can be sued or not. Rest assured, the moment we have a new platform in place, we will let you know.

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Sad Day For The Rumour Mill

Well folks it is a sad day here at the rumour mill. No, the overseas property industry has not cleaned itself up over night (far from it!) If you are a regular reader of this blog, you will know exactly who we are talking about. Apologies to new readers who are not aware of the previous posts which are no longer on public view.

It would seem several perfectly innocent people are, have been, (and no doubt would be) threatened with lawsuits by a certain company. We have been contacted through the comments section on the blog by a number of entities about our recent publication of certain articles about certain companies. We are not publishing these comments at the request of the writers, but they do make some interesting reading as to the legal veracity of them. We have also received a number of comments from both the industry and the public praising what we had written, even from another former company owner about which we had commented.

In a nutshell, all and sundry that appear to have any connection to the rumour mill, or any of the pseudonyms we use for posting have been bombarded with legal threats from the said certain companies in question. It would seem we have touched a few nerves here and there by all accounts, and in the never changing habits of a life time, the companies in question have seen fit to threaten everyone and accuse them outright of slander when in fact they have no connection to us whatsoever.

We at the Rumour Mill still stand steadfastly by what we have published. We have removed the posts to protect the innocent from general aggravation and grief from the companies we have written about. This post is not a retraction of statements, nor is it any kind of admission of wrong doing, slanderous behaviour, or anything else come to that. All comments and postings made by us were factual, with concrete proof of what was going on, as everyone saw. The sad situation is that as always, if you have enough money you can buy good news.

The fact that we did republish an article released by the said company, promoting them and in fact praising them on an eventual press release about their activities (which outranked them in the search engines and therefore was promoting them) seems to count for nothing. Needless to say we have removed that article too.

The various mediums we use for promoting the blog have been updated, some will take a few days to update, but sadly the articles are having to be committed to the hidden pile for the time being.

COMING SOON!

We go on a jolly to China and Russia to hire new writers used to writing articles under communist style oppression and get their take on what republishing already public information means to them, the threats they endure in the process and, how world domination and narcissistic personality disorders are not the best things to have.

We also talk to some cats and dogs about marking their "territory" How do they do it, and how do they undo it when they change their name?