Just before the budget the government announced new rules for real estate transactions aimed at cracking down on tax cheats and speculators. So naturally, we now have real estate agents trying to rush sales through before those rules come into effect:
Kevin Liu of Barfoot & Thompson's Onehunga office sent a letter out to home owners in his area, asking them to get in touch if they were thinking of selling.
This is because there was steep demand from "some groups of buyers" which he said would be affected by a new law due to come into effect from October 1.
To get around new tax and banking restrictions, those buyers now wanted places, he indicated.
But the only reason to want to do that is to cheat on your taxes, either in New Zealand or overseas (overseas buyers might also be wanting to hide corruptly-acquired money from their own governments). But Barfoot & Thompson don't seem to care about that; all they want is their commission, and they seem to be knowingly willing to facilitate tax cheating and money laundering to get it.
