Currency Secrets Agents Should Know: A Game-Changing Chat with Steve Eakins

In this eye-opening episode of The Viking Chat, Kristjan Byfield sits down with Steve Eakins from Lumon, one of the property industry's best-kept secrets. Whether you're in lettings, sales, property management, or Build to Rent, this is the episode you didn't know you needed — and one you’ll never forget.

With over two decades of experience in currency markets and international property transactions, Steve lifts the lid on a massive blind spot in UK estate agency: the power of currency exchange strategy. From boosting offer acceptances to saving sales that were about to collapse, Steve shares real-world examples that show how FX expertise can directly impact your pipeline, profits, and professional reputation.

🔥 What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

✅ Why more UK vendors are moving abroad than ever before — and what that means for agents
Steve reveals the real numbers behind the UK exodus, including how 300+ millionaires are leaving the UK each week. These aren't just headlines — they’re completions. And if you’re not asking the right questions, you're leaving serious revenue (and client value) on the table.

✅ How to help clients get more money from lower offers
Sounds impossible? It's not. Steve explains how shifts in currency exchange rates can turn a “lowball” offer into a better deal for vendors relocating overseas. Learn how to reframe value in today's price-sensitive market.

✅ How foreign exchange impacts both sides of the deal — buyers and sellers
Whether it’s a cash-rich buyer from the U.S. or a landlord repatriating funds from Europe, knowing the FX landscape can unlock better outcomes, smoother completions, and higher satisfaction. Steve breaks it down — simply and practically.

✅ Why lettings agents are missing a huge opportunity
Lettings agents — this one’s for you. Kristjan shares how The Depositary is now rethinking landlord comms after realizing just how many NRLs and foreign investors stand to benefit from strategic currency handling. Spoiler: it’s not just about sales — your landlords could be losing thousands a year.

✅ How proactive FX partnerships reduce fall-throughs and improve client trust
We talk forward contracts, market alerts, and the value of having a reliable, knowledgeable currency partner in your corner. It’s not about adding friction — it’s about removing uncertainty.

✅ How top agents are embedding FX into their MA, offer, and pipeline workflows
Steve walks through how smart agents are using currency conversations to build trust, differentiate their service, and close more transactions — often with happier clients and better outcomes.

💡 Why This Episode Matters

In a world of increasing international mobility, geopolitical shifts, and volatile markets, currency isn’t just a back-office detail — it’s a core part of modern property strategy. Yet most agents aren’t even asking the question. This episode will change that.

Whether you're dealing with overseas buyers, UK vendors moving abroad, or international landlords managing income streams, this conversation will open your eyes to a low-effort, high-impact way to add value, protect deals, and stand out on the high street.

This isn’t theory — it’s tried-and-tested insight from one of the biggest FX players in the property world, backed by real stories, stats, and serious savings.

🎧 Tune in now and start asking the questions that could save (or make) your next deal.

🔗 Learn more at www.lumonpay.com

 📲 Find Steve on Instagram: just search “Steve Currency”

Transcript

Hello everybody and welcome to the latest episode of The Viking Chats and I'm delighted to be joined today by none other than Steve Eakins of Lumon. So for those who don't know Lumon they are a property focused, property orientated brokerage for funds. That's right we're a currency broker so we help people move money around the world around property transactions. So for those who aren't familiar with Lumon Let's just start with a little bit of background. So let's start with you personally. How long have you kind of been in the wonderful world of currency transactions? - I think I'm about employee 19-ish. So I've been there for nearly two decades we're 25 years old. And when I walked into the business, the size of the business was about the same kind of size of people upstairs. It was dating. But now we're recently celebrated 25 years. where 200 people nearly across nearly 200, 200, across nearly 10 offices throughout Europe. So not teeny, we transact around 25 million a day. So this year we'll be hopefully breaching the 10 billion which sounds ridiculous, but we do a lot of moving money around the world. And a lot of it is property centric. And our kind of industry playground initially was very much Europe, because that was the epicentral of the Brits buying abroad. We'll probably get into why that's all bloody changed recently. But as a result, like we're the biggest in France, probably second in Spain, hopefully the first next year. Biggest in Portugal. So out there, you'll see us on billboards, you'll hear us on the radio. You'll see us in the papers. There's a dozen buses going around Spain with our brand on, which made me laugh this summer when we had a lot of agents in the UK. Kind of go for a break, go for a holiday, and then they send me a picture going, "Have you got an office in Villamora?" Yeah. Oh, right. Have you got an office? Yeah, we're pretty big in Europe. Yeah. So we're trying to stay, but they find me out there. But yeah, we do a lot around it. And I've been there for a long time with a lot of our partners because a lot of our clients come to us. Nine out of 10 come from an introduction. Nice. So it's all around that kind of ecosystem around a client making a move. So we've done it in France, Spain, Portugal, loads of different industries and sectors. And how's that growth happen? You've just launched cold offices in each country each time or? Pretty much yeah so it's going in and working with the ecosystem. The people around the people really so setting up offices, getting good people in it, we'll get in-country teams, bilingual teams, in-country banking and all the normal bits for it and then promote it out to the to the clients. So we're a B2B2C model. Yep. So direct through agents traditionally or wealth managers, visas, lawyers, solicitors, bankers, we get banks refer us in Europe which I always find a bit peculiar. But there you go, we're happy. We could do this, but talk to these guys. I mean if that's not a good validation, I don't know what is. That's useful, right? And then we've, I've come into Europe, into the UK, sorry, and doing more and more in the UK as a focus point for the last kind of 18 months. So really the UK operation has really primarily just been the last kind of 18 months, two years. It's really new. So I normally say like a lot of agents don't even know our industry exists. So a lot of it is, you know, actually we're a bit bigger than you are. And then equally, their understanding of what we do and where we fit and what the values are from an agent's perspective. And the two big assumptions I get is, yeah, I've got you, I know where you are, this is probably a London thing, you know, you know, I'm not in London, so I won't do it. We actually do more with agents in Wales than we do agents in London. And the other one that people get a lot of is the assumption that, okay, I've I know what you do. I let you know when I get my next Chinese or Singaporean or Hong Kong inquiry. And I go, yeah, please. But actually at the moment, the way that wealth is moving, everyone's leaving. So four out of five of the clients I'm introduced to through the UK actually vendors leaving. So yeah, quite useful. But from an agent's perspective, why they like it is standing up from the rest of the high streets. They don't have something different. I'd give you some numbers on how many people moving in and out of the country because this normally shocks a lot of people. But ultimately, without all the fancy shiny stuff that we do, we provide or we aim to offer a better rate and a better service than the other banks. So if an agent's got an international buyer, if we're introduced, we can increase their offer. If you've got a vendor that's leaving, and there's a lot of them at the moment, in this price sensitive market we're all dealing with in the UK, It means that we can get vendors to accept lower offers because even though it's a lower offer It might actually get them more euros more dollars Look, I think I think for any good agent whether your sales are lettings You've got to be looking at elements that make your transaction smoother where you deliver greater value And also where potentially you can generate more revenue, right? And so I think, yeah, it's a bit of a no-brainer, right? It's a bit like partnering with a mortgage lender. You know, if you're a serious sales business, that is an essential part of your business. That's gonna be a really, and finding, you know, I think the right business is understanding you've gotta go and find the right broker that is gonna get you decent deals that people want to take up, and that also convert that don't have, I mean obviously with mortgages, you've got the valuations and all the conveyance and everything that goes through that. There's no point partnering with someone with insanely high mortgage rates and massive commission if no one ever wants their product and they always down value properties. - Comes into when the agents are talking to the vendors around offers. The top offer isn't always the best. - And it's about building your profile. It's about that expertise, right? It's about going, do you know what? I'm sure you've spoken to your own bank or you might have your wealth manager or whoever it is who's advised you on the mortgage, but we really rate this guy. I mean, we've closed our sales department about five years ago. We were exclusively letting them property management now, but we have a fantastic mortgage broker that we've worked with, I would say probably for about 15 years. And actually we don't take a penny from him. He's just bloody brilliant. We got introduced him. I think we got introduced to him through our network when Anne was looking to buy a property. And he was just bloody brilliant. And then I ended up buying at the time a 17th century timber-frained house with no foundations that was practically unliverable. It wasn't derelict, but, and it was a probate been empty for nearly 10 years, been on the market for five. And there had been... - So a class this as a project. - I think there was like eight sales that had fallen through on it over the years. And he came along and we made enough that it got accepted and the deal got done. And it was really interesting actually, the agent who sold the property to us was like, who is this guy? And I was like, look, I don't know if he pays for furos, but he's good. And over the years we've referred him and it's not always about commercial gain. I was like, look, if you can leverage that and with Andrew, we never had the volume where we felt that was a conversation worth having. For us, it was just someone in our corner who if a client got stuck on eating some advice, they were great. - They were a value adding partner rather than someone that respectively still cares about the family and asks about the weekend but adds true value. And that's what, yeah, in our space, we're kind of like, from a UK perspective, what I say to a lot of agents is we're kind of like, Property staging was five years ago. Yeah, that's a little video was five years ago And now everyone either knows about it and is doing it or kind of knows I probably should be considering Yeah, it's all the other way the next wave of it because there's so much more movement of people and money for all the political reasons But to give an idea last year about a hundred completions a day Happened when the funds were leaving Wow and this year it's even accelerating more with all the millionaires leaving which are property They're not bank account millionaires, they're people selling up. So there's 300 millionaires a week leaving, 300 a week leaving. And agents just aren't necessarily asking the question. And when they do, they go, "Oh, right, okay. What is how we can differentiate here? Is how we can stand out? Here's how we can add some more value." And again, it's all part of that service, right? It's solving that problem for the customer. It's another thing they don't have to concern themselves about. It's another thing that's just wrapped up. How many times do agents have to wring around the solicitors on completion day? Where's the funds? Try and do that international. A whole another matrix of variable. Yeah. Working with a partner that can help with that gives a visibility. But it comes to that price, service and value add. And then it's all the other bits because, well, if you're interested, we get lots of people leaving. Yeah. And generally the top, across any price point, the destination country that everyone's going to is still Spain. Interesting. So last year, 9000 Brits apparently bought over there. Second, even I got wrong. Which is interesting given all the kind of scam-ungry legislation that Spain kept on, I mean they didn't implement quite a bit of it but they did try to scare the market with... Second homes and things. Last year was a massive political year around the world. Every country pretty much has got a new government in place and all of them made promises to get in and that's part of the Spanish thing. Equally the Golden visas in Portugal, that was all a whole taunt point in the media around golden visas going off, yes they turn their cheapest one off but there's still another 25 different visas you can get from golden visas. So, yeah Spain is the most popular from a vendor's destination, they're stepping across any price point but then if you're talking mid-market up, so half a million pound plus that the destination standout is still to buy now. So everyone's going to buy for reasons. And then if you're over 55 or the client, if you've got a dollar nominated. Here's a stat for you, the power of currency which people go, "Oh, I've got it." If an agent has a property on the market now that they listed five months ago and they know the vendor is moving to Dubai, the US, the Middle East, or the Caribbean, or US nominated, they could actually, the vendor could take a 5% price reduction. You could leverage the shift in currency rates. and still get the same amount of dollars as they would have done. So these are the stories that I should probably put on. Which of course then you've also still got to then correspond that to what's happening in the market over there, right? Because if you get the same amount of money that doesn't help you if the market there has shifted up 5%. But equally if the market there has shifted down 5%, you've got another 5% to play with. We get this a lot with the agents that we do most with, or see the angle who have importantly asked their question on their offer letter or their MA or Vow letter, they ask the questions where the funds come in from, what's happening, do you need a solicitor or mortgage or the other. What's it for, what you're going to spend it on, where you're going. As far as purchase or your right of finance, you're moving money internationally. Really easy safety net, but we get quite a few agents that will come to us and go, I've got this really good cash buyer, it's got no chain, but he's offering below the asking price, but we know this vendor's moving to Europe. I'm going to go, great, okay, give me the numbers, we're up. Okay, right. Go to them and say this is a great offer, it represents at the moment, it's cashed by a no-chain, but this below asking price offer actually gets you more euros than if I came to you with a full asking price when we listed the property six months ago. And that often ends up with like two pages of emojis from the agent. I've not accepted it. Yeah, it's all about context, right? It's all about context. I saw some really interesting content, an agent I love called Location. Location did a little while ago, and it was when the the market dips a little bit. And they got a lot of vendors being a little bit techy, being like, "Oh, but I don't wanna reduce my price "because that's what I've established "I need to buy my next property." And it was like, "Yeah, but what you're forgetting "is that the whole market has dropped that 5%. "So yes, you're gonna get 5% less, "but the property you're gonna buy is 5% less." So it's all context, whether you're talking price or exchange or mortgage rate or whatever. I mean, again, I always find it really interesting, you know, touched on, you know, mortgage brokers being an important part of the business. You know, I've worked in businesses before and see people before where they're really quite anxious about having that conversation. They're like, "Oh, no, I've spoken to them. "They've spoken to their bank, they're fine." And it's like, "Dude, you saved them half a percent. "And you write down, you explain to them "what that half a percent actually means." Yes. They'll very quickly have a chat with your mortgage broker. We did one not this recent or relatively recent ago and it was a buy up. So we talked about the vendor option, but you still get lots of buyers coming out. Yeah. And at the moment that matrix is changing with labor and there's no more Middle East in factory laps going around London. There's no... There's a lot of... Quite a lot of Indians coming over at the moment. And Americans. And Americans. So Americans represent about 16% of the market. I wonder why. I can't. I can't. Yeah. But if you've got Americans, extra pair of white gloves if the inquiry comes in. few stories on this. So I've had, I had two clients and I get introduced to one or two Americans a day at the moment. So a lot coming in. And two last month that I know of personally that we were introduced to when the agent received the inquiry. I want to, I want to have a look at this property when I'm over. Can we arrange it? And they went, yep, but you need to speak to Steve and the currency angle made the intro. And before these two clients landed in the UK, we'd already done their currency transfer. Nice. We already had their parents. So that meant but the agent knew highly qualified, highly motivated, and very serious, because we had their money. - Yeah, 'cause you don't whack a million or two over unless you-- - But going back to that price point, we also had Americans who, they were negotiating final point, and it was on a relatively multi-million pound purchase, and it was down to the last half a percent, and neither buyer or vendor wanted to move, and probably a lot of people watching can relate to this, a bit annoying from an agent's perspective, But they realized that the American was obviously moving funds over, so you need to speak to Steve. On that first phone call, we were able to increase their offer by one and a half percent because of the saving we could offer over the night. All of a sudden, negotiation broken, deal done. - Done. - Just by recognizing, asking the conversation, it happened in all in a space of half an hour and deal done. And equally not, I didn't give them a half a percent more for the one and a half full saving. - It's really important, it's really interesting talking about this because I think with agency and again it doesn't matter it doesn't matter we're talking a lot about sales but it doesn't really matter sales are letting's I think as a frontline agent you you can get so blinkered and bogged down with with the transactional element the bit that you facilitate and you've got to be able to take that step back and look at it as an entirety like you said and look at the the the different elements that could impact the success or fail of that. Like you said, access to funds, lending, aspirations, what that money is for, etc. I mean, we've also had interesting conversations with people before where we've had, I remember years ago, we had Alan O'Rourke with who came to us and I think we'd been looking after the property for about five years. And what we felt out of the blue was he went, "I'm sell. It seems a bit sudden and it was like why? And he's like oh you know my son's getting married and we really want to give them a big wedding gift. We want to give them a deposit for a house and it was like cool okay and it was like and what about the rest of the money? Because this was probably I'm gonna guess it was probably somewhere around 450 grand at the time and they had no mortgage, they bought it 20 years ago for like 60 grand. They were home and dry. And it was like, but it was an investment property. So capital gains tax, liability, you know, and it was it was again about just having that conversation because what we very quickly realized was actually they were only planning on giving about 80 to 100 grand to to their son and daughter-in-law. And they had no plan or aspirations of what to do with that other 300, 350 grand. Obviously they were gonna face a substantial capital gains tax bill on that. And then we're also faced with kind of, what the hell did we do with this money? And again, talking through it, we were like, well, why don't you do like 125 grand remortgage? Release that equity. give your son that 100 grand, spend the 25 grand refurbishing the property 'cause it was dated. - Yep. - And so we did a complete refit of the property and the uplift we generated in rent by doing the refurb paid the monthly remortgage cost. So he still got the same netting account. The Sun got the amazing wedding present and they held on to that property for like another decade. You know, so again, you've got to have those conversations. You've got to have those conversations. You've got to have that conversation. We get along with people who are selling their second homes in Europe and bringing the money back to the UK. I often hear on the trading floor people making a joke, "Where are we sending these pounds to now? Are we sending it to the Ferrari dealership or the Porsche dealership?" and everyone laughs it off. No really, what are you planning on doing? And they're like, maybe this. And we kind of go, well, Google or chatGBT doesn't count as wealth planning. You probably want to speak to someone around this, don't you? Yeah, please. Okay, right? But yeah, if you don't ask the question, you don't get it. And it's another way of standing up from everyone else and adding that value that people will remember. - Yeah, and I think it's just about being comfortable with getting the nose, right? Just like you'll get a nose and agent, there will be people who absolutely categorically don't want to have that conversation with you. They'll look at you like you're overreaching and be like, "I'm not having that chat with you. I just want you to sell my house." But equally, there will be those people, and again, we've all had them, where they'll lay it all out for you. They'll tell you absolutely what their aspirations are and what they want to do and what their concerns are and everything else. Yeah, I think it makes a really exciting opportunity. So agents get it. - Have those conversations, people. And yeah, think about the opportunities. And like I said, it's not necessarily about making more money, but delivering more value. 'Cause you know, who's that person gonna send their mate to when they're like, oh, actually I'm thinking about moving to the UK. - And asking the question, you can do it at the early part, but it's a sizable part of the market now. Two, three percent of completions are exposed from it, from a vendor's moving and that's only accelerating. - So look, we wanted to talk about that 'cause I mean, you've already casually thrown out some pretty alarming numbers there. So let's talk about, let's talk about this apparent exodus. 'Cause I have an element of cynicism to it 'cause I've got some thoughts on the other side, but you've thrown some out already, but let's just circle back to that. So you were saying, what were some of those 33? Was it 100 transactions? - So the data that comes out of RightMove is, last year it was kind of 32, 33,000 Brits brought abroad. That's we selling their property to, it's not second homers. And that equates to around 100 completions a day when the money's going over. The report this year, which got a lot of press, was the Henlein Partners wealth report, which was suggesting that 16 and a half thousand millionaires were gonna leave the UK, so the biggest exodus of wealth out of the UK for all the reasons. - And is their data to back that? - Yeah, they backed it off to other data points and bits and pieces from it. But that's 300 a week. But even if you take the grabbing press multiplier off it, I'd highlight that there's more people leaving at the moment than people probably are thinking. But he's, so my main question about this, they're selling those homes to someone though, right? - Correct. - So who's buying those homes? - Correct. - So we're not necessarily losing wealth? - No. - Or capital generation, 'cause I know that is a concern. I think, you know, my thing when you read a lot of this, there's a lot of headlines around this, And if you choose to move to a country with appalling human rights, because you get a really low tax rate, good on you. Does it's not where I want to live. But there's a really interesting-- and I don't want to drift into the thing too political, because, yeah, nobody needs that right now. There's enough political noise out there right now. But from a kind of entrepreneurial economy, et cetera, etc. kind of balance. I mean, with you guys, with where you sit, are you seeing as much money coming in as going out? Is there a relative proximity? I mean, you've touched on the fact that, you know, what we're seeing at the moment, probably the two dominant nations coming in in India and America, and you've already said your big market is Europe. So not that you don't trade in those areas. - From a UK side and data and what we look at, we're definitely seeing more people leaving than coming in. International's coming into the UK, the makeup of that has changed as a result of the concern around wealth tax and what this might be on budget, which is 30 or 30 days away now. So we'll hopefully rip the plaster off and see what that looks like later. But as a result of that who's coming in, the international's coming in, data a few years ago from Knight Franks from Hamptons was suggesting that 2020 I think the data was that it was six seven percent of buyers were international. Now this year you're looking at one percent so the amount of international buyers coming into the UK is reduced. Who's coming in? It's not the Middle East and as much it's not the rich Europeans, it's the Americans and the Indians and other nationalities are more of a share. The data from Hamptons International's Q1 2025 was 16 percent of the international's coming in We're American but if we sing less international buyers coming in but these transactions are still happening and that Suggest that there's a greater growth of wealth Within the UK. Oh, we've got more the data says that more people are leaving than coming in Yeah, but equally to your point who's buying the properties then because there's a buyer in a seller Because that's the thing right if these people were leaving the country and being like, oh, well, I'll just leave the asset there You know you deal with the uber wealthy who are like What's a couple of million? You know, I'd argue that's more of a concern, but if they're actually transacting Someone's buying it right someone's got access to cash or finance at them well Everyone listening to this has probably been in the property market for a while We know normally it's driven by the four days and over the last couple of years We know we've had those catalysts around Covid and Brexit and other events that have pulled forward those moves or people relocating to the country side for more space or Moving up and all those bits. So as part of the narrative in the UK market at the moment of it being very price sensitive and sticky Is the who's buying at the moment and I'll have this conversation quite frequently of well where now the month we are coming up to? Budget period end of November then December and festive period Are we allowed to say that we can be more optimistic for next year? Because I kind of feel like I don't want to say that. I don't want to say that. I do know that. Because we've said that the last couple of years, right? But interesting, like transaction volumes. I know from the data that Zootlof shares with us at the board meetings I tend to. Transaction volumes are pretty sturdy though. I mean, we're sitting around more or less around that kind of million transactions a year, which is kind of generally considered a pretty healthy transaction volume. I think when we're in recessions and tough markets, that typically dips by 20% or more. You dip under 800,000, you've got a problem. Bullish markets cap out at about 1.2. So you've got that kind of 20% flip either side. But we're very much sat in and around that million transaction and volume kind of marketplace. - And with the data you get from Zupra access of a million, do you see that there is data backing up the fact that there's more transactions at the bottom of the market or on the middle? - To be fair, in the ball means, 'cause we're a lettings board, the sales data is quite light. - Headline. - Yeah, it's kind of, yeah, exactly. It's the headline before we dive into the more granular Zupra reports. But we always touch on it. We've got senior people in the room who are always quite intrigued to see what those big data sets are, which are far more relevant to a business like theirs than they are to a business like ours. But it's interesting seeing that, and then you see the hyperbole that we have within the marketplace around everything, from tax changes to market to political landscape to tax and everything else. But like I said, transactionally, it suggests that yes, we've got all these pressures and changes and everything else, but the market is actually still kind of ticking along. Still flowing, still changing. Pretty normally. Transactual dollars are in range of a normal period. Yeah. Now, let's see what the autumn budget does in a few days and see if that can absolutely blow the last quarter out the water and turn this, turn it into a slightly more difficult market. I mean, again, if we're seeing, you know, even with this exodus, if we're still seeing a good volume of transactions and we're still seeing those people transacting and selling to leave, which means someone's buying, it's just about understanding the nuances of that market, right? It's about changing the changing habits, the changing profiles. These are things that I just can't control, but being in front of it means that you can adapt to it quicker than everyone else and be more successful as a result to follow the - Yeah, brings us back to this whole thing about looking at opportunities, whether that's revenue or just unique attitudes that you take that you know will help you deliver more transactions and more reliable transactions of greater value to your clients. - Protecting those international sales is the thing that people normally look at first. Man of times I speak to and visit new agencies who are new to it, didn't know we existed. We have a chat and I go, "Come on, just do me a favor, "just pull your pipeline out." And I remember this vividly, I had this, I was in this office and this lady brought out this beautifully presented, all color coded sales thing. I was like, okay, you've got a lot of time in your house. This is beautiful. (laughing) And she's like, I think I've got a few on the whiteboard over there. But anyway, I was like, okay, well that looks like a French name, are they French? Oh yeah, they're actually, they're going to France. Okay, right, let's go through. And in the space of five minutes-- - They don't spend British pounds in France. - Yeah, we had that. We found five or six opportunities on there where they had live vendors that they knew were moving abroad in the pipeline already. any kind of well one Brett you're saying you need you're struggling and need more revenue and the sex thing haven't even asked you know what again I mean letting so so you know you look at lettings and London dominated huge marketplace in the London in terms of homes in terms of marketplace roughly a third of all letting agents are based in London which is quite an astonishing figure when you think about it. But when you also, I mean, when I look, you know, this is literally making my brain tick. I'm all they're thinking about, oh, yeah, you need to look about how you deliver value. This is not a conversation we typically have with our landlords. I would estimate that a third of our landlords are either NRLs, non-resident landlords, or they are actually foreign investor landlords. So and the vast majority of that income, I know a handful of them keep the revenue in the UK because they come over regularly and they use it for family and friends and whatever, but the vast majority of those clients will be transferring that money abroad. Well here's something else that most people, so when we're moving money around for clients in our industry, you do it via what's called a spot contract, which is basically a buy now pay now option, but another increasingly popular one at the moment is technically called a forward contract, which is a buy now pay later option. So allows them to lock in the exchange rate, avoid the moving variable of x not equaling y later or x not equaling x later. So they know what the cost is going to be. So we use that a lot or that gets used a lot by landlords that are getting an income and it's not like the market standing still. That's the other thing to consider. So we've talked about our window is there, industry is there, protect those international sales, give clients more money which enables the agent to help with it. But equally, the currency market moving so much can really risk the pipeline. So let me give you some numbers. When I first started, if the market moved by half a percent in the currency market, the bells would ring, it would be on the front of the FT the next day. Big news! Whereas now, if we see it three days a week, it's a quiet week. It's moved half a percent this morning on the inflation data. When you're talking about an agent protecting a sale and negotiating, that half a percent can make a hell of a difference. Yeah, and I think it's, again, I think it's really interesting us having this conversation because the default mindset is around sales. Again, another American, I'm afraid, but I was introduced to an American earlier on this year and I really like this one. It's one of my favorite stories of the year because they were rebinding their family home down on the south coast. - Nice. - It's not from sound banks. Lovely. Introduced when the offer was accepted back in April. Their budget didn't have too much space in them. So, you know, Trump's doing a lot of trade tariff conversations. There's a bit of risk here. You could do this, you could do that, you could do this. They decided to do a risk off. So they did that forward contract. The buy now, pay later option. So they locked in the exchange rate. All their money was locked in investments and things. So they needed some time to get out. But they locked in the exchange rate for the completion which I think was end of July. - And so I presume you guys just pre-purchase at that rate. They're contracted. - Yeah, correct. So there's no risk there. They're contracted to it, correct. But we did the maths at the time of completion, say end of June, it was beginning July, one of the two. And if they had bought their pounds then, rather than in April when we were introduced, it would have cost them an additional $180,000. The pound to dollar rate is varied by over 16% this year. - Wow. - 10% difference odd now from the beginning of the year, but a $180,000 difference. You put that first off, the client was exceptionally happy. - Yeah. (laughing) - We got a lot of spotless something, which I think I'm on their Christmas card list. The agent was very happy and ecstatic, 'cause obviously if that's salad falling through, we all know how hard business is. Never mind just sell it. - Yeah, and if they're making that sort of sale, that was a serious property, that was a serious sales fee. - Correct, yeah. So they protected that fee, they earned a bit from us, obviously from the introduction, but the client's happy, the agent's ecstatic. We happy days. - But it's, you know, it's, it's, it's again, it's about opening up that mindset, right? It's easy for me to kind of look at sales, like I said, which we don't do and be like, "Hey guys, you've got to be thinking about these different pieces in the puzzle." But we sat here talking about this, and I'm literally like, how, how have we never had this conversation with our non-resident landlords? How have we never sat down with all the-- - We haven't been talking for too long, but yeah. No, but with all that you know, I'm an educator point on this is something that's happening This is a big thing here's a problem that you're not even aware that's yours But it's partly yours because it risks sales because equally I've just told you that lovely story the amount of times I get introduced to clients on the day of completion and the agent is asking me to pull a rabbit out of the hat Yeah, I can't say I can't do it. Yeah, it's not gonna add up and I get clients crying down the phone at me because X doesn't equal X anymore and the sales fallen through as a result of and like you said you need to have that run-in to be able to advise them and be like With what we think is going to happen in the market now's a good time to lock it in What's the risk to reward ratio? How do you want to do it? Do you want to do some now all of it now none of it now and asking the difficult? Well again, so on letting's write that we talk a lot about the pressure placed on landlords at the moment and generally around funds So obviously section 24 was a huge one and how that impacts people. But generally compliance and agency fees and everything else, you know, there's been so much talk recently about the pressure put on landlords and their margins and yet like I said, I would estimate that roughly a third of our clients would benefit from Yeah, or potentially benefit from from a currency exchange service that delivers results And I said with with and I think interestingly with a lot of our clients What we also find as well is you know what you've talked about about that model of being able to kind of just kind of Monitor the market a little bit and kind of go with the flow I would I would argue that a lot of our clients often quite rarely Urgently need that money month by month like they would happily go you know what you know even if even if we got it paid out like quarterly but but we balance that with a with the most people use the bank that's still the enemy and in the nicest of ways if we couldn't provide a value or a saving we wouldn't have 200 people on the payroll so pretty confident we can do it yeah need to have the opportunity to have a fair comparison for it and then it's managing the currency exposure when was the last time your bank rang you right So we'll be proactively contacting clients around this has just happened. This is the impact. This is what's happening next You know the world is evolving and changing so quickly at the moment And that's why we're growing beautifully in demand because we can add those values and David But from back to an agents perspective, it's you probably didn't even know my industry existed now Hopefully you do and now you spent a minute actually I've got one and maybe I can help Would you know what like the only time I have turned your industry was 10 years ago when I sold my mum's properties in Spain, you know, and I kind of marshal I handled the entire process for how we relocated her to the UK But again went out looking for and I did shop around and we got a good right I think I think I saved her something like 20 grand at the time Or got her 20 grand more by finding by finding the right the right partner to do that with But yeah, it's it's fascinating the psychology because I could say you know I did that, but it was a very personal transaction when we did sales, which we did for 20 years Never had that conversation And in the 25 years we've done lettings We have never once thought that might be an interesting conversation of value so we're definitely going to be sharing this podcast And Yeah, right be I think what I'm going to be doing off the back of this I'm gonna identify the top three countries our landlords live in and drop you a little email Ask the question and see it there because it's Beforehand it was small now. It's getting bigger. Yeah, now. It's not humongous This isn't service that's going to be for every client that you deal with as an agent Yeah, however the one that it does It could lose that sale Yeah, if you're not talking about it anymore because the market's moving so much well - Well, not you said it will, you know, I see our clients potentially taking a bigger play with this because if there are substantial changes, and like I said, there are a decent sway through our landlords where they don't urgently need that money. So I think we will see a growing number of landlords go, do you know what? We're talking to Lumen, we're monitoring the market, now's not a good time. We'll just let that money pool in our UK bank account. And six months from now, eight months from now, when it hits that. - But these rate alerts in the spike notifications, all those tools there to help make the money work harder. - And if you can potentially boost your income by 5%, 10% by doing nothing other than just waiting, if you've got that ability, then yeah, wow. What a great way to run your business. Oh, look, I mean that was-- - Well, there you go. - Slightly blow my mind. I'm sat here like, I'm about to go on holiday on Monday. You've just given me another ton of work. I've got to try and facilitate within the next three days. - You'll be surprised how many clients thank you for bringing it up. It'll be a problem that you haven't shared with them, but it'll be a problem that clients have. - Well, you know, Andrew, our mortgage broker, I mean, we've introduced him over the years to a lot of landlords are the accountants that we use. You know, they are our go-to accountants. We have no revenue agreement with them at all. They're just fantastic at what they do, and they're really lovely. And again, we've referred lots of clients to them. So yeah, it's all about those ticking those little boxes. But then we also know we've got this ecosystem where we can depend on the fact that the advice they get is going to generally be of a certain standard and level. And if there is, if it does fall into a gray area, then you've got that relationship to be like, "Soo, told me through this little bit of advice." - Yeah. 'cause that's like the opposite of what I told the client. But no, I think, again, and I think for any property business, the more you can make your clients and customers rely on you, the more you can become that kind of soothsayer of property, whether it's mortgages, insurance, - The market takes everything property. - Then what better position to be in? because guess what, that conversation at the dining table that on the sun land or on holiday, whatever, when someone's like, "I've got this problem, I've got that problem." If you can be that one single source of, if you can have someone going, "You know what? I went to these guys to let my property or to sell my property, but since then, they've sorted this, they've sorted that, and they've done this, and then I've just gone back to them to do that." That is, those are the conversations you want your clients and customers to be having around the dining table, though, and they're talking to their mate or their colleague or whatever, he's like, "Oh my God, just doing my nut in." They'll be like, "Just call these people, let them talk to you, tell them what's going on, and they will help you navigate your way through it." And it's, yeah, that kind of all-encompassing, holistic kind of attitude to property is never going to do you bad? So talk to me about you in London, because you were based over in Europe before? No, so we're UK earned and settled and placed in the UK, but we're regulated in Europe, the UK and the US, so I've now got more people in compliance than I have in marketing, which is good fun. But yeah, we've got, but I did so much work in France, I've got two kids, two girls, we've both got French names, because I did so much work over in France. So yeah, so UK based not that far away from here over in Farringdon where we've got about 140 people on a full day. Well we came down to your lovely offices, you hosted a fantastic little supply meet which is where we properly met for the first time. But yeah, no that was that was a good little get together. And do you own in the UK or you rent? Me I'm in the UK and personally I own my home. So I'm outside of London in the home counties, picked a little village which had the right ratio, two kids, two schools, six pups. Two kids, two schools, six pups. Yeah, sorry, a bit too much personality coming through there, but yeah, good ratio for where we've ended up, which is nice. So yeah, enjoy that with a couple of pups. And how old are you kids? I've got a nine and a six. Nine and a six. Nine and a six, you're old. So both kids, both girls outnumbered. I was fully prepared as a dad for my nine year old to become teaning. But what I wasn't prepared for, that my six year old who's got no biologically excuse is mirroring her sister. So I've got like one and a half teeny girls. My nine year old this week, we've just got her first knee high, well she wants knee high boots for Christmas, high heel boots for Soda Pop, which is like modern baseball girls. - Yeah. - For those that-- - Yeah, okay, pop demon hunters. - Yeah, so yeah, she's now sleeping in high heel shoes. - Amazing. - All part of the fun, right? - Yeah, yeah, my eight year old daughter delightfully through the absolute biggest tantrum in the school playground this morning at, absolutely nowhere, joyous, so much fun. So much fun. And then I've got a four year old boy who, yeah, I mean, I just, I'm increasingly referring to him as the cretin 'cause he's just, He's the most gorgeous and cheeky little rascal, but Jesus Christ, yeah. Yeah, the joys of parenthood. The joys of parenthood. - That's it, good fun. - I think we've kind of took some really good points there. So, look, if you're, doesn't, it don't matter if you're sales or let-ings, I think what we've uncovered today is, no matter how long you've been doing this, no matter how long you've been doing the game, no matter how long you think you've covered all the houses, we all could do with looking at our business and thinking broader. And yeah, clearly this is potentially a massive jigsaw piece for pretty much any estate agency business out there. So yeah, hopefully some good things for you guys to think about here. If you want to find out more - Lumonpay.com is the website. Easiest way to find me is probably on Instagram nowadays. When I first started it, I used to get referrals via fax machine. Now I get them via Instagram. But yeah, feel free to find me just such Steve Currency and I come up at the top. - Steve Currency. There we go. Find Steve on Instagram or go to Lumonpay.com and find out a bit more. Reach out as you can see. very easy to talk to, no waffly but it's just real genuine expertise and insight. So, thanks for coming in. See you guys again soon. Bye.