As we run into the last few days coming up to Christmas I would like to take this opportunity to briefly summarise this year for both us at Arbon House and our member agents.
Not only myself but everyone here at Arbon House do truly appreciate how tough it has been this year but let me reassure you that we are doing everything we can to continue to support our member needs, at the same time constantly improving and developing our in-house system and services to provide you with high quality services and benefits.
Talking of benefits, we are continuously reviewing and looking at improving existing benefits and always on the search for new ones which I know are very important to you especially when considering renewing.
We have recently sent out the NAEA bulk renewals to about 3700 people. Encouragingly we were delighted to see that within two weeks about a third of people had already renewed. It is also worth noting that there has been an increase of new people joining the NAEA this year - which is its highest level in four years! That is exciting news but at the same time we are aware that we have still got lots of work to do but it is very encouraging that people are both renewing quickly and joining in greater numbers.
ARLA on the other hand keeps going from strength to strength and we are confident that we will soon reach that long awaited 6,000 membership level for this division!
Moving on to NAVA, on the auctioneering side of things - again we continue to see minor increases and have a well structured plan to further develop ICBA.
Another interesting thing despite all the doom and gloom that is going on which has heavily been fuelled by the press is that a number of members have actually had a very good year - one of our member agents being Melfyn Williams. Unfortunately due to the current climate which looks to be continuing into 2011, many members will experience good and bad moments with sales etc and will fluctuate due to the lack of mortgages, what is going to happen with first time buyers when the stamp duty holiday runs out at the end of March. Things would look a lot better if the media presented more positive news rather than negative but this is something that we have expressed with the media and will continue to support.
Fingers crossed nothing horrendous happens, so we're looking for next year probably to be no worse, no better than this year but I can assure you, we will do everything we can to continue to keep putting realistic but good new stories out there!