2009 Most Read Investment Property Rumours

Well folks, as 2009 draws to a close we thought we would dig about in our statistics and see exactly what was popular this year as far as rumours in the real estate world were concerned.

A couple of the articles were removed so instead we have linked back to the page we published explaining the reasons, it goes to show though that the articles in question were correct and accurate at the time, and still are now.

We have linked the titles into the pages for easy ready reading. feel free to comment if you wish (no swearing please!).

2009 was a tough year for the industry, many companies have simply closed, many however opting to just disappear altogether or failing that just hide and not answer the phone!

We hope here at the Investment Property Rumour Mill that we have provided an informative insight into what happens in this industry, and it would seem a few of our predictions have been correct. As for 2010, we should start to see some recovery for the most part by the summer providing the bankers of the world don't make another mess, and the media decide not to shoot everyone in the foot with their doom and gloom!

Top tip for 2010? If you are going to buy abroad, it would still seem Brazil is the place to go. The 2016 Olympics will ensure the influx of international trade and investment for some time to come, with any luck Brazil will make the most of it. If you do buy though, don't just buy for the sporting factor. Nice as it is at the time, most resorts will not stay sustained after the event. The main cities though will. Bear in mind the oil and gas fields in the country that have yet to be developed which will provide income for many years to come.

Top Investment Property Rumours!

Fortuna Land and Oanna Group – How It All Started
MRI Overseas Property Wound Up
DCC Property - The New Macanthony Realty International? (*)
Riding The MRI Construction Farcical - Bait and Switch Part 3
Ocean Estates - The Poseidon Adventure?
VAT is going on in the Bulgarian furniture world?
Vila Verde - The Great Bait and Switch - Part 1
Red Hot Homes - Some Scams Dont Know When To Stop
Instant Access - The Scam Continues
Fractional Ownership - Pros or Cons?
MRI - Strange New Marketing Tactics
Investment Property Bargains in the USA?
What Happened To Viva Estates?
Sad Day For The Rumour Mill
MRI - DCC - Solutions Overseas - What Next? (*)
We Get Heat - Not The Sunshine Variety
The Great Bait and Switch - Part 2 - Investment Property Spin
Exclusive Interview - Chris McCarthy - VIVA Estates
DAMAC Downsizes - Rumour Confirmed
Another Mysterious Inside Track

The above are just the top 20 posts this year, there are plenty more in the archives. Those marked above with a (*) relate to removed posts that involve MRI and their many guises.

We look forward to bring you more from the investment property world, hopefully alot more positive than that of late.

To keep yourself informed, feel free to sign up using the feedburner widget on the main blog, or simply click the following link, confirm the mail and you will receive updates as we publish!

Subscribe to Investment Property Rumours by Email

Have a happy New Year!

MRI - Strange New Marketing Tactics

Well folks, after a long break we are back!

The summer tends to be a fairly quite period in the investment property game with many companies either taking time off, or spending some time finding new products or, dreaming up some elaborate new marketing ideas.

Whilst browsing around the search engines, we came across a very strange marketing tactic indeed, especially as far as the web is concerned. As a rule, if you have a web site, all of your content and articles really should be relevant to what you do. For instance, if you have a site that sells cars, linking to or having articles and blogs about funeral services is a waste of time, and will likely have a negative effect on your site.

It would seem though (and you can see for yourself) that MRI Overseas Property seem to be doing just that.

After only about 20 minutes of browsing, we found sites from MRI Overseas that would teach us about minimizing stress, stop the extinction of life, teach us about self improvement, recycling and even educate us about public speaking!

Now one has to wonder what exactly the relevance of those subjects has to do with overseas property? The reality is, nothing at all.

So, why do it? Has MRI begun to diversify into "stress free eco friendly self improved shouting on stage?" We doubt that.

A educated guess here is to battle the constant heat surrounding them in the search engines. Almost any term or phrase surrounding MRI pulls up complaints and heat of some description in the search engines which of course is not good for them. By publishing so much irrelevant drivel is purely a ploy to clog up the search engines with their brand name using blogs.

In fairness, had they done it with slightly different blog platforms, they might have succeded, but the way it is at present, it really is doing them no favours.

Having said that, we could of course be completely wrong! Perhaps we are all soon to be invited to fancy exhibitions about how we can reduce the stres induced by buying an overseas investment property that is now apparently worthless and won't be completed, so we really should forget about it and buy another one on the other side of the continent! Wouldn't that be nice!

You can see the the blogs in question by copying and pasting the links below. (Our legal begal suggested we shouldn't link directly for copyright reasons)

http://mrioverseas.org/
http://mri-overseasproperty.net/
http://mri-overseasproperty.com/
http://mri-overseasproperty.info/
http://mrioverseas.us/
http://mrioverseasproperty.us/

If follow this link though, you can see who all the sites are registered to for yourself http://www.who.is/whois/mrioverseasproperty.us/

Surely the time, effort and money would be slightly better spent on dealing with the client issues and complaints themselves rather than publishing entirely unrelated waffle? Just our 2 cents.

COMING SOON

We will be delving into the last years worth of data to see which articles have been the most read, and how people have found us. A first glance there are some fairly obvious ones, but there are one or two pleasent surprises!

Riding The MRI Construction Farcical - Bait and Switch Part 3

Hi Folks,

Hopefully (although unlikely) this will be the final episode in the Bait and Switch series. We say unlikely on the account that there appears to be no limit as to what gets said or done by the "Leading Overseas Property Company"

We have our Legal Beagle at the ready as you can see to carefully look at what we write and make sure we are being good.

Last week CaboVerde24 had a letter issued to its hosts by MRI's lawyers, demanding that they take down/remove content about them, not unusal one might think, being as almost everyone on the planet has been warned or threatened at some point for even mentioning their name.

It would appear the forum owner has had no choice but to move the content to a secure section of his site, and does express concern at free speech and the like.

One might presume that "that's the end of that" but no, just 3 days later, a new thread has come about regarding an "Urgent MRI Meeting" to save you racking your brains as to what the devil that could be all about, it is an invitiation to an "Absolutely must attend Director level meeting"

Hmm Director level eh? Could that be that all the other staff now work for Solutions Overseas, or DCC International Property, those companies that aren't related, in any way, shape or form, other than by address, offices, staff, directors and managers. Not to mention the pay per click campaign? (For those that aren't aware, when running a PPC campaign, you are not allowed to pay for trademark keywords that you do not own. For example, If we were to go and purchase the word "Microsoft" for a campaign, Mr Gates would be well within his rights to sue us to the grave. Type in certain MRI phrases and see what comes up on the sponsored ads, chances are though it will be disabled after a couple of days)

The basic premise seems to be, "Threaten everyone you can, and then start the switch program all over again" The same story seems to be the case over on the Tierra Del Sol Owners Forum who kindly posted some links to their plights, the main ones being,

Meeting with MRI thread, and,

MRI are threatening legal action against TDSO

MRI also amusingly threatened the owner of the domain investmentpropertyrumours.com who submitted the correspondance to us through the comments section which can be seen in the We Get Heat article in which we suggested that Mr Bulow and/or the MRI lawyers contact us. So far, not a peep out of them.

The latest correspondance we have had submitted from domain owner Mr Stevenson we can't directly publish, but our legal beagle says we can say that it wasn't very nice, but nevertheless amusing on the account of barking up the wrong tree, and that the letter repeatedly stated that the they (the lawyers) had been instructed that everything on the blog was untrue.

The letter itself reads as though it has personally been shouted at a secretary whilst her only copy of "Hello Magazine" is dangled over the shredder.

Mr Bulow cannot claim that he cannot contact us, he in fact runs a rather interesting blogspot blog himself, rather offensively titled "Letters From The Septic Land"

The first post on it back in march 2008 also has a very odd twist to it, the url for it is http://cjbulow.blogspot.com/2008/03/land-of-merkins-and-septics.html

On the post itself he suggests we use google to look up the title if one is not English. To save you the bother, a "Septic" is cockney rhyming slang for Yank, or American. (Septic tank = Yank)

Very nice Mr Bulow! Rather you than me writing things like that whilst living and working in the US.

As for the rarely used word "Merkin" in the url, here is a definition according to Answers.com

Noun. A pubic wig for women. [Alteration of obsolete malkin, lower-class woman, mop, from Middle English, from Malkin, diminutive of the personal name Matilda.]

Would you buy an investment from a man who talks about things like this?

The thing is though, as this new round of "Top Secret" meetings goes on, one has to question the validity of many of the "investment properties" that were offerred in the first place.

A certain Malcolm J Wright is/was on the books for American Leisure. Now that Tierra del Sol has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy, a few things need to be asked.

Mr Wright had rather a lot of fingers in a very large number of pies, a full list of which can be seen here. Nothing really untoward about that one could say, (Apart from the Allen Stanford $8 Billion fraud case!) however.

A little more googling later and we come accross an excerpt of an SEC filing. (Securities and Exchange Commission) which is basically discovery litigation regarding securities fraud, violation of Florida Securities and Investor Protection Act, breach of their employment contracts, and claims for fraudulent inducement, against Malcolm J Wright.

Now bearing in mind that the excerpt is from 2007, and it really wasn't the hardest article in the world to find, one has to ask why anyone would do business with someone under that kind of investigation? Granted MRI were not the only people to be promoting TDS, a now defunct Platinum Properties was also involved.

Given this track record though, it does beg the question of how much due diligence was actually done in the first place? The Stanford Group of companies seems to be turning into an ever expanding nightmare which will run for years, but at least the main crux of that has been frozen and closed down to prevent more cons and scams.

Was the "Due Diligence" in the form of large commissions? We don't know. What we do know though is that commissions received will have to be paid back under the chapter 11 proceedings. That should be an interesting one!

As for libel and more threats? There is a fantastic article written by Diarmaid Condon published on OverseasCafe.com which highlights exactly what goes on in this very corrupt industry.

We have invited MRI Construction (Or whatever they are called this week) to contact us, and we invite them again. Tell us exactly which bits you perceive as libel and why, and we and our legal beagle will go through each and every one.

We have not broken any laws in the way we write or report. Google quite clearly states its position on the use of its blog platform in the following quote from its help section,

"Please note that Blogger is a provider of content creation tools, not a mediator of that content. We allow our users to create blogs, but we don't make any claims about the content of these pages. We strongly believe in freedom of expression, even if a blog contains unappealing or distasteful content or presents unpopular viewpoints. We realize this may be frustrating, and we regret any inconvenience this may cause you. In cases where contact information for the author is listed on the page, we recommend that you work directly with this person to have the content in question removed or changed."

COMING SOON!

We take a look at more mysterious goings on in the Investment Property World after a tip-off from an anonymous poster, this time eminating from the investment advisory hotbed that is the Isle of Wight!

Technorati Profile

We Get Heat - Not The Sunshine Variety

For this post, we are going to enlighten you as to what can happen in the world in which we work.

First of all, we need to make a few things clear.

The content of mails that have been submitted to us have had some data removed (contact details only) to prevent them from suffering from spam. Other than that, the body of the mails are left intact and as is.

We have sought legal advice from a number of jurisdictions to understand exactly where we stand, and how we can most objectively deal with the situation that has arisen as you will see in this post.

For the non IT savvy out there, we need to make a couple of technical points clear too.

A private web domain is a web domain that is owned by a person or company, and that person or company is responsible for the content that they publish. They are not however responsible technically for what others may externally publish to their domain except in certain circumstances.

An open source blog platform that is provided by a company, in most cases provides that service through sub domains. The difference between the two would appear thus;

www.mywebsite.com would be a private web domain and,

mywebsite.blogspot.com is a blog platform domain, entirely different from the former, and in effect "leased" with or without charge to the user.

Ok. Back to the reason for this post. Upon checking for comments earlier today, we found the following sent by a Mr Stevenson.

Dear Mr Stevenson.

It is with extreme annoyance that I find it necessary to contact you once again regarding the investment property rumours blogspot.The last time we contacted you, despite your disavowals of any link, you modified the content accordingly. However, you have now posted recent attacks on our company which are untrue, and serve no purpose other than to deliberately target our company and personnel in an attempt to damage our reputation.We now demand that the article referring to bait and switch is removed. It is libelous, and copies of the article have been made by us, and forwarded to our lawyers.If the article is not removed within 12 hours, we will be instructing our lawyers to pursue you personally, as well as any company or blog that you hide behind.Your immediate action is required.

Regards
Chris Bulow
Business and IT Manager

Followed by;

Dear Mr Bulow.

I will once again reiterate that whilst we do own the domain for www.investmentpropertyrumours.com, we do not publish anything on the domain itself, and no content is present at all at that domain, from us, or anyone else.

The blog I presume that you are once again refferring to is hosted by Google, (hence "blogsopt") in the address.

We did submit a copy of the last mail you sent to us to the blog publisher through their comments section, along with our response. Their subsequent actions of which we have no control or influence over. We will also submit this and your e-mail to their comments section in the same fashion. You could do this yourself as well I would imagine, which would give you a direct contact to them.

I personally have posted no personal comment on you, your staff, your company, or anyone or thing you might be involved in, and neither Me, my Company nor our webhosts take no responsibilty for content that is not ours, and is not even published on a domain that we own or control.

I can understand the situation that you would appear to be in, but I am afraid I am not in a position to comply with your request.

Regards

Phil Stevenson.

To clarify who these people are, Mr Stevenson is the owner of the private domain

www.investmentpropertyrumours.com

Chris Bulow is the is the Business and IT manager at MRI Overseas Property.

We would like to thank Mr Stevenson for bringing this correspondence to our attention, and we would also like to state that Mr Stevenson has sent us a similar mail before, from the Mr Bulow after some postings that were made some time ago.

We would also like to state that we are not Mr Stevenson, and that Mr Stevenson has not had any involvement at all with this blog, nor any of its postings. We would also like to point out that whilst the private domain has been offered to us for sale, we have declined.

So far, this is the only form of correspondence from MRI that we are aware of. We have made clear on our blog that if anyone at all feels we are being unjust, unfair or mean to anyone, they really are encouraged to contact us direct, through the comments system. We read and respond to all comments, and will publish them were applicable, and likewise delete or remove if not appropriate. We will also modify, edit, or even remove posts if it proves that they are vastly inaccurate.

To date, we have not had any direct requests from any company we have written about to edit, remove or modify any posts. The removal of previous posts was purely down to undue threats and pressure being made on parties not involved.

After spending some time with our legal people, we have the following statement to make.

"Whilst we accept that some of our postings might be a little close to the wire, we do take into consideration ALL of the people and entities that it can/could affect. We have always stated that we will edit/remove/modify any postings if found to be inaccurate.

If MRI Overseas Property, Mr Bulow, Or their company lawyers would like to state exactly which statements in which articles are libellous, and why, we will happily address the requests with our lawyers.

We can be reached initially by posting through the comments section of this blog, and we can begin correspondence, via e-mail from there."

The Great Bait and Switch - Part 2 - Investment Property Spin

Well, this is the second part of our "Great Bait and Switch" article, and for this instalment, we thought we would take a piece freely available press released by a certain party, and take a look with our "fact goggles".

To avoid confusion, the press release parts are in italics, and our interjection is in bold type.

MRI Overseas Property Has Been Able To Help Clients In These Troubled Times In A Noteworthy Way.

We are intrigued, first time for everything!

MRI Overseas Property has met with many of their clients and has been able to assist a number of them overcome the problems they've been experiencing with property purchases made before this current crisis started.

Sounds promising!

(1888Press Release) April 27, 2009 - The changes in the world economic market-place have had many varied effects, and many different consequences. One of the most notable is for people who bought property in the emerging real estate markets of the world just prior to the global downturn. Some countries, such as Spain, Portugal, France, Bulgaria and the United States, are in a position to just ride out the storm knowing that demand will return to these areas as soon the market starts to recover. But where does that leave clients who bought in the emerging markets where the infrastructure was planned for the coming few years, but is not actually in place? Places like Romania, Cape Verde, Morocco and a host of other such destinations. MRI assists clients in distress.

OK, sounds like a substantial claim. As to stating that Spain and Bulgaria are financially sound enough to "ride it out" could be called into question, but hey, let's read on!

“We knew it was a high risk strategy buying in an emerging market” conceded Matthew Edwards from London who invested in a 2 bedroom apartment in a complex in Cape Verde, “but we did not expect the downturn to come so quick, or to be so severe. At the time we bought in mid 2007, the market was buoyant and even though Cape Verde was fairly basic in terms of facilities, we expected it would take around 3 to 5 years to bring the infrastructure up to a standard to make it a world-class holiday destination. With what’s happened to the global economy, we know it will now take much longer, and may never happen”.

Hmm, the old testimonial trick. Often used in marketing, rarely believed in most cases, but here we see the onus of blame being left largely at the foot of the client. Now correct us if we are wrong, but was it not MRI selling the investment in the first place? recommending it as a high growth area, and no doubt suggesting the "Buy 3, flip 2 and pay for 1" trick used constantly in the rising market. What sadly was not used was the "Don't forget the exposure you are opening yourself to"

Having said that, perhaps we are not giving "client" Mr Edwards enough credit, could it be that he wandered into one of MRI's infamous exhibitions with all of his decisions made and research done and simply hand over a bunch of cash saying "want that one", without asking any questions or getting any sales pitch at all? Make your own judgement.

Many others like them are in the same position, and as more and more clients decide to pull out of their investments in these countries, the worse it becomes for those who are left in.

Well one would think so, I mean, 10,000 clients can't be wrong can they Mr Macanthony? (Note the "it gets worse for those who are left in")

Dominic Pickering, Chief Executive of MRI Overseas Property, confirms that he has personally been contacted by a large number of clients who are attempting to get out of these investments in emerging nations, many of them asking if they can be switched elsewhere.

We run a small blog. We have a few subscribers. Even WE get contacted by your clients about getting out of your recommended investments and how to go about it. If the forums are anything to go by, responding to them would be a new idea!

“The world market is a very different place to what it was 2 years ago. It’s bad enough if one or two developers are struggling to complete the projects they promised, but when it comes to whole areas, and even countries suffering a huge economic setback, clients are running a real risk of being left with properties that are worth only a fraction of what they paid, and furthermore have very little prospect of rentals due to the lack of facilities, or regular flights, or decent roads.”

Well spotted, with the economic market having changed, I suspect the office cat has noticed too, but more importantly, with MRI selling "investment property", and Mr Edwards having "invested" into a property sold by you, we have a couple of questions;

• Does this not mean you are investment advisors?

• As investment advisors, does this not make you responsible for doing some maths, due diligence and general checking before flogging people property?

Only a couple of years ago, Romania was quoted by Channel Four in the UK as being the best place on earth to invest in, with potential returns in excess of 400% over 10 years. Clearly this is now highly unlikely to be achieved. In fact, some real estate investments in Romania may be lucky to reach parity with their 2007 values in ten years time.

Ahhhh! So it's Channel 4's fault! That's ok then. Good old Channel 4, the pillars of salt in the investment property advice area.

Furthermore, many developers around the world are going bust. Many are hanging on by their finger-tips and are down-grading the development so that it does not now contain the facilities that clients originally expected. Legal cases in these countries are fraught with difficulties and rarely end up successful from the purchasers perspective. More often than not, clients throw good money after bad retaining lawyers to pursue developers in far off nations, and the result is no funds ever get paid back.

Developers are going bust? Bust like you claim Tecnicil are? The same Tecnicil that have publicly stated that no such thing is happening, and that certain promoters are spreading rumours in a bid to have people pull out of the development purely for yet more financial gain after they have been paid?

In a strange situation in Calabria, in Southern Italy, a developer has had their building license revoked. Rob Davies from Cardiff who invested in the development with his sister, said he could not believe the news when he heard it. “The developer is blaming the Town Hall. The Town Hall is blaming someone else, and the insurance company that was supposed to cover our deposit has not paid out.” In what is rapidly becoming a finger-pointing exercise, Rob says “it’s the purchasers who lose out at the end of the day, whilst the lawyers get rich”.

Now where do we think that "client" Mr Davies might have heard that? A developer that mysteriously has no name, in an area that was notorious for having no licences in the first place! One would think that it would be an idea to make that kind of corruption public, state it as a fact and link to it would it not? So much for all that due diligence and checking out the developer in the first place.

It would also seem that MRI like to play "pointy finger" doesn't it? Now it's the lawyers that are the bad guys. Naughty lawyers! Are these not the same as the lawyers who had expenses and offices funded by MRI in Bulgaria? Did the mafia not like the style?

That means clients are having to face the possibility of losing large sums of money, or otherwise, they must look for alternative ways to recoup the loss that they have incurred.

You think Mr Pickering? Well, no doubt you are going to tell us how!

“We are in a fortunate position at MRI in that we are a developer as well as being a Real Estate Agent” stated Pickering, the CEO.

Now isn't that convenient! But hold on a moment, MRI Overseas website is now MRI construction, and of course DCC International Property is a completely different company, which was stated in a press release to quash rumours that it wasn't. We seem to remember removing a post to that effect after most of the industry was harassed by you accusing all and sundry of writing it.

DCC International Property is apparently owned by MJ Liggan, or hold on a moment, Michael Liggan, or is it the new re branded Mike Liggan? We don't know, but google about and decide for yourself with the various press releases out there.

“That means, that in a few cases, we have been able to give our clients the opportunity to switch their investment into one of our own developments, particularly if the original developer in the emerging market has failed to live up to the terms of the contract such as not completing the full on-site facilities, or being late with the development.”

Well isn't that nice? Such a kind thing to do offering to help those clients out like that. No catch there I'm sure.

Pickering went on to say “It has been very well received, as we have helped clients to avoid losing 30, 40 or 50,000 euros.

Hold on a moment, you seem to have omitted the part where you are telling your clients that will switch that they have to pay the difference against the new property. Based on a property advertised as "price on application". You present a very shiny timeshare style pencil pitch designed to calculate how much liquidity the client has, adjust the price of your new "bargain property" offering that you conveniently build and control, take into account the amount the client has laid out already, and remove all their cash. Neat trick!

The real problem has been that we do not have enough properties to satisfy all the clients that would like to switch away from an emerging nation, and into one of our blue-chip regions. It’s a simple case of supply and demand, and sadly, far more people would like to move than we have properties available.”

Please do define "blue chip region" we really could do with a laugh. Especially given your investment advice so far. As for not having enough property, well I guess that means every single one will complete on or ahead of schedule, without delay, and every single one will be on or above specification won't it?

Matthew Edwards from London was one of the lucky ones. “We managed to get out of Cape Verde and into Portugal with MRI recognizing most of the deposit we had lost in the bad investment in Cape Verde. You never know what the future holds, but I feel much more confident that Portugal will recover much faster than Cape Verde. That means that I stand a much better chance of making money out of my investment, and getting many more rentals. I feel a bit sorry for those who are left in Cape Verde, but at a time like this, I have to think for myself, and protect my own families position.”

Well lucky Mr Edwards. Mr Edwards, were you told about the responsibilities regarding your Cape Verde contract? Are you aware there is a possibility that you could be pursued for the balance on completion, whether delayed or not?

It’s a sentiment that we can all relate to.

We'll let you the reader be the judge of that.

The original press release can be seen here

Part 1 of "The Great Bait and Switch" can be seen here.

We have posted links already to Cabo Verde 24 and the Tecnicil affair, but simple Google searches will highlight the distaste that "10,000 clients who aren't wrong" are expressing. Don't just take our word for it.

COMING SOON! We are on the verge of bringing a company revival/re brand of a positive nature to the table! Who will it be? Sign up to see first!

VAT is going on in the Bulgarian furniture world?

Well folks, pending the consolidation and final draft of our story on "Strange Bulgaria Seminars" we thought we would wrestle with the very confusing situation regarding VAT on furniture in Bulgaria.

So far (that we know of) we can only find a couple of companies that appears to be the cause, and you guessed it, it's MRI, and loosely mentioned are Bulgarian Dreams.

Now, as per usual, we need to insert a disclaimer here. Apologies for any boredom it might cause, but it has to be.

Investment Property Rumours is purely relaying and consolidating information that is freely available on the internet, which is linked to and/or displayed within the blog. We are not responsible for your opinion on what you read or think, nor any conclusion that you might come to as a result (be that positive or negative). This blog is here to inform. It is not an instruction or a religion and should not be treated as such.

Investment Property Rumours is not linked to any company, nor does it solicit or sell advertising (other than automatic web generated search engine ads for which we are not responsible).

Ok, down to the nitty gritty!

As members of various forums and subscribers to a large number of blogs about the overseas property business, we obviously see a lot of conversations amongst owners and prospective owners of property overseas. A large number of them can't be taken seriously, but every so often we see the odd thread that warrants looking into.

There seems to be substantial concern about furniture prices, where it is, how much it costs, and whether that cost is what it says it is, or subject to change later on.

The overseas furniture business has been very competitive from day one, with everyone jostling in the search engines for position due to the substantial profits to be made out of it, not only as the sale of the products themselves, but also the fitting and so on. Some companies have manipulated the situation further by insisting that certain packages and specifications be installed to comply with rental agreements (which may or may not exist of course!) basically holding buyers over a barrel, having been sold more than they could afford in the first place by offering rental programs which many seem to be failing to profit from despite assurances and promises from salesmen.

The subject of VAT in any country is a complex one to say the least. We are not accountants, and make no claims to be either. However, VAT has long been used for scams in the past and no doubt will continue to be in the future.

It would seem in the forums that people who have paid in full for a furniture package in Bulgaria (In some cases as long ago as 2006) are now being sent a bill for an additional 20% VAT!

Now the 20% part is correct. The current rate of VAT in Bulgaria is 20%. No qualms there.

Charging the VAT after the fact? Well that's a different story.

Due to the rather heated affair with MRI "restructuring" which we uncovered at the end of last year, many of the original web pages about LIFEtime aftersales and furniture have disappeared from the usual search engines and general public view. On a mission as ever though, we found a very handy tool that appears to archive all sorts of things that were thought to be neatly hidden under the carpet, doused with "Shake 'n' Vac" and never to be seen again.

With the tool in question, we stumbled across this, (Click the image to enlarge, or, if you would like to see the archived Furniture Packages page click here.)

Now providing my eyes aren't deceiving me, it says on there that "The emphasis is on creating packs that include absolutely everything from cleaning to VAT to give you an apartment you can walk straight into - with NO hidden charges. We strongly recommend organising a furniture package well in advance of completion."

Hmmm. Now this page was last archived according to waybackmachine on February 14th 2008 (you can see other pages from the same site there too)

Now as we have said, accountants we are not. Let alone Bulgarian accountants. But, if someone tells me the price is fully inclusive "from cleaning to VAT", and tells me there are "NO hidden charges" how the hell can they present a VAT invoice years later?

After asking a few book keepers and accountants on the subject and subsequently being baffled into a corner with a pencil and a calculator, the general gist of what we could make of it in layman's terms is as follows.

There are occasions and situations for VAT disbursement to occur. These would normally be in the case of accountants providing services via a third party. Certainly as a rule only within the service industry and not in the case of products.

It has also been known if a company has made errors in it VAT charging or reclamation, they are advised (usually after inspection) that they politely ask their clients to pay VAT on previous bills. Having said that though, said clients are within their right to tell the company in error where to put their VAT bill. If it isn't settled, the company in error is responsible, not the end user.

On the face of it, this all seems to be a case of moved goal posts, possibly a misinterpretation somewhere, maybe even a mistake, but after looking deeper, it all seems to get a little more sinister....

It would seem as some clients have found, that if you try to take the latter path of suggesting that MRI put their VAT bill where the sun doesn't shine, clients are being told that not only will they not get their furniture (which they have paid for "in full, with no hidden charges") but they will lose what they have already paid! No refund offered, partial or otherwise.

Again, we are not accountants, forensic or otherwise, neither are we high court judges, but this is tantamount to extortion is it not??

To see specific details on this area of the discussion, simply take a look at the VAT on Furniture thread here from EyeonWorldwide.com. Someone has amusingly posted in an excerpt of a letter from MRI staff stating that all their furniture packages are inclusive of VAT.

The apparently now defunct Bulgarian Dreams is also implied on some threads as well, but after the high profile heat on the TV, one would suspect they have had the sense to go to ground!

One would hope that MRI Property (Which now seems to only consist of MRI Construction on their website) will sort this out in a civilised manner. I mean, it wouldn't be the first time they issued press releases cover things up, or taking stabs in the dark at innocent companies. We wouldn't be surprised that all hands are washed, and the buck gets passed to the "non-related company" Solutions Overseas who appear to be recommended by MRI on their FAQ page, being as MRI apparently don't supply furniture?!

What can you do about it?

Well there is a small thing called "Distance Selling Regulations" that have to be complied with that catagorically state a few simple things according to The Office of Fair Trading;

Cancellation periods
"The regulations give consumers an unconditional right to cancel an order. This is to allow the consumer the opportunity to examine the goods or consider the nature of a service.

If a consumer cancels an order, written notice must be given to you by:

goods – seven working days from the day after that on which the goods are received by the consumer;
services – seven working days from the day after that on which the consumer agrees to go ahead with the contract.

If you fail to provide consumers with written confirmation of all the required information, then the cancellation periods can be extended up to a maximum of three months and seven working days. If the missing information is provided during this time, then the cancellation period ends seven working days beginning with the day after the full written confirmation is received by the consumer.

Where a contract is cancelled, the consumer must ensure that reasonable care is taken of any goods received and 'restore' them to you. This does not mean that they have to return them - unless you stipulate this in the contract - only that they make them available for you to collect.

You must refund the consumer's money as soon as possible and, at the latest, within 30 days of receiving the written notice of cancellation. The consumer may, at your discretion, be charged the direct cost of returning the goods, but you must tell them about this in the written information you give them.

If payment for the goods or services is under a related credit agreement, the consumer's cancellation notice also has the effect of cancelling the credit agreement."

If you feel we are being unfair in anything we cover, feel free to comment. We do read all comments, and have published 99% of those posted. If you wish to post, be sensible and do not put personal information in. We cannot edit it out.

We will leave you here with this article, make of it as you wish. We are now going to have a chat with yet more lawyers about some seminars to see how we can publish the next article, covering the very complex issue that appears to run along the lines of "I sold you something in good faith, have taken your money and spent it on fast cars, now because I have no cash, I'm going to blag you into another development and claim the original developer that I haven't paid has gone bankrupt, and charge you several arms and legs for the pleasure"

Until next time, invest wisely. If you have already invested, keep an eye out!

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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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