A friend of mine in Sydney called me today regarding a company he has come across. I’m not sure how he got onto them but their name is Country Home and Land Sales.
Basically the deal was that they run a bus trip from Sydney to regional NSW towns (Parks, Tamora, Cootamundra, Cowra) offering the participants cash flow positive properties (they have a team purchasing and renovating them beforehand – apparently they have around 250 properties!) with rental guarantees on all of the properties of 10% with 3% annual increases for 25 YEARS! Sounding too good to be true?
My friend said that some of the properties they were offering had multiple units on the title, or blocks big enough to develop 5 or 6 units/properties on them. He was told that the reason returns were so high is because the company had found tenants through the Department of Housing by approaching Sydney based renters on government assistance and offering them equivelent living in a regional town at less than half the rent. Or they a deal with the Department of Housing direct… something along those lines.
Has anyone heard of this company or maybe bought through them? I told my friend I’d post a thread see what comes up?
Cheers, Leigh.
“All the world’s a stage, and you choose the role you want to play on that stage” William ShakespearAs with everything in investing, due diligence is crucial. Clients of mine were looking at investing with this company.
A search of Google of one of the principals, Victor Ollis, reveals a Hansard (QLD Parliament) reference.
See the 6th (page 10912 of Hansard) page of the pdf below;
http://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/handocs/1995.pdf/950221ha.pdf
It sounds great, but as Leigh questions, “Sounding too good to be true?”
Go in with your eyes open, do your research and know who and what you’re dealing with.
Regards
Well done Ozbroker. I think you have done alot of readers a great big favour.
And thanks to Leigh for bringing this to the forum’s attention.
Nice one Ozbroker! I’ll pass on the link to my friend, I’m sure he’ll be having second thoughts about it.
Raises an ethical question though, should we judge someone on mistakes they made 20 years ago? I’ve told him to have a good look at the article and he’s actually going to approach Victor about it, see what he has to say! He’s going to still do due diligence on the properties (a little more than he would of before knowing this) as there’s always the chance the guy has changed and the deals are legit.
Cheers Ozbroker [
]I actually went on the bus trip with these people late last year as I was interested in finding out his strategy.
Basically it’s a wrap variation where Vic’s company buys up cheap and rundown properties in regional areas, does them up (very cheaply and not too flash), wraps them to investors at around 30 to 50% markup with a 5 year leaseback and 4x5year options. He then puts in pensioners from Sydney and pays 10% of the purchase price to the investor as the lease payment, and also covers all maintenance costs during the term of the lease. The investor does have to pay for council and water rates.
I wish I’d thought of it first!
I didn’t buy anything although I did look carefully at a block of units built in the 70’s but the return when I crunched the figures was pretty woeful for the first few years and the COC return was not attractive. I would have had to put in 30% deposit as it was a block of units, and the council and water rates were very high, much higher than comparable properties in Sydney.
My other reservation was that Vic is probably in his 60’s and not a healthy man (very overweight). The question came up about what happens when he retires and he said that his two sons would take over the business and continue to run it as it is now. Sounds good in theory but the two sons are not in the business currently. Who knows what they will do when the crunch comes.
However, some friends who went with me did buy a block of units and are receiving the money regularly each month.
BTW it’s interesting that he is still offering a 10% return as he was saying late last year that because of the increased price of property in his areas he would only be able to offer 8% in the future so “you’d better buy now while the return is still so high”.
Dianne
“Make a decision, take the risk, pay the price, or reap the rewards”
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