Forum Replies Created
Yeah will do Ziv, the health products also sound great.
Regarding housing what I do know about Brunei's is that people there have a tendency to renovate them and it is getting tougher regardinig getting premits to do that.
What's unique about the housing there is that a lot of the older homes are built on stilts in the water. They look quite shabby from the front, until you see a satelite dish coming out of them so they can't be too bad.
Despite the really hot conditions, it rains a lot so water shortage is never an issue either.
Most health services are virtually free; my wife who comes a Brunei, pays a dollar to go to the dentist. Hence yes, the living conditions are very good. That said, the quality of health services in Brunei don't have the best reputation, and citizens who need really serious stuff done (and have the money to spend) will often go to Singapore.
I had an aunt who busted a collarbone and flew to Singapore to get a plate put in it recently! Lol
Just saw this post Ziv. Many Thanks!
Well Brunei’s hot like Singapore and sticking with the topic of property, the government has a tendency to give houses to their citizens. Yes it’s true. The country has the 3rd largest supply of oil in Asia, one of the largest supplies of Natural Gas in the World and their ruler; the Sultan is about the 20th richest man on earth, he used to be the 4th a few years back. The best thing is that this guy is not corrupt and quite willingly gives generously to the community.
This might put things into perspective a bit, the country’s population is around 400,000 people, yet they have a national airline; Royal Brunei Airways which flies out of Melbourne every day. Amazing. Yes they are the fattest country in Asia per capita, but I am a bit of a health nut so there is always potential to get some kind of business going on that front.
Back to the property stuff though, once I find out more about the property market there, I will start posting some stuff on this site. I will be living there by the end of the year at the latest, and won’t be coming back to Melbourne until the kids are ready for high school, which will be at least a decade.
Hence my interest in the Asian property market.
Don’t think he has the time with all the properties he’s trying to flog. More realistically he may be devising another company name and website. I was amazed learning how many companies Mr. Allan was affiliated with as shown on The 7.30 Report.
Not surprised that he isn’t returning my emails any more, although I often thought he was buying time when he did email me though. Lol.
Yeah great idea, although methinks Mr. Allan may be crying poor.
Anyway, still stuck in the last year regarding this My USA Property farse, but things start take another turn for the worst. After Mr. Allan responded to me on April 1st last year, stating that he would get back to me within the next few days, I didn’t hear from him for nearly a month. so I sent numerous emails, here was one of them:
On 25/04/11 5:43 PM, “Gavin Hicks” wrote:
Hi Andrew,
What is happening with the properties? I have sent numerous emails to (you secretary) Deb
who said she was meeting you last Monday and have not heard back from her.(The property manager) Allan Applegate has also been very vague about when the Youngstown
properties will be rented out. For the past two months he has been saying
once the electricity is connected the properties will be rented out. That
was February now it’s nearly May.I am in desperate need of the money and currently falling further into
debt due to the fact I have been able to sell, let alone rent out these
white elephants.Gavin
Andrew Allan responded on the 26th of April;
Hi Gavin,
I had a draft email to you so you have beaten me to it. Finally we had the
guys in Detroit go out and inspect the property and there is a tenant in
there not paying rent. They will move out if we give them $200. I have
arranged for this to be paid. They will also go there and clean up the
place and do a full inspection which is another $300 which I have covered
too. Once I know the full condition we will get back on the market and
sold ASAP!!In relation to Youngstown I left a message for Alan today to call me back.
I need to confirm works are done or at least close then I will email it
out to the buyers to sell. If I get that within the next 2 days I will
have it emailed out by Thursday our time. I would expect it to sell
quickly.All this sounded very optimistic, but remember NEITHER of the properties have been renovated or rented out and this is now May 2012. Please note the difference between SPIN and ACTION. Sigh. By the way I never received receipts for the money Andrew said he paid, so I’m only taking his word that he did this.
Anyway I contacted some Orlando property watchdogs, newspapers etc. about Mr. Allan’s comings and goings, got a little interest but not much. Contacted Consumer Affairs but as far as they stated they would just put the compliant on file.
Would like to know if anyone else has some suggestions?
Well I will be starting a family with my wife in Brunei, which is a goal of sorts. But I guess with investment goals I will have to get back to you on that. Things will become clearer once I start getting some sort of cash flow for the US properties.
Thanks for the encouragement Dubs, and I agree with the fact that I will better off with the help of others on this site.
I can actually say that through the guidance of Jeremy Laws, his mate Marty Stone and Emily I have been able to find decent property managers for each property and developed strategies to get back on my feet. Emily even paid the back tax for one of the properties on my behalf and I am now paying her back each month in installments, which is amazing and really is far and beyond any thing I would expect. It really does show she as a genuine empathy for people and is willing to go the extra mile. She would be the first person I would be willing to invest with in the future.
Actually since I started communicating on this forum around 6 months ago, things have really improved.
Thanks everyone.
I will be moving to South East Asia soon Ziv, what are some other spots worth investing in?
Unfortunately I actually don’t think Andrew would be taking much interest in this forum Knox, which is why this problem occurred in the first place.
If Andrew had been a conscientious property expert such as Emma, Jay, Ziv or the many others on this forum I wouldn’t need to be communicating my situation now. A very simple strategy for Andrew would been for him to go to an actual property expert in the US with decades of experience and ask them to help me get me out of this mess. But I doubt his ego would have allowed that.
No, I honestly think at this moment Andrew is simply focusing on his next sell and putting virtually all his energy into his marketing services. A case in point being through the help of people on this forum I was able to find legitimate property managers, who could actually adequately manage each property, within weeks of looking for them whereas Andrew was unable to find them for me over the course of two and a half years.
How could I say? Andrew is all spice without any substance and I guess my postings on this forum will (hopefully) make others aware of him and other such charismatic marketing property gurus.
Just to let you know Andrews MyUSA website just has the home page removed. The rest of the site is still active.
http://myusaproperty.com.au/company.php
and here
And this company was set up 23rd April 2012
http://www.usapropertymanagement.com/
Why not become a member? Lol
It’s a really interest article Ziv, my in-laws come from Brunei so I will pass it onto them. It makes sense that Singapore would be a good place to invest as it is well off and has a high density of people.
Anyway continuing on from the last installment of this saga, and just to let you know that I am not going through all my email correspondences with Andrew Allan and also My USA Property, but just the main ones which really pinpoints how they misrepresented themselves. In this latest installment, with the email below, I attached the marketing document Andrew gave me before I bought the properties in late 2009.
By now, due to Andrew’s lack of action, my thinly veiled threats were becoming more overt. In a previous email I had threatened to take legal action, but unfortunately it didn’t really give the guy much of a jolt. Due to the costs of Youngstown exceeding the $8000 Andrew had mentioned it would cost to renovate, he ‘loaned me an additional $4000’, as I was not wanting to pump any more money into this investment when I had not received any returns even after 15 months at this stage. I also had a deposit to pay for an investment property in Australia too.
To: Andrew Allan
Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2011 8:59 AM
Subject: Re: Settlement
Hi Andrew,
I am still waiting for your phone call. In regards to the $4000 you loaned me, that was because I was told by you when I first joined MYUS Property that the renovations would be no more than $8,000 for Youngstown. I promptly put the money in the bank account and it was sitting there for many months and nothing happened. If I had been told intially that the renovations were going to be $12,000 I would not have purchased the property.
Please refer to the attachment which I was given when I first joined MYUS Property. I refer to points 1 and 5. Firstly point one which states that the company will “allow 4-6 weeks vacany period for each property”. Well the Youngstown Property has been vacant for nearly 18 months, so that is obviously a misrepresentation.
Point 5 states “the correct property management is in place”. Clearly Ronnie Williams does not fit into that category. I don’t know how you found this crook and I would have definitely not brought the Detroit property if I had known that you had not properly checked out the agents in the US.
If you feel upset about me attacking your character, well feel comforted by the fact that I invested over $60,000 of my life savings into your company based on our face to face meetings and Malcolm’s recommendations. Settlement however is next week for my St. Kilda property, which you knew about when I first joined the company and you guaranteed that I would have definitely sold a property by now. I simply don’t have the money for settlement due to the fact that what you told me was going to happen regarding sales and cashflow has not occured.
I look forward to your response.
Gavin
Anyway here was Andrew Allan’s response, notice how he is still deflecting away responsibility, and is actually acting more victimised than myself. I can see the irony in this now. Anyway at least I got a quick response from him on this occasion. Neither of these emails were modified.
April 1st
Hi Gavin,
This week I have been unwell and in meetings. In relation to the renovation costs these are all estimated. I received quotes for less and some for more but on the average it was around $8,000. In relation to the document you send me you will see I don’t make any guarantees as I cant. I don’t own the properties and I never purchased the properties so I don’t have control over the vacancy period or can I control a property manager that decides to steal money and not do there job correctly. The reality is we cant control these elements. If I knew that Ronni was going to end up like this do you think I would have put you into this investment? How much do you think I make? Millions??? Did you know it takes me about 9-12 deals in the US to make what companies in Australia make on one single person buying an apartment??
Under no circumstances did I guarantee that these properties be sold prior to your settlement in St Kilda. I am doing all I can to get these issues resolved. There is no money for me to make but as your a client I am here to help. To say that I misrepresented pretty much everything I will not stand for. We have disclaimers to state that we cannot guarantee anything.
I understand your frustration Gavin and you need someone to blame. I am here to help you must remember that. I am waiting on Alan to get back to me as the church is looking at buying your Youngstown property. I can get it sold straight away but I need at least 1 tenant. Detroit I have followed up with Jeremy Burgess the wholesaler for his inspection. If you can give him a call because he has also lost about $500,000 thanks to the property management.
I have Debra following up as well. I will have further updates tomorrow my time.
Andrew
Anyway, Andrew took quite a while to respond after this, despite saying that he would the next day, which only added to the frustration. Despite numerous calls I have never ever been able to get in contact with Jeremy Burgess to validate whether he did get ripped off, it was really only Andrew Allan’s word. Many months later (around Christmas time) when still nothing had been done regarding renovating the properties, I pushed Andrew Allan to send me all his email correspondences with Jeremy Burgess. He made up some excuse that he was unable to transfer the information from his old computer. This was one of the main reasons that pushed me to go on the 730 Report.Thanks for that Terry and Jamie
Got to admit it is good to have a property watchdog out there. I guess Neil has to have pretty thick skin as those he exposes would regularly come back at him attacking.
Really good, interesting stuff as usual Jay. Many thanks for the input and if I ever do get some cash to invest with again, I will be looking in your direction. I don’t understand though what you mean by investing with TWH. Is that your company? As you know most Australians are quite slow when it comes to investing in US property, so I will need to have that part of your post spelt out in a bit finer detail.
Many thanks Mihovi for the 40 plus photos you took of my Detroit property and the analysis you did of it too. It was encouraging to get some positive pointers out of it. Just need to get the cash together now to renovate it, which as you know will take a while.
It’s great to know that you know Detroit so well and hold it in positive regard too.
Hi Mihovi,
I would be interested to know which people you know who have worked with Mr. Burgess and if you could pass on their contact details that would be great.
Anyway, continuuing on from Andrew's last correspondence with me in February last year, I had to wait nearly a month, after sending several follow up emails, until I heard an update from Andrew about what was going on with my Detroit property. This was the property I owned and I paid Andrew Allan good money to renovate and find a reliable property manager for. Well as you can see below the property manager; Ronnie Williams, did not fit this category.
Please note the email below has not been modified at all.
March 15th
Hi Gavin,I have finally spoken to Jeremy who was the wholesaler in Detroit and
there seems to have been major criminal matters with the previous Property
Management and them now being investigated for Fraud. For the past 3-6
months they have been pocketing the rent from over 90 properties and now
have a number of owners looking at options. I am having someone look at
the property first thing Monday to confirm how we can quickly sell your
property. I understand you require the funds to settle on your St Kilda
property and I will make it a priority to get on top of this.I am looking into where the security deposit is located to recover as
well. I will also be keeping on the Youngstown property as I know once
that is done we could sell that for a profit. Lets touch base Friday my
time.Andrew
Well just to let you know, it took me quite a while before Andrew contacted me again. I had a deposit on a investment property in St. Kilda and needed to sell a US property quickly in order to get money for a deposit. As mentioned previously I made Andrew Allan aware of this before I purchased the two US investment properties and he said I would be able to turn over one in at least three months!
As you may be picking up by now Andrew despite his rhetoric, was all talk and no action. Consequently the rent money was never recovered and Andrew, did not find another property manager. He ended up passing the blame onto the wholesaler; Jeremy Burgess and later on told me to contact him as Andrew was unable to get in touch with Jeremy himself! As you will see in the next few weeks Andrew starts passing the blame onto others, even though I paid him money to find the wholesaler, property and property manager. I guess the email above is really just touching the iceberg compared to what happened later on.
Just a follow up to the 730 Report Story, I spoke to the producer of the story regarding My USA Property that went to air, Greg Miskelly, tonight and asked him if they had heard anything from Andrew Allan and My USA Property. He said that they had sent phone and email follow ups but had heard absolutely nothing from him. He believes that story in The Warmnbool Post was all hot air on Andrew’s behalf. The My USA Property site has gone down and I have not heard from Andrew Allan at all until basically straight after the story. Greg reckons he’s gone in hiding for a while.
I guess the only concern from that point of view is that I do recall Andrew talking about expanding his business to Saudi Arabia, among other countries outside the US. Obviously his name is not going to be worth promoting, but I suggest that people keep an eye out for companies promoting US properties overseas and let me know if there are any simularities with the marketing regarding My USA Property.
Very interesting advice guys, unfortunately I didn't know you three years ago.
I guess the thing is too, not always to believe the information that's online, websites will often put small disclaimers at the bottom that are hard to read. My Allan's company is a case in point
