Lots of people who invested with Passive Investments have asked me to repost the blog I removed last year as it brought so much response from other unhappy clients, so I'm pleased to do so... As you know, I've been investing myself since 1990 (yes, not just through the growth years, like some people who call themselves "expert" - I started when prices were high and they suddenly dropped, which could explain why I'm absolutely NOT in any state of panic about the current market). So when I spoke for a couple of companies who offered to provide a full service for potential investors (and invested in these myself - remember, my rule is that I never speak for anything I don't invest in myself) people asked why I needed help. It's a valid question and the answer was always because, with property, you can leverage both money AND time AND knowledge. Unfortunately, if you leverage other people too far, you lose control. Many of you will know that I used to speak for Andy Shaw & Greg Ballard (Passive Investments) and I also became an investor with them. The idea was that those who didn't have the time, but had the money and the desire to invest in property, would be able to pay Passive to "do it all for them". In practice, it's turned out horribly wrong for me, and not exactly as expected by many others. When someone has too much control through having 6 years' management funds up front AND full control over the bank account, the danger is that they drop the ball and you (whose name everything is in) end up suffering the consequences. Because they've got your money up front (on a NON-REFUNDABLE basis - as Greg likes to point out after he's got the money), they've also got you over a barrell. In my own case, and the case of others, the first red flags were when the bank account went overdrawn, and the first we knew of it was receiving a letter from Barclays! The second red flag came when it took over a week for anyone at Passive to act on the urgent fax I sent through regarding this, and the third red flag came in the form of them managing to get a CCJ attached to me due to another oversight (denied by Greg Ballard, but since verified with the managing agents!). And don't forget, you're now paying this company the best part of £40K - UP FRONT - to do all this for you PLUS a back-end fee of around £20K on EACH PROPERTY!! You can read more about the whole sorry saga on my book reviews page at:
where you'll receive a warning about how buying Andy's book, which, incidentally, takes about 300 pages to say the same thing that I say in just one of the myths I write about in the chapter of my co-authored book "The Advantages of Real Estate") can get you entangled into their scheme, if you're not aware. So that's my response to the people who ask me what I think of Andy, Greg & Passive - NOT MUCH!! Nice idea but do you really, really need to pay all that money and leave yourself so exposed? By the way, it wasn't so much when I was speaking for them, but they increased it over time. The question I'd like to ask is where have all these funds gone? They took so much up front from their clients and this was meant to be in order to manage their portfolio for 6 full years. Now, only 1-3 years on for clients, Andy has moved to Cyprus, Passive have at least one judgement against them already, there is a skeleton staff at their offices and Greg is pleading poverty when it comes to returning money due to clients. Even their acquisitions manager left, stating, in writing, "I left the company as I no longer had the confidence in their abilities to provide the service their clients paid for." Wow, that's from an insider. I've been contacted by various clients who have had problems ranging from the usual lack of communication through to Passive's inability to return large sums of money under the terms of agreements they had whereby Passive paid a return on money deposited with them. Where's it all gone? In addition, many clients are now left with all their funds tied up in properties that they cannot remortgage (showing how important it is for a company to have a strategy that doesn't just work in a rising market - any fool can operate in a market like that!) and some have more than one property that isn't even let. So much for Passive's assertion that they held more sway over letting agents than an individual owner. I do wonder whether Passive, Greg and Andy will be around for much longer. They have a string of past business closures behind them, Passive Investments Ltd company accounts are late and for a couple of supposed "property millionaires", you may be surprised what a personal search on the individuals will throw up. My legal action could be the final nail in the coffin, but I reckon they're already hammering away themselves.
Recent Comments