We only ever told people to buy and hold for 10 years and the properties should double in value. When the media first attacked me not one person had actually made a loss. They used dummy buyers who they lied about and used a valuation from Herriot which I cover in the valuation page and told me they wanted to do a comparison between the Real Estate agents and ourr company which I was happy to do. They turned up and instead of doing a fair comparison like they said, they had already made up their minds and they were prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner all in one. There first question was "How do you feel about ripping off all of these people? They had already made me guilty and out of a 2 hour interview I had maybe 30 seconds on air, hardly fair.
After the ACA story went to air many people tried to sell there property and surprise surprise, after a national TV story the demand for these properties was not as high after the story went to air. Simple supply and Demand would tell you that this TV show produced more supply than Demand with buyers desperate to get out. It is no surprise they lost money. But lets look at the Real Estate Agents and see if all of their buyers made money.
Crown Towers Gold Coast
Property Bought Year SOLD Year Loss %
Lot 35 $265,000 1997 $170,000 2001 $95,000 35% Loss
Lot 262 $725,000 1996 $470,000 1999 $255,000 35% Loss
Admiralty Towers Brisbane
Lot 73 $318,000 1995 $250,000 1998 $68,000 21%Loss
Lot 99 $539,800 1994 $431,000 1998 $108,800 20% Loss
Grand Mariner Gold Coast
Lot 35 $427,500 1989 $265,000 1998 $177,500 41% Loss
Lot 154 $1,020,000 1989 $500,000 1997 $520,000 51% Loss
I have thousands of examples of losses where people bought through Real Estate agents and lost money. Investing in Real Estate in short periods is a risk and it should only be viewed as a long term strategy. The high rises are usually not great as an investment unless they have some really good position or are in a unique situation of being very cheap or can not be replaced. A friend of mine made a fortune out of a Highrise in Sydney but this is rare, we sold very few Highrises because they could not meet our criteria.
The big question is why is it that I was shown to be ripping people off when we told people to hold the properties for 10 years, had valuations, and our properties suffered smaller losses than the real estate agents?
Or was it that I was selling 60% of the new properties on the Gold Coast as one office and the other agents were left with the balance between 1000+ agents?
Was the media and Herriot merely puppets to my competitiors?
