(04-08-2012 08:05 PM)Mark Alexander Wrote:  Hi Linda

I have a few questions for you as I have contacts which may be able to help you to recover some if not all of your losses.

Is Elite Property Services a limited company?

What advice have the Solicitors and Barristers offered? Not so important but out of interest which legal advisers have you engaged to assist you to recover your losses and what are the costs to date? Also, please name the solicitors on both sides involved in the conveyancing of the property when you purchased it.

Have your legal advisers talked to you at any time about ATA (after the event) insurance?

Would you be willing to share with me the written advice from the barrister?

Regards

Mark Alexander
Founder of Property118.com

Linda - You'll probably find that if you have a BTL mortgage, you're in breach of it's terms, because it will not permit regulated tenants.

Your best bet would be to look at a claim against the solicitor for professional negligence - and they will be insured.

(04-08-2012 11:36 PM)Glenn Ackroyd Wrote:  

(04-08-2012 08:05 PM)Mark Alexander Wrote:  Hi Linda

I have a few questions for you as I have contacts which may be able to help you to recover some if not all of your losses.

Is Elite Property Services a limited company?

What advice have the Solicitors and Barristers offered? Not so important but out of interest which legal advisers have you engaged to assist you to recover your losses and what are the costs to date? Also, please name the solicitors on both sides involved in the conveyancing of the property when you purchased it.

Have your legal advisers talked to you at any time about ATA (after the event) insurance?

Would you be willing to share with me the written advice from the barrister?

Regards

Mark Alexander
Founder of Property118.com

Linda - You'll probably find that if you have a BTL mortgage, you're in breach of it's terms, because it will not permit regulated tenants.

Your best bet would be to look at a claim against the solicitor for professional negligence - and they will be insured.

I agree Glenn.

I'm exploring the various angles to see whether one of my solicitor contacts might take this case on a Conditional Fee Agreement (AKA "no win no fee").

(04-08-2012 01:49 PM)kamet_batra Wrote:  

(04-08-2012 07:31 AM)linda frewin Wrote:  

(04-08-2012 03:39 AM)kamet_batra Wrote:  I would do what Simon Topple has suggested, a written recorded complaint to the solicitors would be a great start.

a. Do not entertain any "suggestions" on phone.
b. Keep written and documented record of everything.

Brendan Kiely was recently featured on Watchdog after taking multiple deposits on a same property so I am assuming he hasn't decided to change his course of action.

Also investigate where the money (£650) was coming from for two months.

What due diligence was performed by yourself before you actually signed the dotted lines?

I am so embarrassed to say that we did very little due diligence - we were totally naive and trusted a lady called Maria Davies who we were totally taken in by and believed. I now know that this is the most stupid thing we have done in our lives and now we are paying for it big time. We are very honest and good living people and have to realise that there are people in this world who are not like us. These people are consumed by greed and the only way they can make lots of money is by ripping off innocent people. We have been to a solicitor already and a Barrister who have charged us a fortune already and are sitting on the fence as they said that it may cost us a lot of money to take these people to court and if we lose we would be bankrupt!! The Law is a complete ass - it is so obvious that this is fraud and I can't understand why we could lose at all - but we are frightened of an enormous bill. The fact that the conveyancing solicitor has lost the file shows that they are hiding something!

I am not exactly sure if you have chosen the right course of action via litigation. As you are already aware it could be very expensive if you lose as normally you would be ordered to pay for defendant's costs.

However it may not work the other way around, say if you won the case, before the defendant could pay you, they may go bankrupt leaving you with your own costs.

The course of action which may be more suitable to you at this stage is to present a case to your solicitor's insurer, claiming on their PPI for professional negligence.

But I am sure, during your conversation with Vanessa, these points would've been covered.

---

Hi Mark

Thank you so much for your advise. We really do appreciate any help we can get on this case as we are becoming very worried about how much this could potentially cost us and I do really want justice with these unscrupulous people.

Here are the answers to your questions

Elite property Success are not a limited Company

We have used a Wosskow Brown Solicitors in Sheffield because we knew them through a Network group. They put us in touch with a Barrister - Nick Mason, Park Court Chambers in Leeds. My husband Paul went to see him with someone from Wosskow's. Paul said the Barrister wasn't very helpful and made him feel stupid for getting involved with these people. He said that it could be an expensive case and if we lost it could cost
us lots of money which we haven 't got. Since then we haven't known where to turn. Wosskow Brown haven't really done anything and haven't even written letters to Elite Property and Hometrader. We have a bill already of over £2000 which we haven't paid yet and don't really want to as they haven't helped at all!

The solicitors who did our conveyancing were called Darling & Stephenson in Darlington. We don't know who Hometraders solicitors were.

No one has mentioned ATA

We haven't got any written advice from the Barrister - we were really hoping they could help?? I really don't know how they can charge what they have done.

Any help at all Mark would be very very gratefully received.

Thank you so much

---

Sorry spelt advice wrong!!

I can back the OP. Mr Green and his partner in crime Mr Holmes owe me a fair sum of cash.

Like the original poster, I own a number of BTL's in Scotland. Was contacted by Mr Green through submitting an enquiry to the Property Investment Finders website. I was promised a property in the Glasgow at 25% BMV area which just happened to be in the same street as I own one in already.

I was suspicious from the beginning, particularly the harrassment from him to agree to go ahead and then hand him a significant advance deposit. However I checked the company out (as much as I was able) and they seemed legit, went and viewed the property and even spoke to the owner and confirmed it was for sale (but not the price) On the basis of this, the fact that he was naming the solicitors I would be using and I checked them out also, I transferred the cash. I received a shambles of a contract, which states in very poor wording that depost fees were not refundable but transferable. No mention of this PRIOR to it. I noticed and was straight back on the phone to him.

Needless to say the first property sale fell through, for reasons I didn't believe. I immediately demanded my cash back and they came up with a further solution of another property. Two weeks later I was advised that the buyer had accepted an offer from another buyer. They tried to offer me another that had been hawked round every outfit in Glasgow as BMV, when in fact it was well over valued. Enough was enough for me at this stage.

I harrassed him non-stop for weeks, and did eventually get half of my cash back. Only now has he started to ignore calls, emails and texts, when I am chasing him for the other half

I will be getting the rest of my cash back from Mr Green. His business will be suffering as a result. I just wish my initial google search on him had brought up this site.

I will let you all know when I get my money back, because I will.

Hi Paul,

Welcome to Property Tribes and sorry to hear your plight.

You might be interested in this discussion about how deal sourcers should be registered with an Ombudsman.

I would recommend that you report this company to the Property Ombudsman and also Trading Standards.

Thanks for the welcome Vanessa.

I've sourced a property before through a similar company in Sheffield, and it all went through ok. Hence I probably let my guard down a little bit here. It won't happen again. There is a connection between Property Investment Finders and Jay Parmar, who has been involved in similar schemes in the past from what I can see. Where Mr Green and Elite Property Express fit in to this web, I'm not entirely sure. A jumble of different companies is of course how these people work

Property Investment Finders were recently wound up at companies house, yet in the past few weeks have come out with a flashy new website and it appears to be business as usual. I know Tom Green is still involved with them, because he was mentioning to me on a few occasions driving up to Derbyshire to deal with the current project there.

And as you can see from Property Investment Finders home page their latest development is in Derbyshire.

I'm not sure there is any point in trying to deal with these people via legitimate and legal methods, as I've done up to now, but I'll keep the thread updated.

If these companies are not a member of an Ombudsman scheme they are definitely operating illegally and you should report them. If they are members of an Ombudsman scheme you should address your complaints to the appropriate Ombudsman. As a Consultant to a solicitors firm with a specialist department dealing with internet defamation law I know how potentially dangerous the allegations you are making in open forum are, not only to you but also to the forum owners.

For details of the laws affecting companies such as those you are complaining about please see >>> http://www.property118.com/index.php/ope...man/31245/

For more information about internet defamation please see >>> http://goo.gl/924J9

Continuing the after the event (ATE) insurance and conditional fee agreement (CFA - commonly know as no win no fee) discussion, if a solicitor is prepared to enter/arrange such agreements then the clients exposure is minimised. If the client does not win, then nothing is payable to their solicitor and the ATE insurer meets the other sides costs. If the client wins then the other side should be ordered to pay the clients costs.

But if the client wins then the solicitors fees are payable under the CFA and an issue can arise if the other side do not pay the costs as ordered or become insolvent. Therefore if a client has a choice of who to sue and one of the options is a professional with insurance (like a solicitor or a surveyor) then they may be a more attractive defendant because they are insurance backed.

If Alick and/or Linda would like to discuss this/their disputes further with me (I am a property litigation solicitor at Temple Bright LLP in Bristol) on an informal and free of charge basis, then please feel free to call on 0117 9200056 or 07711 764993.

Bruce

Hi Bruce,

Good to have someone of your experience on Property Tribes. Welcome!

Just wondering if you have successfully got money back off a deal sourcer for a client?

It seems that once these unscrupulous companies have your hard earned ££££, it is nigh on impossible to get it back.

They just keep offering "alternative deals" that do not generally fit people's individual criteria. It's like pushing a square peg into a round hole and it doesn't work for the client.

Could you let us know actual cases where you have succeeded getting money back - no need to name the company.

Paul Shamplina of Landlord Action was successful with two well known wealth creation experts in getting people's money back, but he does not undertake this kind of work anymore.

Someone should specialise in this ... they would make a fortune!

Vanessa,

The answer to your question is that I have never been instructed to act against a deal sourcer, so no I have never recovered money from one.

If the deal sourcer is a legitimate entity, then I would suggest that the reasonableness of the terms are looked at by a commercial litigator. If a term is 'unfair' then it may be unenforceable/void. When considering this, different reasonableness tests apply when one party to the agreement is a consumer/individual than when both parties are commercial entities.

On the other hand if the deal sourcer is not a legitimate entity and who disappears off the face of the earth, we may be venturing into a possible fraud. The best place to start may be the police, unless you can identify assets owned by that entity which can be enforced against.

Bruce