To most people, “Making a Million” or more is an impossible target, so most never try. How about then, a scenario where one happily married couple, after 30 years in successful Corporate positions, with a string of children and grandchildren, decided to ‘give it a go’, built up a portfolio of nearly SIX MILLION DOLLARS – then lose the lot due to becoming ensnared in one of the biggest property ‘rackets’ in the united kingdom.
How would that have affected you – your whole life; your relationships, your family, or most importantly – your inner spirit?
To most people, the catastrophic size of this failure would have driven them to bankruptcy, divorce, or even contemplating suicide- especially when the private key bitcoin generator reasons were nothing to do with the then current credit crunch, but because of the crooked behaviour of one or more individuals.
This is a true-life story of what happened to a couple who worked hard and successful in their ‘Day Jobs’ for over 30 years, and still took the time out to go for their financial life changing goals – achieved them – lost the lot – but with an unbelievably strong inner strength, fought their way back, and are on the UP again.
Not only that, but this pair have since worked unselfishly for over a Decade, providing help, assistance, and on many occasions, a shoulder to cry on for well over a hundred other families, couples, and individual investors similarly affected. On top of that, as whistle blowers on the whole sorry episode, they were rewarded in 2007 with a High Court Writ for Defamation and Libel being served on both of them for $500, 000 each plus damages – at 4. 00AM, when a Post office First class stamp would have sufficed.
Wow!
The full story of our fight is too detailed to go into here, and the story is still not done totally yet, but if you ever find yourself in anyway near as dire a situation, you may want to reserve an advanced copy of our book, due out next year – entitled ‘How To Get out of Debt while Still Living in it’. As a similar victim you will automatically get offered a copy at a 50% discount, and resale rights.
Anyway, for two years, back in 2005, with me approaching 60, we had been slowly building up our investment property portfolio, including a dream retirement penthouse on a new Marina development near to our present home, and a superb large apartment in Bahama Bay in Florida. But then, we were seduced by very clever and expensive advertising, to buy a number of properties that on the face of it should have doubled our fortunes. One of our friends actually bought around $12 Million worth of these properties, and he was only earning around $40, 000 or so a year! These properties, most with more than 4 rentable bedrooms, were all sold by the same developer, with Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) valuations, supposedly fully renovated, and fully tenanted with students, prior to completion, with a Landlord appointed by the developer.
Little did we realise, back then, the significance of that previous sentence. As all these properties needed Local Authority status of Multiple Tenancy, and had a landlord, appointed by the vendor, managing the tenanting of those properties. Unless the property had full Local Authority House of Multiple Occupancy (HMO) status, due to the 2004 Housing Act, it would not only have been illegal for a landlord to tenant such a property, but it would also have been illegal for the landlord to sell it to another Landlord. So – any mortgage issued to finance that property, would not be able to legally secure their debt against that property.