Anyone had experience with Ben Everingham and Pumped on Property?

Hi FireandWater.

Thanks for sharing your experiences about our business.

Were sorry your experience with our business ended with you feeling like you need to comment on this forum. After working with over 400 clients and buying over $350,000,000 worth of property in Sydney and Brisbane this is the first time we have ever received negative feedback online. As a business owner this breaks my heart and is not in line with the experience we tried to create for you over 13 months.

Unfortunately we can not please everyone. This is a hard realisation we have had to come to terms with after years in business.

After 13 months of working with you, inspecting properties that meet your strategy on a weekly basis, educating you on the market, sharing all of our IP with you and placing offers on 4 properties with you it was hard to see you leave.

That said we did refund 100% of your services fee after spending over 250 hours of our time working to get you the best outcome.

Our strategy is simple. This strategy has not changed since the first time we spoke. It has not changed today:

We buy quality properties, at market value, in quality suburbs. We target suburbs close to the city and the beach and try to time the property cycle to the best of our knowledge using the information we draw from Core Logic, Phil Anderson, Fred Harrison, Michale Matusik, Residex, HTW, ABS, SQM and a range of other sources. We also like to help clients achieve strong cash flow and treat every relationship like it is one that will last a lifetime. We dont transact on properties with clients, we help our clients work towards financial freedom and stay well connected for as long as our clients would like us to be in their lives.

It hurts that you have failed to mention that during our first strategy session you told us you had never bought a property before. After going through finance we later found out you owned two. It also hurts that we found out you were placing offers on properties yourself without telling us during our exclusive agency agreement.

Unfortunately we are not financial advisors which mean we can never tell you to buy a property, nor would we if we could. As we discussed in our 2nd strategy session we understand the market well and do our best to help educate you, but at the end of the day its your decision.

We do not send properties to more than one client, everything we do is one to one. The fact that we only take on 5 new clients a month demonstrates this.

Im sorry again about the email. As you mentioned I did try to rectify this by a call and realise I was in the wrong. I was frustrated and hurt after such a long term relationship. We try our best to deliver for every client. I believe the 13 months we put into the relationship before refunding 100% of your services fee demonstrates this commitment.

I am also sorry you have had to lash out online like this and couldn't call me to discuss. This is very hard to take after a 13 month relationship, 250 hours of our time and a full refund.

We wish you all the best on your journey to financial independence and appreciate you sharing your experience.

 

To be fair, I don't think it was 'lashing out' at all, FireandWater shared their experience (after prompting from others) so others can form their own opinion. You can't expect that only people who have a great experience to share it, if what you are offering is a great service then your results will speak for themselves and you should have a tonne of people advocating you/your company. Also expecting people to speak to you directly when they received abusive emails when they got cold feet and asked for their money back is a bit confronting - you admitted you sent the email then tried to call to apologise - true character shines through here (did you read the bit about their mother being sick therefore needing the money back?)
FireandWater also mentioned lots of positive things about their experience with Pumped on Property but you've focused on the negative only.
Joining the forum to defend yourself/company is a little bit extreme IMO

 

What was fireandwaters strategy and how did the suggested properties not fit that strategy?

 

This whole thread is a benchmark as to how experiences should be shared and responded to. Kudos to @FireandWater and @Pumped On Property for both of their accounts.

 

Exactly my perspective - thank you for your support.

I also believe the response by Pumped on Property is why I wouldn't recommend them. Overly defensive and frankly inaccurate in the description of what actually occurred.

To set the record straight - Pumped on Property have confused my personal circumstances (again mind you) in their account of our interaction. I stated up front I had two investment properties. Evidence I did so - during the first strategy session there were comments that you had actively bought in one of the suburbs and that it had experienced good growth but you thought I had overpaid! I would also state that you knew I had property as you referred me into your property management business and emailed your brother who was (at the time) acting as the property management point of contact to consider managing one of the properties for me. Furthermore you also provided me a town planner point of contact to try assist in understand potential development options. Again... all things which demonstrate I was 100% up front with you from the start.. I would also offer it makes absolutely no sense at all to omit that very critical information when undertaking a strategy session!

Secondly - I also did not make any offers on other properties without Pumped on Property knowledge. In fact, I notified the buyers agent that due to the lack of progress over the previous 10 months and due to the failed 4 contracts (3 of which were a direct result of significant building / structural issues identified during building and pest; the 4th failed due to the bank valuation coming up short for the expected rental return) and that my first buyers agent had moved back to Brisbane and had offered to consider my needs in their work. The buyers agent response when I stated this was 'no worries, if you need any support then let us know'. The only time it came up as a problem was after i asked for my refund.

Ps thanks Lindsay for also considering the actual reason why I left this service. My mother is, thankfully, recovering well following two lots of surgery and moving to Sydney so that I could be her primary carer.

Perhaps now considering Pumped on Property's response to my feedback it is apparent as to why i was reluctant to say anything! But I think this experience now provides invaluable insight for others to consider.

 

Investment property as close to the CBD as possible (or other location which provides good fundamentals of capital growth with a preference for the Redcliffe Peninsula) of a purchase price <$500k with a <4% yield and something that didn't require significant amount of work (ie nothing that would require significant renovation or maintenance immediately - happy for something i could value add in due time).

I received a regular (perhaps weekly?) email with properties which were apparently tailored to my strategy / requirements. Many of the properties in the emails required (immediate) work or renovation or were well above the price range.

 

Dont know anything about the area. How realistic are those requirements? Just because thats what you want doesnt mean theyre there.

 

Used POP last year , for my fourth purchase which had GF potential. The whole process was roughly 12 weeks from initial meeting to finding property with Ben and team. Over all the process was smooth and professional. Would use them again

 

What are the cost arrangements for buying via PumpedonProperty FireandWater ?

 

Anyone ?

 

Thanks mate...really helpful

 

Any new feedback or recent experiences to share??

 

They do receive a large commission from their Granny Flat builders so their advice may not be totally independent. And their recommended Accountant is really bad

 

I watch most of the content on YouTube, they're a good laugh and I'm happy to see some guys giving it their all to create something for themselves. I was investigating the GF option on my own in Redcliffe when I noticed they simply stopped overnight talking about MBRC, instead shifting to Logan. This was odd as they'd previously said they'd not go to logan!

It wasn't until I went looking further I found there's been a backflip by MBRC and granny flat rules. This is likely why they abandoned ship and changed locations. Not once was this mentioned in a video, which I found a bit off-putting.

Also, it's interesting to see what they're buying for themselves vs clients.

I decided in the end it was good for interstate people with zero knowledge or time but as a local, not much value as the suburb knowledge was what was worth paying for.

 

I agree with exactly what you said Clean, and you are correct Mortan bay Regional Council doesn't allow Granny Flats any more so that is probably why they now purchase in south Brisbane, dispite previously saying on youtube they would never buy there. They should be fully transparent with their commissions as people pay large amounts of their hard earned for their services. I would like to see what Bens portfolio consist of, as the other Pumped staff have not built granny flats on their properties.

 

I find it very odd you've signed up 3 years ago and the only post you made is about this company... Surely theres a backstory..

 

No, I just watch their youtube clips and thought I would do the right thing and let potential buyers know what their agenda is before signing up, as they do not disclose. Apart from that there service is good. I do not work for anyone else, or have any interest in any other organization, althoough I have used other buyers agents that were ethical.

 

It's a shame I only read this thread after I joined as a member of Property Chat, didn't know that some of the threads will not be publicly available if you're just browsing.

Just sharing our experience with the company.

We bought our first IP in 2022 through Pumped on Property, short story- we will never use Pumped on Property again. Their onboarding strategy one-on-one session is not really helpful, it's a general phone call to discuss why people want to live off the passive income and why real estate is a good vehicle for it. It's not a strategy session, it's more of a motivational speech session.

Once you paid the 50% downpayment which is non-refundable or full payment then they will refund 50% if it doesn't work out then you are booked for a phone call with the main owner of the company Ben, he then discusses with you a general strategy that they offer to all their clients, strategy 1 - Buying 2 houses then to build a granny flat, he explains the tax incentives on these properties and the potential rent for the main house at around $450-$500/wk/house and the granny flats for $350/wk/granny flat, with the goal of earning a passive income of $100,000/year. Strategy 2 - buy 4 houses that will rent out for around $500/week/house to create a passive income of $100,000/year in the future. Strategy 3 - buy a really old house, knockdown then rebuild a main home and a granny flat then he goes on to explain the substantial tax benefit for a newly built investment property, you need to own 2 of these houses at least to come near the $100,000/year rent income.

Due to the market price of houses in Queensland, buying a quality house and land suitable to build a granny flat for less than $500,000 is unlikely as Ben has advised, so we opted to find a decent house under $500,000. Being first time property investors, we engaged a buyer's agent to represent us, get a hold of properties that were off the market, negotiate the price better, and inspect the property for us before we sign the contract. They barely negotiated the price down for a property that we had settled on, also I have spoken to a local property manager who is managing properties that were purchased by pumped on property and the same comment was mentioned where the prices paid for the houses could have been much better. The house we settled on was not inspected by pumped on property before they offered for us to sign the contract on the basis that they have been doing this business for a number of years and they didn't really need to inspect the property to know that it was good for its price. We signed the contract because we thought we paid these people $15,000 to do the leg work, the issue was that they lived in Sunshine Coast and we were buying south of Brisbane, they couldn't be bothered to inspect the house on a Monday given the 2 hours drive, it has to be on the day they attended inspections which was on a Wednesday, the issue was, our cooling off period was about to expire and we would be liable to 0.25% termination fee in case the cooling off period came to an effect and we didn't like the property from the inspection. The reason we paid the buyer's agent was to reduce issues like these but in end, it would have been better off to engage a property manager to do the inspections for us, but then again our current knowledge at that time was limited, didn't know about property managers being able to inspect properties on your behalf for a fee or for free.

>Pumped on property were always on holidays, they didn't have normal holiday breaks, and their holidays were always extended, unfortunately, we were buying during the month of April when there were a lot of holidays so your beating time to get inspections done prior to the due diligence expiring. While you're stressing out to cross the t's and dot the i's with the process of acquiring a property interstate, the people that you paid $15,000 to do the work for you are on holiday.

>With one of my discussions with a pumped on property team-member regarding my hesitation to go ahead with a property with an inground pool, they agreed with me that it could be problematic and he was going to book me for a phone call with one of the company directors- Ben's brother Simon. Simon convinced us heavily to go ahead with the property they found with an inground swimming pool for the extra cash flow of $50/wk= $2,500/yr. Informing me that after all, cash flow is very important to investors. After the purchase of the property, we spent an initial $5,000 to repair issues with the swimming pool. And also now that I'm more informed and knowledgeable in real estate investment, we should not have bought that property that was recommended by our buyer's agent. Paid them $15,000 and I'm not happy with the advice I received.

> They have a partnership with Devcon, a real estate company that provides property management services where Pumped on Property gets an ongoing % of the rent as a commission. At this stage, we have left Devcon due to multiple issues and so with the other 5 properties that were bought by pumped on property and managed by Devcon as informed by our current property manager.
Our current property manager also told me about a property with a swimming pool that Pumped on property bought which the buyer spent an initial $20,0000 to fix and these issues were missed by the buyer's agent.

>Right now I'm learning more about real estate investment through this group Property Chat Forum and PK Gupta, should have invested in my education first and bought in Adelaide or Perth and a property without a pool. But then again, I wouldn't have come across PK Gupta if I haven't decided to buy my first IP.

It could have been worse, $15K is a large amount of money for a simple working-class Australian but life goes on, and hopefully, you can have better decisions from what I've shared here.

 

Some of the buyer agent can smell "first time/ inexperienced/ wanna-be" investor from miles away.

It is better to use buyer agent based on word of mouth.

At the end, though they are "so called" working for you, they need to be a sales person.