Dream Design Do

What you're missing is the fact that you're using equity from an IP and you'll very likely be a) very poorly structured financially and b) have no idea about the actual end valuation of the property due to any shortfall in valuation being paid for out of equity.

The biggest issue in these scenarios is you end up paying WAY too much for the property (for eg, pay $470k for a property that's only worth $400k) that results in years of waiting for growth before you break even. Add to that, you've also got your other IP tied up in the deal which further restricts you if you ever wanted to refinance.

It can get very messy. If it sounds to good to be true it always is.

 

Drawing a LOC from an existing IP will attract an interest payment. Under this scenario and based on the properties observed on their FB page, these properties would be significantly negatively geared. Claims that they are neutrally/positively geared would be based on a 20%+ cash deposit. I suggest you prepare your own cashflow sheet.

 

Correct Jess. Their FB page contains a complaint whereby a deal fell through as a result of a failed bank valuation. The customer requested a full return of their DDP payment but DDP refused and only offered a partial payment. With any investment, a failed bank valuation should be cause for alarm. As should their reluctance to repay the full fee.

 

me personally, when a company signs up to post, unless there is a second side to the story or set the story straight ,or always , it always makes them look bad

 

How do you suggest they respond? Or do you suggest they just accept having their brand trashed on an anonymous forum? Businesses put in a lot of money into building brands. I believe it is within their rights to protect it. if they have acted illegally, this is a different case.

 

Got this email the other day. They're now offering $9k kickback for referral of a new client.

 

Just counter the arguments with facts. For e.g. if the individual was told against viewing the property, Just say no it is not company policy period and an incorrect statement. (clients are never advised to do this)

Rather than having a one liner saying hey - we are happy to settle the matter. A lot of businesses (much larger than buyers agency from restaurants, corporates. building companies etc) get bad reviews all the time. Also, there should be some level of warranty on services provided based on the specification. Having accurate and correct representations (whether verbal or written) are important as all individuals consume time and dollars in property purchases.

 

Any "facts" would still remain unqualified as this is an anonymous fourm. And if the company was to respond, they would have to sign up which is against TMNT's comment. This is the big problem with anonymous forums and social media in general. I would also consider it to be unprofessional for a company to air the details of a customer issue on a public forum.

 

Hi

The first we heard of these concerns was in this public forum. As a team we were disappointed about this since we have had positive testimonials from Sonya, these are available in the public domain, namely YouTube, as seen on the DDP channel.

We have not been contacted by Sonya prior to this post in regards to these concerns, nor have we been given a fair opportunity to resolve them.

We had made repeated attempts to contact Sonya in order to fully understand the situation.
This week we finally got through to Sonya and are now awaiting correspondence from her with a more detailed outline of the issue at hand in order to resolve it swiftly & amicably for her.

We encourage fellow investors to note & view this independently. DDP was founded over 5 years ago and has to date helped clients purchase over 1000 properties. Understandably, the majority of our clients would keep their personal finances private, yet we have received over 100 positive testimonials in the past 12 months that can be found online on Facebook, Google, Youtube and the DDP Website.

We eagerly anticipate Sonya's correspondence, should resolving the issue at hand be her first and foremost priority.

Sincerely ,
Lian.

 

Well Airbnb, uber eats, eBay and many share economy use reviews to get accurate feedback. They have are millions of users and generate millions in income and millions of people use them to make their decision to use services or not. Nothing wrong to sign up so many other buyers agents do it but sign up officially with name title. Rather than signing up with multiple usernames but from the Same ip and get called out by the moderator

U don't have to air personal comments just stick to company policy or standards. What is fact vs fiction is very straight up. Was there any comments or recommendations to not view any Property prior to purchase? If a company is as good as it says it is there should be no issue handling a few complaints from disgruntled customers

 

I agree with the comment re: "recommendation to not view the property". Was this a verbal comment or was it formally documented? If it was the former, it could be he said vs She said? It could get very messy and a bad look for the company online. There is an old saying that relates to journalists, "never wrestle with a pig in the mud. You will both end up with crap all over you, the difference is, the pig loves it" (particularly when it is from an anonymous site).

 

I personally flew up to have a look at Logan area and determined it wasn't an area to buy in. The demographics were not good and were of lower income percentile which doesn't help if u are looking at prices to grow. Properties in disrepair high insurance costs due to risk of flood etc, news of more housing commissions, jobs wise figures were just so so. I saw lots of crims in the streets. Auctions I went were like dead or basically no action. Logan isn't like a mount druitt as it doesn't have the infra population growth higher incomes u see from Sydney and Melbourne. This was one year ago and I have since bought elsewhere

 

Thanks Melbournian. These are great insights.

 

I had unexpected family issues, my partner lost his job and contacted DDP for a refund. They didn't care and didn't pay up.

Unfortunately we had to sell our property to catchup to your finances due to hardship and Zaki and his team didn't care.

I would not recommend their services to anyone.

 

I think you summed it up well...(my experience was also not very positive although I was experienced enough to not accept anything less than a good deal) - this was in the early years of ddp) but as you pointed out as the business grew and more "grren" investors jumped on-board, it became less about quality service and more about making the numbers i.e. sales!

 

Dear Samm90985;

I have sent you a private message so you may meet me directly to resolve your concern.

As mentioned in the message, the DDP consulting services are under an agreement in which terms and conditions are listed on. We of course vary terms depending on the clients situation and circumstances.

For the public record that can also be given under oath, we have refunded $1.48 Million Dollars to date of our consulting fees back to our clients for various reasons which may result in not being able to obtain finance for a property, financial hardhsip on a case by case basis.

Kind Regards,
Zaki Ameer
Founder - Dream Design Property

 

Hi Everyone, I have had the most stressful and negative experience with DDP. My honest account of my experience is as below:

I signed up with DDP in 2016 paying a fee of AUD 13,900 for a purchase of a house in the range of AUD 300,000-400,000. As this is well over the industry benchmark, I was brought to believe that DDP’s service would be exceptional and would make the buying experience stress free. However my experience with DDP has been extremely stressful and is provided below:

1) Initial Sales Pitch: I was led to believe that DDP would be able to source positive cash flow properties in growth areas at prices which were well below market rates, thus making up for the high fees DDP were charging. My initial remit to DDP via an email dated 6/28/2016 (even before signing the contract), with Subject Line “Initial Criteria for property selection - to be ratified as feasible by DDP” was

"The property

1) should be a positive cashflow property (before applying tax deductions) Should have a high rental yield and I am open to dual residency houses.

2) should have a large land area

3) Total cost of acquisition including stamp duty and any fees, charges and services requires should be under AUD 400000 - Should be the right property for the area for attracting a family as tenants.

4) should be close to (< 1km) from transport (preferable the train station) and supermarkets and schools

5) Should be bought under value

6) Should be checked thoroughly for any long term issues in terms of legal or structural problems.(also flood, fire areas, cyclone areas should be avoided)

7) Should be in an area with high expected growth and low vacancy rates."

DDP's response via Email on the same date was:

"Yes by all means, I have confirmed with our Property team that we can find something that will tick all these boxes.

Just about all our properties fit this mould, with the exception that sometimes we will pick property up above 400K.


The above criteria is basically the same criteria that we would work off anyway.”

Thus trusting in these words, I went ahead and signed the contract with DDP to be my Buyer’s agent.

2) My Actual Experience:

• DDPs calculations to check the gearing of the property often included inflated rent values, did not consider possible periods without rent (which other buyer's agents factor in their calculations) or used lower values for other charges.
• The expected buying price proposed was not below market value. In fact when I did my own due diligence, most times I found the property was listed at the price that DDP was proposing to buy it.
• None of the properties that I checked met the proximity to transport remit from my email.
• The properties proposed were in the general area of south east Queensland. All recommended properties were sent with the positives of buying in that area, which was common knowledge available in the public domain. At no time was a comparison done to indicate why I should buy in one suburb over the other, while other buyer's agents even go down to street level preference for their clients at a far lesser fee. The experience seemed to me as if whatever the customer picks from the stock sent will be sold to the customer as the best buy by DDP.
• The criteria provided by me before signing the contract have not been adhered to in my opinion.
• The first property that an offer was put on was indicated by DDP as a 2003 build which was a key reason why I picked it, expecting it to be low maintenance than older properties. DDP’s proposed price was $360,000. I was shocked when I received the building and pest report which compared the property with properties of the 1970s. On visiting the property personally, it was evident that the property build year was more 1970-1980s and there was quite a bit of repair and maintenance cost that would be required. On asking DDP to negotiate based on these points, I was told that AUD 360000 is the best price even though the property was 20 to 30 years older.
• Also, the DDP estimated rental range for this property was AUD 390-410 per week. On querying the property agents on site, they clearly stated that the range was AUD 350 to 370 per week and they won't be able to get more than that, which made the property severely negatively geared further. This also indicated to me DDP’s lack of area knowledge. Finally we asked for a $5000 discount as a negotiation, which was not accepted by the seller and we had to pull out of the deal. Interesting to note that the property did sell finally at a lower price. On my complaint and strong insistence, only the building and pest inspection report cost, which I had paid to the Inspection company was refunded by DDP.
• DDP indicated that the asking price for the 2nd property that I ended up putting an offer on was AUD 430000, although the online advertisement asked for offers over $420000. In this property the lower level was just renovated and it was advised that this was a dual occupancy property with separate metering, again a key reason for my decision to go ahead. Based on my insistence to reduce the offer price, the offer was finalised at AUD 425000. However, when I personally visited the property the selling agent revealed that the lower level ceiling was not of legal height and hence I would not be able to lease it as two separate properties as a dual occupancy. On returning back and literally forcing DDP to ask the selling agent, it was further revealed that no council approvals were obtained for the renovation carried out on the lower level which included a fully functional kitchen. This obviously put me as the buyer at severe risk of litigation in an event of an untoward incident like a fire in or due to sections of the property for which council approval had not been obtained and someone is hurt due to it. Moreover, in the case of damage to property due to these unapproved sections, the building and landlord's insurance would be voided. Despite these risks which were pointed out by me, I was still recommended by DDP to buy the property without any price reduction, although it had potential to put me under serious litigation and financial liability.

I believe that buyer's agents are appointed to protect the buyer against such risks. In this case, a seasoned buyer's agent would have immediately inquired with the selling agent regarding council approvals in case of a renovated property even before recommending the property to the client or would have noticed a lower than regulation height if they had personally visited the property.

3) Lack of proper due Diligence:

My experience has shown a sheer lack of due diligence from DDP on the properties recommended. My opinions are below:

• Information provided by DDP on properties was already available on the internet in the public domain.
• Moreover, in the cases above, the information provided was proven wrong or basic checks were not done resulting in deals getting cancelled.
• As would be expected from a buying agent, who is supposed to act as the eyes of the investor when purchasing interstate and especially when charging an above benchmark premium fee, DDP never viewed the properties before recommending them or even before the initial offer price negotiation or signing of the contract. In my experience, they have relied on the internet and the information provided by the selling agent rather than doing their own visual checks to verify the facts. It was only when I went personally to visit the properties or while doing a building and pest (after the offer price was decided), when a potential property manager was sent to the property. Querying these property managers have revealed that the expected rent values were inflated and that the proposed property would not fetch the rent quoted by DDP.
• The amount of effort, time and money that I had to put in to validate information provided by DDP and to carry out my own due diligence completely negated the reason I took a buyer’s agent in the first place.

4) No Service for Buyer Advantage:

In my experience, DDP also seemed to be more interested in closing the deal than negotiating on behalf of me, Whenever a point of negotiation was brought up (always on my initiative), I was told that a lower price cannot be obtained. There was no attempt to try to negotiate with the seller, until I pushed hard and pleaded to do so. At all times it seemed from my experience as if I was being sold the property by my own buyer’s agent !!

5) DDP Mortgage Broker Incompetence:

My experience also showed that the mortgage broker suggested by DDP provided a number of false quotes in terms of rates and provided wrong loan terms while quoting the rates. One instance was where I clearly indicated that I wanted an interest only loan and I was provided with a principle + Interest offer. A number of instances like this finally caused me to find my own mortgage broker.

The above instances indicate to me that DDP never fulfilled the initial remit that was agreed before I even signed up with DDP. Moreover rather than making the process less stressful, the lack of due diligence, checks, buyer- advantage negotiation and service expected from a buyer’s agent has made the experience highly stressful for me and negated the reasons I decided to use a buyer's agent. Apart from the lack of value for a high fee price of AUD 13900, I have also suffered unnecessary financial loss (approx. $1005) in terms of unnecessary trips to Queensland and the 2nd property Building and Pest report for properties which should have not been recommended at all had the proper due diligence been carried out.

The above is my factual experience with DDP and I believe it is important for experiences and reviews to be placed online, for the benefit of other customers who can weigh experiences and take a call.

 

I started with them around 4 years ago now and had a totally contrasting experience. I used DDP after I'd been sitting on a heavily negatively geared studio apartment for a few years and it was really hurting me. We sold that and tripled the size of my portfolio in just under two years. The brief was "if i lose my job, i want to keep the property's i buy". It's been three years now and I've never been so comfortable in high amounts of debt. All facts checked out, all purchases under market value and a great support team. Great equity growth and a positively geared portfolio - the two big boxes ticked, so I couldn't be happier really. I'm gearing up for another purchase as I type.

 

Would love to hear more about the types of properties DDP has sourced and secured for you if you care to share?

Date, region, purchase price & yield would be a good start