Freedom Property Investors

First 20 episodes of the property couch podcast is great starting point

 

i have also been to one of freedom property investors seminar too. what i find is most people who goes there are either have zero clue in property investments or not very experience in property investing.

it is his team's strategy to be aggressive and play down or ignore whatever question you have. i will avoid them

 

We filled in and paid for the Freedom membership and had a few phone calls to see what they could offer us, there was a bit of hard sell such as we only have a few left and you need to decide within 24 hours or it will be gone, we decided it wasn't for us and asked for a refund of the membership amount which was promptly paid back to us with no problems.

 

Beware of any firm claiming to be a 'one stop shop' charging a membership fee, selling you the property AND doing the finance for you is a recipe for conflict of interest.

 

You did not answer the Specific question asked by Simon. Im interested to know the answer to this please.



Just so I understand how it works ... let's use a hypothetical example:

You arrange a group purchase where, say, 5 people are buying a block of off the plan units (is there a minimum number of people you have in a group??)

Each unit is worth something like $800,000 after discount. You receive a real estate agent payment (commission!) of between 1% and 4.5% of each of these amounts.

So your company would receive commission payments of between 5 x $800,000 * 1% = $40,000 and 5 x $800,000 * 4.5% = $180,000 for this deal? Based on this hypothetical example, you would be receiving between $40,000 and $180,000 per deal - is that correct?

 

Just attended Freedom Property Seminar this weekend. Typical Sales pitch of selling financial freedom dream first by Scott in a story telling fashion.. then brining Liana in picture to say it is supported by numbers and fact finding. Not any specific information.. in short selling their personal stories (another question who can verify their net worth?) and at the end ask for membership.....

Since then two team members have called me... and no one can answer my basic question that membership fee is $3,000 (heavily discounted from $30,000- what a joke.. in business world it sounds too good to be true). why should I pay 3,000 now for next 7 to 10 years service promise? It is against economics principle.. no matter what they call membership or subscription fee or fee to use their research data.. it is my payment to Freedom properties for next 7 to 10 years service where they will help me to get good discounted properties using large members purchase bargaining power... it doesn't make sense... you know what was the answer.... you are not fit for us... hahaha!!

Next question none of the two people could answer- if Freedom Property is going to bring me discounted prices for OTP properties where most of it not available in the market or couple of years far from coming in the market.. how would I quantify the discount when there is no market price available? It would be just I would have to trust Freedom Property words? or what?

Plus being buyer agent and sellers agent is huge thing here and not being clear on what (in terms of %- they are happy to tell you again and again how they negotiate deals but not what is %) they are making from property developers it is huge..

In short stay away from them!!! My opinion though.....

Note: I am new in Property buying/ Investment. Been in investment world (mostly equity) for more than a decade.

 

The killer for me is the conclusion that to exercise their buying power then they can only be dealing with people with a lot of properties to sell - developers and the prices therefore are nothing but numbers in spreadsheets but likely padded with generous profit margins and sales incentives..

 

I attended a webinar a while back and wasn’t impressed. One reason is that they claimed their approach is risk free (e.g. due to rental guarantee). Um, no it’s not. I wasn’t impressed with the follow up call either - more closing tactics than substance and borderline inappropriate advice. And as far as property investment goes there isn’t really a track record - two or three years of anecdotal evidence projected into a theoretical future is all a bit meaningless.

 

The very notion you are a "member" of anything is dubious. This suggests mutuality but the very essence of the arrangement is one sided. Its a bunch of clients and adviser. Its not a club and there are no "members". Members of a club may vote etc. Really its just paying to join a filtered spam list (adviser could call it prospects) that isnt deductible . Often dressed up to look like you get services for the fee and thats likely true since they want to avoid time wasters. But to handover your money for promises to help sell you something they will make money on is another. So the membership fee didnt pay for true access to deals since they later "pay" for that priviledge. Imagine paying your mortgage broker AND they earn a trail AND they also get a cut from a friendly developer and a little tickle from the real estate agent with a nudge nudge wink wink not to mention the price being a tad high. What independent advice would that be ? The level of honesty varies. Some are secretive and others very open and upfront. And arent defensive.

Many spruikers mask property vals and prices paid using a well tested process.
1. Make sure the adviser and the finance are being jointly organised. It also looks terrific if you tell the buyer that they are "independent" but they work regularly on deals together. So they are mutually joined at the hip. Litle if any independence. Different office even. But working the same deal.
2. Have "bank vals" all ready. Hmmm who did the valuation ? ...But this needs the other element which is in 3......
3. They seek buyers who have equity in property. These deals use 20%+ of the funds from equity so that a valuation shortfall is masked from the buyer. A sales pitch is you are crazy not to max out the interestd eduction. They sell the higher tax benefits. The equity covers the shortfall. But the buyer is made to feel like their finance is all progressing well and ready for approval. yes - It all gets approved. And if LMI comes into the picture - That is also deductible over time. There is a pitch to every issue. And the people who act always win - right ! The more you delay the more you miss. Urgency and need are made to be compelling. The line about never having enough in super is usually thrown out about now.
4. The property developer and adviser have a fee arrangement (as well as the broker and others ?)
5. They are vague in disclosures and use words like "examples" or are non-specific. I know one who declares the precise $ value. Its akin to a BA fee and they also list all the services etc that are included. Often these claims about fees are "masked" eg an illustration.....

For example, if we help 1,000 members source and negotiate a property with:

a. Positive cashflow
b. Instant equity opportunities
c. long term capital growth potential
d. and other opportunities such as manufactured growth opportunities

and our fee is $12,000 per property deal, then we would make 1,000 x $12,000.

Nobody said the fee WAS $12,000. Thats just an example. It could well be $35K, $50K. The worse the property the higher it is. A reflection of developer desperation.
​

Have seen tonnes of these deals with slow moving deals eg Rouse Hill NSW units. Chinese and other developers built STREETS of property. Its a hard sell. So developers release XX lots to friendly sruikers who can make more than selling as a real estate agent. They dont want to drop prices so they offer a cut to the adviser in lieu of a dropped price. And possibly pay a different company so the spruiker sales company doesnt receive a cent. But another company does. If a developer has property in great demand they dont need sprukers. But in this cliemate many deals are harder to sell. They more desperate the developer the bigger the sting.

Go in with ears and eyes wide open. Some are OK and some arent.

 

Wow. Paul, your post is a public service to those of us stuck in the Matrix.

 

I've been watching this thread with interest and I have some insight to add because I was interviewed by Scott Kuru last year for a property sales advisor role. It was not a pleasant experience for me as he was quite rude to me and needless to say I did not take the job.

I’m not sure why he is being so secretive about how they earn their money because he was happy to brag about it to me when we met.

He told me the commission I would personally make per property sale would be between $5,000-$10,000. That's $5k-10k per property sale in my pocket, he told me I should average about 4-10 sales per month earning me up to $100,000 PER MONTH IN MY OWN PERSONAL COMMISSION!

He also informed me that the sales people are earning between $300,000 - $1,000,000 + per year and the telemarketers earn $100,000 - $300,000 per year?? That doesn’t seem right but that’s what I was told.

They wouldn't be paying their sales people this much if they only earned $12,000 per deal so that number was clearly a made up and bogus number. Simon's calculations on their commissions is spot on.

Scott or Freedom earns $40,000-$100,000 in commission for each property he sells. So effectively as a customer you are paying $3,000 just so you can then pay them let's say on average a further $50,000 for each property you purchase through them. They also do your financing in-house which they make a commission on (no idea what the fee is on the lending side but i'm sure it's significant).

They are making money off you, the customer left right and centre through joining fee, large commissions on property and finance. He told me most people by more than one property at a time so the commission then would double or triple from $50k a pop!

Most of their customers are first time investors and generally not very savvy about the property market and they have no idea they are paying these commissions and instead they believe they are getting some sort of a discount, they believe the $3k sign up fee is all Freedom are making from them. It’s quite sad really.

I feel there are several conflicts of interest in how they operate. There is nothing wrong with making commissions or a fee for service or advice but when you are taking money from your customers at every turn for joining, advice, selling property and financing it definitely raises some red flags about the integrity of the business and the advice they give you.

 

I would like to add one more thing, after reading through this thread people have noted that it is a conflict of interest to charge for advice and then receive commission on the property they advise you to buy.

It seems to me that is exactly what they are doing in charging a joining fee and then receiving commissions on the sale and the financing, considering they are advising you on which properties to buy based on the data they supposedly put together with Liana's analytics skills.

 

If they receive commission on the property they advise you to buy and the advice is 'free', it's STILL a conflict of interest.

 

*crickets*

 

Ok I have been following this thread and thought of commenting on this today.
I don’t like to say bad things about anyone but I don’t want anyone else to fall for this.

Freedom property investors Scott Video came up on my FB and I have listened to the video and thought of giving it a go because they agreed to refund my membership fee of $3000 if I’m not happy with them. I have had few calls with one of their property strategists and they were so so efficient and calling me all the time and he talked to me about the properties and he was being really nice.

After that their mortgage broker started calling me following up with everything and emailing me asking to provide the documents ASAP.
Their meetings are way too long and I cannot waste 3 hours to discuss about two properties.
They couldn’t provide a property that I’ll be interested so I said i don’t want to go ahead. it was so hard to tell them that I’m not interested. When Scott had the video first time he said they are not investing in apartments but the strategist asked me to invest in an apartment which I’m not happy about that at all. But he insist that’s the best investment. I understand he works according to Scott’s rules but they are contradicting.

I’m trying to call them and the phone goes to voice mail. I have tried so many people in their business, I’m not sure if they have blocked me or everyone’s complaining so they don’t answer their phones. They ask me to leave a voice mail with a message so they could get back. But no one has got back to me. They don’t answer my emails, neither calls.

I didn’t like the urgency to make it happen and trying to sell the apartments.

He also tried to sell me another property and said it will be there for 24 hours. How can I decide to buy a property in 24 hours. This is my hard earned money. I found another similar block advertised through another real estate agent for the same price and I told the strategist as well and even the builders website says they give government grants so basically they are selling at the same price and Scott and the team take all the commission or most and they keep buying properties.

 

I hope you get your refund mate..

 

Thanks James. I hope I’ll get it back too. I waited few weeks before posting here on this thread because I wasn’t sure if they were busy to get back to me and I will wait for another week and post few more reviews about them in other sites as well. People need to be aware of them.

they have spreadsheets which they show you. But no proof if the no’s are correct. Rent guaranteed but no proof again. You just have to believe them. If developers bankrupt they say yes there are govt associations to help you and freedom property doesn’t help with that. It’s not that easy to apply for these and it takes time.

You can do good things and bad things and no problem with that. But when you do something bad, it will come after you for the rest of your life.

 

I forgot to say I started following this thread after buying the membership so it was toll late. But I was surprised to see even the founder of this website was active on here. It’s nice to see real honest people are doing business.
I’m glad.

 

start listening to Propertycouch podcast which i came to know after joining this forum.. I am new with property investment and ready to invest time in learning/ research...

I am working hard to learn and happy to make mistakes along the way.... but it worth it...