By Robin Bowman

Inside Track - a company that promoted Buy To Let investments through 'how to' seminars costing thousands of pounds - has called in administrators after blaming the credit crunch for a critical fall off in business.

The Inside Track seminars promoted property investment schemes run by an associated company Instant Access. It promoted its founder Jim Moore offering a route to leave behind the 'daily grind' and the opportunity to live on 'Easy Street'.

Its colourful offerings promised that "any bright and hungry person could build a £1m portfolio from scratch in five years or less".

Good times

Maybe - but that was during the good times.

Its property deals, often touted as being sold at a discount, frequently focused on two sectors of the market Property Secrets has consistently warned against - city centre flats in the UK and holiday homes.

We have always maintained holiday homes, or places in the sun, are not serious investments, while city centre flats in the UK, especially in many northern cities, have clearly been suffering from huge over supply for several years.

At the peak of the boom, Inside Track was reported to be turning over almost £25m. Numbers attending its seminars have fallen dramatically however in recent times. All seminars were suspended earlier this year.

"There has been a huge drop-off in people going to the seminars," Glyn Mummery, joint administrator for the company, was reported as saying.

Inside Track founder, Jim Mr Moore issued invites to free investment seminars, where a weekend course was sold, costing up to £2,500.

The FT reported that in 2005 that Insight Track's members were said to have bought one in 12 of new-build flats sold in the UK.

"Inside Track was the largest of the seminars selling new-build property," Ray Boulger, of mortgage broker John Charcol, told the FT. "They were attracting some people into buy-to-let that perhaps shouldn't have been there."

Here, at Property Secrets, we are not surprised at this failure.

Company failures

At the Home Buyers show in London earlier this year PS CEO Neil Lewis stated that he believed that half of the companies at the show wouldn't be there in September - it appears that this may well be proven right.

The concern now must be a) what happens to investors who have uncompleted investments with Inside Track and b) what is happening in the market?

Neil said today: "It is worth stating here that many of the property agents who previously sold poor quality UK properties have now rushed to other markets - Romania is probably one of the best examples - and that investors are at risk of these companies also going bust.

"Property Secrets are big fans of the Romanian market - but we don't like the signs that we see of so many groups pumping deals in this country and they seem to be doing so without much care.

"Investors need to be careful!"

The Seven Golden Rules

Time to resate the The 7 Golden Rules of Property Investment? We think so....

1. Only buy off plan property in High Growth Markets

2. Aim to invest in properties that are Below Market Value or where market values are rising very rapidly

3. Either buy properties in the early phases of developments or early phases of neighbourhood regeneration

4. Only buy in markets where there is growing demand from the local population

5. Minimise risk by ensuring contracts are robust and you have a good lawyer

6. Buy at the best possible payment terms and take advantage of long development lead times where possible

7. Invest quickly in great deals - don't wait for the perfect deal that may not exist

And - we might add - do not pay big money (by which we mean thousands of pounds), for access to information that claims to hold THE big key to successful property investment.

Rely, instead on meticulously sourced, insight-led investments, offered only after a market has been carefully researched and assessed. Need we say more?!