A can of worms has been opened. Hopefully, PS will you this constructively and improve things on their side. It is THEIR responsibility. 1. Due diligence. What did you as owners check on the PS investments prior to putting money in? I see that these investments are spread out over many regions of many countries. Have you done separate due diligence on each of these places, or have you simply trusted the world of one company? (have PS given you access to their research source) How can you tell if some of these areas aren't getting saturated. Prague has been a hotspot for quite some time now.. Have you visited every place? (bit paranoid. I have met a lot of people recently that will do anything for a few pence. It is my responsibility to have enough due diligence done so that I can not blame others in the event of serious investment fundamentals falling short) 2. I see some of the issues that have arisen. Any other issues arisen? Would time have been/be a healer? (leave PS to resolve the issues?) Have you had to start paying for the apartments prior to "actual" completion? ( before ready to rent) Big no no. PS should have the power to prevent these issues.. (I do not mind delays as long as someone else resolves and I do not lose the apartment or any money) 3. I see that PS do not take responsibility for getting mortgages. A very important part of the investment process for most of us. What kind of mortgages are being made available? In Romania I hear that the mortgages are quite unsophisticated. Some with 2-3% redemption penalty for the life of the loan, and only repayment. Meaning we can not ever change the mortgage without great penalty. I see that Lynn has had hassles. Oliver : Have you at PS been educated by the problems that have arisen so far?

Hi Brian, I too bought in Garden Heights and was a little dismayed to see the figures. Observing Eko Park having done so well i.e. 133% ROI,in the same amount of time, can we assume that maybe Garden Heights were overpriced at the time of sale? or is this development considered to be in a more prestigious area than Eko Park? Any pointers or opinion from PS would be greatly appreciated, particularly as I have read (from several sources) that Krakow has now taken over Warsaw for price increases with claims of 30& price rises???? Thanks.

There is a contract between the Investor and PS, it is clear, they have no responsibilities. Oliver seems to be using this as another Marketing Tactic which is fair play as this is what PS do best. Oliver, I would like you to remind me of when exactly you offered to take away some of the hassle for us at Avlida and at what cost, also when you were last involved in any negotiations or dealings with ABB or anyone in Cyprus, it would help me to understand where I went wrong and what experience you have to help us with the following situation we are in:- We find there is a Law set out which requires the Developer to take certain steps to register the Jointly Owned Property at Avlida and to make application to the Dept of Land & Surveys to set up a Management Committee and Regulations in order for it to be legally recognised, up until now we have been told by the Developer that he only has to facilitate this and we have been struggling on our own and cannot get all the Owners to honour their responsibilies because a) we have been unable to make contact with all the owners b) we have no legal power to be recognised in a Cypriot Court as no application has been made to appoint a Committee c) we do not have the legal constitution to collect and hold the Joint Owners funds without the above applications being made. None of this was mentioned in the PS prospectus and despite several Investors enquiring about the future servicing and maintenance of Avlida the answers were never forthcoming from PS, the Solicitor or the Developer during the run-up to signing contracts. What can you do as part of your After Sales Service to sort this one out Oliver?

.... Oh and as far as a single point of contact at the client Services team goes - that seems to be an ever changing goal post with an excellent line of defence, if anyone has actually managed to get a satisfactory response since Helen Eade left the Goal Post then it would be good to hear because we have found the service to be very good at kicking the ball away but not alot else and when did the Client Services Manager become the Legal and Business Affairs Manager? About the time when the Clients' problems started to become a Legal Threat I suspect.

I have to share Derik's sentiments as an investor in the Santa Marina deal in Cyprus. I tried repeatedly to obtain fellow investor contact info from PS, having tried in vain to get help on this point and was advised they could not as they need to protect their customer details from others. This is understandable, but without reacting to the numerous messages and requests for help, I feel let down they could not even review the obligations that should have applied under the deal they did as ultimately the only people who have the power to get the obligations fulfilled. We live and learn as the investors, but wish PS could have adopted the same approach and at least worked with us to have the correct structure in place and put each investor - i.e. their customers in a position to benefit from it, as we are still pushing that water uphill 2 years later... From a legal standpoint, yes PS have no obligations to help out, from a repeat business perspective - it would have made me more willing to invest more through their service, which from a sourcing and deal negotiation perspective has been impressive.

Gentlemen, I must strongly object to some of the comments within this thread. Property Secrets have informed all Avlida and Santa Marina investors on several occasions that we do not offer an after sales service in Cyprus. This may be something that we do in the future but it is not within our current plans. With regard to Avlida, I understand that other investors have much to thank Deric for in getting the development to its current state. I have spoken to the developer this afternoon and he believes that most but not all clients have signed the relevant documents. The person in charge of the Avlida units will respond to me next week and explain in more detail, what is outstanding. My impression was that the developer is keen to help but that all buyers need to act on requests and be more a bit more active. If you all act collectively then the process will move forward. Leaving it all to Deric is not going to help. I will post back on this thread with the information that I receive from the developer. May I refer to two of your points? Legal and business affairs make sure that the contracts that are created at the outset do not lead to problems such as those you are experiencing with Avlida, benefiting you the clients. Helen was with the company to launch the first 15 development, taking them to exchange. We now have a business that launches 3-4 deals per month and manages 631 units. Yes there are more people and yes there are more processes but our aim is still to service our clients to the best of our ability. regards Oliver Watts

Oliver I can appreciate your re-stating of your obligations and of where you feel your role ends. I made a point of highlighting I felt the deal was well sourced and the developer is of high integrity - On this point I hope I created no misunderstanding. Should this be the case, I would like to rectify it now. However, there ideally would have been some help listening to our concerns on not receiving any correspondence from the PS sourced solicitor on sign off and payment of the deal, property registration with the land registry and legal requirements along with the next steps on setting up a management committee. As the sourcers of the deal, some of the elements of the deal not delivered on can only be rectified by you guys as the dealmakers. A few of us did ask for some help on obtaining details of investors from PS to try and get this going in the absence of any response from the legal rep and this was turned down on the afore mentionned grounds. I would prefer now take this off line, as this is not meant to be an open slanging match. Your stated follow up with them, recommendations on next steps if necessary is greatly appreciated will help significantly I am sure. As I think all would agree a tremendous amount of effort from Derik and a few other investors has got us to a point where we are understanding the requirements which probaby could have just been communicated on conclusion of the stage 1 payment by PS or the appointed lawyer up front resulting in more time to invest in other projects.

Oliver, I would like to reply to two points in your post. 1. “I must strongly object to some of the comments within this thread.” As a newcomer to this situation, you obviously underestimate the depth of feeling against PS. The posts on this forum are relatively polite and restrained compared to the anger and frustration many of us feel. 2. “I will post back on this thread with the information that I receive from the developer.” We are fully aware of the position of the developer, having confronted him face to face for the last few months. There is nothing you can tell us about his position. If you become the mouthpiece of the developer, you will only stir up more angry responses. If you can get him to immediately comply with his legal responsibility, and institute the communal insurance for which the majority of us have paid, then I will thank you. Property Secrets brokered the legal mess that we now find ourselves in. A lot of us are still working hard to resolve the very difficult, outstanding, long-term, legal issues of communal ownership in Cyprus. Your other investors in SE Cyprus will benefit from this. Please don’t make the situation worse by merely restating the case of the developer. We have had to educate him in his legal responsibilities in many cases. Finally, it is down to the hard work, courage and determination of Jo and Deric, that Avlida has been turned into a development that we can be proud of, instead of the shambles that Property secrets and its chosen developer would have delivered. The best thing that you can do now, is to offer a simple apology on behalf of the Property Secrets directors, and leave it at that.

Oliver, I would like to respond to your post for one reason only, to bring this to a swift and positive conclusion for all of us as I believe you are on the right track. You have now got the Developer's side of things and I will hopefully fill in the gap on the other side which may help us to get the completion and Management of Avlida to the point it should have been two months ago. I think you can help to bring this about. The Developer is partially correct, in February my wife and I produced a Management Agreement which we persuaded him to adopt after a long and tough meeting, he now supports it fully to our knowledge. Nearly all of the Property Secrets Investors have infact signed it or committed to sign it, most have also paid their share of the Global insurance that we negotiated on their behalf. However,the Developer sold several of the units to his own contacts and not via PS, he assured us that he would deal with these people and the Landowner who owns Block A. unfortunately we now have a situation where it is a few of these people who have not paid their insurance or signed their Management Agreements and continue to ignore us. Thanks to Peter Richardson of Santa Marina, we now know that the Law is clear, the Developer should have registered Avlida Complex as a Jointly Owned Building, the Regulations should have been registered as should the Management Committee. We really had asked the Solicitor, yourselves and the Developer many times about this but had no answers - that is water under the bridge, now we have a situation where we have had an AGM to make decisions but have discovered that infact our Committee has no Legal recognition so the whole process has been slowed down again. Tenants are now moving in and we have no rules or regulations registered, we cannot take Legal action against owners who do not comply with the rules or pay their dues as we will not be recognised in a Cyprus court. This will devalue our properties if we don't address this quickly. As mentioned before ABB have shown a commitment to resolve the oustanding Snagging and quality issues in the jointly owned areas but seem to have slowed down on some of the more serious issues. A few of us have now formed a pro-active group and several of our group are following this up with ABB over the next few days, we hope these will soon be finished adequately. We are also joining forces with Santa Marina to form a stronger group and hope that the Developer will recognise that he can also help these Investors with their Management process. What you can do for us Oliver is to listen to our side as we have no other Agenda than to look after our Avlida Investment, my wife and I are not tied in with any other organisation, company or individuals, we have no reason to tell you anything other than the absolute truth. We have both been great fans of PS in the past but do feel very let down over this because we asked many times for this issue to be addressed well before Exchange of Contracts. You have an opportunity to put this right, you may not have had an After Sales Service in place for Cyprus but there is a statement in the Prospectus offering us support throughout the process and I am sure Neil is fully aware of this. We know you have grown very big very quickly, we are always being told to bear with you as things are changing/improving, this is a very familiar tale. It is indeed a bit ship you Sail now and the deal need to keep flowing but you could just try to slow down and catch up a bit so we can all benefit. You like to promote Investor Updates, this is one of your earlier deals which you could so easily have turned into a success story if you had listened to us earlier. Please help us to turn it around before it slips away - we are worn out and could so easily let it go. I would hope that when you talk to the Developer again you will use any influence you have to get him to honour his commitment to get the insurance monies and signatures from those people who he sold units directly to, to effect the Global Insurance policy; to confirm that he has registered the Jointly Owned Buildings with the Lands & Surveys Dept in Cyprus and to make an application to register the Management Agreement which he adopted. Then he can assist us with registering the Management Committee which Karin and Norman Butcher are going out to try and achieve this week. We know the Developer quite well now and he might mean well but has far too much going on (much like yourselves) he doesn't have anyone specifically to look after Avlida as they are all so busy which is why we need to step up the pressure before his other deals become his main focus. This is a very long post, written jointly with my wife as we hope it is our opportunity to work with you to wrap this up and let other Investors know that we see your approach to the Developer as a step in the right direction even if it wasn't seen by everyone as quite the correct way to do things.

With regard to a comment by Lynn R. I have to say, with all due respect, none of the below is anything to do with PS or even the property. In fairness, the hassles below are simply the result of poor research and, with all due respect, a degree of narrow-mindedness. "Obtaining a mortgage in a CEE country is just painful, they are 30 years behind both in products and mentality. Yes,like all foreign countries that are unknow to us we will face difficulities, but I assure you I hadn't expected so many and with so much hassel!" Which CEE country? Poland? They are not all the same. Poland most certainly is not 30 years behind. Perhaps we should be happy they even have a system that allows foreign investers to use their mortgage system. You would not want to be a Polish person trying to get a UK mortgage! (I'm a Brit, not a Pole, by the way). The products are there to fit demand, and of course it is a growing economy. The mentality you criticise is one that is making Poland a country in which so much progress is happening, and allowing investors to make money! Now that is not a bad mentality! It is good to see a bit of healthy criticism for the PS sales hype (which I tend to ignore anyway to some degree). But anyone who thinks financing property investments in not 100% his or her responsibility and does not require a great deal of research, should probably expect extra hassles, and no matter what help is provided elsewhere, will be going in, to some extent, blind.