Ben,

Although I didn't rate your post I would agree with the 1 star rating. Its the message not the messenger people are rating and the messages you are passing on are not very helpful.

For many months now PS has not provided any useful information about how their investments are performing, in addition there seems to be a policy of ignoring any requests for information made via the forum.

As to the sales data, good or bad, this must exist and it wouldn't take more than an hour or so to format it for publication, so there must be some other reason why PS are refusing to provide it.

For a start how about clarifying your comments about the Romanian market being very difficult - do you mean, like Poland almost nothing is selling at any price.

Regards

Alan

The credit crunch that we are dealing with is affecting all economies in some degree. Even though the effects on eastern and Central Europe are much less than in old Europe, none of the countries will go untouched and this is going to affect resale prices, demand and buyer confidence.

To be clear, if you wish to maximise your return on investment we do not recommend that you sell at this point in the markets cycle. You should complete and rent your unit instead.

However, we understand that for personal reasons or simply a desire to raise more cash you may wish to sell now.

Clearly you will not get the best price, although you may benefit from a significant currency gain.

Since we re-launched the i-PropertyAssets resale service the demand has increased in the last 3 months by 65%. To help i-PropertyAssets to fulfill this demand we have rapidly developed a new website where the 3 parties involved (client - i-PropertyAssets - partner) will share information. The newly improved system will allow us to provide more feedback to all our clients in a periodic basis (via telephone and via you’re My Investments page).

In addition, because of the differences in our markets we have sent our brokers out to these countries to search for multiple agents or more options in order to provide a better service to our clients.

I just want to say that anytime I have had a conversation with any of you who have requested our resale service I have started the conversation asking you a very simple question:

Do you want to sell quickly or maximize price?

If your answer was maximise price, I strongly recommended NOT SELLING NOW. I have been advising clients that today is probably the worst time to sell most of the properties (there are always exceptions). On the other hand, if for whatever reason any of you needed to sell or reassign a contract quickly, I have explained to you the state of the local market and I have given you a realistic selling price (if we were able to determine one). Some of you got upset about the current prices and decided to put your own selling prices and nevertheless those are normally the properties that have had no viewings because of a non-competitive price.

Regarding a realistic selling price, I have mentioned that some times we may struggle to give you a realistic price. Why? Well, let me ask you a question:

If in a 2 month period we have sold 2 similar units (sqm, floor, and finish) in the same development one for 90,000 EUR and the other one for 160,000 EUR, what will be the recommended selling price?

This is the current situation of some of our property markets – huge swings in price and not enough data to be able to definitively say ‘this is the price’.

I just want to finish telling all of you that we as well as our partners are working very hard to help all our clients in this difficult time. We have the knowledge, experience, and infrastructure to do the best; however there are factors away from our control (high supply-low demand, mortgages, rental vs. buyers market, etc) that we need to account for.

Very soon we will be providing an article on this website to update you on the different situations in our markets.

Regards,
Maria

Maria,

Thank you for this detailed response. In this market any information based upon real sales even if patchy will be welcome and the sooner you can publish the better.

Regards

Alan

Hi,
Its interesting that so many people have problems. This should be an indication to property secrets or i property assets (who ever needs to take the responsibility) that their service is not very effective.

I have asked to have an apartment sold/flipped about 4 months ago in Poland and have had to deal with about 4 different people in the process. I waited about 3 months to get the letter to sign (marketing agreement to sell ...4% commission and at first looking for exclusivity!!!). When I asked if there was any experience in selling/flipping I was told they had no experience of selling/flipping off plan in Poland. While I have no problem with this as it was honest I still did not get a response to an email sent 3 months ago looking for more information ...not the only email sent looking for updates... and which I requested also by phone. Also I did go for the recommended price from PS which I thought would help guarantee service.

Automated email messages seem to be the norm from PS but they do not answer questions. Mostly only requests for money or sales promotions. Not customer oriented.

Now I can understand that people have to work very hard in PS but all investors have paid big money for the service of property secrets which seems to be forgotten. Excuses are not enough. Better say you cannot deal with it than have people waiting with poor service, false promises and delays when they could go somewhere else for support. Remember we should work together when times are tough as its easy to pretend customer loyalty in good times. I can assure you that working at being more open would help your clients and yourselves ....not the attempts to keep all business within your own grasp. There are a lot of people with experience within this network , (I would hope?) which could help everyone if it was shared openly but this kind of sharing of personal information even if requested by a member is not allowed.

When times are tough it is better to equalize risk over more people than to expect each individual to take it all ,just to suit the one in power. This can only be achieved by sharing. This of course is the human aspect of property investment.....are we ready for it.

Some examples of this would be that if we could ask the builder to delay final payments for a couple of months when final payments are due, then instead of everyone pulling
out individually and loosing money (also the builder) we could work together (also with builder) to find a good solution.

Also individually trying to sell apartments is time consuming ....sharing the work load when times are tough would also reduce PS work load....this is in all our interests I would assume. This can only work if we are willing to share the profits also, but in the end everyone wins as customers would be happier and employees also I assume.. In the end there would be more profits for everyone as there would be a better chance of selling.

Anyway enough of this ........but lets hope for a better sharing future if I am not dreaming. Good luck to everyone.
.....Mark


PS I cannot even get into the section on Polish property for sale on i-property assets.. If I cannot how can someone looking to buy property get in.

"Some examples of this would be that if we could ask the builder to delay final payments for a couple of months when final payments are due, then instead of everyone pulling
out individually and loosing money (also the builder) we could work together (also with builder) to find a good solution."

I agree wholeheartedly with this. I would be happy for delay penalties to be dropped if extentions were given by developers.
Developers also have a lot to lose if sizeble numbers of investors can't complete (or sell), and then they are stuck with unsellable units and the bank knocking on their door.