Hello Anna,

as you now accept, there was not much of value in your analysis, however, if you could respond to my first post about the added threat of the market being further flooded by "pump and dump" operators, it would be at least useful information.

Depends on who the agent is.

Anna, if you want some contacts for agents in Cyprus let me know.Other investors may know some as well.
One of the problems in Cyprus is the lack of quality agents.

Peter

Mike,

As far as I’m aware, the ‘pump and dump’ hasn’t developed on large scale in Cyprus. As I have said in my previous post, estate agents selling on behalf of developers work on higher commissions (8-9%), however their number hasn’t increased dramatically.

Cheers,
Anna

Peter,

Thank you for the post. It would be very useful for all interested in Cyprus market, if you could share your contacts.

Many thanks,
Anna

Dear investors,

During the course of 2007 I conducted a number of conversations with clients that had bought into Cyprus investments, fleshing out the requirement for more support from PropertySecrets, and more specifically, i-PropertyAssets in this market.

In December I engaged in a detailed discussion with Neil Lewis, our CEO, and was asked to present a proposal in this month's board meeting as to how we can help our clients. An early response for your ears only is that it would be wise, but not necessarily fanancial beneficial for us to set up the completion service to assist in the bueareucratic nightmare that has led to many sleepless nights for some of our investors to drive the units to the 'key ready' stage.

Also I believe that we can re-engage with the market and offer insightful support in the resales activities.

I do not want to over promise as it is clear that the secondary market has a completely different dynamic to the primary one but we are true to our word will do our utmost to remedy this situation.

Once we have agreed exactly what we can do I will report back to you via a Cyprus investors blog on the PropertySecrets website. I will also send an e-mail alert to all Cyprus investors to make sure that no one misses it.

All the best

Oliver Watts

Hi Anna,

I am happy to pay a 10% commission if you partner in Cyprus can sell my Phoenix Flat at the announced 57% growth.

Erico

Oliver, that sounds as if it may be helpful. I await your response with interest.
Huw

Anna

I do not understand why PS have not corrected this and the many other incorrect (as PS have admitted) figures quoted in the performance updates. Surely you are risking PSs reputation by not doing so.

On a more parochial note (i have a unit in Palace Heights), is the Nicosia market suffering the same problems as the coastal areas in Cyprus.

Regards

Alan

Hi Alan

There is nothing to correct. Let me explain. For incomplete developments we will continue to source current price data from developers and / or partners and update our figures on the Investment Performance pages as usual - and indeed we have. I'm not sure what other figures you are referring to?

However, for completed deals this is no longer possible so what we are doing there is sourcing real achieved figures by PS buyers via i-PA. BUT - we don't currently have a system to display those online.

This is in hand, however.

In the case of Palace Heights, it is my belief that it is a much better investment than the coastal investments, by virtue of being a city, plus all that goes with it being Nicosia (lack of land to build on, strict planning permission etc). It's not quite Bucharest, Warsaw or Sofia, but is the much better investment in Cyprus. That's my opinion anyway.

Ben,

I am amazed at this response, I have pointed out the factual errors in your figures at least twice previously. These errors were confirmed by PS (Stan) and in the strategy reports sent to investors following completion. Other forum posts have made the same point in relation to other Polish investments.

Anyway to recap in respect of Pelikan:

The performance update states that units have appreciated in value by 121%. As I was considering selling a unit I contacted PS to confirm that the figures were realistic and was told that they were wrong; in that they compared the price of a black finish units to units fully fitted to a high spec factoring this in reduces the gain to around 50%.

Now to me this is a factual error and the website entry should either be amended or removed.

Following on from this, I looked a bit further into the figures being provided and found other problems namely

- they overstate the average price of the units being offered by the developer
- they do not take into account of large developer discounts/incentives that are
being offered and effectively reduce the list price.

I have contacted agents with a view to selling one of my units in Pelikan and been advised that to have a chance of a sale I would need to undercut the developer price by at least 10-15% and that even then I shouldn't expect anything to happen quickly, as over 60 units in Pelikan remain unsold.

The end result is that far from being able to bank a 100% plus profit I would be looking to about break, perhaps make 10%, if sold now.

I appreciate you have made the point that these figures are intended to be "indicative" but when a reported gain of 121% translates to roughly break even I think meaningless would be a better description.

I don't intend to comment further, if PS are happy with providing incorrect/superficial information that's a matter for yourselves.


Regards

Alan