ITV show on the Costa Del Sol

Gillespie:

I am not a failed speculator, either in Spain or in the UK. I have been a property investor in the uk for over 25 years. I buy & renovate properties in the UK, some I sell, some I keep & rent out. I wouldn't trust an Estate Agent to tell me if the sun is shining! Too many times I've been called by agents in the Uk telling me about this great property that needs a bit of tlc & I can double my money or  I can rent for some vast monthly amount, etc etc.

9 times out of 10, it is complate crap!

Even 3-4 years ago it was, to me, obvious that the holiday rental market was saturated. PW didn't tell buyers that they could rent easily, it was companies like Parador that did that. Yes, some buyers didn't check, & they have been caught out.

Of course, the agents lied! The people in the UK, working for Parador, Atlas, Mesdsea & Masa, visiting Spain once or twice a year, most oif them failed double glazing salesman, had no knowledge of the rental market. It wasn't their job, their ONLY interest was getting someone on an inspection trip, they would say anything to get 'client' over.

I can assure you that I don't look at ANY developer as a friend. I'm sure agents didn't either, but if they needed a sale to keep their job, then all the rules go out of the window.

I don't know where you get your information regarding my boss, but I have worked for myself for 30 years!

I trust my own judgement, I'm not always right, but that is life.

I did not buy to let out. I bought for myself & for my family to use as a weekend/holiday home on a secure development with golf. Not everyone likes PW, that's fine as well.

I have no ulterior motive in this. It is obvious what you do for a living with your comments. It is inconceviable for an estate agent to consider anybody else!

I repeat, if you cannot see the difference between someone buying properties to let out & discovering that they can't, & someone buying a property which turns out, through NO FAULT OF THEIRS, to be illegal, then I'm sorry for you.

This message was last edited by rob6578 on 10/07/2009.

"I can assure you that I don't look at ANY developer as a friend. I'm sure agents didn't either, "

Yet in your previous post you said...

"agents who lie in collusion with the developer."

Which way do you want to go left or right?????

"I am not a failed speculator, either in Spain or in the UK. I have been a property investor in the uk for over 25 years. I buy & renovate properties in the UK, some I sell, some I keep & rent out. "

So basically you buy property cheap from families who are being repossessed and either sell on at a huge profit to innocent buyers or rent them to hard up students or foreigners.

People on here like Tish and Goodstich think you are marvellous, well i tell you rob, you never fooled me from the start, you are in property to make gains for your own personal profit, I see you as no more than an estate agent, making profit from doing up old houses.

Ohh and before you protest you only buy the finest houses at the maximum price so as not to rob any innocent vendors, and you only rent them out as ridiculously low prices to do the tenants a favour, spare a though for honest estate agents who don't rob people!!

There are a hell of a lot of them!!!

Dear All and goodstitch,

well now you really must stop this complaining.

they did not say it, either singly or in collusion, they did not supply brochures with rental charts, they did not endorse the developer or the lawyer, they don't know each other and never met except on the rare occasion when you were present and those notes you made are not a true record.

in any event they don't return any monies, nor does the lawyer or developer, that is the system here as everyone knows and you should have checked, it is a system you have to learn. The UK nanny state does not apply here.

Surely you knew that you cannot take anything at face value that anyone tells you, you must take your time and check everything including the local street cleaning arrangements. Did they not tell you that before you handed over your life savings??????? they must have, you could not have been listening.

Sorry, old chap, I am afraid it is all your fault, be more careful next time.

Their door is always open if you happen to find some more life savings.

Good luck.

I hope that is a fair summary.

Regards

Where are all your sycophantic fans since they now see you as a unscrupulous landlord????

And before anyone criticises me for assuming rob is an unscrupulous landlord, just look at his previous and other peoples posts who insinuate all spanish property agents are crooks,

It was intended to antagonise and hurt!!

Gillespie:

I am so tired of this!

Once more: I never suggested agents were friends of the developer, that doesn't mean however, that they don't work together. Do you only work with someone you regard as a friend?

Of course, the agents who called me in the UK were agents I had been in contact with. Of course, I use them, they are a source of property, that doesn't however give them the right to lie to me, but they do, I accept that & work around it. I have been doing this for 25 years, & I'm not always right. For too many people however, the only time that they had dealt with property was when they bought their house in the Uk, maybe 20 years earlier. So they were naive, does that give anybody the right to steal from them?

In the UK, where problems do happen, action can be taken, as it can in France where estate agents are licensed, as in the USA, Australia, South Africa, Canada & many other countries. In Spain, no regulation, no license, do what you like & you will get away with it!

My point is, There are too many estate agents who WERE & ARE LIARS OUT FOR THE COMMISSION ONLY!!!

I can also assure you that while the people who work or worked for Parador, Atlas, Masa etc are many things, VICTIMS THEY ARE NOT!

The people who committed these crimes are NOT people like me! Maybe like you (you are, after all, an agent),  but NOT me!

To clear a few things up about agents..............

It is not in our interest to plot the downfall of any build or even try to sell any client a lemon, firstly, when we use a developer we are usually in a battle to get paid from them so they are certainly not friends, if the property does not complete then we do not get paid, if we get paid on a 40% down basis and the property does not complete then we can be chased by the developer for the return of any paid commissions.

So, as you can see it is not in the interest of the agent to sell unlicenced or illegal projects, besides the fact that you would have every client on the phone or in the office every 5 minutes, it does not make any financial sense either.

Just for Rob and his comments about agents....18 years i have been in the industry and i have the same disdain for developers as you do for agents......as you are a self admitted developer then we obviously have a mutual distrust....but surely you are labelling YOUR industry as corrupt carte blanche.

Gillespie is dead on when he states that so many people did not research, a proffesional investor will listen to everything,disregard it and do a feasibility study, a amateur investor will follow the herd often too late take everything they are told as red and when it all goes wrong blame the nasty agent for not telling him that he wouldnt get any rental because all the people that would rent it have just purchased next door,they then blame the nasty bank manager for increasing the interest rate and doubling the monthly repayments "who would have thought that could happen!!!"

illegal builds are wrong, we all know that and con men will prey on the weak, the spanish system will not protect you because before the mass influx the spanish would just bob along with it,it is there system, we cannot expect UK standards to exist here because it is not the UK and to be honest that's why most people who live here do so.

I met a proffessional investor last week looking at property here,he told me of a disatrous investment experience he has had in Thailand, he has lost £100,000 on property that will not be built, he told me that he was aware of the risks when he purchased there and in all he has taken it on the chin as in his industry you are dealing with foreign systems, some you win,some you lose.

I was shocked at how blase he was but understand his sentiment.

I would like to know the actual percentage of people who have lost money to illegalities to people who are quite happy as the former sems to eclipse the latter in the media but on a personal note i do not know anyone who has suffered at the hands of such irregularities, if you look at this forum, apart from a few grumbles of shoddy workmanship ther are not that many that have actually lost out.

This argument will rage on and on but just remember that this thread started talking about the naievety and stupidity of someone that wanted to make their fortune running a bar in a industry they had no knowledge of, a country where they did not speak the language,had no experience in running a business in any country let alone spain,had no knowledge of the Spanish system,did not conduct a study or forecast on profit and loss, purchased something that nobody else had shown any interest in for three and half years and thought this was a good swap for their life savings..................oh yeah i see it now.......how could it fail.......must have been down to the smooth talking con man agent....don't you just dispise them.......

My God, this is getting ridiculous!

I am not Rachman brought back to life! I buy property on the open market. I offer what I feel is the right price, FOR ME! It is up to the vendor to accept or not.

I rent property on the open market, & I receive what the market can bear!

I don't take advantage of any-one.

Of course, I'm in business to make money, why not? I'm not in it to lose money.

I have NEVER bought a house about to be re-possessed! Why, because there is no profit in it. I have bought re-possessed properties at auction, where I am in competition with maybe 20 other buyers. I bid what I think it's worth, I get it or I don't.

I'm not insinuating that ALL Spanish property agents are crooks, I'm saying that most ARE!

I can sum it up better than that Norman,

The buyers want to come on an all espenses paid trip. They want to be chauferred from the airport.

They want to drink from morning till night at our expense. Maybe get a round of golf in.

They want us to sell them a property and not make any commission.

They want us to translate for them for the rest of their lives because they only want to know the words "mas cerveza por favor!"

They want us to find them a car that never breakes down, yet reserve the right to complain if it does.

They want us to get their children into a school that has no crime, despite them leaving the UK because their local school does.

They want us to find a little job for their wife, so the husbands can drink all day without feeling guilty!

They want us to translate at the doctors where they have their wacky-doodler on the doctors desk.

They tell us how wonderful Spain is and that the UK is rubbish!

They call us serupticiously to go to the local brothel at 2am in the morning because they have been arrested but plead for us not to tell their wives!

They expect us to sort out their Sky TV because they cannot get Corronation Street, even when I can't.

They tell us how  RubbishSpain is and that the UK is so much cheaper now!

They decide they want to go back to wonderful old England because their UK pension is not so good since the exchange rate collapsed, all the agents fault of course!

They want us to sell their property at a profit - despite there being a recession- to some poor unsuspecting fool from the UK at an extortionate price!

They expect us to organise a removal company back to the UK and ask us to look after their stray dogs until the rabies jabs kick in!

They never send for the dogs and we never hear from them again............ THANK GOODNESS!

Oh, dear, all you poor agents and developers. It's a hard life, innit?

We started off with a "heated debate" on the lines of Carolyn Aherne and are heading into the "only one way to sort this ..... FIGHT" Harry Hill scenario.  Quite amusing, really. 

Personally, after 13 year of dealing with the great unwashed, rude and foul mouthed British public who know all their rights but have no inkling of their responsibilities, I do feel for you, honest, hand on heart etc etc (like hell I do).  Got ripped off by an agent AND a developer/builder so no, my heart does not pump purple pee for any of you.  Likewise, found a developer/builder who was great (dodgyish agent but I'd learned my lessons by then) and am just looking forward to the day when I can settle into my little pad in Spain and get away from all the bickering.  Unfortunately, it would now appear that I am being lumbered with a "La Presidente" who was a very nice lady until she got voted in and is turning into a politician of the Hitler/Stalin persuasion, you know, the type who lays down the rules while bending them if they favour her and her hubby.  Still, after also dealing with unscrupulous solicitors and notaries I should be able to weather the storm.  May take a couple of denuncias (not that they did any good against the agents etc) but it may help to pass the time while I sit on my balcony contemplating my navel!!

Oh, and love the bit from some posters about "It wouldn't happen in Britain as you have rights there".  Mister Nasty Agent in the first place was a British company.  Letters, complaints etc to the trading standards in UK town where they were based did absolutely nothing at all except whitewash the company so it looks like the protection you get in UK is also a crock of brown stuff running down the beaches from open sewers. 

But you lot carry on.  It really does while away a pleasant evening when nothing is on telly except repeats and England show, once again, they have some pretty poor bowlers when faced with Antipodean cricketers.

"It doesn't pay to say too much when you are mad enough to choke.
For the word that stings the deepest is the word that is never spoke,
let the other fellow wrangle till the storm has blown away,
then he'll do a heap of thinking about the things you didn't say

Rob, don't waste any more time defending yourself from the likes of Gillespie.  I think he has lost the plot.

Agree about the telly this evening, Babaol !

                   "Before the mass influx the spanish would just bob along with it, it is their system" 

Georgia, what does the above quote actually mean? that the spanish people were quite happily  prepared to be ripped off and then went merrily along on their way.  Why do we have to accept that it is not the spanish way it has nothing to do with the way the spanish do things, it is to do with decency and honour but greed got in the way when a country that had never seen as much money pouring in has made crooks out of thousands of ordinary people lots of whom took bribes, and what about the mayors' who we read about every day who are being taken to court on various corruption charges. Too much money came into a country  in which people had never seen or experienced  before and suddenly there were riches to be had (or so they thought)and they could not and still can not handle it. Now the credit crunch has caused a lot of these crooks to panic, the golden goose has gone and because the courts are so full they can be more blatant with their cons and be off years before they ever get taken to court.

Regards Kathy

Dear goodstitch,

are we right to complain????

did you realise how those poor agents suffered???

I expect you feel as guilty as I do, after all what is the loss of your life savings compared to their daily misery?????

it doesn't really compare does it????

after all we can always take one of those new fangled "born again" pills and start saving again.

in any case the market may be different 49 years hence.

I hope what we have learnt here will still be useful.

the crooks wont get worse will they???

I wonder what "Spain Uncut" has to say on the subject???

Answers please.

Regards

Norman

My agent was superb - still is.

Developer of family holiday home - excellent .  Agent made it clear he would only take us to reliable new builds or any reslales within our criteria. True to his word to this day.

Developer of second holiday home for other family members - crap - warned by agent but decided to proceed - our choice.

Did masses of local/internet research, including Spanish friends.  Good understanding from them that nothing can be taken for granted with Spanish authorities. 

Money talks and spanish culture accepts this as normal in Spain.  It doesn't excuse the corruption but Spanish people know better than us how to live within it and work with it.  We are not used to such open corruption, but that won't stop it happening.    

We can be stupid or not, we can do lots of research or not, but at some point if we want to buy in Spain we have to trust someone in that process.  The outcome seems to be a lottery. Shouldn't be ...but it is.  

Hi Bobaol,

Here is tel.no. for the book (free) Financial control in Owner's Communities in Spain written by UHY Fay and Co. I picked mine up today from my post box.      -      952 76 40 65 it's very informative, maybe you already have it, if so no harm done.

regards kathy

"Rob, don't waste any more time defending yourself from the likes of Gillespie.  I think he has lost the plot. Agree about the telly this evening, Babaol !"

Quite right rob, go to bed like aunty Tish tells you, read Brer Rabbit and tommorow all those nasty people who dared to question your role in the murky world of property landlords will have gone away"

Bobaol, those nasty El Presidentes can't damage your health service pension so don't worry too much!!!

Norman, we estate agents don't care about supplying our clients with nice houses at affordable prices, we much prefer to supply bad ones in an effort to ensure all our clients are unhappy- Clearly you have never strived to build a reputable business!!

Kathy 1962, don't worry, the Spanish respect the British so much, I mean, the UK market must account for at least 1.74% of the total Spanish property market that they will change all of their rules just for you!!! The UK buyers are the golden goose that props up every Spanish family, I mean, the English with their teenage pregnancies, binge drinking children, Europes highest illiteracy and their fine upstanding parliamentarians are the centre of the world!!!

What do you people think the Spanish are? And just how big and important do you think your pathetic cheap purchases are to the Spanish economy.

Banco Santander have just bought a large chunk of the British banking system, they now operate the UK's main airports and yet you still come to Spain and spend your hard earned wages on rip-off UK landlords apartments. You buy HP sauce from rip-off UK shop owners at €3.55 a bottle, you pay Ryan Air €20 to carry your suitcase and you pay €30 to an illegal UK airport-run con-man to pick you up and take you to your apartment when a Spanish taxi driver will do it for €12!!!!

When will it ever end???

Well Gillespie, your last post shows your true colours. It is typical of how most estate agents view the UK public, with zero respect. That's why there is no reciprocal respect from us. I think you need to get a reality check. You've clearly no idea of the level of corruption that exists in Spain associated with  your chosen job. ( "profession" is not applicable to REA's ) If you had you would not have written  such ill-informed posts. You have to sink to puerile sarcasm when you  have lost the debate.

It is a pity that the likes of yourself cannot accept that honest people, not the likes of "the Rusty Nail" couple, DID do their "homework", but were literally robbed of a large sum of money by the property triangle people. You may not have been party to it but a huge number of British agents were. When large sums of money were there to be made, any scruples they may have had went by the way. Why is it so hard for you to accept that people were so deceived by people that should have been trustworthy? 

I wonder how you would feel if you had lost tens of thousands of pounds to crooks ?

Dear All,

this simple chap loves what he hopes are fixed facts and information however posted, thanks everyone.

cannot the good agent be named and does he post and advertise here?

I understand that naming and shaming the bad is legally tricky, but that cannot be the problem with the good?

incidentally do the commercials pay EOS for the advertising attached to their posts?

surely agents advertising here should be bound by some sort of code of conduct?

they don't really believe that they act only for one party to the transaction?

they are not just salesmen for the developer? no surely not!

I thought estate agency was a respectable INDEPENDENT business introducing two parties to a possible transaction, the proceeds of which pays their commission, accepted and understood by both parties, with the BUYER providing those proceeds.

since this respected independent trader is acting for both, he obviously must provide service to both HONESTLY AND HELPFULLY.

I think brothel service is stretching it a little too far, but perhaps you have to stretch things a bit whilst building up, though 1.74% isn't much of a base to build from.

Surprising information, I hope it is factual.

Regards

Norman

I'm happy to name my agent at any time - if allowed on EOS.  He does not advertise on here, but like some on here, he is an independent longstanding company not a networked national.  BUT I have also had excellent help and support from agents (and our resident lawyer Maria) - on this forum - given freely at any time, and I respect their honesty and willingness to contribute to debates. Surely one of the best things about EOS.

well having had a couple of days away from the PC, and reading through, I really feel that this is all very much coming down to personalities. The attitudes from some on here in the last weeks, months even years, has shown them to be , what I would call 'ok people' with a strong sense of fair play. They sound like they have big hearts, come over as trustworthy, consider integrity important, but are often considered naive on here because rightly or wrongly they expect those qualities from others as a starting point.. Big mistake it seems?  We can only really expect people to see a point of view if they are starting from a shared starting point of basic right and wrong, have a natural leaning towards decent folk wronged and a natural leaning away from those who show none of the qualities we respect and expect from those we deal with.

So the other camp?. Well mostly made up of agents or ex-agents it seems?. They really do see being naive or making a mistake as something just as wrong as deception, lies and betrayal of trust. Not suprising really as that makes them more content with their own actions. They have a natural leaning and respect for those who can make money through the misfortune (or stupidity as they see it) of naive people who have at some stage put their trust in some person or company with little or none of their integrity.  They mostly see the victims of those with no integrity as fools who get what they ask for. They like to blame those wronged for lack of research, lack of homework etc.  I can only conclude these are pretty unpleasent people with very little sense of fair play. Their line of thought is obviously much closer to those many of us have been cheated by, than those we feel we could trust.

I know tthere are many grey areas between camps, but reading through, the dividing line is plain to see. You either see decent people wronged as victims or fools depending on your own sense of integrity and justice.

We really need a Costa Del Sol show to name and shame, and show up those who have wronged so many, and those who support their cruel and selfish views for the people they really are!