Country House and Land Sales

[Jacque]

Has anyone had any dealings with this company?
My husband answered an interesting sounding ad in one of the Sydney papers some time ago and they faxed some info about what they do. It appears as though they onsell country property for a profit, and then offer 20-25 yr leasebacks. Before I contact them again, just thought I'd check to see if anyone has had any dealings with them......

 

[Sunstone]

Dear Jacque,

No personal experience with them.

Their company name is only a registered business name so either they are a sole trader, partnership or have the registered name owned by another entity. (This is the cheapest way to get a name registered for use as an internet domain name or publically in one state.)

Extracted from ASIC's database at 23:04:39 on 13/01/2003
Name COUNTRY HOUSE AND LAND SALES
Registered state/no. NSW BN97904246

Type Business Names
Registration Date Unknown
Status Registered
Principal Place of Business not available

Jurisdiction Department of Fair Trading, New South Wales

No document list available for this organisation type


Country House & Land Sales
91 John Whiteway Drv Gosford 2250

Initial perception seems that they are small time operators (who have not taken the right steps to structure their business and nationally protect their business name) but this is not necessarily a bad thing if they can deliver what you are looking for.

Maybe some of the north coast guys would have more info. If not let us know how you go.

Cheers,

Sunstone.

 

[brains]

Sunstone, a couple of corrections:

Gosford is on the Central Coast, not North Coast.

Registering a business name in a state protects it from being registered by someone/something else as a company name nationally but not as a business name in another state.

Beside that ive never heard of them.

 

[yuch.]

Hi Jacque,

I do know quite a fair bit about this mob.

I saw the ad about 3 ~ 4 month back in the Saturday Herald. Out of curiosity, I rang them up to find out more about their offer.

These people buy properties and onsell them to investors. The investors then rent the properties out to them and they sublease the properties out to pensioners. The pensioners sign up a lease contract with them to lease the properties for 25 years based on a 5 x 5 renewals.

From what I understand, these people buy properties at 50% discount and sell them to investors at market value. They then agree to rent the properties from the investors at a rate that equals 10% yield. They make the profits out of the sale as well as the rent.

Anyway, I gave this lead to one of my coworkers and he actually bought 5 properties of this mob.

However, after a bit of digging around for more information on this mob, my coworker found out that these people were being mentioned in Queensland Parliament.

The doco revealed that these people used to own a company called Courtesy Accommodation and Gold Coast Accommodation Services Pty Ltd. And Victor Ollis (he is the point of contact for Country House and Land as well) was convicted in the Southport District Court in April 1985 of defrauding elderly people of more than $700,000. He was sentenced to 12 years gaol. The charge related to the misappropriation of moneys and the making of false promises about a proposed retirement village to be built at Labrador. The doco also mentioned something else. Their current bussiness was also mentioned is this doco, I have abstracted it below:

"Coast Accommodation Services Pty Ltd leases a number of properties on the Gold Coast. It appears that the company approaches landlord who have advertised for tenants in the paper and convinces them to let it lease their properties. The company then sublets those properties to tenants for profit. From complaints it has received, Consumer Affairs is aware of a number of landlords who claim to be owed moneys by the comoany under these agreements. "

The document goes on, if you are interested you can goto Google advance search and search for "Victor ollis". It will return with 6 entries, the Queensland Parliament one is one of the six.

Have fun!

 

[yuch.]

I hope I didn't scare you away, Jacque.

In my opion, I think buying off him is not a problem at all, as long as the number stands.

I think your worst case scenario is, he doesn't pay you your 10%. Then what you do is, you either rent it out through your local agent or you can wrap it or sell it....

 

[Jacque]

Thanks for that Yuch- you have been most helpful
The trouble I can see (besides the fact that the guy has spent time in prison!!) is that it's a bit dubious him saying he can buy at 50% of market value. How are they doing this? Who would give their house away for half the advertised price?
Also, what type of pensioners would be willing to sign such long leases, given that their own life expectancy may not be as long as the lease?
I will ring and chat to them, asking them my extra long list of questions. How is your coworker going with the rents? Has he had any dramas so far?

 

[yuch.]

Jacque,

If you ring up and ask him what kind of prices he pays for the properties, he wouldn't tell you that he bought them at 50% discount.

All these information came up because my coworker bought 5 propties from this guy, and everything was going so well. And he went along to the trips a few times and spoke to the local RE agents, observed how Vic Ollis buys properties at 50% discount.

Anyway, cut long story short. My coworker thought purchsing at 50% discount and selling at market price is a good idea but he doesn't know the area well, so he was offering Vic Ollis to be the money partner. And he had proposed a few possible structures to run their 'business', all of them involves company/trust. Vic Ollis didn't seem to be comfortable with it...

My coworker thought it was a bit strange, so he decided to do some digging about Vic Ollis. This is what he came up with.

Well I get updated with the Vic Ollis story every second day at work...... (some good entertainment it is!)

Anyhow, my coworker is still getting his 10%, no drama yet. Anything happens I will be the first one to know!!

 

[Sunstone]

Dear Brains,

Gosford is on the Central Coast, not North Coast.

All comes back to where you are and where you are thinking from. I lived for a number of years in Sydney and from Sydney, Gosford is a) It is North and b) on the coastline.

But if you want to follow semantics I'll leave that up to you.

Registering a business name in a state protects it from being registered by someone/something else as a company name nationally but not as a business name in another state.

This is only partially correct (I note that this is not correcting anything in my previous post.)

Registering a business name only protects the name in the state in question for the industry that they are currently engaged in. It also can be used to register the same internet domain name if they get in first. The name can be registered as a company and be effective nationally. In most cases this will not cause a problem however if it is the same name, operating in the same industry and operating in the same state then the original registerer of the business name can have a case to restrict usage of the Pty Ltd company name in it’s state.

I have personally registered a company with the same name even though the business name was already registered in another state.

It is correct however that when you register a business name in one state that someone can go along and register the same name in another state, even if it is in the same industry.

Cheers,

Sunstone.