Summit Land

jan59

Does anyone know anything about this company?

They seem to want to sell me land - and wont take no for an answer. They rang my husband who was too polite to tell them to get lost. So they sent out a brochure to him. Except that they also sent a brochure with a covering letter addressed to some poor woman in another part of the country. So I called them and asked for them to take our details off their database and I was assured that this would be done.

However, three phone calls later from them - one from a chap who called himself Howard and asked to speak to my husband like he was some kind of close friend - no company detials given or anything, just thought it was a social call. Husband quite rightly says Howard? who the heck is Howard??. So when 'Howard' rang again, I said that hubby didn't recognise the name. 'Howard' says Ah! he's been talking to my mate, Ian King. Whats this about? asks I. Then some waffle about how MY husband has asked for this information. I inform them that we already have a financial advisor and that their contact not welcome. That was last week.
So today, phone rings, Some chap asks to speak to hubby. Who is this? Ian King was reply. I asked him how he got the number as we are registerd with the telephone preference service. I was curt and told him that we wern't interested and that they had also sent out someone else's details to us. Oh, I hope you put them in the recycling, we are always trying to reduce our carbon footprint! No sign of concern that they had given out someone else's details to a complete strager. I said he was wasting our time and the chap had the cheek to reply that we were wasting THEIR time if we were asking for stuff and not really wanting it! At the time, I was really hacked off and told him to sort out his carbon footprint and F**k off. I have never sworn at anyone on the phone before but I was absolutely incensed.

The parent company is Newville Development ltd and only registerd in July 2010, so no track record or anything.

Seems like they 'sell' land as an investment in the hope that it will come on stream in teh future, sounds like a way to take money off people for a very risky return.

Rant over, be warned.

trumpton

Sounds very much like the land banking scams which have been popular in the last few years. They buy farm or greenbelt land, portion it out into plots and then sell it to people for a huge mark-up by getting them to believe that they will be able to get planning permission to build houses on it in the near future.

Quite a few of these companies have been shut down in the last couple of year and there are some heart-breaking stories of people who have lost evrything:

http://blogs.mirror.co.uk/investigations/tag/landbanking

http://www.propertyscam.org.uk/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12609590

jan59

thanks for the reply and the information. Its very annoying that you are contacted in this way. Have had the opportunity to check with my husband and he has never spoken to this company, so they are very definitlely wasting their time with us. Problem is, I feel sorry about those people who will be conned, yet there seems to be no law against this - apart from the moral one of course!

trumpton

Some of the people involved have been charged with fraud - ie. selling the land on the basis that development will be allowed when they know it never will - but unfortunately, as with many of these scams, the company will close or be forced to close and the cash and assets will be long gone. I doubt that creditors of these companies see any recompense and the process is very protracted.

The same people are involved in dodgy businesses again and again - like Virgo Healthcare and the Gils - they simply take all the cash out, then close and start again. We need much tougher legislation to make certain individuals toe the line.

Oopsadaisy

Land is the new timeshare/holiday club/buy to let/champagne investments/fine art scam.

Unregulated, easy to lie and get away with it...perfect for the scammers.

eddierog

Land banking has had some bad press and rightly so. I very nearly invested £6000 with a company that contacted me. I managed to contact the council where this plot of land was being sold and was told that planning permission may take 5-10 years but more likely it will never get planning permission.
I was lucky but have heard of people who have lost tens of thousands of pounds. If you want to invest put it into good old bricks and mortar. Prices are still dropping but now is a good time to buy.
The forecast is that property prices will peak around 2015.