Holiday Property Bond

fred246

Center Parcs is good but known to be a tad expensive. If you want a holiday there you just pay for the time you are there. No need to invest a small fortune in a poor investment before you go.

Seronera

Because he is spouting rubbish. Everybody makes their own value judgement on HPB and what is right for Fred is right for him, and nobody has challenged that. Over 40,000 people, mainly of the professional classes don't agree with him and yet he won't or can't accept that, and keeps trying to tell us what a dog we have put our money into when I and thousands of others don't agree. I think its one of the best £6000 I have ever spent.....but he can't fathom that one out, or when other people in the HPB say the same.

Finding a £7000 a night AirBnb property to try and disprove a point I made is ludicrous. HPB property is in a different league to most AirBnbs but if he wants to use them I have no problem. For some inexplicable reason he has a problem with me much preferring the HPB. In all honesty I think they are an entirely different product and not directly comparable......but then I use both and he doesn't, so I would know wouldn't I.

If the idea of the forum is to give people a fair overall view of the HPB, then Fred is not doing that. He has chosen to attack it, and that attack is largely unjustified as if it was as bad as he suggests it would not still be prospering after 35 years. Plenty of others have given a fair assessment of the plusses and minuses of the HPB and I feel no qualms about calling out Fred for trying to do a hatchet job, unfairly in my view.

Nobody has ever said HPB is cheap, but a lot of people don't want cheap, have examined the HPB offer pretty closely, and said "Thats fine by me, it does what I want". Why does he have such a problem with that ? Dissatisfied Bondholders are very rare creatures so Fred is missing something pretty fundamental, but he won't acknowledge that, he just bangs on again and again on the same point most of us took on board decades ago and live with perfectly happily.

You obviously think my attacks on him are unfair. Well now you know how most bondholders on here feel about his comments.

System

Some for the thread drift but does anyone know of a 'foolproof' way of getting HPB to stop sending unwarranted marketing material?

Seronera

Hengus Says "Some for the thread drift but does anyone know of a 'foolproof' way of getting HPB to stop sending unwarranted marketing material?"

If I were you I'd drop them a line and request to be taken off all mailing lists. This won't stop stuff that comes inside magazines and so forth, or general mail drops, but it should stop any direct addressed mailing.

Their address is HPB Management, HPB House, Old Station Road, Newmarket CB8 8EH

Good luck!

fred246

They take 25% off your initial investment that they say is for marketing costs so they can get more people to invest. That's why you are suffering Hengus. I remember contacting my trading platform when an investment said it had an initial 1% charge. Can't imagine paying 25%. That's why you lose a fortune if you cash in early. They then charge 2.5% annual charges. Ouch. That's for administering the fund, operating the booking system and 'supporting the bondholder'. I think I would need some support if I was fleeced of 25% of an investment immediately.

jaybeetoo

HPB is not an investment.

System

Seronera wrote: »

Hengus Says "Some for the thread drift but does anyone know of a 'foolproof' way of getting HPB to stop sending unwarranted marketing material?"

If I were you I'd drop them a line and request to be taken off all mailing lists. This won't stop stuff that comes inside magazines and so forth, or general mail drops, but it should stop any direct addressed mailing.

Their address is HPB Management, HPB House, Old Station Road, Newmarket CB8 8EH

Good luck!

I have tried that - and failed. We have moved in the past 3 months, so the mailings are coming via mail re-direct. I may have to play the GDPR card.

fred246

jaybeetoo wrote: »

HPB is not an investment.

The Holiday Property Bond website quite clearly says that it is an investment.

Seronera

I think Fred is doing a great job of missing the point. The whole point of HPB is never to sell and then to hand on the benefits to children. So lets assume I invested a total of £7000 in 1987, and I write that off over the 30 years I have been a member of HPB, it works out at a cost of £233 p.a. for a lifetimes access to excellent holiday properties. I still have to pay my user charge, but thats no problems to me. When my kids inherit my bond benefits its effectively at nil cost to them and they can carry on just paying the use charge if they want to use the bond, or nothing (in our case) if they decide not to use it.

In the meantime the properties are well looked after and maintained and new properties come on stream from time to time.

Now somebody try and tell me thats a bad deal because it doesn't look that bad to me. A loss is only a loss if you realise it. As an experience investor fretting over his 1% management charges Fred should know that.

I also own and sail a small yacht and the costs of running that are usefully more than the HPB has ever cost me. A friend of mine who passed away recently was the founder and MD of a number of highly successful motor dealerships. He regarded his move into the HPB as one of the best things he ever did and he was a very shrewd businessman indeed, as are his children and they all continue to use the bond with their families and love it.

Fred is missing something, thats all I'm saying. As we keep on trying to impress on people the HPB is great, but if you put money in, you should never sell the bond. Its a simple as that.

fred246

The most worrying part of the Holiday Property Bond is that many people have commented that in order for the bond to keep going in the way it has it has to keep attracting new members. Every new member has 25% immediately taken off by the management. Millions of pounds every year seem to disappear as payments to the management. There is always a feeling that things aren't very transparent. If you read through Seronera's posts he has complained about it on many occassions. So is Seronera promoting HPB to protect his own bond? Bondholders are always encouraged to promote the bond. Given the past 'goings on' it would just seem prudent to me to avoid the bond totally.