Imagine owning a professional financial advisory business, and someone who you do not know, offers you a $7,500 referral fee for every client that you send to them and buys a property from them. This is the type of audacious offer property spruikers provide to financial advisers across this country!
These sorts of referral programs are commonplace in the unregulated property industry. Financial planners and finance advisers regularly receive referral fees, kickbacks, marketing levies – call them what you want, for promoting properties to their clients from spruikers and developers. The best part for the spruiker is that they do not need to declare these referrals to you.
In the end, YOU pay for this cycle of implied expertise when in reality the expertise is built upon a theory of “How much can I make” by flogging these properties to the unsuspecting buyer. There are always many supposedly great reasons to buy these properties but how can you be sure that the basic fundamentals of buying the property have been addressed. More importantly, how can these properties be right for you, if the spruiker does not understand your financial circumstances and goals?
The costs associated with these schemes are always borne by you, the purchaser. In the case above the spruiker has 200 properties for sale that he is paying a minimum $7,500 referral fee to financial planners and finance advisers. This equates to $1.5 Million worth of fees being paid into the pockets of those “advisers” that are supposed to have your interests at heart.
These very actions are the reason that the Property Planning Australia exists – to provide genuine “fee for service”, customised financial planning and investment advice for you. Any of our investment advice is free from external referrals and influence – our focus is to firstly understand you and then develop and appropriate property planning strategy from there.
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