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Hi formites, I was alerted to this post by one of our potential clients and whilst US Invest does not like to get involved in forum discussions (due to an obvious conflict of interest), I wanted to answer a few of the questions floating around on this post. I am one of the Managing Members of USInvest and I currently occupy the property at 2650 SE 7th dr. Pompano Beach, FL 33062. The owner of this property is a gentleman by the name of Craig Chown. Being in the Real Estate business, we are always looking for ways that we can buy distressed Real Estate for less than market value. This deal was brought to me about a year ago and we occupied the property based on the premise that US Invest may in fact one day acquire the foreclosure either for ourselves or one of our clients. Prior to me taking over the property, there was a tenant by the name of Anthony Mellone living in the property who hadn’t paid rent for over a year. Having been in the industry for several years, and a well known property investment coach in America, the owner of the property approached me to see if I could help him remove the tenant and negotiate a deal with the bank to purchase the property. Whilst we did not have to go through with the formal eviction, the aforementioned tenant was removed and US Invest began to negotiate a short sale whereby we would negotiate on the borrowers behalf to purchase the property for less than what was owed on the mortgage. Public records are widely available in the US and I must congratulate you Speedy Gonzalez on your detective work on this subject! It must be made clear, however, that I personally have never had personal contact with the previous tenant and neither has USInvest. The house was in Foreclosure when I was approached to enter discussions with the bank and, like many properties in foreclosure, this property did have an unsavory tenant. I hope this clears things up a bit as to the address discrepancy that has been brought up. The American head office of US Invest is not in Florida. Its actually located at 600 Alexander Rd, Princeton, NJ. We have a 7,000 Sqft. Office in Princeton that houses our Sales, Marketing, Administration and Economic Research Team. We have an office in Florida for our Acquisitions Team as its very accessible to our current markets. This is a nice home on the water, but is internally fitted out as a working office. We have 6 Acquisition officer’s working and living from that location. This offers us a huge advantage to make sure proper research is done. Nearly every night you will find multiple Acquisition staff burning the mid-night oil on our due-diligence procedures. To act in the most professional manner possible I do not intend to self-promote US Invest in any way in this forum, but I will answer all comments thus far. I am not aware of any posts ever made by our staff or clients and should you have any concerns or questions, please feel free to contact me directly. And to lastly answer the recent posts. Florra, We are sorry we could not do enough on our end to win your business. That is regrettable on our part. Please also be aware we do not guarantee any returns whatsoever. Yes we do sell property with active tenants paying a monthly amount so it is a very low risk investment, however all investments carry risk. 12-16% is definitely achievable and we have members experience these returns year on year. But we also have property in the 9-11% region too. We are realistic with what is achievable and we have a very good reputation in the market. Were not out there promoting 20-30% returns from areas such as Detroit or Vegas, because we have been in this business since 2007 and have kept a good reputation because we do things the right way. We offer quality investments in areas that will actually come back to pre GFC levels and surpass them. The fact that we have been around for 5 years and you have not found anything bad regarding our company is hopefully taken as a good sign. Zmagen, Your post had some good humor to it. I would like to point out, though, that our membership encompasses a lot more then access to our website to see what properties we have to sell. We give away quite a bit more then that, and our membership is also fully refundable. We do not make money from people becoming members; we make money from selling quality investment properties. I will try to explain our membership strategy because I see you are also in a similar business Selling Japanese property to Australian’s. I commend your approach to selling property, but this is not our current model. To begin to explain our model, let me point out that we spend quite a bit of time and money researching the right markets. We have two full-time research teams. One team researches the State, City and Town we look for property in and the other team researches the viability of the homes in the chosen “hot spots”. Our team is headed up by Reid Stewart in our Florida location. Reid is one of the foremost experts in US Property Acquisition. Reid’s team look through thousands of foreclosures a week in our chosen "hot spots" to bring to market what we believe to be the absolute best property investments around. All our homes are fully renovated and tenanted, so a full turn key service. During the renovation process we always replace the basics like carpet, paint, tiles etc. We also give new bathrooms, kitchens and appliances in most cases. We then replace everything that’s older then 5 years. So for instance a boiler with a 20 year shelf life we will replace if it’s over 5 years old, same goes for the A/C etc. We do this to ensure our members see real returns and not pipe dreams. Last thing we want is a member buying a property rented out with 12% net return, but after 9 months the HVAC goes bust and they need to shell out money to replace. This therefore is not a 12% return, and could end up becoming a negatively geared property like the majority of what’s on offer in Aus. We take massive pride in the service we offer, and repeat business is the foundation to our success. So to quickly explain why we charge a membership. As some of you may know there is a lot of work involved with getting an overseas client ready to purchase in America. They must fully understand the tax implications with not only the IRS, but also the ATO, they must be properly structured with the right corporate veil to protect themselves from what we all know to be a highly litigious nation. On top of all that our members want finance, which is not a clear-cut scenario when America runs on the FICO score system and Australians don’t have credit here. So we have a lot of work to do to make our members acceptable to the US banks that we have partnered up with. There is a lot more we do long before a person can buy a property in America with us. Anyway to cut a long story short and to try and keep this post from going on forever, a few years back we never charged a membership fee, much like your model now zmagen. Because of this we experienced a lot of window shoppers that were not serious investors and wasted a lot of our time. We move a lot of property on a weekly basis and can only give our full-undivided attention to people who are ready to buy property in America. $995 is a drop in the ocean when you are about to spend $40,000- $150,000 on a property. For what our members get, this amount is insignificant to them, and if some of you reading this are thinking that its not an insignificant amount to you, please rest assured that it is fully refundable. We also ALWAYS refunded back the $995 on the first purchase of a home with us. Were not in the business of trying to make a living off a refundable $995 membership fee. Its purely a deposit on future business. The membership strategy has been very successful for our company and our members and we make no apologies about it. Things stay exclusive for our members and when our weekly properties come to market, our members have a very real opportunity of getting exactly what they want without those properties being available to any guy with an internet connection (no disrespect to your current model zmagen). And on the flip side it benefits us, because we only deal with the right people who are ready to build their property portfolios. It’s a win-win. Thank you all for reading this lengthy post. We do not wish to enter into a debate with anyone and respect all your views and comments. Our company does not want to market itself on public forums, but we had to answer the current questions, I hope you can all appreciate our standing. I would like to apologies for the current standing of our website. It is currently going through some much needed changes, as we have grown from 30 staff to over 70 staff in the last 9 months, so “our team” and “the contact us” will be getting updated this week as will some other aesthetics, so please bear with us. The website should be updated before the end of this week were told. Should you have any further questions please don’t hesitate to contact me directly at [email protected] and I would be happy to discuss this with you in person. Humble Regards, Ryan
Zmagen, thanks for your response. Let me quickly point out, you have your business which it appears to be distinctly different from USInvest. You charge your fee’s however you like, and it gives me no place to criticise your legitimacy. Conversely, our investors have the choice to pay for our services of which provide great value to our members.
We are are not Spruikers by any stretch of the imagination, We are a company of more than 70 staff and contractors in business for 5 years. We have a good reputation and do right by our customers so I would appreciate terms such as the above to be left out of these discussions.
You asked for a description of what it is we provide for our members. If you don’t see value in that, or if it differs from the product you offer in Japan, that is your opinion and I respect that.
USInvest membership includes the following:
• A free consultation with our in-house CPA. Our CPA has been an expert in this field for many years. If your familiar with what an expert accountant bills for their time, you will know that this offers a tremendous amount of value to our members at no extra cost.
• A free consultation with our in-house Attorney. The right legal advice is essential. Australian’s can of course invest in America without this advice, however we see that as irresponsible practise. Although it may save a few dollars, investing without the right legal advice is something we leave for the ‘spruikers’ you spoke about earlier. Again this value speaks for itself. Our in-house attorney was the Principle at her own law firm in New York City, before we secured her services to work for USInvest full-time. We also offer ongoing advice to our members, but always insist they seek independent advice.
• A 4 week educational course teaching members about our operation, where we invest as well as our due diligence process for every property we bring on board.
• Assistance in setting up our members LLC to create the right corporate veil and safe-guard our members for the long term.
• In-house US certified agents and brokerage assistance as well as liaising with our partner entities to arrange for bank finance. Anyone familiar with the US market knows that having real finance available for our clients is worth its weight in gold and is something we couldn’t have done without the experience of our very qualified team of ground staff here in America. USInvest, however does not offer in-house finance or financial advice.
• US Bank Account set-up to collect rents, make payments etc
• Property management assistance: We operate as a one stop shop for our members when it comes to any issues that may appear. If our clients have an issue with their property, we provide the ongoing assistance between client and property manager to ensure the issue is resolved. Why don’t we offer management? Because this is not our area of expertise and our experience allows us to recommend only the best property managers and systems to our members. Again, being in the international real estate investment industry, I’m sure you know the value of quality management and round-the-clock assistance.
· In-house Economic Analysts: The economic research we do is paramount to the future of an investment. We research all areas of our investments form property to income ratios, demographics, rental demand, housing elasticity and inelasticity, the permitting of each town etc. In America every state carries its own set of regulations, and within that state every city has its own regulations and within the city each municipality has its own regulations. Providing quality analysis is a vital part of our business and something that really does set us apart from our smaller, less resourced competition. We employ some of the brightest minds in America for this department, helped largely by our head office location in Princeton, NJ. The majority of our research team are graduates of the prestigious Princeton University. Princeton is the top academic school in America. It’s part of the “Big 3” being Princeton, Harvard and Yale. Princeton has been the number 1 school 9 of the last 10 years. Our head of the economics department graduated with a BA in Economics from Princeton and declined offers from Goldman Sachs and Meryl Lynch to join our company. Our team knows this market better than anyone in Australia and most likely America. Our quality research and due diligence process is something we pride ourselves greatly on and puts us light years ahead of our competition.
• Lastly all the properties that we acquire are exclusively for our members. The majority of our team is in research and analysis and our members are thankful that they have exclusive access to the hard work that is invested into acquiring only the best properties in the areas we operate.
Zmagen, I’m sure you can see the value offered here, as well as the relevant costs associated, of which I can assure you equate to more than $995. Of course you are welcome to your opinion and if you don’t see value in our business, that opinion is yours to hold.
I do hope this gives you, and other readers a broader view of the company behind USInvest. We are a very proud company and value the success of our members as the future of our business.
Again, should you wish to contact our team correctly, please feel free to contact me directly or feel free to visit our website.Zmagen, I wish you and all the readers of this thread all the best in your future investment endeavours.
