Property seminars: How we lost a fortune

It sounds so simple . . . Attend a free workshop and experts will teach you to become an armchair property millionaire. Does the formula work? Read these investors’ stories and judge for yourself:

Richard Dyson, Mail on Sunday - 11 November 2007

Convinced: Brenda Davies says Inside Track’s presentation was slick and articulate.

THE MUSIC TEACHER - Claims she lost more than £100,000

Brenda Davies responded to an advert by property investment company Inside Track in August 2004, attended a free workshop and then spent £2,495 to attend a two-day seminar on property investment at London’s Renaissance Hotel, near Heathrow Airport.

‘They were articulate and convincing,’ says Brenda, 58, a music teacher from Dulwich, south-east London. She wanted financial security with an income in her retirement and thought this was the solution.

She paid £6,000 to join Inside Track’s Platinum Club. ‘I thought, fantastic, these are professional property investors, I’ll pay them to build and manage my portfolio,’ she says.

Now she says she ‘must have been mad’, but by that first weekend she paid deposits on properties in Florida and Spain. ‘It seemed normal. Hundreds of other ordinary people were there doing the same thing,’ she says. Within weeks she had bought two more flats - one in Beeston, Nottingham, and another in the golf resort of Turnberry, Ayrshire - full article