The property guru trap

Tom Entwistle comments on how training providers are selling dreams and simply delivering debt. Then he gives some personal advice for novice investors - see below.

Anyone who’s been in the property industry over the last 30 years or more has seen lots of property trainers, property “gurus”, and property scams come and go. Some, not all, have no more experience in property investing than the Pope, maybe I’m doing him an injustice, but many are purely charismatic motivational speakers. 

It is probably impossible to quantify a precise total for money lost specifically on "scam" property investment schemes over the last 20 years or so. The sector remains unregulated and many individual losses don’t get reported or are simply put down to failed investments.

However, UK fraud intelligence and other legal bodies suggest the total losses could run into hundreds of millions, if not billions of pounds.

A multi-million-pound industry

Across the UK, and USA where many of the multi-million-pound property training industry ideas originate, individuals (aspiring property investors) have been quietly stripped of their savings. Or worse, they are landed with eyewatering debt and driven to bankruptcy, not to mention the effect the experience has on their mental health. 

Anyone with an interest in property investment, when searching the internet, and especially on YouTube, will find themselves inundated with ads for property training schemes, many offering free literature and relentlessly marketed free one or two-day training events. 

There is a well-worn formula used at these events: participants are usually regaled for several hours by slick motivational presenters and stories of property investment success. Using psychology, guile and clever crowd control the organisation steers participants through a process which leads only one way: to paying for a full course. 

Some of these schemes last over a weekend. The atmosphere created is manic, electric and fast paced. The charismatic presenter describes their journey from redundancy or debt to owning dozens of properties and the testimonials roll across a screen, there may even be past students who describe their journey from novice to investment nirvana. 

Sign here!

By the end of the last day, Sunday afternoon, a significant proportion of the audience has been persuaded to hand over a credit card to sign up for a “very limited number” of places on a training programme for “selected” participants. These can cost anywhere between £5,000 and £15,000 and often one programme leads on to another, and another, with people spending upwards of £25,000 in total, before they even start to invest in property.

Now I’m not claiming that every one of these training schemes is an outright scam. Some participants claim to be happy with their training and claim to have achieved their investment objectives. I would contend, perhaps they are in the minority.  For many of those who have passed through this process, the consequences have been catastrophic.

The business model at the heart of the UK and US property training industry is designed to enrich the course providers first, course participants a distant second.

If you feel you really must get training in property investment, I suggest you must be highly selective in the training you enlist on. You should select a scheme that’s a member of The Property Educators Accreditation Scheme (PEAS). This is a UK-based initiative designed to bring self-regulation and high standards to the property education sector. It was created by the Property Investors Bureau (PIB) to help investors differentiate between credible educators and less reputable operators.  

A playbook, designed to relieve people of their savings and more

The content of these courses tends to be motivational with the substantive material, if it exists at all, usually fed-in gradually over time to encourage sign-ups for further courses.  It’s all very deliberate and frighteningly so: those with savings are encouraged to use them, those without are told they don’t need them, and those in debt are told they will soon become debt free.

Across the pond in the United States these schemes have operated for decades on an even greater scale. Celebrity authors and television personalities market the brand, but don’t take part in the training. Training coaches are often recent graduates of the same programme extolling the virtues of a “proven money-making system".

By the time the committed student works through the several tiers of a typical UK provider's process, their total expenditure can easily reach five figures, and that is before they purchase a single property.

A case study

A recent Sunday Times article features one such UK training provider, one of the many constantly advertising on YouTube. This one, which Companies House registers as residing in Yorkshire, is run by a husband-and-wife team and claims to have trained hundreds of thousands of would-be property investors. 

They offer a free introductory event followed by premium membership programmes. It has thousands of reviews on Trustpilot, with mixed reviews. The positives praise the individual coaches and describe successful property transactions. But there’s a substantial body of critical reviews that tell a very different story. 

The introductory course is generally described as a prolonged sales pitch, some claiming they were “persuaded” to leave for asking uncomfortable questions like, “when does the educational content appear?” Others explained how refunds were refused when requested for legitimate reasons.

A pattern of complaints emerges

A pattern of complaints emerges from this and other similar courses on forums and legal advice channels with consistent stories: attendees report being assured during the sales pitch that refunds are always available, but when it comes to the crunch the terms and conditions spell out a different story and they rarely are, or they are made so difficult to get that students give up the fight. 

The Bounce Back Loan controversy

One provider gave advice during Covid-19 that was tantamount to encouraging course participants to commit fraud: it was to encourage them to take out government Bounce Back Loans to fund their property investment projects.  

It was even suggested to them that the loans carried no stipulations as to how the money was to be used. The fact that only existing businesses were eligible for the loans, only if they were adversely impacted by Covid-19, and that directors or principles remained personally liable for repayment, was totally ignored. 

An unregulated sector 

The property training industry in the UK remains unregulated. It leaves a highly permissive landscape which is thoroughly taken advantage of by many of the scheme providers. Delivering educational investment courses is not required to be regulated and authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). 

It gives cart Blanc to providers, who claim to stop short of giving specific financial advice. It allows these companies to charge eyewatering fees for programmes that promise to teach the knowledge necessary to generate passive income from property. There is no consumer protection that would apply if a regulated firm gave the same advice.

The lucrative add-ons

Often the companies running programmes go way beyond training. They have their own appointed finance companies, insurers, firms of solicitors and off-plan developers. They source deals and recommend specific investments, all involvements which generate even more revenue for the providers. 

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has warned about property investment training schemes that involve law firms, or other firms which not only add an air of legitimacy, but they also provide another income stream for the provider.

Action Fraud reports training fraud separately from other forms of investment fraud, but there’s a wide overlap. Victims, many of whom are ill equipped and unsuited to property investment, are lured with promises of property investment training, only to find the training leads to funnelling them in towards purchasing investments. 

These might be sourced and recommended properties, serviced accommodation or off-plan developments and commercial property investments, many of which carry significant risks and require years of experience and skill to operate successfully. Risks that even some experienced property investors would not touch with a barge pole.

The Inside Track debacle

One of the most notorious schemes was run in the early 2000s, a company called Inside Track operated along the lines just described. At the height of the early 2,000s property boom it ran paid (highly expensive) educational workshops, which in turn steered students toward property purchases. 

These were buy-to-let properties through linked businesses using a technique known as gifted deposits, involving artificially inflated valuations that allowed buyers to obtain risky 100 per cent mortgage financing. 

When the 2008 financial credit crunch arrived and property prices fell sharply, often by as much as 50 per cent, many of the student investors were left with properties worth far less than the mortgage loan value, in other word, they were in negative equity. Inside Track entered administration in 2008 along with several other similar providers while many of their student landlord investors were driven into bankruptcy.

What’s probably most surprising is that virtually the same model persists and exists today. The claims persist that property investment education generates abundant wealth. And, crucially for the training provider companies, there’s always more people they can target and persuade to attend their courses, often financially vulnerable people seeking a way to become wealthy.

There’s a serious human cost

Behind this story of exorbitant course fees, naive newbie investors and a slick convoluted network of firms extracting more fees lie individual stories of serious financial distress. There are people who have used their life savings, liquidated pension pots or remortgaged family homes to fund advanced programmes, and then their property investments. 

Steered towards risky and often unviable investments, many have spent years attempting to recover their losses through the Financial Ombudsman Service, while at least one or two have been driven to suicide. 

In 2025 a company called the Unique Property Investment Group, an assisted living linked investment scheme linked to another training system went into administration. It left hundreds of investors facing losses across an £18 million scheme. 

Action Fraud received over 25,000 reports of investment fraud nationally in the latest reporting year, with victims collectively losing over £649 million. That’s a 13 per cent increase on the year prior. Property-related fraud and training-linked schemes account for a significant proportion of that overall investment fraud figure. 

What should change

Consumer advocates and property industry experts have long called for tighter controls over this training provider sector. A requirement for licensing, FCA regulation and a mandatory cooling-off period would be a start. 

A requirement to publish independently verifiable outcomes for students of these courses should be mandatory. Data showing how many students who complete programmes and subsequently achieve profitable investment returns would be welcome. Providers should not be allowed to receive undisclosed commissions from investment products recommended to students.

Currently, none of these safeguards exist. 

A personal view

As someone who has invested in property most of my life, residential as well as commercial, I’m amazed that anyone would pay exorbitant fees for training. I can understand why some people need “handholding” to give them confidence. But perhaps if you need too much support, you could be the wrong person to contemplate property investing.

The idea that you can invest in property with no money is dubious to say the least in my view, highly risky at best. Often it means taking out personal loans or maxing out credit cards where so much can go wrong if things don’t go smoothly. In property investing things very often don’t go smoothly.

Currently the advice is to invest in serviced accommodation or commercial property rather than residential as the buy-to-let tax regime is unfavourable. But service accommodation requires hours of work and commercial is inherently more risky and harder to get into without a successful track record of property investing. 

The claims of most property courses are often way too optimistic and frankly the providers don’t care if you lose money, so long as they get their fee, which they take up-front. 

Residential or commercial

My advice for a rooky property investor would be to start off with residential which is guaranteed to be lettable in the short-term, providing it’s well located. With commercial there’s no guarantee you can let in the short term, it can take months, even years to let a vacant unit while you’re covering all the carrying cost. Business rates and insurance is a killer cost. 

You can buy ready tenanted property, but it is obviously going to be more expensive. Another more viable option is mixed use. Flats over shops is a great way to compromise and reduce your risk, providing you find the right location. Don’t forget, some high streets have been decimated. 

My preference would be to save enough capital to fund a reasonable deposit before venturing into property and acquiring a decent mortgage. If you intend to do this seriously you should consider doing it through a limited company as they give serious tax advantages for portfolio landlords.

Build your own course

Ironically, you can learn as much, if not more, from a couple of £10 books on property investing than you can from attending these courses. You won’t get the handholding but if that’s what you need, join a local landlord group, join a landlord’s association, attend a local Property Investors Network group, and speak to experienced landlord investors, your own accountant, solicitor and local letting agents.

Books & videos

There are lots on Amazon for around £10. Start with these:

1 - How to become a successful property investor: Your ultimate guide to building a profitable property portfolio Paperback by Maxine Fothergill – an experienced landlord and letting agent

2 - The Good Landlord Handbook: Succeed as a landlord under the Renters’ Rights Act by Suzanne Smith – this is bang up to date with the latest laws, written by an experienced landlord and former solicitor

3 - Investing in Real Estate, 7th Edition by Ph.D Gary W. Eldred – an experienced US investor in residential and commercial and an academic

4 - Investing & Developing Commercial Property: A Comprehensive Guide To Buying, Selling And Investing In Commercial Property Paperback – 28 Jan. 2025

by John Howard

YouTube videos are a great source of information and free learning, most offering their services, but there are many more to be avoided. I’m not recommending any to do business with; try these examples, soak up the knowledge - don’t go paying anyone any fees, at least until you've read the books and you know roughly what you are doing:

1 - 40 Years of Property Advice In 77 Minutes

2 - Inside the World of Property Consulting | Andrew McDonald

3 - The Harsh Realities of Commercial Property Investing

4 - "This Will Keep You POOR - Commercial Property Investing" on YouTube

5 - UK Commercial Property Market Update: Key Trends and Opportunities | John Howard Property

6 - How to Get Started In Commercial Property: 5 Golden Rules for Investing in UK High Street Shops

7 - Commercial mortgages for investment property - How lenders assess affordability