Tan Kin Lian's Blog: Land Banking Scam

Saturday, August 02, 2008

Land Banking Scam

Hi Mr. Tan,

I've just read your blog on land banking scam and though I would share a email that I sent to ST a while back when they had a relatively positive article on land banking back in 2007. I feel ST has not been as investigative as they should have been and many times, have articles that doesn't give a complete picture of investments , almost to the extend that it would appear they dare not provide any additional information or view other that so called "experts" with vested interests.

LETTER TO STRAITS TIMES JOURNALIST

I wonder if you have done a proper investigation into the whole land banking issues, especially about companies like X since there has been numerous discussion about scams by them in the internet ? A simple search on the internet will throw up lots of information about such scams and how these scams works even if the titles or funds are put into escrow until the sales completed.

Your article by not addressing such issues does a great dis-service to the general public. I hope that ST will follow up with the investigative style that expose the previous NKF and that that has made us Singaporean proud of ST.

http://mywealthplanner.wordpress.com/2006/10/28/profitable-plots-investing-in-land-banks-1/

While I have tried to put reply to this article in the forum, I feels that this is insufficient for those readers that do not make use of the internet as much.

I would appreciate if yourself or your editor could look into this and do a proper follow up articles. And in view of the large amount of money changing hand just because of a simple article like this . I've also got calls from various companies trying to sell the land banks ideas and doing some "talks" over this weekend and having read your articles, I'm wondering if the timing of these calls is co-incident or deliberately timed to be after your article.

7 comments:

zhummmeng said...: Scams if not checked may become an acceptable way of doing business. Scams seem to be rampant in sales only. The degree of damage depends on the products involved. If it a tangible product the damage can be controlled and limited but if they are intangible the damage is far extensive and wide ranging like time share and life insurance.
Currently the most complaints are against time share salespeople, real estate agents and life insurance agents.
For timeshare you have CASE taking up the cudgels for the aggrieved consumers. For property agents the companies and associations are dealing with it themselves proactively but for the life insurance agents ON ONE is dealing with them. None!!!The cries of consumers fall on deaf ears.The companies won't do. They are shutting their eyes to the rampant scams and malpractices of their own insurance salesmen.They are interested in the bottomline only. MAS is bochap and keeps insisting that it wants to play a supervisory role and leaving it to the industry. MAS is playing a good guy role.They are all taichi-ing the issues.
It looks like the consumers are left to fend for themselves . The helpless consumers are equally clueless about what they should do and eventually fall victims to their trusted sincere insurance agents to fleece them clean.
The consumers should form a society to deal with the insurance agents. Unity is strength.; August 02, 2008 2:27 PM
Alan said...: hi,

Always be careful when investing in Oversea.

It's only for the Rich!

Cheers,
alan
Land Banking-Is a Scam?
http://alantanblog.com/; September 15, 2008 9:24 PM
Anonymous said...: Next time you hear a land banking company tell you about the shortage of houses in the UK and how desparate they are for your Green Belt land you might want to consider these items from the UK. Or just do a search for Land Banking Scams in Google

UK Guardian
The Royal Town Planning Institute issued figures in June 2007 showing that developers were sitting on enough land with planning permission for 225,000 houses.
The information is easily checked. Persimmon plc is on the internet boasting of a "long high-quality land bank ... of over 53,000 plots with planning permission", though if you scroll down you see a later report that the same firm cut £600m off its land bank's value last week.

UK Eastern Daily Press - Top Ten Scams
If you buy land with the come-on that it will rocket in value when the council grants permission for housing, what happens if the council says no? Could you get your money back by re-selling the land? No, because you paid way over the odds for a few square yards of grass.

Motley Fool UK Investment Site
When UK land is collapsing in price how can these adverts still be running. [in Asia] The British always talk about "they" should do something about 419 scams in Nigeria. Who are the "they" in the UK that will stand up and say to Asians this is clearly a bad investment dont do it ?

Or dont we care because the investors are foreigners ?
Is there some 'protect the UK reputation' department that I can raise this with ?.
The FSA comments on land banking are a joke. They warn that the key risk in land banking is it could be a CIS.

Even to an English speaker its meaningless. Who cares if it is a CIS.
The key risk is YOU WILL LOSE ALL OF YOUR MONEY; December 03, 2008 4:12 PM
Anonymous said...: Site owner. I notice the reference links in the above post dont work properly so I have copied the post and fixed them below. Very useful site thank you.
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Next time you hear a land banking company tell you about the shortage of houses in the UK and how desparate they are for your Green Belt land you might want to consider these items from the UK.
Or just do a search for Land Banking Scams in Google

UK Guardian
The Royal Town Planning Institute issued figures in June 2007 showing that developers were sitting on enough land with planning permission for 225,000 houses.
The information is easily checked. Persimmon plc is on the internet boasting of a "long high-quality land bank ... of over 53,000 plots with planning permission",
though if you scroll down you see a later report that the same firm cut £600m off its land bank's value last week.

UK Eastern Daily Press - Top Ten Consumer Scams
If you buy land with the come-on that it will rocket in value when the council grants permission for housing, what happens if the council says no? Could you get your money back by re-selling the land? No, because you paid way over the odds for a few square yards of grass.

Motley Fool UK Investment Advice Site
When UK land is collapsing in price how can these adverts still be running. [in Asia] The British always talk about "they" should do something about 419 scams in Nigeria.
Who are the "they" in the UK that will stand up and say to Asians this is clearly a bad investment dont do it ?
Or dont we care because the investors are foreigners ?
Is there some 'protect the UK reputation' department that I can raise this with ?.
The FSA comments on land banking are a joke. They warn that the key risk in land banking is it could be a CIS.

Even to an English speaker its meaningless. Who cares if it is a CIS.
The key risk is YOU WILL LOSE ALL OF YOUR MONEY; December 05, 2008 7:02 PM
Anonymous said...: UK Land Banking plots are not just being offered in South Asia. Here are two reports from South Africa. One is from 2007 with the land banking company UKLI defending itself against concerns raised about its business model. A year later the same company was bankrupt leaving 4500 people with 69M pounds (S$180M) lost investments. The second article is from Nov 2008 with apparently the same land plots being offered by a different company.
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May 2007 - Special investigations > UK land schemes: exercise caution!
South African investors approached by smooth talking UK agricultural land sellers should proceed with extreme caution. Moneyweb attended a seminar last Sunday hosted by a company called UK Land Investments Group (UKLI). The sales pitch was slick with emphasis placed on potential returns.
Schemes such as UKLI's are simple enough, and have featured in a previous Moneyweb article on the subject. UKLI purchases greenbelt farmland that it claims has a good chance of being re-zoned for development. It re-packages this land into house-sized parcels and sells it at a handsome profit to South African and other foreign investors, most of whom have limited knowledge of the UK greenbelt land market.
Investors hoping to make large profits in the UK land banking market should perhaps ask themselves why operators like UKLI are going to great lengths to market themselves to foreign investors ..... The UK has one of the world's largest and most sophisticated financial markets - most viable investment schemes do not need to look offshore to attract capital.
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The second article is from this year. UKLI was shut down in the UK in June. Draw your own conclusions but mine is that UK land plots are not a good investment.
November 2008- UK land plot investments: worth the risk?
We investigate the investment merits of tiny UK land blocks. Without the prospect of rezoning, the land's value would be a fraction of what St James's land is selling it for.......
Thus the crucial question when evaluating a purchase is what chance the land has of being rezoned.
......the model of selling small plots of land to many investors is untested and has a zero success rate. In other words, there is no documented case of any plot sold by a land banking company such as SJL ever being rezoned for development.; December 10, 2008 11:25 AM
Anonymous said...: If you guys want a REAL and SOLID RETURN OF INVESTMENT (ROI). Pls go to Kingsbury International (M) Sdn Bhd that 1st Asian LAND BANKING in USA that offer FREEHOLD LAND TITLE come with FREEHOLD MINERAL RIGHTS TITLE. Do you think we as a investor can earn a solid and safety perannum or monthly Return Of Investment (ROI) on this current economy situation? We Kingsbury International (M) Sdn Bhd won't let our LAND in position of WAITING or Investor in position of WAITING too... come to see us The Gardens Hotel - Skyview 7 (Level 29) on 13th& 14th June 2009
Time: 10.00 am - 6.00 pm
Call:03-21620522 Carl for Special Invitation.; June 05, 2009 10:27 PM
Unknown said...: If one can buy a piece of land with 500' frontage on Highway 21 just north of the San Marcos Airport cost us only USD1,000 per 0.1 acre. Why must one pay an overly inflated mark-up price of USD9,000 per 0.1 acre to Kingsbury International (M) Sdn Bhd for so-called Auqerena Heights which is even farther from town center? With some simple maths, we should know our investment decision ....; August 05, 2010 9:07 PM