This is my Finvest review a story of our dealings and experience with Finvest. This is for anyone else out there who is considering starting a relationship with this company. My account below is a detailed look at our experience with Finvest.
At the start of 2019, my wife and I decided that we would finally make our hard-earned savings work a little harder. We had spoken for years about getting into property investments but had never taken the definitive steps to start down that path.
This delay was mostly due to anxiety of taking the plunge into the unknown of the property investment game. When you’re dealing with that kind of money it is a daunting experience. Especially when you take that dive into off the plan property investments. There are SO many questions, right?
Finvest Review — How it all started
Rewind to May 2019 when I saw a catchy online advertisement from a company called Finvest. Their ad was appealing to me and spoke to what our family was looking for. It was enough to pique my interest. So I left my details in a form and awaited my follow up call.
A few days after I received a call from Justin Windridge, one half of the duo that runs Finvest. We had an initial chat and spoke about our goals and what we were looking to do. He suggested an informal meeting.
It was the 18th of May 2019 when our journey with Finvest started. We sat down with Justin and another gentleman named Damon (one of the many other team members who came and went). They gave me the usual spin on how they worked, who they worked with and some potential benefits.
Meeting Lisa Harris (Finvest Review continues)
We weren’t really ‘sold’ anything at that stage until we finally sat down with Lisa Harris the other half of the Finvest operation. The matriarch of Finvest if you may.
This meeting was super interesting where Lisa gave us her rags to riches stories, how she learned property investing the hard way and was here to help other people achieve the same success.
She was speaking my language. I was intrigued by her origin story as it resonated with me. Like her, I was a child of immigrant parents trying to win in Australia.
Lisa is super confident in her abilities. She is a great sales person, I’ll give her that. She bedazzles with stories and the opportunity to save money through working the taxation system to your benefit. This was all sounding great!
Owning another property. Gain huge tax deduction benefits via depreciation and build capital gains without really doing anything except for paying a deposit. We also discussed the opportunity of creating a self-managed super fund (SMSF) and how buying property through this mechanism was a great way of exponentially growing your super.
Why hadn’t I done this before?
When the Sh!th have Hiteth the faneth
This is where it gets interesting. My wife and I were super interested in moving forward with a property in a new estate in Bendigo. So we ran through the numbers with Lisa and her team and thought, ok, let’s do it.
As the wheels started turning, I was interested to understand the other opportunities out there. Lisa then introduced us to a big development known as Ivanhoe Gardens. Again another interesting property which had many benefits to it.
Again we did the calculations to figure out if this was a feasible exercise. We were very explicit in providing details that by the time this ready to settle the likelihood would be that it would be just my salary as we were planning our 2nd child and my wife would most likely not have a wage.
It turns out again, according to their modelling that the servicing of a loan was possible in the given scenario. We gave it some time and met with Lisa and her team at the building site of Ivanhoe Gardens and got another spiel about this property and how amazing it was.
We were 100% sold again on the concept and the benefits it brought financially so we decided to move ahead with this property as well given the calculations showed we were able to get financing.
You’re probably reading this and thinking WTF mate? Did you buy two off the plan properties in the space of a month?
Yeah I know it sounds crazy when I think about it now. But if I’m being honest I was truly caught up in the dazzle and were given assurances of the servicing of finance. Lisa had built a connection with us and we trusted her.
As it was coming to the end of the financial year. To officially secure the properties with the associated financial incentives, we had to complete payment of our deposits for both properties. Bendigo and Ivanhoe.
Things were moving fast on the Bendigo property and we commenced working out the finer details around financing in July 2019. This is when the SH!T hit the fan.
Part 1: We found out that the original modelling for the Bendigo property which was initially based on a 10% deposit was not servicing at that rate and required 20% deposit to get the finance. Ergo we needed to front up more cash and eat further into our savings. This was starting to make us uncomfortable.
Part 2: As we were figuring out the financing the broker then found out we were going to be buying the Ivanhoe property as well. He was shocked as he thought we were using a SMSF for this purchase. This was not the case. We had specifically asked for it to be a personal investment and all of our communication with Lisa was exactly this.
The Finvest mortgage broker was stunned by this as he was very unaware. So he ran the numbers and gave us the horrible news. There was no way that we would be able to get finance for this property in the scenario we had explained to Lisa.
As you can imagine we were now in this really bad situation where we needed more money for one property and we wouldn’t be able to get finance for the second property.
The true colours of Lisa (Finvest Review Continues)
Naturally, I rang Lisa to discuss the current situation. I wanted to know what was going on and how we could get this resolved. At first Lisa was very cool about what was going. I felt somewhat reassured.
Then…. I had a call with her and the finance broker. This is when all of the sudden Lisa decided to pull a switcheroo on the narrative. “Apparently” she was under the impression that we were financing this through a SMSF.
I was like….. WTF?
This was somewhat shocking to us given that all of our conversations were around a personal investment. It was all in an email the modelling and the servicing of the loan. So as you could imagine I was super frustrated with what was happening here.
All I was thinking was, had I just blown $57,000?
Yes, I had a singular discussion with an SMSF agent but at no stage had we indicated to Finvest that we were moving ahead with an SMSF as I repeated to Lisa ad nauseam. She didn’t want to hear it, in fact, she became rather condescending and dismissive.
I remember one phone call when she became so aggressive and accusatory of me that I had to get off the phone. Given my temper, I didn’t want to be the one who ended up looking like a goose.
What was next? Let’s send an email to Finvest detailing the timelines along with communications we had with them with the instructions that they needed to fix this issue given their error.
From this stage, Finvest was sticking to the story that they believed we were financing this under SMSF. In an act of desperation, we did our research on SMSF independently and the numbers weren’t adding up. I also then realise why should we enter into a deal we are not comfortable with. We informed them that no, we didn’t want to go down this path.
As it turns out the narrative became: now Finvest was coming to the rescue given according to them that we had messed up and they were going to onsell the property as a “favour”. But until that happened our money was just sitting in a trust account.
This had become an extremely stressful time for us. I was worried about my wife given she was pregnant with our second child. All I could do was continuously push to find out what was going on. It was now 2020 and nothing had happened.
Our baby boy was due at the end of January and we still had this big financial shadow hanging over us. On a personal level it even got more hectic as my wifes father had become severely ill and we found out just after our son was born that we only had just a matter of weeks left with her father.
To say we were super stressed with this looming financial burden of this deposit, the arrival of a new baby and the passing of my wife’s father was a gross understatement.
Finally a glimmer of hope in March. We were able to come across a couple of internal emails which show clearly Lisa confirming that she had made an error. Take a look at the below in amazement given what I have just explained.
I found a sense of vindication as for months Lisa and Justin had made us out to feel like we were the ones that had made an error in communication. Their continual denial and lack of accountability was to me mind-boggling but boy was I thankful to get this evidence of their financial misconduct.
We promptly sent a letter of demand detailing that we had these emails and that our deposit be returned within 30 days. What are the chances? That day they had a buyer for the property to swap out the deposit.
The story continues
Given this was March we thought we were near the end. A deed of cancellation was signed in April with the developer Blue Earth Group. We didn’t receive the final signed copy until early June with a notification that we should see the money returned within 30 days.
Onto the next ordeal trying to get our money from the trust account through the developer's solicitor was a nightmare again. Apparently, due to Covid it was delayed. I thought initially that seemed reasonable.
After continuous badgering from me… FINALLY 78 days after signing the deed we saw our money deposited back into our account some 14 months after we paid it.
We popped a bottle of champagne that night and felt the greatest sense of relief. We were so happy to have our money back and could now move on with our life without this financial cloud over our heads.
What did we learn?
- Dealing with companies like Finvest is fraught with danger. As they were both the ‘sales’ arm for these developers as well as those providing the financial advice on servicing. This was a massive conflict of interest.
- Why did we not get a second opinion? When dealing with big decisions always seek independent advice. Learn from our stupidity that you shouldn’t just trust someones advice. Especially if they have financial gain involved.
- Persistence overcomes resistance. Whether we were lucky that it all worked out in the end, staying on top of the resolution paid off in the end.
- Never sign anything straight away. Sleep on it, that at least gives you the ability to think it over and digest whether you are making the right decision.
Advice for Finvest
- As your email states Lisa. You’d never made this mistake before. Instead of denying it, own it. Be accountable and try and resolve it ethically. The way you tried to make us feel as if it was our fault was deplorable given our family circumstances as well.
- As Warren Buffet once said “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”
- Honesty is the best policy.
- We are currently refinancing and get some gratification that you will be seeing a good chunk of that commission getting clawed back. By no means does it make up for the anguish and anxiety you put us through but anything to get something back from Finvest is totally worth it.
- An apology for our treatment would really be appreciated.
