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Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2010 11:11 am
by GB_Groundworks
seanandruby wrote:
GB_Groundworks wrote:i've heard a story of someone similar, con man introduced to developer as a rich guy claiming 4m tied up by customs of shore. developer went ahead got planning etc and incurred over 150k in costs etc had a cheque from the guy but was being told to hold off till revenue attention went away. finally tried to cash it and obviously it bounced a mile high, turned out this guy had done it before a real fantasist. anyway so some real professional nasty men got involved gun in mouth job in his family home, on 30% commission on any money recovered, some of manchesters roughest. he never paid, but he'd be a brave man to do it again though.

Hardly anything will stop a conman they usually have a condition like Megalomania. It's a Psychopathological condition that gives them feelings of grandeur. They are usually loners, gamblers etc. They are'nt necessarily hard men. The threat of violence does'nt usually deter them, you have to take from them whatever they have. :;):

he wasn't a hard man, he'd started out conning a small family car hire firm, he's worked for the couple who owned it for years and they trusted him and went to live abroad and he managed somehow to get control of the comany and do them for close to a million.

in the story i mentioned above once the salford family got involved to recover the 150k, this guy went to birmingham and london trying to drum up backing from other gangs etc. but once they heard who was dealing with it this end no was interested in helping him.

he's out on his arse now, house repossed wife left him guess she didn;t enjoy watching him have a 9mm put in his mouth. story goes when they turned up to pick him up he was threatening the lads that picked him up with their own name haha.

my dad lost £870,000 on the last development he did, trusted a car dealer friend of 40+ years. car dealer had the site valued at 750,000 but was running a 1m overdraft to run the car sales business but managing it had a stock of over 300 cars. deal being once sold he got his land value plus 20% of the total

so it was done on a hand shake, dad to build 8 x 2 bed apartments, and 5 x 5 bed houses on site and lent him 250k to keep him ticking over. never got it in writing despite me and mum sister telling him his solicitor etc he was like no we've done it on a hand shake i've know him 40 years always done business together and always been ok,

turns out car dealer was sinking fast, he was involved with a industrial estate and the hirring out of thse huge motorhomes to f1 teams and film makers, his partner did him for over 2m so he then mortgaged the site upto 800k, his house 2.5m etc sold his barn off. sold his house for 1.2 must have had a scam going on with surveyor or something.

so having spent 2 years building this site my dad had to discharge the debt to hsbc before they could sell it the houses. put him back 20 years of hard work, i wanted to kill the guy. think dad just felt silly for trusting his oldest friend.

we've since bankrupted him and his wife legally, they just moved it al into kids name he owes hsbc another 1.5m then us 800k but they get first dips on it.

that was a lesson learnt the hard way.




Edited By GB_Groundworks on 1263122112

Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2010 12:18 pm
by lutonlagerlout
that's a horrific story giles
a brickie i worked with was run over and killed over a £35 unpaid bet
during the last recession ,my old man and his partners built 9 houses,similar deal, but the farmer was to be paid a set amount
anyway calamity struck,house prices collapsed
and the units that were up for 65K ended up going for between 25-35K
farmer took his full cut and the old fella and his partners lost 140k on a years work,it took him 12 years to pay it off,but fair play he didn't take the easy way and go bust as so many do today


LLL

Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2010 12:36 pm
by GB_Groundworks
well yeah that hits us as well tony, finished the 5 houses just as the credit crunch hit, the flats flew off at 240k the houses varied in size were on at 440k ended up selling 3 of them for around 380-320. got 2 rented out couldn't shift them. was a hard pill to take, been on the site 4 years. i was pushing my dad to crack on flood the site and get them all built but he didn;t want it to get out of hands so he stuck to doing one house at a time with his usual lads so took over 4 years in total with planning etc so missed the market. hindsight is a wonderful thing, but i wanted to hit the site stick all the roads in and groundworks for all the houses and have 5 teams one on each house but dad didn;t want to get that big and deal with all the logistics so we finished just as the market died.

father and son shouldn;t really work together haha especially not when they have very similar mentalities we end up having some right arguments about how to do things, i now go through mum its much easier haha. we are now writing it off 220K every tax year.




Edited By GB_Groundworks on 1263127125

Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2010 2:26 pm
by sal_ja
Thank you all for your comments, I will start planning.

Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2010 2:41 pm
by lutonlagerlout
sorry sal we went off on a tangent
ask for personal recommendations
ask to see recent work
go with your gut feelings
remember quality is more important than price
LLL

Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2010 7:45 pm
by rab1
never just take the cheapest quote.