Property commentator Vanessa Warwick has said she will continue to be an advocate for ‘authentic property and wealth educators’ who provide quality training at a reasonable cost and has welcomed the PEAS initiative launched recently by the Property Investment Bureau.
She sat down with Paul Shamplina for a video interview filmed at a property sector gathering a few days ago to discuss this topic.
“As we know, the wealth creation industry is totally unregulated and that makes it a very, very dangerous place for consumers, particularly as those who are attracted to it tend to be younger, more naïve and slightly vulnerable people,” says Warwick.
When asked how she would like to see the wealth creation sector policed, Warwick proposed a three-point plan.
This includes social media platforms taking more responsibility for removing content that misleads consumers, the sector being regulated along the lines of the financial service industry’s FCA scheme, and potential students being vetted before signing up for expensive courses to ensure that they qualify for BTL finance.
In the video Warwick describes many of the educational courses on offer as akin to “buying a ticket to see a Unicorn”, highlighting how training courses can cost the same as the deposit on a property, and says too few students realise that property investment requires capital.
Shamplina agreed, saying: “Getting into property needs some money to get started, otherwise it’s just a pipedream.”
Redress
The evictions expert also said that he’d urged the recently launched PEAS scheme to include redress within its membership requirements so that customers of PEAS accredited educators, if they want all of some of their money back, had an independent third-party adjudicator to gain redress via.
“You have to start regulation somewhere and if we don’t then eventually Trading Standards are going to get involved, or the government will legislate,” he said.
As mentioned in the interview, the New Statesman recently ran an article examining ‘landlord influencers’ on social media, highlighting how many market their courses to young people with promises of easy riches through property, with many using their luxury lifestyles as part of their marketing.
Watch the video
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