Further to my article on yen mortgages supplied by Dominion credit I have received 2 further communication inputs from clients who have applied for a mortgage via Low Rate Spanish Mortgages.
Over the Christmas period Low Rate Spanish Mortgages pulled back their pay for click and paid for link activity but are back with a vengeance. They state 800 applications were approved last year. This is pretty spectacular as even at the height of the selling market we; who were the leading supplier of non resident loans; completed on about 500 mortgages each year. Given lack of non resident sales in Spain last year they must have cornered the whole market with no-one else lending at all!
They say they charge no fees but the feedback I have received indicates you are asked to pass an amount of money apparently for a valuation and this is payable upfront but the property is not visited a desk top valuation is done and what is considered for the valuation is not clear.
The Chief Executives house in Mexico which is being raffled in a spot the ball competition which was due previously to have the winner announced in November 2009 has now been extended to when they have 76,000 entries. At € 25 a pop, this would pull in 1.9m euros for the owner if closing date does not get extended again.. European competition laws that cover this type of competition appear to be being contravened.
Many quality websites and portals like Eye on Spain, Guardian financial site are accepting Google ads giving credence to the company.
It is amazing that no-one checks the advertisers on their website.
The solution to this surely sits with the companies that allow the advertising to be run who should undertake far more due diligence to ensure the advertiser is following European laws.
See latest feedback on Low Rate Spanish Mortgages below .
The comments from Clive Ballard are posted below.
As you say, Dominion Credit and Finance website is new, The name was only registered Jan/Feb 2009. Low Rate Spanish Mortgages were advertising the Yen mortgages in Oct 2008. The DC&F website, like the LRSM website is not very professional for the nature of what it is supposed to sell, and the office in Singapore is not an office but only a phone answering service. Like yourself I could not find any references to Henry Braithwaite in the banking world. I phoned/e-mailed him on a number of occasions in March 2009 requesting information on agents, other than LRSM for these mortgages.
I got no responce to the messages left.
Since DC&F were not contactable, and had no website until Jan 2009, I wonder how LRSM were able to offer their mortgages in Oct 2008, and purchased the domain name in May 2008.Low Rate Spanish Mortgages charge a non refundable, 500 € to apply for a Yen mortgage.
I applied for a mortgage from them in Jan 2009, when there office was in Valencier. Approximatly 6 weeks later when I chased the mortgage, they had apparently moved to Bilbao, though were working through a UK phone answering service. When they rang back, I was told the morgage was not granted, due to the financial situation, but if I liked to apply again in 3 months (and pay another 500€) the situation might have changed.
It seems to me that the only ones making money out of this, are “Low Rate Spanish Mortgages”, a 1/2 man run business who as well as running lotteries, also run a dating site under their other company name of Marverose S.L
They also have interests in an Estate Agents (wherepropertysells.com), though I think this may now, have closed.
N.B. The original UK company named Dominion Credit and Finance went bust in the 1990′ies.
Brian McKenzie says:
January 25, 2010 at 12:17 pm
Hi.
Similar story as clive only this time they said the mortgage was not approved because the valuation was wrong,which made no sense as no valuation had been made on the property. This email stating the above information was sent to me only after repeated attempts to contact them and also they said that they had sent me an email stating this a month previous which was total rubbish. Further attempts to contact them to clarify this has been ignored. I am now quite sure after reading Clives letter that I have been well and truly scamed..
B.Mckenzie
G F Crudgington says:
February 22, 2010 at 4:46 pm
Like Bryan & Clive I have also had similar experience with Low Rate Spanish Mortgages and paid £228 for survey only to find that the survey was never done and the mortgage was refused on the basis of an “In House Valuation” made by a company Dominion Credit and Finance located in Singapore, thousand of miles away from my property in France and that the loan was below the Dominion Credit and Finance funding level. Communications have not been good. I doubt whether they will refund the money paid for a survey which was never carried out. I had hope that it was all above board but I am now convinced that it is a scam and it is highly unlikely that I will get the survey fee back.
However we have received this positive comment from a Mrs Barbara Gosling in Mexico
I read your warning with interest!
While I cannot comment on Clive’s own application, all I can say is that I found the service provided by LRSM to be of an extremely high standard. Indeed, thanks to them I am happily residing in my new property soaking up the sun.
More From IMSHeather
Incoming search terms:
- ubiquitous mortgages mark foreman
- dominion credit and finance
- how to say lowest rate in spanish
- spanish ads for mortgage for house
- yen mortgage
I was approached by ubiquitous mortgages and offered a multi currency mortgage for property in Turkey. They want me to pay the in-house valuation fee upfront as well.
These people have no idea how the buying process works in Turkey as UK nationals require to go through a military clearance process which usually takes about 3 months before a property can be registered in their name (and therefore be mortgageable!).
Also, if the property is ‘valued’ on a desktop from Singapore how can they be sure of the risk factor for the lender’s / underwriter’s capital is tied to? in other words, how do they know the property is really worth the amount of credit they’re offering?
This all sounds a bit too suspicious in the way that they gave me an agreement in principle within hours.
Is there anyone out there who actually DID receive their mortgage through Dominion in Singapore? Can anyone please come forward and do us AND Dominion a huge favour and testify?
Cheers,
Matt
I am in the process of buying a property and found ubiquitous-mortgages.com to at the top of most search engines.
Is this a genuine business of not? I am concerned that they have requetsed the up-front valuation fee and I have the words from the aforementioned stories resounding in my head!
To proceed or not to proceed? That is the question?!
All I can say is we publish every comment we receive about Ubiquitous/ Low Rate Spanish Mortgages whether it’s a complaint, a recommendation or from the owner, Mark Foreman.
Be aware that the ubiquitous listings you see in Google are
paid
adverts. Any company or individual can advertise here – there is no vetting whatsever by Google for financial services. If they were advertising UK mortgages then the ads would be covered by the FSA guidelines but as they are for International mortgages they are not.
It’s also worth noting that the more you are willing to pay for the ads the higher up your ad appears in the listings. Since UM (or LRSM) have been paying for these adverts for many years in the top position it goes without saying that these ads are making them more money than they cost.