The Small Print

We try to keep all potential costs and liabilities completely visible so that at no stage are you surprised by an unforeseen bill.  This page details in simple terms the costs you can expect to incur – for a full legalistic wording please click here.

Charges and Guarantees

• There is a joining fee of £10 for registering your requirements with us. We need you to tell us what you would really like, in order to identify people who share your interests. This charge is primarily to deter people who aren’t really interested in buying but just like playing around on the internet, and could be wasting your time and ours. Such people will almost NEVER pay even the smallest fee, so it’s a good way of protecting everyone else.  You become a Bronze member of OwnerGroups.
• There’s NO CHARGE for our initial work in setting up a group, providing you with the initial agreement information, and our initial search and reports on suitable assets, but we do ask for a deposit (currently £250 or approx US $310) to cover our out-of-pocket costs incurred in this process. This deposit is placed in a separate client account set up specifically for you and the people who share your objective, and we’re accountable to you for everything spent from it.  If the group is not formed at the end of this stage, the remainder of the deposit is returned to you.  You are now a Silver member of OwnerGroups.
• Once a group is actually formed and we are in a position to start hunting for your asset we ask for a further deposit of £750 (approximately $950) to cover costs in our search.  Again this money is held in your own group’s client account.  You are now a Gold member of OwnerGroups.
• Our final fee is based on successfully achieving your objective, and is 6.5% of the value of the asset purchased, charged to the whole group (not to you individually). This is payable when the asset is purchased and handed over to you – in other words, if we don’t succeed in putting a group together to buy what you want, we don’t get paid. This one fee covers all the aspects of our business, which you would otherwise have to employ separate companies to do for you – a “dating agency” to find compatible partners, lawyers and accountants providing the appropriate legal and administrative structure (both between the members and for the group as a whole to own the asset), agents to find and acquire the asset for you, and a service to continue to run it. We believe our charges are considerably less than it would cost group members to achieve anything remotely similar on their own. Your individual liability of course will be for your share of this fee. (Our fee does NOT of course cover any duties, taxes or legal fees etc, payable to complete the transfer!) There are also some minimum figures on our fee.
• After purchase, charges are based on an optional annual contract, renewable after the first year. The first year’s fee is payable at the time of purchase, but the group has no continuing obligation to use the OwnerGroups Company if it feels it can organise its own affairs. The exact cost of this will vary depending on the overall level of service the group wants and the type of asset involved, but for typical property groups the basic service described above (administration and finance) will be about 15% of the annual budget of the asset being managed. Remember once again that you will personally only pay a fraction of this.

What We Can And Can’t Do

• We will do our best to match you up with other people in our system, and find something that suits your needs, but
• We don’t promise that we’ll succeed in any particular time-scale.
• We will do our best to provide you with good advice, going to reputable outside sources where necessary to get it, but
• We cannot be held liable for this advice, and it is up to you to use your own judgment when reaching decisions about whether to proceed or not.
• We don’t guarantee any particular financial or other outcome from joining an OwnerGroups group, nobody can!
• We will act on your behalf, and we won’t take commissions or fees of any kind from organizations selling property or other assets unless you agree to it in advance.