Over the years I've worked with quite a few real estate marketing companies abroad and accompanied quite a few buyers of apartments abroad. I've stopped being surprised by the stories of buyers who saved a few shekels on professional accompaniment and paid dearly later to fix the situation, or those who did not listen to my advice and then found they had erred in judgment, and others who were simply dazzled by the presentation and the marketing promises, which turned out to be empty.
Danny (a pseudonym) bought an apartment in a foreign country after attending a sales conference held in a Tel Aviv bar. The marketers presented a picture according to which the return he would receive would be double-digit. After more than a year he came to my office angry and asked to examine the option of suing the marketers for fraud. It turns out the return is about half of what was talked about at that conference.
From a look at the slides Danny photographed during the conference, it can be seen that the marketer presented figures for expected rental income and included in the current yield the expected appreciation of the property (a figure that is not reflected in ongoing income but only upon sale of the property, because if the apartment's value rises as prices rise, the owner's gain does not arrive every month but at the time of the apartment's sale), and also included the cost of the management company but forgot to mention that the practice in the country is that the owner pays the municipal tax and the insurance costs, and also did not include additional costs that were discovered along the way.
Danny's agreement did not include any commitment to a return, so I had to explain to Danny that the fact that he did not check and consult, but was swept up by marketing promises that turned out to be inaccurate, is not grounds for a lawsuit. Had he only consulted with someone experienced in the field, he could have understood how overly rosy the picture being painted for him was.
Stories are based on real situations, with identifying details changed. Not legal advice.
Translated from the Hebrew original. עברית