EXCLUSIVE
The Federal Court has found property spruiker Rick Otton engaged in misleading or deceptive conduct in a book and DVD called “How to Buy a House for $1”, because it had never been done.
ustice Jacqueline Gleeson has found Otton and his company We Buy Houses Pty Ltd breached four sections of the Australian Consumer Law.
Otton had been taken to the court by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission over techniques with names such as “rent to buy”, “sandwich lease option”, “deposit builder”, “handyman special” or “sweat equity”, “vendor finance” or “purchase by instalments”, and “some now, some later”.
Justice Gleeson said she accepted the “theoretical possibility” of a set of transactions in which the consumer pays $1 only to acquire an option to buy a house and is able to sell the house pursuant to another option without incurring any other costs.
“But there was no evidence before the Court of a single occasion on which this had occurred,” she said.
“Therefore, I conclude that there is no evidence that the respondents’ strategies can or could enable a consumer to buy a house for $1 and there are no reasonable grounds to believe that the respondents’ strategies can or could enable a consumer to buy a house for $1.”
More to come …
Online Source: www.news.com.au
