STAFF at an international property company are resorting to hard-sell tactics and lies to sell second homes to Britons seeking to buy abroad.

An investigation has found that some employees working for MacAnthony Realty International (MRI) also oversold the investment potential of overseas properties. Customers complain that they were told their mortgages would be covered with “guaranteed rents” which never materialised.

Salesmen talked up the investments in one Bulgarian resort by saying property prices were rising by 20% to 30%. Official figures for the area put growth at 2%.

The company is one of the fastest growing property agencies in Europe and has diversified from its core market in Spain to eastern Europe in the past two years. It generates £100m annual turnover and boasts that it sells a property “every 43 minutes”. Many of its customers are middle-class investors from Britain and Ireland.

It has benefited from the boom in sales of cheaper purpose-built apartments overseas described as the “new timeshare” by industry figures. Between 500,000 and 2m Britons own property abroad.

Some of the high pressure methods are reminiscent of timeshare selling, which was forced to clean itself up after a series of exposés. The selling of overseas property is largely unregulated.

MRI said that a “large proportion” of its 16,000 customers are entirely satisfied. It says sales staff are told not to lie or exaggerate and to sell ethically at all times. The company, based in Marbella in southern Spain, was founded by Darragh MacAnthony, 30, an Irishman who last month became chairman of Peterborough United football club.

Former employees liken the atmosphere inside the company to a cult. They claim sales staff, who are paid a small retainer or commission only, are often forced to work seven days a week and are banned from wearing the colour red in the office.

Three former employees described how at one of the weekly “clapathon” meetings last year, MacAnthony threw a startled trainee’s jacket out of a window because it was red. “He told us, ‘The only thing that can be red in this company is my f****** Ferrari’,” recalled one. MRI says the red jacket incident never happened.

This summer a former employee approached The Sunday Times with concerns about the company. An undercover reporter joined the MRI training scheme in Marbella and after two weeks became a “sales/telemarketing executive”.

Lucrative rewards were dangled before trainees from day one. “You see the Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Porsches that are parked outside?” said Kostas Tsitsias, the chief operating officer. “They belong to us . . . If you like fast cars, big houses and vacations, come and get it.”

The company runs exhibitions in Britain and abroad where it encourages potential customers to go on inspection trips, paid for by MRI, to see the resorts.

The undercover reporter was taught a “pitch” to persuade customers to go on the trips. Lorna, her trainer, emphasised that while she should not “bullshit a client”, some lies were permissible.

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