Ashley Dean Binnie in one of his viral videos. His YouTube channel features videos that share his philosophy on flipping as well as investing tips. Photo / YouTube
Binnie, in his mid-30s, used his social media presence to sell coaching courses and advertise his services as a flipper for investors. Video titles included How to Flip Houses with Absolutely No Money, I Flipped The Most Rundown House in Masterton, and How I use AI to create $60k property deals in 10 minutes every day.
However, his social media channels have been deleted or made private since OneRoof reported on Binnie’s financial troubles at the end of last month.
In a podcast interview posted in 2024, Binnie said he quit his marketing job in 2021 to flip properties. He claimed he bought 12 properties in three years to flip while juggling a new baby and building his own home. His wife set up a private school, Enrichment Studio, in Algies Bay, north of Auckland, which was open for less than a year and was put into liquidation last month.
In April, two of Binnie’s companies, Ascend Advisory Limited (formerly AshleyDean Limited) and Atlas Holdings, were placed into liquidation owing more than $2m.
However, he set up Signal Theory Limited, on May 14, described as a marketing consultancy firm.
MBIE national manager for business registries Bolen Ng told OneRoof that the Registrar of Companies was looking at information provided by the insolvency practitioner on the failures of Ascend Advisory Limited and Atlas Holdings.
“As a director of two companies that have failed within a five-year period, Mr Binnie will be considered for prohibition by the Registrar of Companies,” he said.
Ng said it would be “speculative” to predict how long prohibition could last before a decision was made, adding that an individual could be prohibited for up to 10 years.
The length of time would hinge on the particular circumstances of the case, including the nature and extent of the mismanagement, any pattern of non-compliance and the person’s overall conduct in relation to the failed company or companies.
Ashley Binnie used his social media presence to sell coaching courses and advertise his services as a flipper for investors. Photo / Supplied
Binnie could appoint someone else as a director of Signal Theory Limited if he were subject to a ban, but if this did not happen within a set period, then the company would be removed from the Companies Registrar.
OneRoof interviewed several people who had interactions with Binnie after being directed to online investor forums that raised concerns about his behaviour and business practices.
One woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, told OneRoof she and her friend got in touch with Binnie last year after seeing his Instagram posts, in which he promoted his property coaching courses.
“I was watching him for a while and following him, and he was posting people’s success stories.”
The woman said Binnie seemed convincing, so she and her friend decided to buy their first investment property through him.
The pair took over the agreement for a house they said Binnie had under offer in Newlands, Wellington. They paid $550,000 for the property in July last year and agreed to pay him $140,000 to manage and carry out renovations on their behalf.
The Property Renovation Management Services Agreement, seen by OneRoof, states that Ashley Dean Limited would provide renovation design assistance, source, manage and pay tradespeople and contractors, help select a real estate agent, provide sale and purchase negotiation support and provide general project management assistance.
Binnie called the proposal a “turnkey flip” – where he would find a property and manage its renovation on the client’s behalf through to its resale.
In a video Binnie sent out to clients on “turnkey flips”, he says they wouldn’t have to do much more than pay for the house. “You will get full support and guidance from right now until the property is sold. Every step of the way, we will be like, this is the next step, this is the next step.”
Ashley Binnie used his social media presence to sell coaching courses and advertise his services as a flipper for investors. Photo / Supplied
The woman alleges Binnie presented them with a spreadsheet of all the costs and told them that they would make a minimum profit of $100,000 based on a sale price of $790,000, which he said was the worst-case scenario.
“He did a proper analysis on his spreadsheet and said this is your outlay and this is how much you can sell it for, and this is the profit you can make. So, I followed that, and I basically fell for it,” the woman told OneRoof.
“I had never been to the property, so I was just relying on him to do all the work for us and based on his advertising and all of his contract and stuff, it basically looked very clean and like, okay it’s a ‘no-brainer, let’s do it’ sort of situation.”
The woman said that after going unconditional on the property, she didn’t hear from Binnie.
Binnie eventually completed the renovation in about four months, not the six weeks he initially claimed, and blamed the delay on having to change contractors.
“We ended up going to Wellington three times because we hadn’t seen it, and there were no progress reports, and he was not meeting the timeline. We were like, ‘What the hell is happening? We’ve paid for you to sort this out.’”
She alleged that the “quality of the finish was extremely poor” and claimed that they had been “ripped off”, arguing that the project “probably only cost him $40,000 and he charged us $140,000”.
She said that a dishwasher that was part of the chattels when they bought the house had been removed but not replaced, and that Binnie had not fulfilled his promise to install a new bathroom. “He had quoted us for a new bathroom, which it is actually not,” she said, claiming that he had only put in a new shower screen.
She claimed that Binnie had used two different colours to paint the rear exterior of the house and that the landscaping was a mess – “it’s not even presentable”.
An independent building report commissioned by the women found there were still problems with the house even after Binnie’s renovation was completed.
The women claimed that Binnie ignored their requests to carry out additional work, and that they were forced to pay about $10,000 to other tradies to get the property ready for sale. “He sort of just went missing, and we’ve been trying to manage it ourselves. He wouldn’t reply for days.”
She claimed Binnie charged them $2500 to stage the property even though it was included in the original fee, and said he did not reply to their repeated emails asking for reimbursement.
Ashly Dean Binnie and Kenyon Clarke in a screenshot from Binnie’s video, posted on YouTube late last year. Photo / Supplied
He emailed the women in January this year in response to their concerns about the quality of the work, saying: “We completed a $140k renovation on the property. All old houses and even brand new build [ones] have minor issues on building reports.”
The woman said she had been having sleepless nights over the property. On top of the $140,000 she and her friend paid Binnie for the renovation services, she estimated that they spent a further $50,000 paying the mortgage, and covering staging costs and additional renovations and repairs.
“We are working hard to just keep paying this until it gets sold, but obviously, the longer it takes to get sold, the more the outlay for us, and we are in a deficit. It’s really, really bad – it’s been on the market for a long time,” she said.
“We’ve lost thousands of dollars, and we are in a really s*** position to be honest.”
She said listing agents had told them the sales figures Binnie had used in his projections were out of date or not comparable to their property, which hit the market in December last year and has yet to sell.
An Auckland builder told OneRoof he had a similar experience with Binnie. He had followed him on social media for several years before signing up to one of his “turnkey flips”.
He managed to make money on the central Wellington do-up he bought through Binnie, but said he was unimpressed by the quality of Binnie’s renovation work.
The man, who asked to remain anonymous, told OneRoof that Binnie had a home-and-income property under offer, which he took over the contract for in mid-2025.
He paid an additional $215,000 for Binnie’s property renovation management and services, which had the finder’s fee built in. The services included a fixed-price renovation, addressing any issues raised in the initial building report, project management, design and home staging.
The man said Binnie’s contractors relined the walls, put in new wiring and installed two new kitchens and bathrooms, but a building report after the renovation highlighted a range of problems, including holes in the roof and leaking windows.
“There were just pages of issues,” the man said. “He didn’t carry out a lot of things he said he would do.”
He claimed Binnie had told him the budget had blown out and there was no money left to fix the issues.
The builder agreed to go to Wellington and make the repairs himself on the understanding that Binnie would repay him $5000 for materials and sub-trades. He said he was still waiting to be repaid.
“It took me a good three weeks just working every day. There were lots of little things that you would have expected to be done, like doors not closing and little stuff like that.”
The builder knows he is one of the luckier ones, as he was able to sell the property. He said he was also aware of several others who were in much worse situations than he was.
Ashley Binnie is well known in investor circles for his YouTube channel, AshleyDean. Photo / Supplied
A couple from Auckland accused Binnie of selling them a “dud” AI system for flipping properties. They told OneRoof that Binnie’s Instagram posts on the tech were convincing, and they thought it could help them find their first home.
“We didn’t sign up because we blindly trusted him with property – we actually signed up because we wanted to make use of the AI system,” one of the complainants said.
They said they paid $5920 in August last year for four months of coaching using an AI system programme called Flip-to-Freedom.
In several ads, Binnie claimed to have developed an AI system that found good deals for him. He claimed the programme could identify do-up properties, call the agent to ask for the price and provide feedback on what the property would sell for after renovation. He said the system then narrowed down the properties that would have between a $150,000 to $200,000 “spread”, which is what he needed to make it a worthwhile flip.
They said they dealt with Binnie and one of Binnie’s assistants, named Mark.
“We soon realised that the AI didn’t really exist. They told us it was coming out in stages, but after three or four months of asking Mark heaps, it didn’t really work.”
Not long after signing up for the programme in mid-August, they started getting excuses. Binnie told them during a video recording on the Flip-to-Freedom Discord in early September that the developer had been “smashed with sickness” and was in hospital. He said the programme would now be rolled out in three stages, despite his advertising claiming he already used it. In that same 15-minute video call, he said it would be a week away before later contradicting himself by saying he hoped stage one would be finished by the end of the month.
The only programme they were given access to was an air table via Discord, which had identified rundown properties with a resale value of more than $200,000 more after being renovated, but even then, a lot of the properties were either new builds or had been sold.
“I never actually saw any working AI system in any way, shape or form similar to what he had been advertising …”
An email from Binnie in January this year – his last to the couple after they gave him one last chance to give a refund – claimed he had provided what they had signed up for. “But I guess we just have different perceptions on it. No other clients seem to have an issue. Anyway, you do whatever you need to do. I will still be here helping our winners win in property,” his email said.
The complainant and her partner then took Binnie to the Disputes Tribunal for making false and misleading statements about the product, and he was ordered in April to repay them the full amount.
They said they were still waiting for the money because two days after the ruling, Binnie’s company, Ashley Dean Limited, was placed into liquidation. They said that they were shocked to receive an email from Binnie weeks later, promising to help people “create massive equity in property within two months” using Flip-to-Freedom.
Another Auckland homeowner claims that a property she bought in Riverhead in June last year for $1.52m has caused her nothing but trouble. She also claims that it has links to Binnie.
Michelle Stallard told OneRoof that she bought the property from a developer.
She said she later spotted her distinctive 1910 villa in multiple videos posted by Binnie on his social media accounts.
OneRoof has viewed more than six of Binnie’s videos where he uses images of the Riverhead property before, during and after the renovation to promote property flipping as a way to make money.
Binnie explains in one of the videos why he takes so many photos of a property he purchases, while taking a picture of the Riverhead property on his phone. In another video, he tells people they can buy a Rolex in two months by finding a property with value and potential, using an image of the Riverhead property in its unfinished state.
“He [Binnie] was touting it all over social media as his first development. He had some kind of tie-up somewhere along the line,” Stallard said.
“I’ve got proof he was using it on social media. Although his name wasn’t on the contract, why was he saying it was his first development?”
Stallard said the property had drainage issues and that she had been pressing the previous owner to cover the cost of the repairs.
Binnie does not appear on the title of the property and has no connections that OneRoof can see to the previous owner. OneRoof tried to contact the previous owner for comment and asked him why Binnie appears in videos in the property. He had not replied at the time of the publication.
Binnie did not respond to OneRoof’s request for comments regarding the claims made by his clients or what his links to the Riverhead property were.