Ben Reeve Lewis Friday Newsround #176

[Ben Reeve Lewis considers stress ..]

I had a last minute, unexpected jaunt from South East London To Colwyn Bay on Wednesday when a bunch of housing officers wanted training on court procedures for evicting tenants.

I’ve been training since 1998 and the novelty of travel wore off a long time ago, particularly when it comes to staying in Travelodge/Premier Inn type places.

Hotel Roulette

I used to book rooms through some last minute hotel booking site which was always cheap and threw up occasional surprising gems, like the Ivy covered hotel in Cornwall that was sitting atop the cliff with amazing views of Mounts Bay.

Or the sumptuous alpine lodge affair located in Sherwood Forest for just £29 a night.

This hotel booking version of Russian Roulette had its downsides though, like the dive in Manchester that seemed exclusively occupied by Eastern Europeans crammed 4 to a room.

At one point, when returning from the lift to my room I caught a glimpse through an open door of 4 dodgy looking geezers sitting on a bed assembling hand guns.

It was only £18 for the night but I didn’t go back. At times like that a Premier Inn has it’s attractions.

Landlord stress

But if the crowded train travel and staying in soulless hotels are dispiriting enough think on the survey carried out by Property Hawk where it was reported that a quarter of private landlords found the process to be more stressful than they had expected before they got into the game.

The main cause of sleepless nights being rent payments, maintenance and tax.

I was a landlord once. I wouldn’t do it again. My tenants were mates but I still got shafted on the rent by one of them who threatened to sue me for ruined clothes because condensation mould had gotten on to them because she never opened the bloody windows.

Why?

One thing I couldn’t get my head around was this particular finding of the report:

“Despite these concerns and the fact that over half of the landlords surveyed didn’t expect to make any money over the next year, most still had no plans to sell up.”

If landlords don’t expect to make money by being one then why bother?  [Maybe they are looking to benefit from the value going up rather than the rent? – Ed]

This news was also mismatched by an article in Inside Housing  which reported:

“Average rents in the South East, East Anglia and Scotland are at their highest recorded levels, according to property services company Move with Us.”

If being a landlord is so stressful and you can’t make money at it when we live at a time when in many areas rents have never been higher, surely they must be doing something wrong?

Rental increase facts

For those interested in the facts and figures they are:

“Rents in the South East and East Anglia reached the highest recorded levels in quarter 3 of 2014 at £1,254 and £947 per month respectively,

This was an increase of £18 in the South East in each month of the quarter, and £11 each month in the quarter for East Anglia. In Scotland, average rents hit record levels of £727 per month, an annual rise of £67.

The average rent across Great Britain increased by £66 per month compared with the same quarter last year to reach £1,034 per month in quarter 3 2014.

The average advertised rent in London has risen £118 in quarter 3 when it was £2,452 per month.”

Regular reader Penny Anderson will be heartened to read in the same article:

“North of the border, in Scotland, landlords have benefited from a significant rise in the average advertised rental price.’”

Calm down dear…..think of your blood pressure.

Cat included

It seems that people will do anything to maximise their income these days.

The Telegraph carried a short piece about Australian couple Michael and Fran Percevale who threw their cat into the overall house price and got an extra £76,000 on the offer for an already housebroken family moggy.

That must be some kind of record as the most expensive cat in the world. Why didn’t the purchasers just pop down Pets at Home and spend £30? [I wonder what the cat thought about it? Ed]

As readers will know I prosecute landlords for harassment and illegal eviction for a local authority in London. In 25 years I’ve been involved in thousands of allegations and complaints but I never expected to see a council involved in it.

Southwark Shame

The Independent this week ran an interesting piece about Southwark Council, which is the borough I live in, whose housing officers unlawfully conspired to evict a Sudanese refugee and destroy his belongings.

This is the sort of thing that I get involved with where the landlord is called ‘Ron’ and has a broken nose and a pair of blood stained pliers in his coat pocket, not a public servant.

Get this:

“All his possessions, including his passport, credit cards, furniture and computer equipment containing several years of research and personal material, were removed on the day of the eviction and destroyed in a waste disposal facility.”

I’d have been straight into court on that one. Which is where Southwark ended up. The High Court Judge commenting:

“ (The) housing officers entered into a conspiracy to “harm” the man, known only as AA, by securing his eviction from his flat in Peckham, south London, and then conceal their actions from investigators.”

Southwark’s press office managed to cobble together this rather staggering understatement:

“We got things very wrong”

Ha-ha Really???

The council originally offered the tenant £6,400 in compensation but later, as the article states rather mysteriously, they “Settled out of court”. Bet it was a lot more than £6,400. Perhaps add an extra ‘0’ on the end?   [Nearly Legal also ran a post on this story here – Ed]

A smile at the end

What made me smile this week? The homework given to me by my guitar teacher, to learn all the chords to ‘Stormy Monday’ by T Bone Walker.

It’s a standard 12 bar blues except all the chords are jazzed up 9ths and augmented versions. But I pulled it off even though my fingers snapped off in the process. Check out a version here