[Ben Reeve Lewis is suffering from landlords revenge this week …]
Ben does ballet
At the end of last week I was attending a property where a Rogue landlord, renting two large houses out to nearly 20 tenants had been hotwiring the electricity supply off of the street mains.
EDF cut him off under a warrant two weeks before but he simply reconnected it, so they sent the heavy mob around with a pneumatic drill to dig up the road, cut the cables and weld them over to prevent him doing this again. [But what do the tenants do now? Ed]
We have been trying to get this guy, who has 52 properties in 7 London boroughs, all wired up the same way for quite a while now.
In my joy at the fact that we actually have managed to do something positive on the case I tripped the light fantastic out of the front door and promptly ended up in casualty with a grade 2 sprain of my ankle. Landlord’s revenge.
So I am trying to type this with my leg raised, looking as if I am frozen in the middle of a particularly stressful ballet move.
But enough of that, what has been going on out there this week?
Farewell to Alison
I feel that in the last few months I have been overly harsh on Shadow Housing Minister Alison Seabeck, chiding her for never having any ideas about the housing crisis or failing to challenge Grant Shapps in the way a shadow minister should but now she has been moved on maybe its time for me to look back at her time in post at some of the things she did well.
For instance, there was that time…..………….er,………….hang on, let me think a sec………….AH!!!,……er no, ……….hmmmmm…..
The words ‘Sadly’ and ‘Missed’ are perhaps the oddest coupling since John McCrirrick and Joan Bakewell. OK I know that never happened but what a surreal thought. I’ll have to go and poke out my mind’s eye.
Suffice to say her tenure in office was about as illustrious as my 1 day stint as a teenager handing out leaflets on the tube for the 3 Musketeers film, dressed in full swashbuckling attire (I was actually wearing Michael York’s costume). My leafleting partner and I decided it would be amusing to have a sword fight at Oxford Circus tube station and were promptly arrested and sacked.
Courtesy of gawping tourists, somewhere in Japan there will be around 50 faded photographs of me dressed as a cavalier being thrust into the backseat of a police car in handcuffs. Perhaps a more noticeable exit than Ms Seabeck’s
I digress.
A new shadow housing minister
Fanfare and a big hands up though for her replacement Jack Dromey, Labour MP for Erdington. Property Newshound ran a nice short potted intro to Mr Dromey this week and at first sight it does look more promising.
Even back as far as April he has been pushing for rights of tenants and housing benefit claimants, so he at least seems to have some empathy with housing issues.
In an interview this week with the ever reliable Inside Housing he pledged to push housing up the political agenda so it takes centre stage, which is about time.
Return of Son of the Right to Buy
Last week Grant Shapps announced the rejuvenation of that old Thatcher favourite the Right to Buy Scheme nicely covered in The Independent. The fly in the ointment of the original scheme wasn’t so much in the right to buy itself but the prohibition on councils using cash made to build replacement homes, which is a big factor in our current housing shortage.
The new cuddly, caring Tories of the 21st century are specifically recreating the scheme with an intention to use revenue from sale to build new properties, Shapps announcing that 1 home will be built for every one sold off.
But there seems to be a major problem with the scheme. The government will still retain 75% of receipt from sale leaving very little to actually build a new home with. John Bibby, director of housing for Lincoln City Council pointed out on website 24 Dash that typically the sale of a 3 bedroom house in his area, after handing over 75% to government would leave them with £16,800 to build a new one.
Mr Bibby goes on to talk about how councils who still retain their own housing stock agreed to take on a pooled share of the national housing debt in return for being able to keep 100% of rent receipts and take control of finances locally and the right to buy throws this up in the air. He said
“Stock retaining authorities agreed to take on billions of pounds of debt collectively in exchange for local control of local resources. We have spent months consulting our communities, putting business plans in place and balancing the books based on debt and RTB levels. With just five months to go, that is now thrown up in the air.”
The same story is also covered in Inside Housing.
Inside housing
A word about this website. Inside Housing has been around for years in magazine format and is standard reading when you work in a councils or housing associations, it is where most of the industry jobs get advertised (and you can see the salaries that directors get….phew!!!) but I am finding it becoming an essential source of information on housing matters generally and will heartily recommend it to landlords and tenants wanting to know what is going on at policy level and how it will impact on us all.
Most notably I am becoming a fan of a forum member known as F451 whose comments are very well informed and interesting to read. I have no idea who they are but way to go mate.
Robbie and Jason
On a more trivial tip the excellent and amusing property blog Rat & Mouse (cockney rhyming slang for house if it isn’t self evident) who are well worth a regular read this week reported that Robbie Williams and Take That band mate Jason Orange are vying for the same central London swanky apartment. What worries me is the housing benefit cap. I mean, how are they going to afford it come January 2012? Even the rich suffer!
Gnome story
And I will end this news round with my favourite story of the week which was in ‘Estate Agent Today’ where Somerset resident Paul Urch sold the house belonging to his deceased father and promptly went off to France.
The new owner moved in and told him to remove the handful of garden gnomes he had left in the garden. Being in France he couldn’t oblige so the new owner sent him a bill for £160 to have them deported and is pressing for court action for recovery of the fee.
Some people have too much time on their hands.
And speaking of sitting around with too much time on their hands I’ll bid a fond farewell and hope that by next Friday I’ll have stopped walking like Blind Pugh and will be able to report on some decisive verbal fencing between Dromey and Shapps. Lets hope they don’t get arrested and sacked. [Get well soon Ben! Ed]
Ben Reeve Lewis
Ben has started Home Saving Expert, to share his secrets to defending people’s homes from mortgage repossession Visit his blog and get some help and advice on mortgage difficulties and catch up with him on Twitter and check out his free report “An Encouraging note on Dealing with your Mortgage Lender” and have it sent right to your inbox.
Forgot to answer Tessa’s point there about what happened to the tenants. Nothing.
This particular landlord owns 52 properties in 7 boroughs that we know about. He is a people trafficker with, as far as we can work out, over 200 tenants, all with no recourse to public funds, there will be the odd student in there and those with some form of exceptional leave to remain but most will be illegal immigrants, mainly from West Africa, where the landlord is also from. You know that most are illegal because whenever we do a visit people leap over fences or suddenly have to be somewhere else urgently. This means they cant come and complain to us about how they are being treated.
The thing is he charges them all rent inclusive of bills, which of course he doesnt pay because he has hotwired the properties. Cables come straight from the street and there is a main fuse with a massive piece of copper wire in it, which means it will never overload and blow, instead, the house takes the load.
EDF get warrants to disconnect and 2 days later he has re-connected.So far 1 house has caught fire, luckily nobody was killed. His properties go into LPA receivership from time to time, while he shuffles around his finances. The receivers seal the properties up with Site-Ex grills and 2 days later they are down and the property is tenanted again.
Now before anyone jumps in with “Yeah but have you tried…..”. over the past 2 years we have been working in a combined team of Me, our fraud team, EDF fraud team, the Met Police and Serious Organised Crime Agency and yet we still cant physically find him, despite pooling all our combined resources and looking into the individual laws that each party could use.We have his bank account details, his vehicle registration numbers but it is like he doesnt exist. And I’m not even telling you a fraction of what I know. Trust me, when we get him it will be a very long article.
And guess what? He is only one of several dodgy landlords and agents we are currently chaisng around the borough until we are blue in the face. But still, why bother regulating them eh Grant?