Ben Reeve Lewis Friday Newsround #153

[Ben Reeve Lewis is back …]

Well I’m back in the saddle, after spending a week in a hammock and I’ve already got saddle sores.

Flew into Gatwick at 6:30 and was back at my desk by 8:30 as I have too much to do to take another day off.

By 9:30 I was chasing up new leads on a landlord who has converted a house without planning permission and is running the small units as a brothel and the unauthorised occupation of a property in New Cross which just caught fire after it’s cannabis growing equipment ignited.

Like I’ve never been away!!!!!!!!!!!!! Cabanas, palm trees, cocktails and Alligators; all a distant memory.

Ben bottles the bomb …

In case you are interested I didn’t do the Bomb Bay at Wet n’ Wild, not because I bottled it though.

The queue was too long, the stairs too high for 93 degrees of heat, plus we had endless free Blue Hawaiian Cocktails in a Tiki Bar which seriously hampered my ability to actually get out of the hammock (see pic).

So what have the little scamps of housing land been up to while I was away?

Something for the tenants

Nearly Legal gave us some useful information backing up the Superstrike v Rodriguez case from last year.

Superstrike you may recall was the case that established the fact that even deposits taken before the introduction of deposit protection legislation in 2007 need to be protected when it rolls over into a periodic tenancy after April 2007.

The judge in Gardener v. McCusker, a case in Birmingham County Court, used Superstrike to come to the same conclusion, emphasising the point that prescribed information also needs to be re-served.

As Nearly Legal state:

All in all, ouch for the landlords and encouragement for tenants (and their lawyers) to take this point.

Before you huff and puff about the iniquity of it all, bear in mind that you lot (landlords) had the section 21 decision of Spencer v. Taylor in December as your early Christmas present, allow us lot (tenants) Superstrike and McCusker as our little scrap of salvation.

Getting grim in Germany

I read a lot periodically about renting in Germany, as if it is a kind of renting ‘Wunderland’, the tenants version of a mythical island of permanent sunshine.

But even Renter Girl who normally champions German renting reigned back a little of her enthusiasm in an article that grew from conversations with German friends

Citing problems with rigorous credit checks that automatically exclude people from the market, forcing them to lie on forms just to keep a roof over their heads.

Penny writes:

“If Germans have even the slightest red mark on their all important credit rating, as is the case here in the UK, it’s fatal to their application”.

She goes on to point out:

“Friends who own companies or work at larger firms are asked to provide written references on headed notepaper or otherwise support claims of working full time.

More extremely, some forge wage slips and conjure up bank statements, or back up invented and inventive claims of long term, well paid freelance contracts.”

If this sounds out of order, bear in mind that the methods of forgery utilised are simply to ensure a roof over the person’s head. If you were in that position what would you do? Be honest and sleep on a friends sofa? Or lie and have a home?

I’ve always thought credit checks aren’t worth much in real terms. A bad credit rating isn’t necessarily the sign of an impecunious nature but can simply arise from, as Penny points out, a freelancer’s income or past financial problems that no longer exist for an otherwise solvent tenant.

Anyone who has spent time being self employed, as I continue to do in part, will know that managing your income requires constant balancing acts to redress the ups and downs which may affect your credit rating while in other ways they are completely ok.

Conversely a person passing a credit check with flying colours is no guarantee that they won’t be a nightmare tenant.

On the other hand Renter Girl does highlight longer tenancies for our Teutonic cousins and the fact that tenants can put pictures up and decorate as they see fit so it isn’t all bad.

As the excellent German Stand Up comedian Henning Wehn says:

“With stand-up in Britain what you have to do is bloody swearing. In Germany, we don’t have to swear. Reason being, things work”

Don’t mention the war …

Staying with the dastardly Germans, and another ‘Henning’, I read in the Guardian of property investor Henning Conle, who has bought £2 billion worth of prime London property, including department store Libertys

Apparently in Hamburg he owns 2,500 flats, where he is known intriguingly as “The Phantom”, not because he is a super hero but for the sole reason that when repairs need doing he is nowhere to be seen.

One of his ex tenants Annette Kloverkorn said of living in one of his properties:

“The state of the apartment was a catastrophe: about eight wallpapers had been stuck on top of one another, plaster was drizzling from the ceiling. Every year, Conle asked for about 100 Deutschmarks for repairs which were never made.”

And the article digs deeper, reporting:

“Thirty years later, the same building is still in disrepair. One current tenant complained about rotting window frames, broken door locks, woodworm-infested staircases and a rat infestation”.

I am desperately resisting the urge to make comments along the lines of “What Hitler never finished” or “Why goose-step up Whitehall when you can simply buy it?” but I am of course above such predictably British stereotyping and refuse to be so childish.

Why live in London when you can have your own island?

And finally my favourite article of the week came via the Huffington Post, titled “Five private islands you can buy for less than a London home”

You can buy entire islands in Greece, Ireland and the Bahamas.

Admittedly they aren’t talking about your average poky Barrat (Hell) home in Woolwich, they are actually comparing Mayfair and Kensington style properties but it comes to something when London property prices start to outstrip millionaires retreats.

In the next couple of years I wonder what else will become more affordable than living in London? A fleet of private jets? Owning Australia?

Gods Own Country beckons

Speaking of which my sister recently informed me that when we lived in the magic land of Oz as children (£10 Poms in the 1960s) we got naturalised as Ozzie citizens but when we returned 3 years later we never reverted back into Brits.

So there is a distinct possibility that I may be eligible for an Australian passport, with the all the working and residential rights it brings with it.

Bye, bye aggressive, expensive, filthy London and G’day Melbourne perhaps.

I’ll ponder on this possibility while I sew corks onto the brim of my bowler hat.

See ya next week.