[Ben Reeve Lewis has been thinking about celebrity landlords …]
Celebrity landlords have been on my mind this week.
Celebrity landlords
There are some whose names are well known beyond regular surfers of housing news stories like me and are even remembered by those with only a passing interest.
Fergus Wilson is one such, the controversial Kent landlord who has some interesting views on renting and immigration.
MP Philip Davies, especially well known for his resistance to any attempts to regulate the renting businesses who abuses his parliamentary position whilst displaying a frightening level of cynicism in using procedures to defeat housing bills that might impact on his income.
Peter Rachman of course, the not so pantomime villain/grande dame of celeb landlords, fortunately dead.
Nicholas Hoogstraaten, about whom I will say nothing for obvious health reasons.
And also Andrew Panayi of North London who seems to fill up more and more column inches and documentary time by the month.
Mr Panayi in Court
Mr P has just been ordered to pay £70,000 under the Proceeds of Crime Act for continuing to rent out a storage basement as living accommodation despite the council slapping a notice on it, saying it was “Unsatisfactory and substandard”
It appears that £70,000 was a bit of a result given that Islington Council were initially seeking a confiscation order of £103,000, the equivalent of 14 years back rent but I’m sure he can wear it. His company Ploughcane filed accounts last year revealing net assets amounting to £17m and profit of £2.3m.
As good as you can expect?
It wasn’t the penalty that shocked me, nor the fact that he was renting out a storage room with no windows, which I have seen on countless occasions, but the quote of an ex tenant:
“It wasn’t a fantastic place to live and there were damp issues but a lot of places are not that nice, and that is the reality of the rental situation in London at the moment”.
The depressing acceptance that this is a good as you can expect in modern London when you haven’t got much money.
The notion that the most desperate simply have to put up with poor conditions.
I’ve encountered this mind-set before.
One delegate asked me at a conference last week if all this rogue landlord enforcement I was so enthusiastic about was always a good thing, given the desperate need for accommodation of any kind.
She was playing devil’s advocate…..I hope, we never got to finish the conversation.
Sleeping on the street or a damp, unhealthy, windowless box?
I think probably the box, but to my mind any landlord offering out properties like that should find no income stream from it. Being fined all of the rent as is the case with Mr Panayai seem fitting and should be standard.
Sexism in the workplace
Property Industry Eye reminded us this week how sexism in the workplace is still thriving with the report of a job ad on Twitter posted by a Cardiff Estate Agent looking for :
“A good looking girl to work in the front office of a property agents”
Apparently MP Harriet Harman got her nickers in a twist over it, pointing the firm at the Equalities Act, which raises the pertinent question, can I say nickers in a twist without running foul of the Act myself?
I think the firm would likely employ someone they thought was ‘Good looking’ whether or not they put it in an advert, so is the offence in saying ‘Good looking’ or actually having it in your mind when taking someone on?
And how do you legislate for what is in a person’s head?
Board women
Staying with women in the workplace I read on the BBC that of the top 100 businesses 25% now have women on the board of directors.
BBC Breakfast news wheeled out Lord Davies, author of a report entitled “Women on boards”, which I confess made me laugh out loud, bringing out my own inner Sid James. Clearly I need flogging into the 21st century.
Rental scams
The BBC also told us this week of the worrying practice of overseas students getting ripped off in online rental scams in being duped into handing over cash for properties which don’t exist.
The sad case of Indian student Chiteisri Devi handed over £2,000 through a facebook connection saying a flat was going in London but she needed to be quick. She arrived to find there was no flat and her bank account had been cleaned out.
In the past few years as an enforcement officer I came across increasing numbers of people fetching up in my office with the same complaint.
Years ago I maybe saw one now and again but recently its been several a week.
You could call people handing over thousands without even viewing a flat gullible and you are probably right but that doesn’t mean they deserve to have all their money nicked, although I’m sure that’s how the scammers justify it to themselves.
As Chiteisri pointed out foreigners coming to the UK are more disadvantaged:
“If you’re an international student and you have to find somewhere else to stay so you can view the property first,”
If you are a scammer you don’t need to get a hit with everyone. Look at those Nigerian 419 scam emails saying ‘God spoke to me in a dream and told me to give you a million pounds. So if you could just let me have your bank details…….”
They look childish but you only have to get lucky once.
Tenants reading this take note. ALWAYS run a land registry check on a property before signing up to find out if the person you are handing your money to is who they say they are. It costs £3.
What made me smile this week
Well mainly it was the look on George Osborne’s face when he had to go on live TV straight after the House of Lords forced a humiliating government climb-down over plans for tax credits.
A kind of mental video I’ve kept re-running in my head all week.
But also check out this astonishing youtube clip from 1941 of ‘Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers’ dancing up a storm in the film ‘Hellzapoppin’ Amazingly the one in the maid’s costume Anne Johnson is now 93 and still teaching dance.
When they start moving like this on ‘Strictly’, I’ll start paying attention (Sorry Tessa, your fave I know).
See ya next week
I reckon your delegate mate has a point Ben.
The consequences of this current spate of landlord bashing is ‘good’ landlords quit or push up their rents and select (discriminate?) only first class tenants. Leaving rogue landlords to fill the demand for less than perfect tenants. Creating more rogue landlords à la Peter Rachman. Same as it ever was.
Cold market reaction to la-la legislation.
You might expect that Mr. Panayi would take some of that tidy profit and invest it into making his properties actually habitable!? But then, Mr.Davies likes to make sure that we continue running after bolted horses instead of locking the stable door.
It’s a travesty that none of Mr.Panayi’s previous tenants are seeing a penny of that pay-out either. Why not?!
When we don’t have enough of something what everyone wants, we ration it. This was done with food in the 2nd world war. It seems that we need rationing of housing in London with a limited of how many square feet each person is allowed to have.
But what if the ration level that is needed to allow everyone to live in London that that wishes to, is less than the room size the housing standards require?
The same thing happened when they Left the White House, sreitos of them stealing the silverware, leaving pictures of their butts in the copy machine, tearing up the Lincoln bedroom (pictures taken of Hollywood people using the furniture as trampolines) ..just basically acting liked the total spoiled brats they are.The Clintons and the Liberal Left is a plague on this country.I do not agree with anything the Clintons did in office and America will be a better place if they were just run out of the country and send Al Gore with them.