Tenants Turn To Dirty Tactics As Rent Costs Increase Again -

Sale & Altrincham Advertiser – Wednesday June 22, 2011-06-26 by Jill Burdett

And some people are so desperate for a nice place to live they are gazumping others and paying more than advertised rates.

On the flip side increased pressure on incomes saw one in ten tenants miss or make a late payment of their rent in May.

The average rent in England and Wales was £4 higher in May than in April, according to industry giant LSL, which owns lettings agents, network including chains such as Your Move and Reed Rains.

The typical rent was 4.4 percent higher than a year earlier, but there were significant regional variations, it said. “The rocketing cost of living, combined with on-going difficulty first-time buyers are experiencing in obtaining a mortgage, is increasing the number reliant on rental accommodation”, said David Newens, of LSL. “With the fierce competition for homes, rental gazumping is becoming more commonplace and properties are being let beyond asking price, putting further upwards pressure on the market. For tenant, unable to buy, renting is becoming less affordable as demand booms. Rents are increasing at twice the rate of wages”.

LSL calculated that 11.5 percent of UK rental payments were unpaid or late in May.

William Jordan is from Jordans Lettings Agency, which handles properties across south Manchester and Cheshire. He said his offices were experiencing huge demand for rental properties but that they were not seeing gazumping. He said, “we do not work like that. It all comes down to systems and ensuring you do things properly. When a client agrees a rental with us, we organise the paperwork and the fees quickly to ensure things proceed smoothly and quickly. The same with rental arrears. We rarely have tenants who have fall behind or do not pay and if we do, we have procedures to quickly rectify the situation and keep and un-paid rent to a minimum. But if anything we have seen a slight reduction in arrears. People are making serious decision to rent, know their responsibilities and view it as a longer term situation”.

Rogue landlord lived in £1.3m Hale Barns mansion while renting out death-trap `Victorian slum` flats in Longsight - Manchester

http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/news/s/1422738_rogue-landlord-lived-in-13m-hale-barns-mansion-while-renting-out-death-trap-victorian-slum-flats-in-longsight?rss=yes

Manchester Evening News – 03rd June 2011

A rogue landlord lived a luxury lifestyle in a £1m mansion - while renting death-trap Victorian slums to vulnerable families.

Israr Fazal, 54, is now facing jail after council and fire investigators found a catalogue of catastrophic conditions at five flats on Stockport Road, Longsight.

He ran the flats with son Shahbaz and charged families, mostly foreign nationals with children as young as two-months-old, £100 per week.

But while putting tenant`s lives at risk by leaving them in squalid and dangerous conditions, Israr owned a footballer`s style house worth £1.3m on Brooks Drive in Hale Barns, Cheshire.

Son Shabaz, 30, also lived the high-life in a luxury home on Hale Road in Hale, Cheshire.

The pair were branded `nightmare landlords` by a judge at Manchester magistrates court and council bosses compared the flats to Victorian `slums`.

The court heard how council investigators, acting on a complaint, discovered a series of building damage and serious health and safety failings.

In one flat, rented by a couple with a young child, a first floor landing was littered with discarded furniture, mattresses, beds, fridges and washing machines.

Electric and gas metres were damaged and bare electrical wires fell from a ceiling, which had collapsed.

The flat`s electrics had also been by-passed, the court heard.

Council enforcement officers contacted the fire service and their investigations discovered no fire alarms had been installed and no statutory fire risk assessments had been carried out.

Fire escapes were blocked and there was no means of escape, the court heard.

There was also no emergency lighting in the building.

Warren Spencer, prosecuting for the fire service, called the conditions catastrophic.

Mr Spencer added: “Clearly, in these premises there would have been an increased risk of fire because of the state of the flats.

“The concern of the fire service is that they had no co-operation whatsoever. “The premises contained, at any one time, around 12 people. Some were very young children.”

Laura Raine, prosecuting for Manchester council, said residents reported complaints to Shahbaz but he did nothing.

He also ignored a series of legal notices to improve the conditions and failed to attend meetings.

Ms Raine added: “This landlord has put personal financial gain before the safety of these tenants.

“That is of great concern. Our officers have spent numerous hours on this case and have made numerous inspections. There has been great difficulty in locating exactly who was responsible.”

Israr started the rental business with his son then passed it to him to run due to ill health.

The court heard Shahbaz has leased the properties beneath Naz Cash and Carry Ltd from a private company for five years.

He held a duty to manage them and ensure they were safe.

The council and the fire service, who worked together to bring the prosecutions, said legal and investigative costs since the flat`s conditions emerged in 2006, topped £14,000.

Shahbaz, who is also known as Mohammad Ali and Mohammad Khan, pleaded guilty to four charges brought by Manchester council concerning housing conditions and nine charges brought by the fire service.

Israr, who was convicted and fined earlier this year for food hygiene offences at a separate cash and carry in Longsight, admitted six offences brought by the fire service.

Both men also pleaded guilty to an offence under the Bail Act after arriving late at court.

Deputy district judge David Robinson called them `nightmare landlords` who ignored fire safety regulations and said their actions deserved greater punishment than he could impose in a magistrates` court.

He told them: “Your behaviour towards your tenants was shameful. You have shown contempt to their safety and well-being. You clearly have contempt for the law. “You placed a large number of people at risk, including children.”

Manchester councillor Paul Andrews said: “It is absolutely shocking that a landlord in 21st century Manchester is content to let a family live in this kind of squalor, when he is living content in Hale Barns surrounded by rich footballers.

“Slum landlords should be a thing of the past and I hope this serves as a warning to others who think they can rent out revolting properties and get away with it.”

Both men will be sentenced at Manchester crown court on June 29.

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Warning over Private Landlord Scams

MSN MONEY - UPDATED 13/09/2010 - 11:04 

Hundreds of thousands of people have been the victims of scams carried out by private landlords, a housing charity has warned.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been the victims of scams carried out by private landlords, a housing charity has warned.

Shelter estimates that as many as 946,000 people could have been the victim of a scam while renting a property in the private sector.

Their research showed that one in 50 Britons claimed they had been ripped off by a Landlord over the past three years.

Research carried out by the group uncovered five common scams that rogue landlords were using to get money.

It said in some cases con artists were breaking into empty properties and then renting them out to unsuspecting tenants, who were asked to hand over large sums of money as a deposit and rent, before the fraudster disappeared.

Other cases have involved Landlords billing customers for hidden charges that tenants were never been told about, such as charging a £35 fee for a letter or £90 for a telephone call.

In some cases, Landlords asked people who wanted to rent their property to wire a sum of money to themselves or a friend or relative to show that they could afford the property.

The Landlord would then ask for a copy of the transfer receipt as proof, but would use the code included on the receipt to transfer the money from a holding account to themselves.

Shelter said that although it was a legal requirement for Landlords to put deposits into a tenancy deposit scheme, some were failing to do this, and were then withholding it at the end of the tenancy.

In other cases, Landlords did not demand a deposit but instead asked that a friend or relative of the tenant acted as a guarantor. They then pursued these guarantors at the end of the tenancy for costly repairs to the property.

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BBC Business News - 20th August 2010

Potential first-time buyers are facing rising rents as they wait to raise a deposit for a home, a survey has said.

Landlords raised their rents for the sixth consecutive month as demand increased and supply was squeezed, the poll by LSL Property Services found.

Average monthly rent amounted to £676, although this would pay for renting different-sized properties in different parts of the UK.

A home remains most people`s biggest asset in the UK.

The value of properties judged by house price surveys is under the microscope in a new study.

The Office for National Statistics is monitoring the different, officially-sanctioned house price surveys to ensure they do not give conflicting messages.

`Accurate`

The review was welcomed by one member of the industry.

Robert Bartlett, chief executive of estate agent Chesterton Humberts, said that it would be good to come up with a system that gave a "timely and accurate" indication of house prices in a local area.

"Prices vary enormously from property type and location," he said.

Analysis of the housing market by accountants PricewaterhouseCoopers suggested that there would be a 2% average real rise in house prices between 2010 and 2020.

However, this would represent a lower rate of increase relative to the average real UK house price growth of about 4% per year between 1984 and 2007 and about 3% per year between 1984 and 2010, it said.

Meanwhile, first-time buyers are still having to find a large deposit to get on the property ladder.

"The biggest issue is the lack of funding," said LSL`s managing director David Newnes.

"Is is constraining first-time buyers and investor landlords from coming into the market because of the need for such an enormous deposit."

A number of "accidental landlords" - homeowners who tried to sell but were forced to let instead - were now selling up, reducing the amount of rental property available, he said.

Geography was also a factor in the rental market, with the average rent unlikely to be enough for a property in central London, but possibly enough for a semi-detached home in the Midlands.

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Council house tenants could be ordered to move, says Cameron

By Andy McSmith - The Independent UK - Wednesday 04-Aug-2010 - Page 14

The old maxim that "an Englishman`s home is his castle" will cease to apply to thousands of young families in the near future, if David Cameron has his way.

The Prime Minister believes that new council and housing association tenants should be told that they can occupy their new homes only for as long as those in authority think they need them, after which they will be ordered to move out.

The sort of people who will be forced out of their homes will include the upwardly mobile – who will risk being told that if their income has gone up, they should buy a place of their own instead of paying rent – and couples whose children have grown up and left home.

As Mr Cameron floated the idea during a visit to the West Midlands yesterday, he forecast that it would cause “a big argument”.

He was responding to a mother of two teenagers who told him that she had slept on a blow-up bed for two years because the council could not find adequate housing for her. Mr Cameron implied that the problem was caused by tenants not moving through the housing chain.

“At the moment we have a system very much where, if you get a council house or an affordable house, it is yours forever and in some cases people actually hand them down to their children. And actually it ought to be about need,” he said.

He added that many councils run “swap” schemes to move tenants into homes that suited their needs, but he went on: “There is a question mark about whether, in future, should we be asking, actually, when you are given a council home, is it for a fixed period, because maybe in five or 10 years you will be doing a different job and be better paid and you won`t need that home, you will be able to go into the private sector.

“So I think a more flexible system – that not everyone will support and will lead to quite a big argument... looking at a more flexible system, I think makes sense.” He added that changes to tenancy agreements would apply only to new tenants.

The “big argument” that the Prime Minister foresaw began almost as soon as he had spoken, with critics pointing out that his government plans to push house building down to its lowest level in almost a century, when there are already 4.5 million on housing waiting lists. Next year, it is expected that fewer than 100,000 new homes will be built, for the first time since 1923, because of cuts in public spending. The National Housing Federation has forecast that the cuts will add 350,000 to the already swollen waiting lists.

The Labour MP Nick Raynsford, a former housing minister who chairs Triathlon Homes, a venture building affordable homes in the Olympic village, warned that Mr Cameron’s idea threatens to turn council and housing association estates into “ghettoes” – something which the Work and Pension Secretary Iain Duncan-Smith has warned against.

“If you say that every council tenant who betters himself and increases his income has to leave, then council housing is automatically available only to the poorest and most vulnerable, which would aggravate the problem of ghettoisation that Iain Duncan Smith has highlighted,” he said.

“It is complete nonsense for David Cameron to be blaming council tenants for the housing shortage when the extent of under occupation in social housing is actually much lower than in private properties, and when his government is making the housing shortage worse.”

Kay Boycott, Director of Communications at the housing charity Shelter, warned that the plan might not save as much money as Mr Cameron imagined, because councils would have to hire a large number of extra staff to review tenancy agreements and identify families who had outstayed their need.

She added: “David Cameron came face to face with the sort of human tragedy we see every day at Shelter, with millions forced to live in unacceptable conditions.

“Whilst it is crucial the Government asks questions about how we tackle our growing housing crisis, we do not believe the bigger question in housing policy is security of tenure for new tenants.

“Recent forecasts estimate that housing delivery could fall below 100,000 next year for the first time since 1923. Yet the Prime Minister has sidestepped the fundamental cause of our housing crisis, the desperate lack of affordable housing supply.”

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THE POWER RANGERS (Reference URBANLIFE issue 335 Page 19 - 17/02/10)

By the powers vested in them, Manchester City Council wants to come to the rescue of let down tenants by taking on shoddy landlords

MANCHESTER City Council is welcoming the prospect of new powers to control the spreadof shared rented homes across the city and moves to prevent the worst private landlords from letting homes.

 The council has already sucessfully campaigned to central government for new planning and licensing powers to protect communities and tenants from poor management of properties. This has resulted in powers to licence landlords but only after the Government have approved each scheme.

The Government is now consulting on new powers for landlord licensing - which would mean that the council would be able to establish a licensing scheme using new delegated powers, making it quicker for the council to stop landlords who badly manage properties from renting homes. Manchester City Council executive member for neighbourhood services, Councillor Paul Andrews said: "We have campaingned for a general consent for landlords licensing for some time with sucessive housing ministers and it is great news the Government is entering into this consultation.

"Landlord licesing is already a powerful tool for Manchester City Council in combating the blight of some neighbourhoods caused by bad landlords but these new powers will speed up the process and benefit resident who are having to put up with poor management standards"

 And from April 2010 the council will have a new planning powers to tackle the spread of houses in multiple occupancy - where a number of people live in the same house - which can be a particular problem in areas with a particularly high student population.

The council says it recognises the valuable contribution students bring to the city but argues uncontrolled growth of shared student rented housing can change the character of a community and cause a number of environmental problems.

The new powers will mean the council will be able to control the encroachment of student lets into areas traditionally lived in by families and encourage the development of new managed student accommodation in more appropriate locations. Councillor Richard Cowell added: "The new planning rules will mean the City Council can tackle problems caused by the uncontrolled growth of shared lets and ensure that communities can retain the identity of their neighbourhoods. The growth of student accommodation can be directed to areas that will most benefit communities and allow neighbourhoods to develop in a way that is sympathetic to the needs of everyone".

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BELVOIR BITES BACK (Reference Live Ribble Vally issue 13 Page 194 - Oct 2009)

One of the country`s top letting and management agencies, Belvoir, has slammed a recent Citizen Advice Bureau (CAB) report which claims that tenants are being charged over the odds for a range of inconsistent and unwarranted services.

Belvior, which has an office in Whalley, refutes the report`s findings, saying that not all letting agents are teh same and that the number of "rouge" letting agents who are able to set up without any professional expertise or knowledge about the industry, are in a very small minority.

Mike Goddard, CEO of Belvoir said "The CAB report is not only dammming to lettings professionals who work hard to ensure that everything is done by the books, but also paints a false picture of the practices property lettings and management companies undertakes."

Wtih 73 per cent of those surveyed by the CAB Claiming to be unhappy with the level of customer service received from their letting agent, Goddard draws attention to the fact that the 1,300 tenats who took part in a survey were targeted as potential complaints.

 He said "The CAB aimed the questionnaire at those who have had a bad experience and not provided a voice for tenants who have been well looked by their letting agent.

It is unfair to tar everyone with same brush. There are many companies out there who, like Belvoir, implement and embrace the principles of quality customer care."

According to Mike Goddard, the report`s most common complaints - repair delays, the lack of safeguards for clients` money and tenants experiencing an uncooperative service from their agents, could easily be avoided if all letting agencies adopted a customer-focused approach.

Mike Goddard said "I understand that there are companies out there who may not be working as hard and therefore take advantage of tenants in the process. If this continues there may be a call to further regulate the residential property industry in some way but until this happens".