Landlord in ‘legal first’ crown court appearance over rent arrears harassment

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A landlord has appeared in crown court to confess to harassing his tenant in what is thought to be a legal first.

Matthew Betty admitted conducting behaviour intended to deprive his tenant of her lawful occupation of the property in Kilcooley, Bangor between December 2018 and May 2019.

Following the arraignment at Downpatrick Crown Court in Belfast, Judge Geoffrey Miller QC described it as an unusual case.

He added: “It may well turn out to be the first time in the UK, certainly the first time in this jurisdiction, that a landlord has been brought to the crown court.”

The court heard how Betty, of Ty Pwca Place, Gwent, Wales, turned up unannounced, banged repeatedly on the door, shouted at and intimidated a child who was alone in the house, causing her fear and distress.

Rent arrears

He then encouraged two men to visit the property, where they verbally intimidated and harassed the tenant’s young daughter about alleged rent arrears.

Betty also arranged for NI Water to disconnect her supply, having wrongly advised the firm that the house was unoccupied.

Betty later sent an email to Kilcooley Community Forum headed, ‘Undesirable Tenants/Animal Neglect/Child Welfare Concerns’, and copied it to NI Housing Executive, social services, Landlords Advice NI, North Down Community Network, numerous housing associations and several other government bodies.

Speaking after the hearing, the tenant said she and her teenage daughter were relieved it was finally over so they could start re-building their lives.

Describing Betty’s actions as “two years of hell,” she told The Belfast Telegraph: “I hope this makes a change for private tenants who are going through any kind of trauma with their landlord that they know there is help and without the council, this day would never have happened.”

During the hearing, the prosecution asked to have four other charges lie on file. Betty will be sentenced on 24^th February.

Picture: Belfast Telegraph.

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EICR work required but I have a section 21 problem tenant?

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Where do you stand if EICR work might need doing, but you have a broken relationship with a problem tenant who scared the electrician away and stated no electrical work will be done in the house?

A satisfactory report was given last June with a recommendation to install sockets in bedrooms due to there only being one socket currently in the bedrooms (this has obviously dragged on so long due to covid).

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ISA rates and choice plunge

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Moneyfacts UK Savings Trends Treasury Report data, not yet published, reveals that the expectations of a promising ISA season may well be dashed this year due to continued cuts to ISA rates. The savings market overall contracted month-on-month and product volumes have now reached their lowest recorded levels

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LATEST: Ministers dig deep to fund charging points for renters’ electric cars

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The government is unwilling so far to fund hardship loans for landlords or tenants caught up in the pandemic, but it’s got the cash to extend its electric car charge-point scheme to include rental properties, it has been announced.

Revealed this week, the Electric Vehicle Homecharge Scheme is to now include rented and leasehold accommodation and provide £350 towards a charge-point.

The grant provides a 75% contribution to the cost of one charge-point; the main requirement is that someone owns, leases, or has ordered a qualifying vehicle and has dedicated off-street parking at their property.

At the same time, the Workplace Charging Scheme is being opened up to small accommodation businesses such as B&Bs, which will be able to benefit from new funding.

This aims to boost rural areas and tackle ‘range anxiety’ associated with long journeys, as part of the government’s overall £50 million investment in the green technology.

Transport minister Rachel Maclean (pictured) says: “Whether you’re on the school run or travelling to work, or don’t have access to a private parking space, today’s announcement will bring us one step closer to building and operating a public charge-point network that is affordable, reliable and accessible for all drivers.”

An ongoing consultation suggests simplifying payment at charge-points, meaning that electric vehicle drivers can use contactless payment but don’t have to download an app.

It also seeks to make charge-points more reliable and to force operators to provide a 24/7 call helpline for drivers.

She adds: “This is essential for ensuring costs are fair, for driving competition, and for increasing the confidence of both existing electric vehicle drivers and those considering making the switch.”

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London council fines two landlords £135,000 over dangerous and ‘worst ever seen’ properties

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Two rogue Waltham Forest landlords have been handed huge fines for failing to maintain and licence their properties.

Mohammed Bhatti, aka Mohammed Muqeem Amin, 70, the sole director of Property Ladder London, was fined £75,000 after he admitted 12 charges in relation to breaches of management regulations at houses on High Road in Leyton, as well as failing to license one top-floor flat in the street.

Thames Magistrates Court (pictured) heard that council officers discovered serious problems including a lack of fire alarms, dangerous sockets and blocked drains.

Showers and sinks were cracked and filthy, and access to the top-floor flat was only possible via a dangerous staircase.

Inspectors described it as one of the worst they had ever seen. Bhatti was also ordered to pay £6,949 in prosecution costs with a £190 victim surcharge, within six months.

Failure to licence

At a separate hearing, Balmick Seegolam, 61, of St Georges Road in Leyton, admitted three charges in relation to failing to license HMOs in Canterbury Road and North Birkbeck Road.

After being refused planning permission for an extension at the Canterbury Road address, Seegolam applied for a licence and revealed he already had tenants living there despite it being, in his own words, “small and not in great condition”.

After blaming a previous management agent for the North Birkbeck Road HMOs not being correctly licensed, he suggested tenants were at fault for dangerously unhygienic conditions and blocked hallways that could have posed a risk to life in an emergency.

He was fined £60,000 with costs of £3,366 and a victim surcharge of £190 to be paid within three months.

The judge told him: “You fell well below the expected standard of a reasonable landlord. This is your full-time job – it is therefore imperative that you should be fully aware of the regulations and the licensing regime that you operate under.”

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Brand new series of ‘Nightmare Tenants Slum Landlords’ starts this week

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The long-awaited new series of Channel 5’s ‘Nightmare Tenants Slum Landlords’ launches on Wednesday 17 February at 8pm.  This 10-part series, filmed prior to COVID-19 restrictions, follows the frontline work of letting agents, eviction specialists and lawyers helping landlords chase rent arrears and get their properties back;

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Major build-to-rent developer prepares £500m expansion into London

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Property developer Avanton has unveiled ambitious plans to build 5,000 flats for rent across London in the next two years as part of its big expansion plans for build-to-rent property.

It has put aside a £500 million land fund to target locations including Islington, Southwark, Wandsworth and Wimbledon as part of its expansion into the capital’s lucrative build-to-rent sector. The company already has six sites in London including the Gas Works of the Old Kent Road (pictured, above)

Already an established operator in the residential build-to-sell market, it says there’s a significant lack of high quality, purpose-built, rental stock in relation to demand.

Working alone as well as through joint venture partnerships, the developer plans to spend between £20 million and £100 million per site, building up to 1,000 units on each.

Avanton has already started lining up a large portfolio of build-to-rent projects.

In Richmond, along with partner ICG, it’s working on a £250 million urban-village development on the Homebase site off Manor Road for 453 high quality apartments complete with a pocket-park, retail, community and offices.

On Old Kent Road in Southwark, the firm has consent for the £730 million Ruby Triangle project for 1,414 new homes, of which 50% will be build-to-rent, while it also has a third site earmarked in the London borough of Brent for 500 build-to-rent units.

Sales & marketing director David Ronson (pictured) says: “We are seeking to expand our build-to-rent, mixed tenure and private sale portfolios because, despite the obvious challenges, the property market has been extremely resilient and recovered rapidly last year after the lockdown.

“This year the market sentiment has been cautiously upbeat as the UK has taken a global lead in the vaccine rollout and we see great opportunity at this moment in the property cycle.” 

Read more about build to rent.

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Young investors take up the mantle as buy-to-let landlords continue to abandon ship…

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The stamp duty holiday announced by Chancellor Rishi Sunak last July has enabled a new generation of first-time investors to move in on a property sector where rental supply was declining.

The diminishing availability of rental accommodation, which has accelerated rent levels outside of London to a five-year high, is being balanced by a surge in demand for buy-to-lets from new landlords.

The tax break, which ends on the 31^st of March, unless it is extended for existing progressing sales, as is rumoured, has given a temporary boost to buy-to-let sales. It has, according to The Daily Telegraph, “cleared a financial roadblock” for small-scale landlords, enabling them to take a record market share.

Estate agents Hamptons International’s figures show that around 50pc of new landlord purchases were completed with a mortgage over H2 of 2020. This figure, says Hamptons, is the highest market share recorded since its buy-to-let records began in 2009.

Traditionally, the more mature landlord investor base is dominated by cash buyers, often with an inheritance windfall, or simply because they can’t find similar returns in alternative cash investments. This stalwart group’s market share fell from 58pc in 2019 to around 50pc in the last half of 2020, a drop of 12% since 2017.

Diminishing profits due to recent tax reforms, and an increasing amount of regulatory red-tape, have resulted is a steady divestment by this traditional landlord base. But the influx of new younger landlords, small-scale mortgage dependent first-time investors, many dipping their toes in the market for the first time, is bolstering supply again.

Aneisha Beveridge, of Hamptons, told the The Daily Telegraph:

“The stamp duty holiday has tempted more small and first-time landlords back into buy-to-let, reversing a shift towards portfolio investors.

The swinging tax and regulatory changes first introduced by Chancellor George Osborne in 2016 , including a phased-in tapering of mortgage interest relief, abolition of the wear and tear allowance and a three percent stamp duty surcharge, has encouraged many established landlords to think again, to either sell-up altogether or to sell off some of their portfolios.

“But record low interest rates on cash in the bank combined with the lure of a stamp duty holiday has enticed a new generation of investor, many of whom had no previous landlord experience,” Ms Beveridge says.

According to her, there are now 250,000 fewer rental homes in England than there were in 2017 and the proportion of landlord cash purchases fell in 10 out of 11 regions in Britain between 2019 and 2020.

In many regions in the North, where house prices are lower, it means that there is no benefit for a first-time buy-to-let investor from the stamp duty holiday. Here, prices remain within the nil-rate band. It is in these regions that cash buying landlords still predominate.

Currently, until 31^st March this year, completions on property sales, will save up to £15,000 as the nil-rate band was extended in England and Northern Ireland from £125,000 to £500,000. The tax saving is across the board in residential purchases, except that the 3 per cent surcharge still applies for all second homes and buy-to-lets.

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Compensation for commercial tenant of more than 14 years?

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My tenant has one year remaining of a five year Lease on my commercial premises which he has occupied on a succession of 5-year Leases for 25 years. He owns and operates a Limited Company (registered at his home) but has always signed the Leases as a private individual.

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Rishi Sunak considering 6 week extension to Stamp Duty holiday?

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The Daily Telegraph has reported that the Chancellor is under pressure to avoid the Stamp Duty cliff edge on the 31st of March and is considering a 6 weeks extension to the 12th May to allow completion to take place delayed by conveyancing backlogs.

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