Nearly one million people fall victim of landlord scams

Tenants - use a reputable ARLA letting agent - preferably one that has been reommended to you by other tenants. This will protect you from the sharks.

But then landlords need protecting from the army of delinquent tenants too

Some of the landlords are going to get a nasty shock when the new housing benefit rules come in. It might have the effect of reducing rental rates.

It might be useful to know how many benefit in the last year are 8 weeks in arrears bynot paying landlords rent paid to them by L/A.at least 15% by my exprerience

But don't forget - houses are not free, they have to be bought and maintained ..

Well, we are landlords, and we do everything ourselves; no agents and we organise all repairs, maintenance, improvements, etc ourselves. We do everything by the book. We are very flexible to help tenants and I don't think we should be ruled out by caution about rogue landlords. We try to assess prospective tenants by meeting them. If you are a tenant unsure of your prospective landlord why not ask the landlord if you can contact the previous tenant.? In my view many agents charge far too much.

For the sake of balance It is about time shelter exposed tenants scams of which there are plenty. Personaly I would avoid the rented market altogether either as tenant or landlord

I was in favor of Landlord Register I know it was unpopular with most landlords but I do feel it would help in this sort of sitution

A good Landlord has nothing to fear of registration it could be done through the National Landlords association or similer and give confadance to tenants

I meet Landlords and most are good folks but we will always get the bad ones its part of life

as for Johathan re LHA I think your views are very short sighted its the Teanats who will suffer when LHA is cut we have a huge houseing shortage in the UK

I dont take LHA Tenants because its crap basicly I could rent out my properties 3 times over and not to LHA tenants

You get more rogue tenants than rogue landlords. They lie to get in, pretending they have a job when they are on benefit, say they dont smoke when they do.Some moonlight with every last vestige of furniture, fitting etc, even down to the boiler on the wall. Somer install prostitutes, but mainly they just abuse and damage everything and rely on the length of time it takes to get them evicted to not pay any rent. Friends of mine had to remove and burn all the furniture after getting the tenents out after they had urinated in the wardrobes etc. Its not all rogue landlords.

Letting and managing agents are not necessarily unsoiled in this scenario, we have recently as landlords having paid large management fees ended up being handed back a totally trashed flat from tenants, only to discover that the letting agents despite charging had totally inadequate check in check out info, inspection records to even get close to holding water with DPS...it took 2 months of solid effort with this Central London "Solid" agent to force them to compensate ....the scam is legally you are often paying fees for services neither you or the tenants get!

We have been landlords since the mid 80's with a small portfolio of both commercial and domestic properties. We manage the properties ourselves. We always use a referencing agency and then get the rent and legal expenses insured. We don't collect a deposit, but use an insurance scheme to cover tenant damage.

Nevertheless we have had the tenant who completed the referencing form with 'no adverse credit history or CCJ's'. He had a £4000 court order made against him 10 days previously.

Finally the drug dealer who appeared perfectly straight, referenced correctly; then burgled the flat below for drug money. When we eventually evicted him he threatened me with a knife in the back.

Where are all these Rachmann type landlords?

It's good that Shelter are drawing attention to the ongoing issue of rogue landlords in the private sector.

I live in a block of 22 flats and the majority of them are owned by leaseholder landlords that in the main, come under the description of 'rogue'.

Private landlords campaigned successfully against the introduction of a landlord register, with their main arguments centering around the fact that the good landlords would feel 'penalised' and there was already far too much red tape impacting on their ability to 'get on with the job of being landlords'.

On the one hand, the professional landlords that belong to a trade association and have accreditation may well have a point when they refer to 'red tape'. Having said that though, the actual number that do one or the other (or both) is a tiny percentage of the actual numbers of landlords operating as such.

On the other hand, had a basic licence been implemented by now, tenants would have got used to asking for it to be produced and, as suggested by others, the licence number could have been used in relation to all activities carried out by landlords.

A licence would also have dealt largely with the issue of visibility, because the current situation allows the so-called 'rogues' to be as invisible as they like. This is also something that Dr Rugg drew attention to in her Review.

It is also totally unrealistic to simply have to wait for everyone to voluntarily join the likes of the NLA and the RLA and to gain accreditation.

The issue of rogue landlords also now seems to be of interest to the NLA which is no bad thing but is this simply an exercise in improving perception of the PRS rather than anything actually being done?

I ask because the PRS is being touted by some as virtually the 'saviour' of the current housing situation. Surely though an increase of tenants being forced to rent is not the same as providing a well managed rental market of choice whatever the market conditions?

I would also point out that even if 'rogue' landlords are in a minority, that minority can be anything up to 49%!

Kind Regards

Miss Sharon Crossland AIRPM

Leasehold Life

my son and his co tenant have just paid an agent £400:00 as a letting fee, the landlord also had to pay a charge to the agents, easy money or what?agencies in London are a total rip off taking extraordinarily long times to give back deposits, with holding deposits for "damage" which is normal wear and tear and for which the landlord is given a tax allowance and insisting that flats which are perfectly clean need professional cleaning, for which no receipt is ever produced and which is taken out of the deposit. It is time the private market was strongly regulated.

The landlord register would never have got of the ground. The deposit scheme is floundering due to admin problems - so what chance the register.

I had a tenant who paid a deposit - but never arrived for the tenancy. We found another tenant and being good landlords wanted to return some of deposit (less costs) to the tenant.

The deposit scheme couldnt handle this scenario and said we could only return the deposit when the unfullfilled tenancy expired in 12 months time!

Impossible to explian this to the tenant who needed the money.

There are far far far more bad tenants than landlords.

I haved had a few who lefdt owing rent, soiled carpets and rubbish piled up in the back garden.

Fortunately they are in a minority but they are all too common

Labour Red Tape Laws on Lettings has done nothing to rid the business of the rogues but just adds to the costs of honest fair minded and reasonable landlords.

I often think it's April 1st when Shelter issue some of their press releases. They are very good at creating publicity bubbles out of nothing. Read the press release properly. They only surveyed 2234 people! If they'd announced that as the headline figure, they wouldn't have got a column inch anywhere so they extrapolate to produce 'a million!'. Look at 2 of the alleged 5 scams. 'Let and Run' and 'Receipt Rip Off'. Neither can be blamed on landlords. Would Shelter accuse the police if a criminal impersonated a police officer?

Like many publicity seekers, they don't care about the damage they do. They know a good story needs a victim and a villain so they demonise landlords. Of course there are some good tenants and of course there are some bad landlords but headlines are not written when dog bites man. Although Shelter label themselves as 'the housing charity', they don't actually do what they say on the tin. They are a publicity seeking organisation who desperately need to generate funds to pay their own salaries.

Keen to know more about insurance schemes in place of deposits. Our experience is that no deposit = no insurance as all the schemes we have seen require a deposit before they will insure us. Also heard an agent mutter recently about a court case finding that some types on no deposit schemes are to be treated as deposits - anybody got any more info on this?

Hi, i'm Gareth MD of flatshare website FlatMateRooms.co.uk, the flatshare market is one market is most prone to scams, mainly via western union, remember one thing if something sounds to good to be true it normally is. and another good way to spot some fraud members is they only leave an email address not a phone number, for more information see this section on scams http://www.flatmaterooms.co.uk/advice/3-tips-to-prevent-scams-and-keeping-you-safe-online

Same here as Dislexic

I do not take tenants on LHA or housing benefit as they are far too high risk and the current system means I cannot get paid as the rent is paid direct to the tenant who will then give it to their local betting office / pub / drug dealer rather than me. A massive fraud of public money intended for housing, in my opinion, yet this is ignored by Govt and media

I can easily rent my places out to private sector tenants for the full asking rent and more ten times over due to very strong rental demand. So LHA will go to the back of the queue.

Atheist

As an unaffected observer, stand back and look at the problem.

Landlords and Letting Agents are not in this business for altruistic reasons, they are in business to make money, and in this situation mainly out of people who cannot afford to buy.

Now one of the main reasons they cannot afford to buy is, that people with money buy the available housing at an inflated price, with the idea of making more money out of people with less.

It's a funny old world, but not looked at from the point of view of those on low incomes.

Atheist has a point but not all landlords are the same. Some just wanted a safe home for their savings while they tried living in another country. They wanted a good tenant at a reasonable rent. In our case we found a perfect tenant who has been there six years and looks after the place as if it were her own. I went into this fearing the worst and was delighted with the outcome.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of Shelter's approach, the bottom line is landlords are a business, and are therefore expected to act professionally.

Tenants may well rip off landlords but it's landlords that have access to government via their associations, not tenants who don't have the equivalent.

I work for the Directors of the company that own our freehold and I have been involved first hand with trying to rectify the problems caused by bad landords with equally bad tenants.

What interests me the most however is the fact that landlords are eager to press for letting agents to be licenced and for LHA to be paid to them directly. This is because fraudulent activity negatively impacts on them and whilst that is perfectly understandable that they should do so, they are less eager to welcome anything that would benefit others, (i.e. licencing).

In fact Mr Shapps was so eager to please landlords that he not only didn't move forward with the basic proposals from Dr Rugg but he also threw out the baby with the bathwater by not licencing agents (lettings and managing) either.

I find this really strange as both the PRS and the leasehold sector are inextricably linked.

Kind Regards

Miss Sharon Crossland AIRPM

Leasehold Life

From my experience I wouldn't accept the suggestion above that there are more bad tenants than bad landlords and as for the deposit protection scheme, students beware! Where there are several of you as joint tenants your landlord will identify a lead tenant who is authorised to act on behalf of you all, your deposit in their hands so don't expect to see your deposit back without a fight if you fall out with the lead tenant or they trash their room etc.

I'm a landlord only because I couldn't sell a few years ago. Had a couple of tenants, and found that fostering good relations with the tenants pay dividends, although, from first hand contact with others in the 'trade' most definately a few landlords are heartless moneygrabbers, it's also true that some tenants don't deserve to go anywhere near a rented property. These are both in the monority.

The shelter 'report' is biased in it's opinions, and flawed in its mathematics - I bet it find's it's way into the gutter press quite easily!

How about the 1001 Scams that tenants use to defraud bona fide landlords like myself and many of my colleagues, who are offering good housing at a reasonable rents to tenants.

The survey you take is very one sided and suggests that most landlords are corrupt and trying to take advantage of their tenants (customers), when in fact the opposite is true.

Your survey would be far more credible if you also took a survey of the dodgy tenants that pervade the buy 2 let market and are stiffing the landlords they rent from....

This article is a joke and a smear to those of us reputable landlors in the prs.

Point1- If you hand over money to a stranger without evidence of identity and their right to let then you are a fool

Point 2- How can you be duped into debt? Every cost issue must be documented somewhere on paper otherwise it's not going to stand up in court.

Point 3- I don't get this one at all. If a good faith deposit is taken (which I insist on to deter timewasters) then whats the problem with accessing the funds?

Point 4- For me I operate a strict policy of no guarantor no tenancy. I have lost tens of thousands over the years to tenants who rack up a bill for arraers, damage, court costs etc and walk away- you try and find a value in taking a benefit tenant to court for expenses. I can be more flexible and let to Lha if someone else is backing them otherwise they would not get homes so easily. Also the guarantor would never have to pay for anything that cant be justified- rental arrears need to be proved if being claimed for. Delapidations need to be proved with inventories etc. Without this a landlord would be laughed out of court.

Point 5- If the deposit was not protected then the tenants are laughing all the way to the bank! A fine of 3x the deposit taken plus the deposit returned is the mandatory fine. How can they go wrong??

Stop the landlord bashing, pull back the nanny state and let people take responsibility for their lives and let us run our businesses in peace. There is more than enough legislation and regulation to cover all tenants rights- and they only have to ask help organisations to ensure their rights are being protected.

By the way I don't even want to tell you the multiple tens of thousands i have lost with LHA being stolen before I insisted on guarantors.

Landlord register? A tenant register is more applicable.

Amen to the above post

Rogue landlords can be avoided by taking a few simple steps.

1) Ask for photo ID eg their driving licence they will have their home address on it.

2) Ask if the landlord is accredited or a member of a landlord association

3) Get proof that they actually own the property they are renting

4) Take care with letting agents since just as there are rogue landlords there are rogus letting agents out there also.

5) Tenants who have found that their deposit is not put into an approved scheme to claim 3 x the deposit off the landlord

Really what is needed is for all landlords however small to be either registered with an approved landlord association or the local council and a system putting in place where a tenant can quickly and easy verify that the landlord is who they say they are this may mean accreditation of all landlords which is a good thing.

I think it is a case of bad apples. But bad apples can be quite damaging to the reputaion of landlords and until the good landlords disown the bad ones then you are fair game. We have had five landlords who all behaved honourably and returned our deposit in full. However, the one other wanted to keep £140 of our deposit for no good reason and when we complained he counter-sued for £2500 - to decorate his whole house. He was on the Sunday Times Rich list, owned hundreds of houses etc. But he seemed to be able to get away with this - Small Claims Court went with his counter claim - even though he lied througbh his teeth about having to redecorate the house! He ended up on BBC watchdog. The problem is, if this guy owns 900 proporties and behaves in this manner then it takes a few hundred good landlords to make up for his antics alone!

Hello Anthony. I'm sorry to hear about this. I think the only way to avoid issues like this is to have a detailed inventory that includes a video of the whole house, inside and out and both landlord and tenant get a copy of it.

Its very difficult to avoid a bad landlord - just as it is a bad tenant.

No amount of regulation will change this, so people need to use their common sense and accept this as risk which has to be delt with.

Shelter should also realise that without the Private rented sector, a lot more people would be homelesss.

#Timothy Burton.

Thank you. It is so rare to have a reasoned response.

#phil101

Your third sentence---- What a ridicules statement. If it were not for the money grabbing people buying up houses at a inflated prices, to let to less fortunate people at usually inflated rents. house prices would fall dramatically, and many more of the less fortunate would be able to buy, probably at a lower mortgage rate

Atheist - sorry you need to understand basic s.

BTL and BTL lending is only a small segment of the market .Its influence is therefore somewhat limited

What has driven house prices up is the average homeowner’s ability to borrow well beyond their means through the availability of cheap credit.

House prices may well fall, but this will restrict lending further and "less fortunate people" simply won’t be able to borrow at all. House price falls benefit no one - except those who can purchase with cash - i.e. the money grabbing people you seem to despise.

Also, if you are going to call someone ridiculous - you need to learn how to spell the word.

Advice to all would be landlords .Take great care over picking your client tenant. Generally if you buy to let pick an up market area, always independantly check out the CV of applicants. Stick to people with serious jobs and careers, and dont be put off because they only want one year whilst they look around to buy. These make the best and most reliable tenants Avoid the over ambitious and over demanding. Make sure they are happy with the property and are not going in against a background of stress. Establish a good friendly relationship, Believe me it makes all the difference.

#phil101

So you have found out that I am not a very good typist. so you score 1.

I have no idea when you entered this world.

But I can tell you the rapid icrease in house prices commenced when a certain government insisted that Councils sell off their affordable rented housing, at well below market value.

Once they were able to sell these new house owners, realizing they had something of greater value, than the money they paid, decided it was time to leave the Council estate and get into the private sector, the people in the private sector,wishing to upgrade and now seeing many eager buyers coming on to the market,were keen to sell, with the aid of keen Estate agents able to obtain inflated values and so on up the ladder.

The added problem was Banks and indeed Building Societies too eager to lend money to people that they knew full well would have great difficulty to repay their mortgage.

Now I am quite happy for you to correct my spelling, as it would seem that you are well able to do that at least.

I am surprised that the national landlords association or some other body on behalf of landlords doesn't organise a register of tenants with ID details, tenancy history etc etc similar to the credit reference agencies. It would take time to build up, but it would be a start. Over time hundreds of thousands of people would be on it and landlords would more easily be able to assess the risks associated with potential tenants.

I might be missing something here but isn't the campaign to remove rogue landlords?

No the game has changed - the campaign is to remove rogue tenants.

THE LETTING MARKET IS A COMPLEX PLACE CATERING FOR ALL KINDS OF PEOPLE WHO HAVE HUNDREDS OF DIFFERENT REQUIREMENTS. tHE DECISION MAKING PROCESS CAN BE COMPLEX AND THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR THE LANDLORD MAKING CONSIDERED ASSESSMENTS WITH THE FACTS AS THEY STAND. mANY WOULD BE TENANTS HAVE NOT A CLUE ABOUT THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF SIGNING AN AGREEMENT. mANY ARE DESPERATE AND WOULD SIGN ANYTHING TO GET A ROOF OVER THEIR HEADS. A PROPERTY IS THE SAME AS ANY OTHER COMMODITY IT HAS TO BE PAID FOR. THE CAPITAL COST DOMINATES THE RENTAL.. THESE WOULD BE TENANTS DO NOT FIT THE CRITERIA OF THE BULK OF THE LETTING MARKET AND GRAVITATE TO THE UNSCRUPULOUS LANDLORDWITH INFERIOR PROPERTY OR ARE BOGUS. iT IS THE STATES JOB TO HOUSE THESE PEOPLE,BUT AS SOON AS THEY MAKE SOME MONEY THEY WANT THE RIGHT TO BUY,AND JOIN THE REST OF US WHO OWN OUR OWN HOUSE AND WHY NOT?

See my previous comment: Our referencing agency does identify rogue tenants. Thus forewarned we leave them to other, less careful, landlords.

This is always going to be a discussion between the have's (I have a property, you're not worthy to occupy it) and the have-nots (my basic right is a roof over my head). The point is to reach an amicable solution between the two.

After thirty years I reckon we have (nearly) always had a good/very good relationship with ALL our tenants.

Unfortunately a very small minority of ‘bad apples’ who might be landlords or tenants can cause problems and bad feeling in the lettings market. Often frauds such as those described by Shelter are perpetrated by people who don’t even own a property.

Government initiatives like deposit protection, HMO and gas safety regulations aim to protect tenants and help reputable landlords to administer their letting safely. If landlords and tenants use recognised, regulated agents then the kind of fraudulent activity described by Shelter would be stamped out.

Stephen Ludlow,

Director

Ludlow Thompson

Government initiatives are throttling the market for both landlords and tenants. The HMO scheme is appalling giving far too much power to local authorities who often misuse it -in some cases almost any building could be an HMO subject to wholly unnecessary review and interference from bureaucrats whose only purpose is to disrupt and interfere - ever heard of "Common Purpose"?

In my experience Regulated Agents make little or no difference to the outcome for either party - sorry Mr Ludlow.

The TDS increases red tape for honest landlords, dishonest ones don't use it anyway.

This list of 5 landlords scams is misleading. What have points 1 and 3 got to do with landlords?