Other Posts by Hapless Investor

• Be careful what you wish for 'cos you just might get it
• You can't always get what you want,
• Just when you though it was safe to go back in the water...
• Drying out
• It never rains but it pours
• The hand that rocks the cradle
• Career advice for the uninitiated.
• When the going gets tough...
• Would you Adam & Eve it?
• Reality Bites
• Buy two get one fee!
• The withdrawal method
• Home coming
• A tale of two cities
• The rise of the text sick note, and the email rent avoidance excuse.
• The best laid plans of Mice and Men - and slugs named Nigel
• The cost of property developing
• Mancunian madness
• The story so far

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Manchester and The CPO

By Hapless Investor

The letter from the council had completely thrown us. How could they demolish our house? There had been an address to appeal to before the council submitted its request to national government (which seemed to be a rubber stamp exercise at best). They had made a big point about absentee landlords running the area down and having forced the hand of the council to compulsory purchase the area.

We wrote a long letter of response saying how much we loved the house and the area and that we had bought it looking for a home for ourselves. We said about all the improvements that we had made and we pleaded that they include us who were on the number side of the street that had been condemned to be included in the safe zone that was the even side of the street just mere feet away from our front door.

There were only 5 formal objections to the CPO. Apparently there is big business in speculators buying up run down houses in areas earmarked for CPOs, which is why we had such hassle with the estate agent when we were looking to buy. Speculators find the areas, buy 10 - 20 properties at a time, usually fire damaged or similarly uninhabitable yet cheap and then just sit on them until the CPO comes through.

Because we had objected they sent a surveyor around to the house. And the report came back that the house was uninhabitable.

The panic that went through me at that time

We knew that the management company were about as much use as a chocolate teapot but when we had last seen it the house was definitely inhabitable. We had in fact habited it.

We asked Why, or in fact how it was inhabitable, all the time planning ways of inflicting untold pain on the management company for letting the tenants do this to us and our house.

The report came back saying that there was no inside toilet.

Now there are few things in life I know for sure but failing the idea that a bomb had landed on the house and separated the nice internal bathroom in which I had spent ages laying a new floor and installing a shower screen, from the rest of the house, we definitely had an internal bathroom.

Anyone who knows me is aware of my incredible reticence at being anywhere without indoor plumbing. Camping has long since been outlawed and so there was no way on this planet that I would have bought a house with no indoor toilet.

We explained this to the council, not necessarily including the comment about my issues.

And then after a quite protracted pause, we heard back.  Our house's upstairs layout was arranged in a circle. As you came up the stairs there was no landing as such, more of a big step.  You turned left and you had the master bedroom. You turned right and you had the second bedroom. At the back of the house and adjoined by both bedrooms was the bathroom (still inside the building). But apparently not having separate access to the bathroom without having to go through one or other of the bedrooms constituted a breach of the 1985 Housing Act - and as such we legally had no inside bathroom.

This knocked us a bit but never one to take things lying down we came up with a cunning plan. We could create a false wall in the one bedroom and create a corridor that would allow separate access to the bathroom.

We put this plan to the council who pretty much said we could if we wanted to but it wasn't going to do us any good. They were the mighty council and they would win no matter what we did. They then stroked a white cat and laughed maniacally.

And then we didn't hear any more for about a year.

It was alright. It wasn't as if our financial future depended on this or anything.

We received a letter saying that the CPO would be going ahead whether we liked it or not as the government had given Manchester council the right to do whatever they wanted and they would get us and our little house too.

They said that they were having valuers round to the house and we would receive compensation based on their comments.

We were able to get a lawyer (whose fees would be paid for by the council) to handle the sale. And promptly we never heard from him again.

After the council made us a low offer we countered, using pretty much the same sob story letter that we had used to launch our original objection. Didn't do much good here either. My sister researched the matter on the internet and was able to find a surveyor to revalue the property and he was gold dust. He managed to secure us a higher rate based on the improvements we had made (£34,000 plus solicitors fees when we bought a new home).

The sum was agreed and we were told that we would hear from them and receive our money accordingly. Cue the deathly silence of well ... silence as we then heard nothing for months.

Until we got a call from the management company. Apparently the last tenant had been moved out by the council as people renting in that area were considered in need of emergency housing. The management company were unable to place anyone else. Oh and by the way, we had been broken into on three separate occasions since the last tenant had moved out. And although they had reboarded up the door and replaced the locks on each of these occasions (obviously charging us for these chores) and although they had no record of the itinerary following the last tenant leaving, there was now nothing left at the house. Anything that hadn't been nailed down had been stolen.

Two days later we then got another call from them saying that the house had been broken into again. This time the floorboards had gone so that they could take the copper piping. And now we had squatters as well.

We decided to call it a day in Japan as the time difference with talking to the lawyers and everyone else was now getting beyond a joke.

As we arrived at Narita airport two and a half years after first receiving the letter saying that our house was subject to the CPO, we got a call from my sister. Apparently the council had owned our house for the best part of a year now. Despite us having never signed anything or received any money we no longer owned our house in Manchester. All the time we had been worried about break-ins and had been paying for damage repairs and losing our furniture, the house was not actually ours.

Two months later we finally got our cheque. The council expressed their sympathies for the items that we had had stolen whilst the house was owned by them, though we hadn't been informed of this, but they did not see it as their problem. We were then told when we claimed for the purchase costs of buying our new house that we were too late. We were told that as the sale decision had been made so long ago (!) despite the fact that we had only just been awarded our money, we were too late to claim for our solicitor's costs. However faced with me going ever so slightly hormonal on them they relented: as a gesture of goodwill.

Wise decision.

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