Hapless Investor

Recent Posts by Hapless Investor

• You can't always get what you want,
• Would you Adam & Eve it?
• When the going gets tough...
• The withdrawal method
• The story so far
• The rise of the text sick note, and the email rent avoidance excuse.
• The hand that rocks the cradle
• The cost of property developing
• The best laid plans of Mice and Men - and slugs named Nigel

Subjects Covered by Hapless Investor

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• Tax
• Insurance
• Mortgages
• Retirement
• Property
• Property Investment
• Buy to let
• Project Launches
• Property markets
• Property advice
• Auctions
• House prices
• Renovation & DIY

• Social
• Celebrities & Gossip
• Quirky & Amusing
• Rankings & Ratings
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Hapless Investor's Blog

Be careful what you wish for 'cos you just might get it

Now that the nights are drawing in we were doing our basic checks (boiler broken in Flat 1 - check) and noticed the exterior lights needed replacing. Calling in the electrician to get new floodlights fitted (enough to deter the homeless and drug addled not quite enough to encourage Boeing 747s to land in the front garden), I arrived at the flats to find someone had been there before me. Someone with a grudge against the downstairs tenant. For there on his front doorstep, over flowing onto the kickboard of the door itself, was a humungous pile of excrement. The "modern art" had been lovingly crafted and had clearly been done by a humanoid with a love of bran and persistence. Granted my medical knowledge only extends to 15 series of ER but unless the person had serious dietary issues they had actually come back on 3 occasions to ensure they had done everything that they needed to do.

Now you might well ask, WTF? Or to those less familiar with text speak Why?! Why would you do that?! What on Earth possesses someone to want to do that?

And so begins the saga of the downstairs tenant.

Dawg moved into the flat with, shall we say, some issues.

A former award winning body builder who wrecked his lungs with steroid abuse, Dawg was looking for a new start. He was clean but with diminished oxygen intake he was limited in his work options and was currently on housing benefit but looking to top up through part time restaurant work. This had been approved by the DHS and meant that he could pay the majority of the rent through his benefit and top up with his wages - and because he had a history of drug abuse he was able to get his housing benefit signed directly across to us. So far so good.

He wasn't able to provide a deposit (despite driving a Porsche) but he qualified for the council's new Deposit Bond Scheme. Not quite a deposit it acts as a "promise". The tenant promises that they will do nothing bad to the flat but if they do the council promises that they will pay up to £300 to rectify that damage. The tenant then promises to make an effort to pay into a savings scheme when they can, that can then be accessed by the council to cover that £300 if necessary. The savings scheme is voluntary however, and when Dawg signed his Deposit Scheme Agreement you could see how much he intended volunteering.

Things seemed to be going fine, assuming that you accept that he flooded the flat twice, binned our furniture and repainted the flat without permission (bathroom is now fuchsia pink) and failed to pay any of the top up rent. But we were still getting the main housing benefit cheque and was it worth cutting off our noses to spite our face? We were receiving 90% of the rent, and if we kicked him out we may have to go back to having an empty flat for a couple of months until we found new tenants. And although we hadn't agreed to the paint job, for the most part it was done well and he'd replaced our basic rental furniture with rather expensive stuff of his own. All in all he looked like he wanted the flat long term and was prepared to take care of it.

So we hid our niggling doubts: the fact that he would never meet us at the flat; that the curtains were never opened; that there were always a continuous procession of visitors to the flat...

As he opened his door this morning (ok afternoon - we seem to only have nocturnal tenants) "oh crap" was doubly apt.

I asked who he had upset and he answered that although he could think of no one he was the last bastion of defence between the local ne're do wells and outright anarchy. He stopped a group of local kids smashing up light bulbs in the alleyway and the Police had cautioned him. He had told a vagrant not to sleep in his doorway and found an upturned flowerpot on his step the next day. And now this.

This wasn't just maltreatment this was persecution. He was a good guy in a hard world being harassed because he stood up to neighbourhood oppression. I mean... the other day he was actually burgled. Just ask the police.

What? Hang on a second, someone was in the flat? Yeah they took everything. His laptop, TV, microwave (what? my microwave?), fridge freezer (again, my fridge freezer?), they tried to take the oven (that's built in!) and the sofas.

Why didn't you tell me this?

Oh...yeah...well I thought the police would tell you.

So they took my washing machine, fridge freezer...

Yeah but they took MY sofas! (cue righteous indignation)

According to Dawg, he virtually never leaves the flat (since his job had disappeared) and so someone must have been watching him. They must have known that he had a physiotherapy appointment, because when he left the flat at 11 the items were there and when he came back at 5 everything was gone.

I used to work at a cinema and every week I would come up with a new project that involved some strange piece of equipment being hauled up and down the street from my house to the cinema, and it did get to the point where my neighbours didn't bat an eyelid at a 12' tall Tyrannosaurus Rex making its way down the hill. But I refuse to believe that no one noticed someone stripping his flat down.

But fortunately Dawg had an answer for this as well. Apparently on the day that the items went someone was moving into a different flat in the courtyard and all the neighbours thought that the items must belong to them.

On my way out, armed with the crime reference number, and avoiding the do-do on the doorstep I checked the door for signs of forced entry (to go with my medical knowledge I also have several series of CSI under my belt so I was more than qualified). Zip, Zero, Nothing.

I spoke with the neighbours, who although having seen no furniture movement (either in nor out) did have several eyebrow raising tales to regale me with.  There was the one about the people trying to kick the door in at 2 in the morning, followed by the chase down the street with the iron bar, followed by the one where the elderly lady explained that the two big men who often came with the smaller man in the very posh car were actually enforcers for the drug dealer (she seemed extraordinarily proud that she knew this - apparently her grandson had explained it all to her).

But it was the police who were the most enlightening. Although due to data protection they weren't able to give me any real details the highly elaborate form of eyebrow raising Morse code and slow head nodding I was told that although there was a crime reference number it didn't necessarily mean that they believed that a crime had been committed and that they wouldn't be investigating. Either that or Timmy is trapped down the mine.

So ladies and gents, the decision is yours. Do we have a nefarious tenant who has turned our flat into a den of iniquity and should be removed before any more of his dodgy dealings backfire? Or is Dawg a good guy with a whole heap of bad luck? Bad luck that's affecting me. Well the CCTV is going up next week. Big Brother may be watching but is there anything to actually see?

You can't always get what you want,

Passing by the estate agent's window I paused, as always, and finally saw the magic, magic words: 95% mortgage available on this property.

For so long since the economic collapse of the free world I had been bombarded with fantastical images of properties that were technically in my price bracket (There was one for £52,000 for crying out loud) but that I still couldn't afford because the buy to let mortgages now required a minimum of 25% deposits and despite searching down the back of the sofa ‘til the cows came home I still didn't have any actual cash - probably because all my blooming tenants felt paying the rent was optional. Curse them all!

But here, here was the apple of temptation. A property that should have been much more expensive than it was due to repossession, looking for a quick sale and offering a minimal deposit. "Buy me" it whispered.

I brought home the property details and a voice like those Marks and Spencer's food adverts called to me. This was not just a cheap property, this was a completely affordable cheap property.

I booked an appointment to see it and fell in love. The flat was halfway through being converted with dropped ceilings and spotlights. I would have rather it had had all the Victorian features on display (ooooh, ceiling roses...) but at least they'd just been hidden instead of ripped out. The mortgage company said that even on my pitiful wages it would be perfectly manageable but only if I wanted to live there rather than rent it out.

What was a girl to do?

I tend to go along with an idea until someone stops me. And I do mean stop me, rather than just mildly imply that I shouldn't. Granted, there have been many occasions where people really should have stopped me, but hey ho.

I had thought that I would see the flat and it would be a no, but it wasn't. And then I thought that the mortgage company would say no, but they didn't. So I took my builder to the flat expecting him to tell me no, but he didn't. Then a got a call from the estate agent.

I'd been gazumped!

I didn't know you could do that. Actually that's a lie, but this is England. If we have nothing else we have a sense of propriety, and I'd got there first!

Someone else had put in a higher offer and as it was a repo property the mortgage company were obliged to go with the higher bidder, but as a gesture of goodwill (?) if we were prepared to match the other party's offer they would stick with us.

So we did.

And of course (can you see where this is going?) they countered.

Not immediately. Not in a way that would put us out of our misery but a week later. Two weeks before the deadline on our exchange.

Again, we were offered the chance to match.

I called the lawyer and asked for his advice. And finally someone said no.

It wasn't so much a no as a huge sign of relief followed by a "I've been trying to find a way of telling you this for days. You shouldn't touch this property with a 10 foot barge pole."

David, our fabulous if too honest lawyer, forwarded us a copy of the lease. Evidently it had been written at the same time as the Dead Sea Scrolls and without the Rosetta Stone was about as decipherable. In writing more akin to Lord of the Rings than legalese, there did seem to be some acknowledgment that the flat existed but that was where it ended. And as it was a repossession, the other party's lawyers either didn't have information or didn't care to find it.

As far as David could see we were open to 200 years of ground rent that could be claimed off us at any time as there was no proof anyone had ever paid any, and as the new owners, caveat emptor. Fortunately this could be fixed with an indemnity that would cost about £150. Then there were the other 6 points that would also need indemnities, and then there were the points that indemnities couldn't cover.

"Quite frankly, if you wish to pursue with this purchase I may not be able to represent you as it would leave my firm open to too much risk."

So there you had it. Sky high neon letters of a No.

Ah well it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

Just when you though it was safe to go back in the water...

But now was the dawning of a new era. We had new tenants in the middle flat, and after an initial hiccup where The Girls didn't quite understand that they actually had to give us money in order to live there.

People often talk about how times they are a-changing. You kids don't know you're born. When I was a kid I had to walk 92 miles to school in snow in shoes only if we were lucky. We never had central heating when we were young, me and my 11 siblings used to sit around a single candle for warmth and on really cold days we used to light it.

When I was a tenant your rent came first. If you had to live on baked beans on toast for a month so be it. You may have had a fragrant home but you still had your home. So it will never cease to amaze me that so many people seem to think that paying your rent is just an optional extra.

Having had a serious talk with The Girls and shown them the error of their ways (It seemed here it was a problem of ineptitude rather than maliciousness), it now seemed we were on the right track - although the repayment scheme of £3 a week was a little irksome to us all.

All was going to be ok. Even when the good, reliable tenant from the Ground Floor flat said he was handing in his notice, it was still going to be OK.

Then the heavens opened.

The previous weekend we'd been sat at a bar on the beach, applying factor 30 (alright that's a lie, wishing we had factor 30 as we were burning quite badly) and having a fantastic time, and this weekend the gods had decided to make up for that.

Rain came from every direction. It bounced up off the street with such ferocity that you couldn't tell whether it was raining from the sky or the ground.

And the old drainage system of a town built for the Victorians couldn't cope.

Water is lazy. Persistent, enduring, but lazy. It looks for the simplest, easiest path and when the old storm drains that are 6" thick are too heavy to move it looks for an alternative route. The water spewed up through the toilet, shower and sink in the Ground Floor flat. The sewerage contaminated water soaked the carpets and spread through the flat damaging not just the bathroom but the bedroom, living room and hallway as well. The plasterboards walls soaked up the water, as did the tenants clothing that had been foolishly left on the floor (lesson to you all there), and so did the floorboards, insulation and sound-dampener boards.

The asthma stricken tenant had to be re-housed and moved out immediately. The flat was ruined and uninhabitable.

I blooming hate floods.

Drying out

Terry Pratchett gave the best explanation of in-sewer-ance that I've ever read. Insurance is a bet. A gamble. You're betting that something bad is going to happen to your home, your car or even your life. It still strikes me as strange that someone would want to bet that I wasn't going to do anything stupid. To be honest, I wouldn't take that bet.

However the NFU did. And although I don't want to be using this space for advertising they were absolutely brilliant.

We had lined up two new tenants, both had jobs literally round the corner from the flat. The unique selling point of our flat was they could get an extra 20 minute lie in compared to anywhere else they'd seen. Some things in life are priceless.

The only problem now was that we didn't have a flat to rent them.

Dave the non-dead upstairs tenant was feeling remarkably sheepish and on the whole was quite happy to cope with his ruined wall, door and kitchen until I was able to sort everything out and it also turned out that he knew pretty much everyone in Hackney on Sea.

Out of the cursed Sex Pistols mobile phone came the number for a plasterer, a kitchen fitter and whilst we were there, the numbers for ten other people who could fix the odd things around the flats that were in need of sorting out. I dunno, you give these people an inch and they take a mile.

So that was Dave taken care of, but downstairs was another matter entirely. The insurance company told us that the water had seeped into the walls and that the flat was now unfit for human habitation. To demonstrate his point the loss adjuster pulled a sheet off wall paper off the wall taking part of the ceiling with it.

I'll be honest with you, I'm getting pretty sick of people telling me that my properties are not fit for human habitation. First Manchester, and now this.

They installed a series of R2D2 like extractor fans around the flat designed to suck in water from the atmosphere and deposit it in a friendly bucket. I was told I'd need to come back every other day to empty the buckets as the place was so wet. I asked when I'd be able to get the new tenants (and therefore rent) into the property and he made a sucking noise through his teeth and shook his head.

I'll be honest with you, I'm getting pretty sick of people making sucking noises through their teeth and shaking their heads at me.

I spoke with the new tenants and told them what was happening and they seemed pretty good about the whole thing.

6 weeks later when the insurance company came back for the fourth monitoring visit I asked them again when I would be able to move the tenants into the property. Once again he said that I wouldn't be able to rent it for another few weeks.

I'll be honest with you, I'm getting pretty sick of not earning rent from that flat.

The man from the insurance company came back three more times each time he told me maybe next week and I was starting to feel like I was back in junior school asking my parents if I could have my ears pierced like Vanessa Kraft and all the popular girls did. In the end we came up with a compromise. When the damp levels no longer meant the girls would develop polyps on their lungs or anything like that the insurance company said I could move them in if I absolutely had to.

Absolutely had to?! By now we had gone nearly a year with no rent from this flat -Absolutely had to didn't even begin to cover it.

And so it came to pass, amid the ruins of the decimated kitchen with R2D2 still in the kitchen, plaster and wall paper still hanging off the walls and with extractor fans and heaters running 24/7 The Girls took residence in the Middle Flat.

 And for the first time in nearly a year we had money coming in from the middle flat.

But good things aren't meant to last.

It never rains but it pours

No good can come from a phone call at 4.30 in the morning. There is very little that can ever be good at 4.30 in the morning. For the simple fact alone that it's in the morning the concept of 4.30 is, of itself, not a good thing and that is why when the strident ringing of the telephone interrupted our sleep we knew that it had to be bad.

Not adverse to self-delusion I counted the rings waiting for the answerphone to kick in. Maybe it was a wrong number, or a drunk friend calling to tell us that they really did love me (I have a fair few of those).

But then the mobile phone rang. With two sets of elderly parents, a call in the middle of night could only mean one thing. I jumped out of bed and raced down the stairs to see if a message had been left whilst The Boyfriend stood at the top of the stairs scratching himself. 

The call was from one of the tenants at the flats. Apparently water was pouring from the middle floor flat (Adam's) down into the alleyway below. Adam was gone, new tenants had been lined up, the world was back on it's normal axis and yet the downstairs tenant really wanted to risk my wrath by calling in the middle of the night about water? Not blood or anything like that just water.

Actually though, now that I was actually awake water really shouldn't be pouring from the flats. This wasn't Niagara. We had to go and investigate even if we were still half asleep. We reluctantly pulled on clothes appropriate for wandering about wet alleyways in the middle of the night - i.e. any that we could find on the floor - and headed out into the night.   

At the flats it appeared that Atlantis had appeared. Water was flowing from every conceivable nook and cranny from the middle floor flat onto the street outside.

In the flat itself the kitchen was ankle deep in water. My ill thought out jeans soaked up the water like an advert for Bounty kitchen towel as I struggled to get buckets, bowls and bins under the various drips that were streaming through the ceiling above. Clearly something was wrong in the upstairs flat.

We made our way up to the upstairs flat. But the heavy weight of anticipation was on our shoulders.

If the downstairs tenant, who wasn't even affected by the flooding was awake and aware, why wasn't the upstairs tenant, who by now should be thinking he'd got a new swimming pool installed?

But the thing is our tenants aren't just tenants. Remember Hackey on Sea?

Dave wasn't just The Upstairs Tenant. He was: The Upstairs Tenant Who Lived Alone And Had A History Of Alcohol Dependency, Whose Girlfriend Had Left Him And Had Denied Him All Rights Of Access To Their Son.

Hammering on his door the only thing going through my head was that something bad had happened. Or more to the point he'd done something bad to himself. I used to know a group of "friends" who would spend long hours at the pub discussing favoured ways to kill yourself if you absolutely had to, and invariably the bath featured highly in nearly all of these. Dave was a good bloke. He always had a smile for me and always paid his rent on time. I was not going to let him die.

We'd been yelling through the door, and ringing his phone non stop and there was no response. His ring tone was the Sex Pistol's Anarchy in the UK in excessively loud quadraphonic sound and we could hear its strident tones through the door as if Sid Vicious was in the other room.

I tried my keys in the lock but as Dave had always kept his door open I'd never needed to use them in the past and with the fear, adrenalin and lack of sleep coursing through me I couldn't get them to work. I tried all the other keys on the bunch as well. A stupidly large bunch that I'd never really thought about before. But none of them worked. The door was still locked with Dave possibly unconscious, possibly dying - I wouldn't let him be dead - on the other side.

The Boyfriend was still trying Dave's phone and if I never hear that song again it will be too soon. Downstairs we kept a few emergency tools just for odd jobs around the flats. I raced down the four flights of stairs and picked up the hammer and screwdriver set.

By combining both mine and The Boyfriend's full weight against the door I was able to wedge the claw part of the hammer between the door and the jam and tried to prise the door away from the lock. All the time I was shouting through the door in my most reassuring voice telling Dave that it would all be alright and we were nearly there.

I'm not a small person, I carry far too much weight to ever be a realistic challenge to the Cheryl Coles and Pussy Cat Dolls of this world but that night I was thankful for every ounce. Again and again I crashed my shoulder into the door. I could feel the wood vibrate but the damn thing just wouldn't move. I tried again and this time a slight gap opened I yelled at The Boyfriend to wedge the long handled screw driver into the gap and used it as a lever to maximize the gap.

With The Boyfriend pulling on the screwdriver and hammer and me smashing into the door the gap started to widen. By now we had been at it for nearly half an hour. Brain Death can happen in 4 minutes.

By now my shoulder was on fire. But as we persevered between the levering and the smashing the door started to move, but the structure of the locking mechanism meant that instead of the door coming away from the frame the whole frame was came away - taking part of the plaster wall with it.

Eventually enough of the wall broke that we were able to get through the broken door frame. I stepped over the pile of plaster rubble and made my way into the flat. The Boyfriend loitered in the doorway less confident than I was that everything really would be alright.

I headed straight for the bathroom still calling out for Dave in my calm reassuring voice and stood dumbfounded at the empty, dry room. He wasn't lying dead on the floor or in the bath tub (especially considering there is no bath in that flat), so I headed into the bedroom. At the sight of his great hulk my heart stopped hammering and as the sound of my panic stopped rushing though my ears the sound of snoring became all too obvious.

Dave was fast asleep.

Screaming at him simultaneously with frustration and relief to wake up, the undead Dave finally moved - I could have killed him.

His flat was dry and we were able to locate and turn off the stop cock. The deafening roar of water from the middle flat abated leaving behind stunned silence, two barely awake men, a woman with an exceedingly sore arm and a completely destroyed flat.

The hand that rocks the cradle

I was in Boots the other day when a young mother went by with a toddler who was really playing up. An elderly lady queuing next to me turned to me and quite seriously intoned: the answer to external peace is written on the pack of Asprin. Take two, and keep away from children.

I have a three year old nephew and I love him beyond words. He is a smart, funny, loving and intelligent child but I also know that on the flip side of that he can be as Mr Hyde as the next child - especially if someone is foolish enough to turn the Fireman Sam DVD off.

And although not being a parent myself, it seems to me you love your child as much as you can, forgive them as much as you can, support them as much as you can, but never forget that beneath all that they can still be the child that stood there with your favourite vase smashed to pieces swearing blind that they didn't do it.

Our lawyer wrote to Adam's mum saying that as she had signed a legally binding document saying that she would pay any rent that her son failed to pay and she now owed us serious money. Yet what happened next still confuses and upsets me.

After a number of weeks she wrote back with the tone of the injured party blaming us for everything and saying that her son had no choice but to delay (!) payment as we had refused to deal with the persistent damp problems (!) and other health issues. When we had finally contacted her we had waited more than the legally binding 3 months (?) so she was only liable for 3 months worth of rent and as a 1 month's deposit had been taken she was only liable for 2 month's rent.

She also said that as we had stolen a lot of valuable items from the flat and intimidated her son and his partner (!) she was also seeking advice from the police as to how to deal with us. She offered full and final settlement of £1000.

What was really worrying was that as we read her letter it was so believable! If I hadn't known it was about us I would have been filled with righteous indignation against these scum landlords and completely in support of the poor injured Adam and Eve. Dan Brown could learn a thing or two about believable writing from this woman.

But even with this plaintive letter of affront, it was all ok. We had the world's most expensive lawyer on our side, and you simply can't charge that kind of money without being at least half way good.

But the problem with half way is you still have a long way to go. And in some cases that is just too far.

We explained to our lawyer that the previous owner had used, at Adam's behest, the deposit money to pay the first missed rent payment. So when we took on the flat we had no deposit.

The lawyer didn't seem to think this was a defence. The lack of a deposit did not necessarily provide us with a legitimate reason to have not participated in the newly introduced Tenancy Deposit Scheme. However as my protestations that this made no sense the lawyer went from scepticism to excitement saying we could be a test case that might go all the way to the high court.

I did some digging myself and was horrified to see that the lawyer had a point. Although the scheme was new at that time all the cases that had reached the courts had been ruled in favour of the tenant, and the penalty of not having deposited the monies in one of the approved schemes was at least 3 times the amount of the deposit.

We went back to the lawyer, who at this point was still misspelling my name - It's "Miss Hapless Investor", a minor thing but at the amount we were paying it was really beginning to grate, and asked him realistically what we should do. He told us to take the money.

£1000.

Full and final settlement.

We agreed. Lets get him out and move on with our lives.

And a month later he was gone - along with our cooker, beds, wardrobes, fridge/freezer and microwave.

The lawyer phoned his mother who said that her son would never do anything like that, she had bought all of those things, and if we didn't stop now she would charge us with harassment and theft. I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

For more information on the deposit schemes try:

http://www.rla.org.uk/landlord/tenancy_deposits/?gclid=CL-4hfm-jZ0CFWAB4wodAEaI1g

or

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/TenancyDeposit/index.htm

Career advice for the uninitiated.

Not that you'd know it now but when I was younger I used to regularly compete as a teenage beauty queen. Although not quite in the league of the American pageants our local carnival circuit used to invite pre-teen and teenage girls to strut their stuff on the catwalk dressed to the nines in their party dresses and primped hair in order to win a place on the carnival float and a prize between £40 and £250 - don't knock it, it's how my sister bought her first car. The judges were looking for deportment, the ability to smile but also the capacity to string a couple of sentences together.

You were invariably asked about your favourite actor, film or pop star, your favourite place to holiday and what you wanted to be when you grew up. And I always knew the answer. I was going to be a lawyer. From the time I was 6, with the exception of that brief interlude where I was going to be the first female astronaut to set foot on Mars, I was going to be a lawyer. No make that a Barrister, no a High Court Judge.

There was no doubt about it, the legal profession was where I was headed, pretty much right up until the pageants stopped and I realised that law wasn't really for me. Oh if only I knew then what I know now. Why teenage me, Why!

Having had our reprimand from the council Harridan and let the evil Adam back into the flat the struggle started to get the expletive out. We spoke with the lawyer who told us to do whatever it took to avoid the threat of jail but as he was only a criminal lawyer he (hopefully) couldn't be of any further help. 

So the search started for a civil lawyer. Or more realistically a lawyer who specialised in civil law.

In my area there are 65 listings for lawyers who deal in tenancy law in our local Yellow Pages but it seemed to be that although the lawyers we phoned did deal in this they only dealt with it from the tenant's side. As a landlord, even one as clearly (!) wronged as we were, we were indefensible.

We eventually found a firm in the next city whose partner could deal with our case from our point of view. We took an afternoon off, took all our paperwork and went to see Mr Jones. Mr Jones was very sympathetic and, even better, empathetic. He said that we could get Adam out and we could go after him, Eve, and Adam's mother who had acted as guarantor for Adam.  He said we could make sure that they paid: not only for the back rent, but the state of the flat as well.

Finally someone was on our side. Someone understood that Adam was wrong and we, yes us, were right. Finally! "Although Miss Hapless Investor," the lawyer intoned, "before we get to your unrequited support and happy ever after ending, let me first present you with our hourly rate and an approximation of your final bill. To successfully legally remove your tenant, track him and his errant wife, and mother down and get you back your money, now approximately £6000, and do all this with only a semi-smug look on my face will cost you in the region of £6500. That's £170 per hour."

Ahh.

Damn it. There had to be a plan B.

What if I could find a Delorian and somehow power it with 1.21 gigawatts... No that'd never work. I'd be far better looking for an old fashioned police box. We couldn't even shop around and find an alternative lawyer simply because there weren't any. It was this guy or nothing , and nothing had almost landed us in jail.

We instructed the lawyer to go ahead with the basics: concentrate on getting Adam out and at least then we wouldn't be losing any more money. The lawyer would also write to the guarantor and tell her that she had been named in a law suit and we would be pursuing her directly for lost rent.

At last something was happening. We might not be going out like a combination of Rambo and the Terminator in a blaze of retribution, revenge and righteousness but we were actually making progress, we were going to get that scumbag gone, and even better we were going to tell on him to his mum. That'll teach him.

When the going gets tough...

There's something inside most of us that when we call in to work to take the day off, even when we truly are ill, we still have to "embellish" our illness. You may have broken your leg and yet for some reason you're still compelled to put on a gruff voice and cough as you call in to take the day off.

It's not that you're lying, or even faking, it's just that when you're trying to tell people things they don't really want to hear you need to make the message as simple as possible.

The only exception I have found to this was the day The Boyfriend phoned work and said, quite simply, "I wont be coming in today, I'm about to be arrested."

On the advice of our solicitor we went straight to the council offices and sat there until we could be seen by the crazy and obviously deluded harridan who had phoned us earlier to say she was about to initiate charges for unlawful eviction.

We sat down in a room that was obviously used for family counselling. We were sat at a moon shaped table with small chairs and an abacus style toy screwed into it with soft anatomically correct dolls visible in the toy box in the corner. A video camera was screwed to the wall and The Harridan made sure we were sat directly facing it.

She laid it out for us. Regardless of the fact that we had been paid nothing and that Adam had clearly not been present in the flat we didn't have a leg to stand on. In legal terms even if he had left a single sock in the flat it meant he was technically living there. I said at length that he had not been back to the flat and we had witness statements to that effect. She claimed that he had been returning to the flat during the early hours of the morning, every morning, sleeping on top of the sheets on the bed which meant he would not disturb anything, and then he was leaving again before dawn.

NO HE WASN'T! Blind Freddy could see that he wasn't!

I said about how we had propped the letter against the door meaning that there was no way that it could have been opened without the envelope moving, but she swept that away. If we couldn't prove that he hadn't been in there during the early hours then the law was on Adam's side, and even if we could prove he hadn't been there the law was still on his side.

Technically he could have been in jail for the last year, joined a monastery or gone to the moon and we still wouldn't be able to claim that the property had been left.

We tried a different tack as this was clearly getting us nowhere. We asked what we would have to do in order to avoid any further nastiness and ideally jail, and although she reiterated that the matter had now been passed on to the Council's lawyers, she did say that if we let Adam back into the flat they would consider suspending legal action. Not stop, just suspend.

I am not what you would consider a great actress, my biggest entry on IMDB being third angel from the left in my infant school nativity play, but it was time to set matters straight. I did not want that man back in my property. He had lied to us, he had cheated us, he had damaged our property, he had lied to the council and now we were here having to defend our actions under threat of prison. There was no way on the planet that that man was coming back to my flat.

So channelling Meryl Streep (in Kramer vs Kramer rather than in Mama Mia), I sat there hunched over with my shoulders beginning to shake and my palms sweat. I told The Harridan in a hitching voice that I was afraid of Adam and the retribution that he would take on us. I told her about his violent past: the often told story of how he broke a policeman's arm, how he used to hang around with gun runners, how he was a world champion in Karate and Tae Kwan Do.

I told her that as he knew where we lived (foolishly having invited him and Eve round for drinks at Christmas where he appraised the value of my TV and DVD collection) I had taken to double locking the doors and was constantly concerned for the car and how the recent spate of childish damage to the car (windscreen wipers snapped off one week, wing mirrors twisted off another week, things thrown and poured on the car) was so coincidental that I was constantly afraid for its continued existence.

And I told her about Adam's persistent drug use and how when cleaning the flat we found drug paraphernalia which I said I could not permit in the property.

All the time I was speaking in a stuttery boarder-line breakdown voice that would win me an Oscar if anyone ever releases that video camera footage. The Boyfriend alarmed by my performance now started to get very concerned and The Harridan went off to get me a glass of water to calm my nerves.

With The Harridan out of the room we momentarily forgot about the camera, and when The Boyfriend, now quite disturbed, wanted reassurances that I wasn't going to hit several bottles of vodka the second this was all over, I snapped back into my normal state to set his mind at rest.

Damn it! Did The Usual Suspects teach me nothing?

Two hours later financially and now emotionally drained as well, we left the council offices. The Harridan had the keys to our flat and Adam was due to collect them and move back in within the hour. The legal action against us would be postponed in light of our concession, but we would be kept on file pending review and were still liable for the civil suit for having removed Adam's property from the flat.

On the plus side at least The Harridan admitted Adam was an arse.

As Sun Tzu said: a small victory is still a victory.

Would you Adam & Eve it?

 A friend once asked me if I'd ever met a nasty con man. He was using the question to illustrate a point about how he ended up in a Prague back street with some rather large and unfriendly bouncers having been encouraged by a very jovial club promoter to spend some time with a pretty lady he knew.

My friend, who doesn't drink but is very fond of the pretty ladies, was presented with a bar bill totalling several thousand pounds, and the host who had been exceptionally affable up until then introduced him to his less friendly and rather more ape-like friends.

The thing is con men aren't nasty, at least not to begin with. They are warm, friendly people who win your trust with their likeable personalities and their heart wrenching stories. They appeal to your Achilles heel: whether that be your sympathy, your envy or your desire. And like a skilled fisherman once you're on that hook they can reel you in as they see fit, and as you lie there in the keep net, gasping for air, you're not even aware of the filleting knife still to come.

Adam had taken us for a ride. And what was strange was despite the fact that we were now in serious debt it was the betrayal of trust that really upset us. We had genuinely liked Adam and Eve, and we had agonised as they went through (!) a horrible part of their lives.

We left a note pushed under the door of the flat saying that we would be entering the premises the following day. It was now April and seeing the dilapidated Christmas decorations still hanging from the ceiling somehow struck a greater chord than even the empty bank balance.

We spoke with the upstairs tenant and he said that he hadn't seen the tenant in about a month when he had asked for his help to take their widescreen TV down to Cash Converters.

The air in the flat was dead, as if no one had been there for a long time. Pieces of washing were hanging from picture hooks covered in damp. Nothing was left in the wardrobe in the children's room and in the adult's room all that was left were some dirty clothes on the floor and 2 or 3 items in the wardrobe. The place had been abandoned by someone who had realised that their time was up.

We tidied up the worst of the detritus and looked for contact details for either Adam or Eve. There were letters from debt collection agencies and from housing associations saying how they had been burnt similarly in the past.

We left the flat, told the council that the place had been abandoned and told them to stop Adam's cheques. We went on the web and looked up the official way to ensure that we could reclaim the flat legally.

The internet is a wonderful thing. It gives you access to an entire world of knowledge, although invariable not the bit that you were looking for, but a plethora of sites offering to make your manhood larger. But by typing into Google something along the lines of "b@$t@ard tenant has abandoned flat and owes me lots of rent" we found a site explaining that with abandonment you had to actually prove that the place was abandoned.

We tried calling Adam, and then Eve, then Adam's mother who acted as Guarantor (whole other story there!), then we asked the upstairs tenant to call Adam from his less authoritative/threatening number.

None of us had any response.

So we went back to the internet. We felt that we had done the first thing that it had asked for, establishing that Adam had actually left and so we moved onto part 2. We needed to inform someone who was incommunicado that we were taking the flat back.

We downloaded a Section 8 notice proforma. Section 8 notices state that the landlord intends to seek possession of the property and states the ground or grounds on which possession is sought.

We seemed to have grounds 8, 10, 11, 12 and possibly 13 (that's pretty much all of them).

We pinned a copy to the tenant's door, posted a copy under his door, and took photos of my ever so tasteful watch next to the one on the door to mark the time and date.

We placed an advert in the paper for new tenants to start on the day after the Section 8 notice was up and I arranged for a locksmith to come that day as well.

With the locks changed I finally felt a weight lifted. My impression of Adam had completely changed. I'm not a weak person who jumps at shadows lightly but where as we had always laughed off Adam's stories of fights, breaking policeman's bones, and being a national kickboxing champion as just bravado we were now... concerned. After all Adam was a big man, well over 6' tall, and it's not unheard of for even pandas to kill their babies by accident just due to their very size.

The date that the Section 8 notice was up The Boyfriend came home from work, we blitzed the flat and prepared ourselves for the cycle to start all over again.

Except when the phone rang, the person who had seen the ad was Eve. She asked if it was their flat that was being advertised and we said yes, and she hung up.

Then the phone rang again. This time it was the council. Eve and Adam had called the Council claiming that this was an illegal eviction. He had never abandoned the property and by changing the locks we were now facing legal proceedings.

The bottom fell out of our world then.

I explained to the woman from the council that she had got the wrong end of the stick. We had not heard from these people in months. We had had no payment since we took over the tenancy. We had tried every form of communication, save for carrier pigeon, that we could think of, all to no avail.

We were not scum landlords. We had done everything we could possibly do to support Adam and Eve, we had given them every possible chance, we had crippled ourselves with debt to help THEM out and yet they were saying this was all somehow our fault? We were the injured party! We had done nothing wrong and yet here she was saying that this...person... suddenly had the right to turn up at the 11^th hour, no the 11^th hour had been and gone, and threaten US with wrong doing?! This made no sense.

The woman from the council responded in the ice cool tones that one normally reserves for rapists and child molesters. She advised us that this was formal notification that the council (from whom Adam had stolen the rent cheques!) would be starting legal proceedings against us.

Not being a particularly nefarious person I have never need a lawyer for anything other than buying property. So I called the only one I knew who sucked in his breath and advised me to contact a colleague of his. I called him and listened agog as he told us we each were facing up to 10 years in prison and as we had touched Adam's things we were facing a fine of up to £10,000.  

As I stuttered my disbelief he advised us to go to the council and walk across broken glass if that's what it took to get them to drop proceedings:

 "This is not a case you will win, do whatever it takes to make this go away."

For further information and advise on abandoned properties check out:

http://www.landlordzone.co.uk/legal/abandonment.htm

Reality Bites

I have a friend who is applying to be on a reality TV show and so for the last week or so we've been trying to analyse what should go in her application. How do you sell yourself so that you seem attractive but not desperate, interesting but not weird? Had you met my friend you would know what a challenge that is.

But we can all be foiled and fooled by application processes. Whilst we were still negotiating the purchase of the flats it became necessary to advertise for new tenants. Although the flats were still owned by the previous owner he wanted us involved in the selection process of the new tenants as soon they would be ours. An ad was put in the paper and we arranged the Saturday as a day for viewings and interviews.

About 12 groups of people responded to the ad in the paper. But in the same way as my friend and her reality TV show some had applied without really knowing what they were letting themselves in for (It's on the wrong side of town, we need parking etc), then there were those who felt didn't match our needs (we can't afford a deposit or funds in a advance) and then there were the finalists. The people who could potentially be our stars.

In the end we chose a couple with two young children and another very clearly on the way. They seemed to be able to afford the rent and their reason for moving in rang true in a lovely moralistic way (they were moving because they didn't want to fall in with a bad crowd that lived in their previous town), and although they were on housing benefit the man was going on training courses to become a forklift driver and the woman was very clued up and together, she asked all the right questions, had all her references, and the kids were adorable.

They moved in and everything seemed to be great.

Then the cracks started to appear. Following the birth of the baby the council required a Change of Circumstance as now there were 5 people living in the flat, not just 4, and as such there was a break in the payments. The tenant asked the previous owner to use the deposit as that month's payment.

At the point when we took over the ownership of the flat the deposit had been used and the tenant was still a month behind in the rent but the Change of Circumstance was due to be completed at any moment.

Then things changed.

Post partum depression is a horrible thing. It robs a mother of what should be some of the happiest moments of her life. It clouds your judgement and affects your whole world. But for some it is more extreme than others. And with our tenant it was extreme.

Whilst (we shall call him Adam) Adam was at the shop buying milk Eve collected all his things and threw them out. She refused to let him back in the flat and a protracted argument ensued. Upset by the argument, her post partum depression and rumours of his philandering, she locked herself in the bathroom with the two older children and took a large number of pills.

When Adam came back after "cooling off" he heard the children crying, entered the flat and after finding Eve in the bathroom, he called an ambulance.

Eve was held in the hospital under protective custody but when it came to moving back into the flat with her family she revealed a shocking accusation against her partner. She said she could not move back with Adam as he was interfering sexually with her children.

Child protective services removed the children from the property and placed Eve and the children in a women only safe house.

Adam was distraught and strongly denied any wrong doing. He said it was not his partner talking: it was the depression, and that they had been through the exact same thing following the birth of their middle child. He instructed a solicitor and set about getting his family back together.

Following an investigation Adam regained custody of his eldest child and was put in a mediation program to try and restore his family.

Months had passed during all of this and through all of the ups and downs Adam had kept us and the council informed. Unfortunately, and it seemed churlish in comparison, we were now owed thousands of pounds in unpaid rent. During this time we had tried being as supportive as possible but ultimately we are not a charity and we couldn't afford it to go on any longer. We were paying the mortgage from our savings, overdrafts and then as time went on and the money ran out, credit cards. I spoke with Adam and he said that he had been on at the council and he was trying to get an emergency loan from his mother just to tide us over until the council had finished processing the variety of Change of Circumstances that had happened here.

Temporarily relieved, we agreed to give him the week's breathing space that he'd requested. But then the communication stopped. Adam stopped answering his phone, Eve didn't answer hers. Knocking on the door led to nought and notes posted through the letterbox went unanswered.

I went to the council and asked if there was anything that could be done to expedite the payments. Was there anything I could provide that would help them help us by ensuring Adam got his payments?

No, apparently there wasn't.

Mainly because they had never missed a payment. Adam had been paid in full and on time every month. He just hadn't felt the need to pass any money onto us.

But if reality TV has taught us nothing it's that truth is a malleable thing. And as John Lennon said, reality leaves a lot to the imagination.

Buy two get one fee!

As you might of guessed I watch a lot of TV. In The Apprentice this week one team were lambasted for only choosing low cost products to sell. Withering under Alan Sugar's gaze the team hung their head as he criticised them, "There were no star items" he growled - before telling them that they had won the challenge. There's a lesson in that, somewhere.

As much as I would love a star item in my property portfolio I know I'm essentially a risk adverse person. As such I have to balance out my desire for the property equivalent of a toy dinosaur that shows emotion (£195 from all good retailers), with the more practical side of me that thinks multicoloured ponchos at £9.99 are a safer bet.

So when having lost out on the incredible Glenn House it was somewhat of a surprise that a multicoloured poncho of a property came along.

Buried in the property paper this week was a 2 bedroom apartment, close to the town and the seafront for a ridiculously good price. With the two line description whetting my appetite I looked up the details online. But something was wrong. Online the price was £10k higher. With my mind racing with Trade Descriptions Act and Property Misdescriptions Act gobbledygook it actually took quite a while for the penny to drop and me to scroll down slightly further. So there were two flats! (I've always been smart like that) Both in the same building, both 2 bed. Both currently available with tenant in situ but on whom notice had been served. It would have been rude not to go and have a look.

The properties were lovely. Have I mentioned what a sucker I am for high ceilings, spacious rooms, original coving and ceiling roses? The maths added up and granted although I hadn't even been looking for one property I ended up putting an offer in on two. This (and my distinct lack of cash flow) is why I don't watch QVC.

Part of the condition of sale was that we would complete in 8 weeks. Which shouldn't have been a problem until the survey came back. Seriously - I have to get a different surveyor. All he does is rain on my parade. Once again I got a phone call asking me to come in for a meeting before he'll give me the official report. You know it's not going to be good news when he does that. And funnily enough it wasn't, the least of which was the giant subsidence crack that I'd obviously missed whilst admiring the ceiling roses.

We went back to the agent. Agents have a bad reputation. Slimy, money grabbing, lazy they may be (hey I was one once - terrible idea, like giving crack to an addict), but they perform a valuable service. Not only do they corral both properties and buyers but they give you that element of distance. It's one thing to tell your agent that you think the property was decorated by a blind person it's another to tell the homeowner themselves. So when we gave the agent the low down on what the surveyor had said the last thing we really wanted them to say was that they felt this would be best dealt with by a face to face meeting with the vendor. Eek.

Fair play the guy was brilliant and 6 months later we were able to buy the flats.

That was when the surprise kicked in. Stamp duty. Both of the flats were well below the stamp duty threshold, in fact that was one of the things that had made it so appealing was the affordability of the whole thing. By having two flats in the same block we were reducing costs in the fact that we didn't need two lots of searches and had a discount on the survey as it was the same building. So why the tax bill?

Apparently in the opposite way to which the supermarkets work, where you buy one get one free, the HMRC sees multiple purchases as if they were one.

The current level at which stamp duty is payable is £175,000. Buy a property less than this level and you don't have to pay tax, over this level and you do (granted there are exceptions) and depending on how far over this level depends on how much tax you pay.

So if you buy a property for £100k you're free and clear. But buy 2 and instead of it being treated as 2 purchases it's considered a linked purchase and you're liable in the same way as if the property came to £200k. Buy 3 and it's as if it came to £300k, pushing you into the 3% bracket.

The government guidelines on what constitutes a linked transaction are very broad, suggesting that if you buy multiple properties from a large company such as Barratt or Linden Homes even at different locations you may still be liable. Equally if someone who is "connected" (no don't ask me what that means either) to you buys a property from that vendor, or someone "connected" to that vendor, you may again be liable.

But, as Albert Einstein said, "the hardest thing in the world to understand is tax."

 For more information about linked purchases check out http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/sdlt/transaction/linked-transfers.htm

The withdrawal method

We decided against Margate, although had we known that The Apprentice was going to rebrand the area so successfully we might have changed our mind, and instead opted for what is locally known as Hackney by Sea. The moniker was coined due to the seemingly unique agreement between the local council and the borough of Hackney. Hackney pays for their troubled cases to come to drug and alcohol rehabilitation by the sea but don't pay for a return ticket to London. So as well as the normal sea side tourist trends you also have a large transient population looking for short to medium term affordable (i.e. cheap) housing.

So when Glenn House came on the market our hearts leapt. Tucked away at the bottom right hand corner of the property paper was this most beautiful picture of a double fronted Victorian detached house. I fell in love, head over heels. And then there was the price. This 6 bedroom house was on the market for £50, yes £50, more than the property above a 2 bedroom flat. And only £70k more than the house we had completed on 3 weeks earlier.

I arranged a viewing more to get the property out of my head rather than as a serious viewing. I hoped that by seeing what a money pit the inside of the gorgeous chocolate box house it would put pay to my fantasies. Sort of like when you take the Chippendale home for the night and discover you'd have been better of talking to the namesake armchair.

But the inside was lovely too. Not perfect but lovely, lovely, lovely. You could picture Christmases there, you could picture children there (not that I have any desire but that's the power of chocolate box houses),  the only problem was the fact that 3 weeks previously we had bought our house and there was no way we could afford both. But what if...

If we lived in our house (which needed so much work doing to it) and rented out the chocolate box house until the point where our house was in a rentable condition and then swapped our main residence (perhaps I should have been an MP) perhaps we could just about manage it.

But to rent the house as a single unit we would receive about £900 a month. The mortgage would be £1300. So even to my uneducated eye something wasn't adding up there, but if we converted that pantry into a shower room, and put a different doorway into the main bathroom we could then rent the property out by room and we would receive, granted at full occupancy, £1800 a month. And then there was always the option of converting the music room (!) into a 7^th bedroom.

It was brilliant.

I spoke to local agents, yes there was definitely a market for single room rentals but I would need a fire alarm (check: already there), there would need to be 2 toilets (check: already there), there would need to be a separate living area (check: even if the music room became a bedroom there would still be both the living room and the dining room).

We put in an offer and it was accepted. We jumped through lots of hoops with the mortgage company as we had only just returned to the country and had therefore only just started our new jobs, got a survey and instructed the agent to find us 6 tenants.

Then things started to go wrong. The survey came back, or more to the point we had a phone call from the surveyor. He said we should come in for a meeting. At which he strongly advised that we did not buy the property. The survey showed a number of things that were wrong and with the house but it was the fact that he had called us in to specifically say we shouldn't buy it that was the most worrying thing.

We'd had a survey like this once before, in Manchester, and remember how well that all turned out?

Bloody minded me though. I wanted the house I was going to get the house. We came to a deal with the vendors and everything seemed back on track. Until I lost my job. Technically I quit but that's not really the point. What was the point was the fact that my wages were going to be the reserve fund. If we didn't achieve 80% occupancy it was going to be my wages that were going to have to plug the gap, and when it came to the alterations again it was my wages that were going to fund those. And although I had no doubt that I would get another job it threw everything into sharp relief. Especially as this was Friday and the exchange date was set for Monday.

We went to the agent who specialised in single room rentals, and asked him how things were progressing. Had he lined up tenants? Had he started making enquiries as we'd discussed with the tenants of a multi-occupancy house that was due to be closed? The estate agent looked at me blankly. He was in the process of moving offices and therefore couldn't really discuss matters. I told him I was in the process of spending a quarter of a million pounds that I didn't have so I really needed to discuss matters. Although he refused to admit that he hadn't done anything he instead became very combative. He eventually said I would be better speaking with the council as that was a more secure way of getting tenants.

I phoned the council and they agreed that there was a list you could register with for multi-occupancy homes but he wanted to check that I had my HMO (Houses of Multiple Occupancy) license. I said that I didn't currently as I had no HMO properties but I saw no reason as to why I would be turned down, the house met all the criteria. He said that the HMO was not about the house but about me. How much experience did I have as a landlord? HMO licences would only be given in our area if I could prove my worth as a muti-occupancy landlord. I would have to prove that I had a contacts book of tradesmen and could deal with any problem with in 24 hours. And then he asked if I had planning permission to change the house from a single occupancy home to multi-occupancy status. Er...no. I wasn't changing anything so I didn't realise that I needed planning permission. He told me off the record that I would be highly unlikely to get either planning permission or the HMO licence.

Argh. The only way around the license would be to only rent to 4 people. At full occupancy we would be bringing in £100 a month less than the mortgage but as we would have to cover the bills as well (water, heating, lighting) we would be looking at at least a £200 deficit a month. Although we weren't buying the house really as an income source, our primary reason behind the purchase was still as a home for us in about 5 years, could we really afford to make a loss on the house for all that time?

It was with a heavy heart that we decided no. We pulled out of the purchase. We were very upset. The vendors were extremely upset. They had already bought their next house on the assumption that we were buying this one and they were unable to pull out of their purchase. They asked if we would release the survey and the searches so that they could give them to the next buyer, which we did but felt awful again as the survey was so damning. They put the house back on the market and also on the rental market and a year later I still saw the agents' boards up. I still feel awful but we made the right decision.

Find out more about HMOs and HMO licensing at:

http://www.communities.gov.uk/housing/rentingandletting/privaterenting/housesmultiple/

Home coming

The Boyfriend's mother was 5 years old when her mother drugged her and put her in a coal sack. She was then bundled aboard a boat heading from Poland to Sweden in an attempt to escape the German occupation. Her mother, who had disguised herself as a sailor to gain access to the boat, then kept her unconscious with "special medicine" as she smuggled herself and her young daughter across into England. It wasn't until a long time after The Boyfriend's grandmother died, Eastern Europe opened up, and Ryan Air started doing flights to Poland that The Boyfriend's mother ever considered visiting the land she had left in the middle of the night all those years ago. 

Not long after this that we decided to experience what Poland had to offer and started investigating the property market in Poland.

Disappointed in what appeared to be a bubble economy in Estonia where rental properties were (allegedly) only being rented on short term lets (as in a matter of days rather than weeks) to other people looking to buy property, we moved on to Latvia, home of more gorgeous people, and a gorgeous capital city, but again featuring much higher prices than the internet had lead us to believe and then Lithuania, not so beautiful, and Poland.

One thing we hadn't counted on, mainly because we hadn't planned on leaving Estonia, was the problem of bank holidays. We arrived in Latvia with no Latvian money and no answer from any estate agents. Apparently estate agents in Eastern Europe don't work on bank holiday weekends. This was true of Lithuania and also Poland where they seemed to have an entire week of bank holidays, and not only did the estate agents not work but so didn't the bureau de change. Any reservations about the Euro went out of my head by the time we had changed our yen into Estonian Kroon, then to Latvian Lats, then Lithuanian Litas, then Polish Zloty.

We saw a lot of properties but to be honest we were starting to get jaded. Although there were some nice places for the most part everywhere was starting to look like a building site. The explosion of property investors seemed to be turning every city into a new build version of Slough (having never been to Slough that's probably a bit harsh).

Despite the fact the around this time the Polish government put in an official request to ask for some of their plumbers and plasterers back from the UK there seemed to be no let up in the building work going on around Warsaw. One of the nicest developments we saw was next to the Summer Palace, and when we say ‘next to' think about building a housing development going up in St James's Park and you get the idea as to the proximity to the palace.

The thing is the whole plan was to buy a very reasonably priced place in a place where we could work for a few years and rent it out when we chose to move - oh and ideally it should be near the sea. Warsaw has a lot of things going for it but near the sea it aint.

But faced with spiralling property costs, a flimsy rental market, and an uninspiring job market for non builders, we decided to compare the Polish property market to seaside towns that we knew in the UK.

The first thing that came up was a 2 bedroom flat in Margate (a childhood summer holiday haunt, near-ish to London) for £52,000. £50,000 less than anything we had viewed in Poland and in a country where we spoke the language, understood the buying process, and would have flexibility of the job market rather than just the English teaching.

As we looked around the grey concrete jungle that was Warsaw the thought of going home suddenly seemed like a phenomenal idea.

A tale of two cities

When we heard that we had no choice but to "sell" the Manchester house we were faced with a choice. We were managing the cost of the additional equity release on the London property and the amount of cash we were getting back could be pretty accurately described as a pittance. £30k in the UK market could maybe buy us an outhouse in the Outer Hebridies but that was about it and putting the money in the bank was just boring. So what do we do?

Living in Japan meant that popping to the estate agents wasn't quite as easy as it was in the UK and so we decided to exploit the genius that is the internet.

There are a plethora of websites devoted to finding your perfect home abroad and for someone like me who just likes looking at property it's tantamount to porn.

For some reason over the previous few years Estonia had been calling to me. In my previous job I had spent hours looking at plots of land, houses and even islands for sale for less than what my credit card balance was. The only problem was that as all I had ever bought at that point was my own home buying an island in a country I had never visited, in a language that I didn't speak and where the sea froze over enough to a thickness enough to drive on was a little beyond my means. But oh it was nice to look.

But then Estonia joined the EU. Borders came down and all of a sudden a swarm of property investors from throughout the world were hammering down the doors of every property in the former Soviet Bloc.

So as the money (that we hadn't actually got at that point) was burning a hole in our pocket it seemed logical to look once again at Estonia. The prices had shot up. In Tallinn, the capital city, prices were now over £65,000. Outside of our £30k budget and then some. But in Parnuu the second city prices were still accessible.

I contacted the agents and was disappointed by the seemingly ubiquitous answer of "Oh that one's gone but we do have something similar at £20k more" - except for an off plan development in Parnuu. Just 14km from the beach this development was also in one of the key skiing areas so you had the benefit of year round demand. It was 2 bedroom and due for completion 18 months later. But above all it was affordable. £25k per unit. Hell at that price we could buy 2!

It turned out that the £25k ones had gone (what a surprise), apparently a Japanese investor had bought 10 in one go. There were only 4 units left and so we spoke with the agent and he agreed to take a holding deposit on 2 units but most importantly the deposit would be refundable. I didn't know you could even do that. I double checked and triple checked that we could get our money back and transferred the £2000 to the agent.

With our fate sealed we booked flights to Estonia and arranged multiple viewings of pretty much anything that was in our price range. It was strange how our price range had suddenly grown. From £30k we were now looking at 2 units at £34k each. And under the expert tutelage of the estate agents all of a sudden we were looking at pretty much anything under £100k.

Tallinn is gorgeous. In the bright spring sunshine everything was shiny and happy there. All the people were 7 foot tall with shiny blond hair and healthy glows. Everyone looked liked they'd stepped out of the pages of Glamour or Men's Health magazine. Apparently Estonia had always considered itself more part of Scandinavia than the USSR and although I'm not a scientist the genetic family tree appeared to be obvious - and even better as we walked through the indoor market people spoke to me in native tongue, for a nanosecond people thought I might be part of the shiny happy people clan!

We had booked a full day with the estate agent the following day. She picked us up at 9 in the morning and we spent most of the day viewing property. I had made a point of us both bringing a suit so that we would project the image of serious property investors instead of scummy layabouts which is the image we normally project.

We went to the first property but were not allowed in. The building was bright pink. Not cerise or anything interesting but just sort of blamange pink. It was about 8 minutes from the old town/town centre but next to a hospital and in all honesty looked like a 1970s tower block from a council estate in Slough and didn't really do anything to excite us. We then went to the next one and had a similar sinking feeling. Again we weren't allowed in the building, there was no show flat despite being very near completion.

In fact it was only when we got to property 4 we were actually allowed in. Only it turned out this wasn't property 4. The estate agent had taken a wrong turn and had taken us to a house which wasn't on her books. The thing is it was the first one to actually excite us. For the first time we felt like we were actually doing a positive thing and the fact that we had paid over £2000 to even get to Estonia didn't seem like an incredibly stupid idea.

We were taken to the real property 4 and it was a house. A little bright yellow cottage. It was only one bedroom, with an open plan bathroom/bedroom. But it was lovely. Bright and airy with lots of windows and a homely feel. It was £87,000 but you actually got the feeling that it was worth it.

It was somewhere you could come home from work and enjoy being there, although having said that it was blooming small. Our house in London had only cost £86,000 and it was three times the size of this one.

The last property we saw was right in the centre of town. A 2^nd floor apartment in the heart of the town, walking distance from the Old Town. It was a studio apartment with a balcony, gorgeous wooden floors and floor to ceiling windows along the whole one wall. This was an impressive apartment, and there was the possibility of creating a separate living space turning a studio into a one bed.

On the downside, the balcony wasn't big enough to put a chair out there let alone a table set. There was no kitchen and no bathroom installed. Apparently this is the norm when buying in Estonia. Kitchens and Bathrooms are not included in new build purchases. It's considered a personal choice. The developer will put you in touch with recommended kitchen and bathroom fitters but it's nothing to really do with the developer. The apartment was 94 sq foot and cost £94,000.

Our plan had been to move to Estonia and teach there for a couple of years and then rent out the property when we once again got itchy feet.

We asked the agent about the rental market as we had read that the average Estonian wage was £1 an hour. The agent laughed at us and said the Estonian's don't rent property. They live at home until they are married and then they move into a house together if they can afford it. So who would rent something like this? Apparently you would either rent to Finnish businessmen who were over for 3 or 4 days at a time or to property investors mainly over from the UK and Ireland who were looking for property.

Can you say "Bubble market?"

The next day we visited Estonia's second city. Despite it being April there were large chunks of ice, which with our East London, low expectations we assumed were slabs of Styrofoam, littering the sea. In winter the whole sea freezes over enough for cars to drive on.

Although the area was a lot more affordable when we saw our off plan plots we realised why. 14kms from the sea is not a lot unless there is nothing except wasteland between you and the sea.

It didn't take a genius to work out that if building was as rife here as in Tallinn that 14km would soon be filled with a million different developments, all of which would have a better selling point than us. Equally 14kms in another direction lay the nearest shop so our holiday makers would have to drive about 15 minutes in order to get a packet of cigarettes.

Good job we had that refundable deposit.

So all in all Estonia was a bit of a wash out. We'd seen 16 properties in 2 days and still had another 7 days to go but as we grew more and more disillusioned we found ourselves at a bus stop. The journey was just beginning.

Manchester and The CPO

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.

The rise of the text sick note, and the email rent avoidance excuse.

So we ,with our burgeoning property portfolio, were now living abroad and trying to manage the houses from a distance of 8000 miles. Email is a wonderful tool, from anywhere in the world including half way up Mt Fuji (trust us we tried) you can communicate with others at the touch of a button. Very similar in fact to using a phone but one step removed. It's no wonder that 1 in 8 of us now text our boss to say we're taking a sick day. There's no awkward moment where you summon up an Oscar worthy rendition of a person on their deathbed to justify your sprained ankle. And likewise when your friends the tenants email to say that the boiler needs repairing and then the washing machine needs repairing, no - actually replacing, and then they both loose their jobs and could they not pay for a while?

Now these are people I've been friends with for years and I wouldn't suggest even for a second that any of these things were untrue or even embellished, but when you have no means of checking and everything comes down to trust and your bank balance is dwindling you often find yourself, shall we say ‘questioning' why these things have happened.

Dealing with the various pros and cons of whether you're better by going through a management agency or not led us to investigate how the Japanese rental market worked.

The interest rate in Japan was virtually zero, even on loans, and as we were on decent money in a city we loved, the idea was certainly toying with our minds.

In Japan pretty much everything is done through a management company. You typically have a minimum of a two year lease, and you are usually required to jump through a number of financial hoops to prove that you are a suitable tenant (as a landlord I can't say that I have a problem with that).

Tenants pay a reservation fee (usually about one month's rent) before they sign their contracts to ensure you don't rent the apartment to anyone else. This is refundable on the signing of the contract which is useful as the tenant then needs to pay the deposit in a similar way to the UK but usually higher, often the equivalent of several month's rent. But then comes the good bit. Key money is the equivalent of several month's rent paid directly to the landlord as a gift from the tenant to the landlord for letting the tenant have the flat instead of the no doubt numerous alternative prospective tenants, and then the tenant also gives a monetary gift to the management company to thank them for all their hard work as well.

When your contract is up a month's rent can be charged as an admin fee for renewing a lease, and if the tenant chooses not to renew a lease a month's rent can be charged as an admin fee. 

All sounded a bit too good to be true as I received another drip of money from Manchester far less than I had been expecting.

Transcontinental telephone calls to the management agency resulted in no joy, and for the most part no response. It was time to call in the big guns.

My sister is a tax inspector and more to the point she is mother to a toddler. She takes no prisoners, whether it comes to potty training or management companies. Yet even the considerable might of my sister constantly on the phone, bombarding them with letters and even going up in person didn't seem to make any real progress. Eventually they produced invoices for an entire Yellow Pages' worth of work carried out at the house from replacing the fridge freezer to replacing locks. Apparently in the few short months a revolving door should have been put on our house. Tenants were moving in and out fairly regularly and the management company's policy was to replace all locks whenever someone left meaning that any actual rent we had got from them was pretty much going directly to the locksmiths!

So much for gifts from our tenants.

The best laid plans of Mice and Men - and slugs named Nigel

One of the things you find when you come back from holiday is the surprising amount of mail that has built up behind the door blocking your way in and usually causing the door to swing back and catch you in the shins. Now multiply this to the amount of mail found in a house that hasn't been lived in for a couple of months and you can imagine the avalanche of pizza menus, free newspapers and junk mail that waited for us at the Manchester house.

Whether it's my innate sense of journalistic interest or the fact that I'm just plain nosey, I have always enjoyed sifting through these mountains of detritus and it was whilst I was doing this that I found a flyer from the local council saying that they were proposing to propose the possibility of maybe someday compulsorily purchasing any abandoned homes in the area and as such you should ensure that your home, if not abandoned, be put on the safe list. I wrote to the council, assuring them we were lost but now we were found, and thought nothing more of it as my phone rang.

I was being offered a job in Tokyo.

The job of a lifetime in a country that I had always wanted to live in? It was a no brainer. We already had the tenants in place for the London house and so instead of moving to Manchester we would rent out the Manchester house and move to Japan.

What could be easier?

With the London property we knew the people we were renting to. We'd been friends for years and they were looking to move out of their small one bedroom apartment and had always been very complimentary about our house, although they were constantly saying how they would redecorate if it were theirs.

We knew they would take care of the place and would also not be running to us every five minutes when things weren't 100% perfect. As such we hammered out a deal with them that as we weren't going through a management company we could charge them pretty much what the mortgage was. We rented the house out with all our furniture still in it and we agreed that we could store our personal things in the attic. The lease was cobbled together out of a self help guide to renting but as most of things in the one size fits all lease didn't apply (they could redecorate, they were allowed pets, they could smoke etc) what we eventually ended up with could probably be written on the back of a beer mat, and in my younger days probably would have been.

The problem with renting to friends though is where do you draw the line? When do you stop being someone's friend and start being their landlord? What do you legislate for? If your mate owes you money that's par for the course, but if your tenant owes you money what then? Having an intermediary such as a management company would solve these problems. Everything would be above board and by each party being one step removed we could hopefully get beyond any Us and Them attitude on either group's behalf.

But then Management companies are expensive. With fees ranging from 5% to 25% it was somewhat off-putting especially as you hope you're never really going to need them.

We had heard (primarily through self help guide books) horror stories about management companies. There was one where a dripping tap cost a landlord thousands, another arranged for spiritual cleansing and exorcisms for a tenant when she complained that there were "bad vibes" coming from the bathroom, and there was a case of one company that spent £5000 trying to get rid of a slug that kept talking a short cut across the tenants' kitchen floor. I'm no fan of slugs either but for £5000 I'd learn to live with it. It could be a low maintenance pet. Maybe I'd call it Nigel.

As much as we had no worries renting out the London house directly that was because we knew the house, we knew the tenants, we knew the area, and it was all familiar and familiarity makes us comfortable.

We knew our friends would take care of the place and would also not be running to us every five minutes when things weren't 100% perfect. As such we hammered out a deal with them that as we weren't going through a management company we could charge them pretty much what the mortgage was. We rented the house out with all our furniture still in it and we agreed that we could store our personal things in the attic. The lease was cobbled together out of a self help guide to renting but as most of things in the one size fits all lease didn't apply (they could redecorate, they were allowed pets, they could smoke etc) what we eventually ended up with could probably be written on the back of a beer mat, and in my younger days probably would have been.

But none of this familiarity or confidence applied to the Manchester house. I barely knew where to buy tea bags in Manchester let alone try and find decent tenants.

Fortunately down the street from the house there was a property management company. We went into see them and our initial impression was good. It was a little spit-and-sawdusty but then it was a pretty spit-and-sawdusty area. The company seemed to be 3 people behind a pretty worn Formica counter, with a procession of clients walking non stop in and out of the building.

We explained that we owned a 2 bed house and were looking to rent it out. The manager seemed to think it wouldn't be a problem assuming that the price was right but there was no such thing as rental guarantee schemes, or standing order payments in that area. We were told that the more likely scenario would be people paying the management company on a daily basis and then them transferring that money to us, minus deductions, on a monthly basis.

Armed with my self help horror stories I wanted to be clear as to what the company could spend without my express permission, but the more I pushed the more it was made clear to me that there were two ways of operating, their way and the highway, and as the day drew closer to us leaving the country it seemed like we were better of just biting our tongues and hoping for the best.

We needed this to work. So we asked them to do the inventory and assess the house. We were a little concerned when their initial enthusiasm waned into indifference which then bordered on cluelessness. Whenever we phoned we were told that the person we needed to speak to was not in the office, they weren't sure when they would be coming back, no there was no way they could call us, and no one else had access to that information.

Hind sight has 20:20 vision and although now it is obvious, at the time we just needed it all to work! Although the mortgage was small we still needed some kind of income to cover it. And not knowing Manchester, or the people there, at all, renting through a management company seemed like our only option, and this seemed to be the only management company. And so if there was something wrong with the management company we chose not to see it.  We put the bizarre behaviour of the staff down to eccentricities. Their lack of up to date information or instantly accessible records down to a fear of computers.

So when they said that they'd found us a tenant, we chose to put all our concerns aside and try not to worry. After all that's why you have a management company.

Things were moving on: we had a tenant in our Manchester house and we were 65% sure that we might actually see some rent from it. Friends of ours were chomping at the bit to move in to the London house (so much so they kept phoning to check exactly what time our flight was leaving and given half a chance they would have packed our suitcases for us just to ensure we left). If everything went according to plan both properties would wash their faces financially and The Boyfriend and I were all set to go.

And as if in a fairytale, with our suitcases waiting by the door we received a letter from Manchester City Council. Somehow you know when a letter is bad news. Somehow the envelope just feels different, heavier somehow. Opening the letter on the way to the airport we read that Manchester City Council had decided that the best way to regenerate the area was to compulsorily purchase all the homes in the area, regardless of whether they were abandoned or not, knock them down and start all over again. They would be applying to Government and we would be hearing in due course.

Bon voyage eh?

The cost of property developing

Autumn-ish time we got the keys to our Manchester money pit. This was the first time The Boyfriend had got to see the property and seeing it in the middle of the night following a 5 hour drive in a car full of furniture, paint and everything else you can think of was probably not the most favourable time to see it but he was as enthusiastic as I was.

With the £2000 discount we had finally negotiated still jangling in our pockets we set about transforming the tired building into a habitable home. Having watched Changing Rooms and things like that we knew full well that we need to neutralise the colour scheme. Although the plan was for us to live there sometimes you can't see the wood for the trees when faced with 1970s paisley décor.  A large mirror was hung above the fire place, new fires were installed, new appliances for the kitchen, pot plants for the garden. We had a damp specialist to come in, we had a shower fitted, and arranged for a new boiler and central heating system to be fitted.

Over the course of five weeks we started to transform the house into a home. Perhaps not in the smartest of ways, everything was from the Argos catalogue and Currys. All the workmen were found by sticking a pin in the Yellow Pages.

We were phenomenally limited for time as we were both in full time jobs and so could only work on the house at the weekends and the five hour drive on a Friday night meant that we were dead on our feet by then.

It began to feel like we had given up our lives doing this. We were both working full time jobs and all of our free time felt like it was taken up by the house. Not only when we were there but even when we weren't. All our conversations felt like they revolved around the house and jobs that needed doing there. My lunchtimes were spent getting quotes from plumbers, my evenings spent wandering around B&Q, and even when I wasn't actively doing anything house related I was still thinking about it. What colour scheme should I use? What type of handles would work there? Do I really need to replace the whole kitchen or just the doors? 24/7 my mind was occupied by the house.

To a certain extent it felt like that scene in 4 weddings and a funeral where Simon Callow claims that people only get married because they'd run out of conversation.

The surprising thing was how much pressure this put on my relationship. Rightly or wrongly, I felt that I was doing everything. Every decision seemed to come down to me. Every judgement call was mine. I was responsible for driving up there. I was responsible for trying to find the last 4* petrol stations in the country, and I was even responsible for loading the car up with all the things we needed.

Tensions between The Boyfriend and me escalated. The atmosphere at home was frosty at best, and the long car journeys were filled with such heavily pregnant silences it felt like a Scientology maternity ward. And as the time went on hostilities grew to the worst they'd ever been, I mean, even the fighting in WW1 stopped for Christmas. I knew I was using him as a verbal punch bag and I knew that my friends and family were right when they said that if I kept piling all the crap on him I was on the fast road to divorce.

As much as I could name at least 20,000 things I was frustrated and cross about I'm not stupid. Despite the fact that all the annoyances were legitimate what I was doing was masking my real concerns. What I was really worried about was constantly nagging at the back of my mind, the overriding thought that ran through absolutely everything: are we doing the right thing? Am I going to lose everything doing this?

Although to everyone out there the combined budget of £30,000 isn't much. Heck a new car costs more than that. But it was money I didn't have and as such it was all the money in the world. I have always been relatively risk adverse and the idea of extending the mortgage on my home to pay for this really went against the grain.

However by the New Year we had finished most of the work. The house was ready to live in. Peace had broken out again. We had tenants lined up for our London house and all we needed to do was chuck in our jobs, hire a moving van and Hasta la Vista Baby.

Then came the job offer and the dog eared bit of paper and everything changed again.

Mancunian madness

Armed with a provisional equity release on the London home I started trawling the property websites and following our recent visit, Manchester seemed as a good a place as any to start.

 Levenshulme, the place where we'd seen Death Trap House, was now (3 months later) completely out of our budget. Properties which had been in the £25 - £30k bracket when we'd first gone up there were now £60k+, cue lots of kicking ourselves. But in North Manchester there were other areas still within our measly budget and within commuting distance of the centre.

 Having hit paydirt online I started calling estate agents eager to make viewing appointments for the weekend.

 I don't really understand estate agents. Their job is to act as a facilitator between those with money looking to buy and those with property looking to sell. Much like a supermarket selling potatoes and toilet tissues to customers with sufficient money to buy those potatoes and toilet tissue. So why is it that when I go into Tesco or the like they seem quite happy to deal with me and my cash and yet estate agents often feel it's acceptable to look down their noses at me and treat me a s a nuisance rather than as an integral part of their job?

This was definitely the case in Manchester, although I've had similar experiences in Reading and Bristol.

The Manchester estate agent was dismissive of my call (made surreptitiously from work of course) and then was exceedingly reluctant to take me on any viewings.

Fortunately I am nothing if not bloody minded, and eventually the estate agent agreed to show me 6 properties provided I did not exceed a 30 minute slot.

Having taken the train up to Manchester and the bus to the area of Moston I was reliant on the estate agent to take me from property to property very much against his wishes. He made it clear that he did not approve of people from London coming up and taking their properties.

Having seen 2 former drug dens, one of which the estate agent refused to go through the door of, and rapidly running out of time I was told I could see only one more property and in fairness the estate agent did say that this was probably the most suitable of the lot.

And despite the fact that I was seething at his rudeness I had to agree. The Victorian terrace house had two bedrooms and two reception rooms, a small kitchen and a small yard out the back. The street was nice, with the beautiful types of gardens that only seem to come with retired people and the cars in the street were all Vauxhall Vectras and Rover 75 series all less than 5 years old and all worth as much as the houses themselves.

The house was habitable, although obviously in need of TLC, and yet it had a very reasonable price tag. The estate agent made it clear that our time was up and left me to wander around the neighbourhood. Two streets away there were houses boarded up both with wood and metal screens but then two streets in the other direction there was a brand new community sports centre and a new ASDA. A new build housing estate was being built behind the supermarket and the whole area seemed to be giving off the vibe of a diamond in the rough. Granted at present, more rough than diamond, but things seemed to be moving in the right direction.

I came home, made an offer to the estate agent and started the ball rolling. The estate agent refused to even put the offer to the vendor until I could provide evidence that I had cash in my bank account, fortunately I'm a wiz with Photoshop. The vendor agreed and I booked the survey.

When the survey came back though we were in for a hell of a shock. The house was riddled with damp and a million other problems resulting in the valuation coming in at only £7000 and the final line of the report saying in capital letters: DO NOT BUY THIS PROPERTY.

I faxed the report to the estate agent who after discussions with the vendor claimed that the report was false, grossly exaggerated and a feeble attempt to try and renegotiate the price. They had a point with the last thing. I may have thought originally I was getting a good deal paying £27k for a 2 bed house but knowing it was officially only worth £7k did put a different spin on it.   

The problem is that Bloody Mindedness that I mentioned earlier doesn't always work in my favour. I had decided to buy the property and even though everyone and everything was telling me not to, I still wanted to buy that property.

We went back to the drawing board. We decided that we could rent out the London property, live in the Manchester property, do the repair jobs as we could, and the very low mortgage (apportionment from the equity release on the London property) would mean that we could downgrade to part time jobs giving us quality time together. The people I'd met up there (with the exception of the estate agent) had been phenomenally welcoming and it seemed like not just a housing estate but a community that I would really like to be part of.

Maybe this would be the best thing that happened to us. 

The story so far

About ten years ago I bought my first home. I'd popped into the bank to see why my account was overdrawn when I'd expected there to be at least £5.50 cowering away at the back, and hey presto they offered me a mortgage. Ahh, the good old days.

After viewing over 40 houses we finally found the one for us (I say "we": I viewed about 37 houses, he viewed 3). It had the right vibe, on the right street, in the right area and in my head this was a house we could turn into a home and stay there for at least the next 10 years.

 But I had been raised on a childhood of property viewing. Entertainment in my family was going to property auctions, and as the likes of Kirsty and Phil filled our TV screens with property porn I started to get itchy feet.

Whilst looking at an auction catalogue I found a 3 bedroom property in Manchester with a guide price of £5,000. I double checked this with the auctioneers and it wasn't a typo and it was expected to go for fairly close to the guide price. I want to make it clear. I am not rich, but a 3 bed property for £5,000? Even I could find that kind of money if I had to.

So up we went to Manchester. As I have a very honest face the London auctioneers gave me the keys with only a £5 deposit and left me to my own devices.

When we got up there we fell in love with the area. Even since the auction catalogue photo had been taken the street had been gentrified. Completely redeveloped. All the buildings had had their exteriors repainted and a new park had been opened. Kids were playing, birds were singing, and the sun was shining, and we fell in love with the property - until we opened the door.

With hindsight it was still a bargain. But the boyfriend and I are barely capable of rewiring a plug and so the fact that you could see the rafters from the kitchen was a little bit off putting, and when I tested my weight on the stairs and the whole house groaned we decided against it. Of course I have kicked myself ever since.

The thing was even though we knew that that property wasn't for us we had learnt a lot from the trip. They say there is as much to be gained from a good Bad as from a bad Good. We knew that refurbs were beyond us, having neither the ability, the contacts or the budget, but we had well and truly been bitten by the investment bug, and now that the value of my house in London had gone up, I was ready to bite back.

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