It seems that property buying companies have had a great deal of media coverage over the last week. Some of the coverage has not been good.
As a property buyer myself I would like to go some way to set the record straight.
I think the first question is who are the property buyers who run property buying companies. Well I personally know many and they do range from the small one man bands to big organisations with a great number of staff to manage and repair the houses they look after. It seem that in the media they a focusing on these one man bands as the problem areas of the business. Well I can safely say that is not true.
I personally know a guy who runs one of these ?one man band? property buying companies in Cumbria and he is probably one of the most genuine and stand up guys I know. Whenever he buys a property and the owner is going to stay in as tenant he will go and do a full fact find about that persons income and expenditure. At the end of the day most property buyers can continue to let you stay in the property as tenants only as long as you as the tenant pays the rent. My friend in Cumbria wants to make sure that when he buys a house where all his expenditure will be met in the form of rent so he can continue to house the tenants. To be sure of this he needs to assess if the tenant can afford to pay the rent if he thinks they will struggle he will not buy the house.
As I watched Watchdog on Wednesday night they cited a case about a couple called the Wilkinson?s. They it was claimed were 3 years away from clearing their mortgage when the husband got ill and wasn?t able to work. As they could not pay the mortgage in this time the bank tried to repossess the property. In desperation the Wilkinson?s turned to a property buyer to allow them to stay in their home. Now two things got me mad about this storey. The first was obviously that the person who had bought their property had not structured their business properly and as a result they were facing leaving their house again.
However what got me really mad was that the banks were not getting blamed at all for this mess. My first criticism of the banks would be that this couple were even under threat of repossession. It clearly said that they were only 3 years off being mortgage free. Why could the bank have not given them a year or twos break on the mortgage so the guy could get better, get back to work and get back to paying the mortgage. Why do banks at a drop of a hat insist on being heavy handed because if they weren?t the property buying companies would not be needed. Now I don?t know why the bank could not have helped this couple, was it because they could make more money out of the repossession than out of a couple with a small mortgage balance? I don?t know but I still feel they could have done more. I?ll tell you a little known secret now. The banks do have a conscience, they do worry about how they are perceived when they are turning little old ladies and gents out of houses . So how do they live with themselves, the answer is they donate money to a charity called shelter. In my eyes what they do is fund a charity who is left to pick up all the pieces once the bank has got their money back. For many people the damage is already done at this stage as they have lost their home, their children may now be forced to leave their schools, and the disruption and stress on these people is massive and is caused by our greedy banks. Property buyers and buying companies could be a whole lot better I agree. Regulation into the industry and a common code of practice could help. However if the banks lent more responsibly, tried to work harder with people in difficulties, and just cared more then property buyers and their companies would drop out of the market.
Until this happens property buyers will still be there.
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