Meet The Landlords TV programme – fair representation?

Meet The Landlords TV programme – fair representation?

8:52 AM, 30th July 2013, About 11 years ago 73

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Last night I finally got around to watching a TV programme I recorded on BBC a few weeks ago called “Meet The Landlords“.

I was asked to appear on the programme when it was first considered but when I told the reporter what managing my portfolio entailed he wasn’t really that interested. Who could blame him? My tenants stay with me for years, I outsource most things and for that reason I doubt I spend more than a couple of hours every week looking after my property portfolio. It makes me enough to live on, my tenants are all very happy and neither me nor my tenants are ever very likely to make good viewing on the Jeremy Kyle show.

The appearances from landlords and tenants featured on “Meet the Landlords” though was a proper rogues gallery. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the programming team had stood out the Jeremy Kyle recording studio’s a picked the worst of the worst people. Perhaps they offered them a free Maccie D’s in return for them and their landlords to make another appearence on the telly? LOL

The programme featured:-

  • Two amateur landlords whose tenants had not been paying rent for months,
  • a landlord calling himself the HMO Daddy who runs what I can only describe as “doss houses” for the dreggs of society,
  • and a woman from a North Eastern letting agency who let a property for a private landlord to rent to a drunken ASBO tenant who couldn’t even be bothered to turn up sober and then broke down into tears when presented with a property which he clearly realised he didn’t deserved to live in

If the BBC wanted to make a documentary revealing broken Britian this was a success. If they wanted to portray the Private Rented Sector then sorry, in my opinion it was a massive #FAIL

If the two amateur landlords had employed a decent letting agent or spent some time reading forums such as this one they wouldn’t have found themselves thousands of pounds down in rent arrears. One of the landlords was quite clearly on the verge of a mental breakdown but the hypocrisy of her story was that whilst her tenants were not paying the rent due to her, she was falling into arrears with her own landlord and prioritising subsidising her own mortgage! No wonder Paul Shamplina for Landlord Action has such a thriving Tenant Eviction business. He was one of the few people on the programme who came across as being decent.

I’ve heard about the HMO Daddy selling coaching and mentoring and I had always wondered why a landlord who claimed to be successful would do that. In my mind, you mentor people either to grow your own business (i.e. employees) or you do it when you’ve made enough money to become truly altruistic and because you thrive on helping other to achieve or solve problems which you’ve previously encountered. Having watched this programme I think I may have worked it out. Perhaps “landlord Jim” needs to sell a blueprint of his “secret recipe”, or a positive spin on what he would really like it to be like, in order to subsidise the appalling behaviour of his appalling tenants living in his appalling properties, all of which were exposed on National TV?

I’ve read some very positive views elsewhere on the web about the lady who worked for the letting agency and dealt with the ASBO tenant. Yes she was grounded, caring and very patient. What I can’t get my head around is how it can possible be in the interests of any landlord to put a drunken lout like that tenant into what seemed to be a relatively decent property. Fair enough, it was explained that the rent was guaranteed to be paid directly by the Council due to this chaps “issues” shall we say but come on! Anybody with half a brain can see this chap was on the road to nowhere but prison. If that house isn’t completely trashed within a year then I will eat my words but I’d happily lay a bet that the damage he causes to the property and the distress he causes to the poor people living in close proximity to him will not come close to the rental income. What man in his right mind would think his wife and children would feel safe living to a sexist drunk like him? The guy believed he was God’s gift to women and obviously has no respect for society or the law either. The chap needed to be institutionalised in my opinion, for his own safety and for others, but I suppose that’s the result of what was badged “Care in the Community”.

The real shocker for me was the prostitute tenant who gave up possession of her property without going to Court in return for a tenner. Yes she signed some papers but it was pretty obvious to me that she did that under duress and whilst under the influence of drugs, alcohol or both.

Maybe I’m lucky, perhaps I will be labelled as a snob for writing this review, but the “Meet the Landlords” TV programme was nothing like the Britain I know and love and certainly not representative of what I have witnessed as a result of being a landlord for the last 24 years!

What were your thoughts?Meet The Landlords


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16:23 PM, 30th July 2013, About 11 years ago

An interesting point re malicious calls to emergency services have substantially reduced.
Reason everyone has a traceable mobile phone these days.
ONLY the stupid or drunks now make such calls.
Every mobile can now be tracked!
So police will be on the case if there is a persistent no making malicious calls.
This ASBO man should have been prosecuted.
Every time a fire engine turns out it costs £600!!!!!
It costs about a million pounds per year to keep ONE fire appliance on the run
You want to make sure it is used properly.
If it is out on what turns out to be in the parlance; a mickey, then that means that fire appliance is NOT available for a proper emergency call until the 'mickey' has been dealt with!!

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18:24 PM, 30th July 2013, About 11 years ago

Presumably you sold the Aston to someone who parked it outside the Berks Property Meet?

Mark Alexander - Founder of Property118

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18:33 PM, 30th July 2013, About 11 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Jerry Jones" at "30/07/2013 - 18:24":

LOL - perhaps he doesn't go to the meet in that car any more - not since he met Paul anyway 😉
.

Jayne Owen

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16:10 PM, 31st July 2013, About 11 years ago

Indeed it didn't really inspire one to be a landlord. You're the second person Mark that I've come across who had been approached about taking part, but whose portfolio was too well managed and trouble-free to warrant being included!

Would have been good to have a bit of balance though.

Karen Lupton

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16:51 PM, 31st July 2013, About 11 years ago

I wouldn't have ASBO man living in any of my properties. As a landlord, I believe you have a duty to the residents of the surrounding neighbourhood to put decent, quiet living people in your properties, to the best of your ability. If, when I used letting agents, any agent had placed this man in any of mine, I would have been livid! It's not just about collecting the rent. The most suitable accommodation for that poor man is a drying out clinic.

Karl Stewart

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16:59 PM, 31st July 2013, About 11 years ago

I personally agree with Mark it that it portrayed a negative side of the private rental sector in parts of Britain, and if I didn’t know better and wasn’t a Landlord I would be completely put of by what I saw.

The program was biased to say the least and would definitely seem to do Jim's business and reputation more harm then good.

I thought the Landlady who was having to sell her personal belonging to meet her rent payments was quite annoying and completely brought her plight on herself by being un prepared and not having any knowledge and education as to how to operate a rental property business which was being a landlord essentially is.

Also I notice that they didn’t mention on the program the £2m+ Annual rent roll that Jim's business generates.

On a positive note the program was great advertising Paul Shamplina business and I’m sure Landlord Action will add to the 20,000+ instruction it has already been involved in as a result. #NiceonePaul

Chris Hayden

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18:59 PM, 31st July 2013, About 11 years ago

As a landlord who rents to LHA tenants I found it fascinating. My tenants seem to behave a lot better than those shown. I'm pleased that the unfair eviction process was highlighted and that the weight of law is biased towards the tenant. Hopefully this will push the need for a fairer eviction process, forward a little further.

andrew townshend

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19:20 PM, 31st July 2013, About 11 years ago

the program was made to make good viewing, i was laughing all the way through, certainly not true to life, not in my neck of the woods anyway.

Neil Robb

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20:37 PM, 31st July 2013, About 11 years ago

Hi Mark

I watched the programme in horror. I know there is a place for HMO and can see how it could be good for both the landlord and tenant.
But seeing what the HMO daddy proudly rent to people down in their luck. To me it looked like the size of half a normal room for a £110 a week. I rent out full house for less. The thing some people do for profit.
I had one tenant who has been with me for three years plus now. I remember turning up to the house thinking what the heck had happened to it. It was dirty and quite messy. I mentioned this in a polite way and said I understood her situation and asked her to sort the house out. I was there today two years on and was so pleased to see how she was keeping the house evening adding new flooring at no cost to me.
I think some times giving someone the chance really does work out.

Barry Hayden

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20:55 PM, 31st July 2013, About 11 years ago

"HMO Daddy" says he would like to move into "professional letting", but he was a "victim of circumstances"! Then why was he turning a three-bed property, an ideal professional let, into a six-room HMO - money, that's why!

He may be serving a market, but it is a market that should not exist, and I do not think responsible landlords should be blamed for the existence of that market!

"HMO Daddy" deserves everything he gets - high rents, damage to property, loss of income due to non-payment of rents, to name but a few!

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