Mortgage Express instructed Valuations without my permission!

Reply to the comment left by "Chris Green" at "20/03/2014 - 09:29":

Hi Chris,

Mark is on it 🙂

Although he is away now in Malta for the expat seminar (lucky thing) until Monday night.

I get to hold the fort and Puppy sit LOL

TCF is an abbreviation for Treating Customers Fairly. It is one of the guiding principles of the FCA remit, however, by the FCA's own admission it does NOT apply to buy to let mortgage borrowers.

PR will not win this fight.

This is no different to trying to beat the West Brom or the Bank of Ireland into submission over their tracker rate hikes with negative PR. Mortgage lenders are now hardened to it.

MP's are unlikely to back a campaign against UKAR due to treasury involvement, regardless of political persuasion.

The ONLY logical way for borrowers to stand up to MX is to enforce their legal rights with the professional help of solicitors and barristers, hence the arrangement I released in the early hours of this morning.

Talk is cheap folks, action is what's required.

Cuddle up to MX as much as you can Vanessa but be under no illusion that they are highly likely to perceive you as a PR pawn and nothing more. Please carry on doing what you are doing though because raising awareness of the issues and the potential solutions is very important.
.

Mark
Thanks for your input on this and other threads. We all need to spread the word in whatever way we can.

Vanessa
I see that you have taken up the cudgel on property tribes and are acting as a conduit.
Well done to you both and thank you too!

Mark,

Please do not patronise me (again). I am not "cuddling up" to MX!

I am simply adhering to the Terms and Conditions of your very own site, the same T & C's that PT advocates.

•The “Blog” and “Property News” users will abide by the following rules and regulations:

1.You will not post any comments or material on the “Blog” or “Property News” that:

d.contains defamatory, unfounded or unproved allegations against a person, company or organisation

You may be interested to know that the Daily Mail deleted their story about MX landlord Brian Smart.

So Do we all agree MX/ACAR are posing a significant threat to landlord's survival? I can bare testimony to that.
How do we best protect ourselves?
I call for alternative factions to forget their egos and unite in a common purpose.
Mark has offered a contingency plan, a valuable life line. Vanessa has provided valuable information in the past which has laid dormant for too long with those that know and those that don't because nobody has a plan of action. I suggest we need one soon.
Today I have sent my fees for MS's representation in the WB case. I feel as strongly about this but am currently depleted of funds and not wishing to fall into arreas with MX. My pseudonym tells you I have been had already by rogue vendors and organisations and I simply do not deserve this treatment by a lender who must wake up and realise that it had a hand in the inception of its own toxic debts.
I have ATE insurance and am about to sue acting solicitors 7 years on. How many battles on how many fronts are we prepared to fight before giving in and failing to expose these banking scandals for what they really are ? Could other ME mortgage holders comment please?

@Chris Green - thanks for your kind comments about my situation. I had no choice but to blame myself in order to stop the resentment towards what UKAR had done to me. I have legitimate mortgages with them which I took out for the same reasons as other landlords, i.e. for capital growth and income. After they perceived a breach I ended up with them taking my rental gains and my children's University funds and various ISA nest eggs to pay them! I must stress that I have 3 other portfolio lenders who also paid contested service charges for me and they had no issues negotiating a settlement without the need to instruct LPA receivers. In fact some of these other lenders agreed on a 20 yr term repayment on any service charges paid because (using their own words) it was the height of the recession and I was not the only portfolio landlord contesting unfair charges whilst having non paying tenants.
@ Mark (the opening post) - the reason why I would take a very cautious approach with UKAR/ MEx is that the logical approach to organising valuations would be to contact you, the landlord first. They must know that they lent to a landlord on a B2L portfolio. What kind of 'mickey mouse' surveyor would think it was easier to organise valuation appointments by writing to unsuspecting tenants? Not to mention that they were instructed by your very own lender, in the first place! If anyone of us here on this thread were asked to book a block valuation we would instantly know the best person to contact would be the landlord, who might then refer us to his/her letting agent, if applicable! These are simple tactics to rattle the cage a little bit and their best defence is the usual, 'I was unaware or it was an admin error'!

http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?230253-Mortgage-Express-appoint-LPA-Recievers-Walker-Singleton-to-scare-tenants-off!/page79

Just google - UKAR Mortgage Express unfair treatment and you will see plenty of examples of unfair treatments and tactics. To date, no one could stand up to the legal costs of fighting them! (to my knowledge)

I still think my breach was MEx's perception but my lawyer advised me that whilst I paid him to fight this accusation, LPA receivers would takeover my portfolio. The costs involved in getting an injunction against LPA receivership are sizeable and it would take more than the 30 days MEx gave to even get a court date! So I had the choices of-
1) Pay loads and potentially get an injunction to regain a portfolio that might not even be intact and with definitely a worse cash flow. Don't forget this is just an injunction against LPA receivership and I still had to fight to prove that the breach did not happen.
2) Take it on the chin because this is how business is conducted and that it's nothing personal!!!

I chose the latter, which proved to be correct because I am still around whilst my 2 former business partners who chose the other path, ended up losing everything.

TBH, I don't have time for any UKAR personnel anymore. I have copies of letters which I would be more than happy to superimpose any of your names on it and send it all to you over a period of days, so you can live for a few weeks from my eyes! I am sure after that, you would lose all sympathy and gullibility of listening to government sponsored bullying!

If UKAR are so adamant that they are the good 'guys', then ask them for references of happy UKAR account holders!!!!

Reply to the comment left by "Chris Green" at "19/03/2014 - 19:51":

Hi Chris, I was not in arrears! MEx paid for contested service charges for some of my properties.

Reply to the comment left by "Chris Novice Shark Bait" at "20/03/2014 - 13:13":

Hi Chris

I'm not sure what more we can do.

MX have been picking on the vulnerable but I suspect they are likely to meet their match when they start attacking larger portfolio landlords, particularly those in and around London who have experienced significant capital growth in their properties and have the financial clout to fight back.

Time will tell, the strategies and systems to fight back are now in place.

Many landlords will continue to bury their heads in the sand until it is too late and their woeful tales of ruin will continue to be told on forums and in the filler pages of the traditional media. It is unlikely that you will ever hear of those who succeed in their fights using professional advisers as most deals will be settled out of Court and be tied up with confidentiality agreements.
.

@ Mark,

Thanks for your reply. " we can do?"Who is the collective we to whom you refer? I am presuming you mean prop. 118. My message is that the victims do more themselves collectively to fight a double injustice (poor lending, victimised recall of bad debt) . What numbers are we dealing with? Does anyone know? I suggest this thread which has momentum carries on and all affected landlords sign up and give voice to this issue which has been closeted for far too long by confiidentiality clauses. M.E. in my view are not blameless and should be held to account regardless of the governments current involvement and the tax payers intersests. Neither of these circumstances can rewrite history but seem to be a veiled attempt to do just so. This is simply injust. The English law does not only apply to London. What a convoluted tangled web of mystery to excuse incidental collateral damage to small time landlords pinning their hopes on diverted pension funds. Now the government having woken up to entrepreneurial willingness to better pension provisions alters pension rules, possibly with short term tax revenue in their primary focus. It will be interesting to see if this leads to more property investment but there is no joined up thinking in our reactionary governments of today.

In practice I can see how, from what you say, you see how it is working but this is initself inherently unhealthy if you seem to suggest it is just the way of life. Is that not what the government spends a lot of tax payers money trying to second guess?
As landlords we are in this together. The government tells us we are all in this together. Is any of this true? Obviously not. But what if it came even close to true as far as landlords were concerned? Would that not benefit a robust PRS and serve tenants better and further relief critical housing issues?

The government repeatedly fails to build enough homes. Recycling ours at rip off prices to bail out the banks should not, in my opinion be an option to which we acquiesce.

Chris.

Dear All,
Thank you for all the useful comments. I will tread carfully, but it appears I have no choice but to let UKARS inspect and value the properties. Interestingly - the gentleman I spoke to commented that they will be inspecting everyones portofolio over the next couple of years, because of Fraud cases experienced in other former lenders now part of UKARS. He gave examples of houses now run as hotels, and fire damaged buildings.

He also appologized for the oversite of not contacting me, and fwd'd the letter by email.

In short I am cinical, and think they are looking for any breach of contract to call in the loans, as is their remit.
Just to be clear:
I have no arrears and have never had any. I have had no contact with UKARS before.
The properties are long term tenanted on AST's, now Periodic.

I will keep you all up to date.