WOW scary guy, if you leave owing him money he tracks you down and trashes your place...even if it takes him 4 years to find you!!!

And he has set a database for other landlords...

Quote
"With a vast database already he himself found a tenant who owed him £3,800 and trashed his property four years ago"

....As reported in http://www.residentiallandlord.co.uk/news2350.html

http://www.BuyersAgentLondon.com

I am a landlady with only one property which is my pension, I had a nice man come to see my house this week and said he would take it straight away. I dont use an agent and wanted to do some sort of check, so I joinedlandlord referencing and asked them if they new him, they did not know him but sent out an email on an extended search to all their landlords and a landlord came back saying he just left owing him £800, I hope all landlords join and stop these people doing this
Stacie

I think it's my duty to point out that the author of the previous comment is in no way actually suggesting Mr Routledge is in any way scary... he's highlighting an amusing paragraph - open to misinterpretation - in the attached link.

It seems a bit sad Mr Aitken that you would sit up at 11:59 at night a find all possible interpretations of an article. Perhaps next time you have a useless comment to make such as this you should just make the decision to go to bed and save your keyboard usage.

I joined Landlord Referencing Services about two weeks ago and I think it would be fair to say that in that short space of time it has become a massive part of our business. We usually talk to our data controller every day, we have uploaded all our tenants and done several amount of searches. I think it is a very good idea that has been a long time coming!! I would recommend this site to any Landlord.

Well, it is quite a shame that this Mr Aitken has voiced an opinion which has taken the whole article out of context and tried to spin it to give the impression that LRS looks bad, I think this totally shows the mentality of some people who just cannot work for the good of others, I can never work that selfishness out myself however it does resemble the actions as a labour spin doctor, they never really worried about the consequences of their actions to the average guy in the street either, I think my old mum saying sums this chap up empty vessels make the most noise and she refers to, what’s in some people’s heads, Anyway just to clear the matter up for him the concept of this web site is to protect not to destroy.

This can be simply explained by the fact that Landlord Referencing is not about referencing against the information a tenant gives you, it is about taking a reference against the information that they don’t give you. Landlords Referencing gives a voice to landlords to answer back to one sided legislation. Let us face it, no tenant is going to give you their last landlord if they know they have either ripped them off or damaged/destroyed their property.

A good analogy for Mr Aitken to understand is - Landlord referencing is like a chain link fence that is slowly locking together and linking landlords and agents as one across the UK. It is like a huge pool of information and constant communication interlocking members together one by one, with Landlord Referencing just acting as the posts that keep the sections upright and rigid so that each link stays in situ as strong as the last, strengthening the security of the fence as it grows area by area. We do not ask or want people to go and bash tenants up or smash up their property as your writer misrepresented but just give hard working people a chance to protect themselves and their property surly even mr spin cannot deny me or any other person that and on behalf of all landlord and letting agents who are members we are sorry you are scared but dont be I am sure you have nothing to hide.

Poor John. I think he's been misunderstood. The way I read his comment he was merely drawing attention to a comically clumsy bit of phrasing in the article he linked to. He was joking. He certainly wasn't casting aspersions on LRS.

We gave you a plug because even though your business is outside London (our area of editorial remit) we thought it had value and might be of interest to London landlords.

- B

Hi Ben,

Just read this review of our company and was pleased to see that you felt it would be of interest in London as well. We would be happy to expand and cover the London area and the interesting thing about it is that if only 5 landlords tell 5 more landlords and this pattern gets continued 6 times, we would have 78,125 London landlords instantly. When looking at it like this you can see that it would not take long to get London cover London and protect it from rogue tenants!

Thanks for your interest in our business.

Kind Regards
Sarah

Sooo sad, being landlords must be getting to you, our team rents just under 1,000 apartments so are fully aware of the issues, we only have about 0.5% vacancy rate and that is mainly down to empty apartments being worked on, and bad debt is much less than that as we always take a 3 month deposit, employers references as well as credit checks, and in most cases at least one years tax return has to be on file as proof of income and every tenant signs a rental contract, tenants also pay one or two months rent as an agent fee before they get keys which must be in cleared funds, so was just poking fun at an issue many landlords suffer from, yes even us with all our systems in place, I had no idea even one person would think I was serious, some of you clearly need to visit your nearest comedy club....at least once in your life..... if you have bad tenants, do your home work first, if you don't then it down to you but I appreciate there is no 100% perfect system, but 'crying over spilt milk' springs to mind here guys..

Think comment above this comment by Sarah LRS is a great idea, how many of you will do anything about it though?

John..

http://www.BuyersAgentLondon.com

Oh Dear!! Thanks Ben I love this blog its healthy to all of us, big agents with high value properties telling the buy to rent owner landlords how to do it always helps , well Another 40 landlords became member’s today john so I think we might just be doing ok however not as good as you it would seem! But I must admit you do have a great sense of humour which every landlord and agent in the UK can see now ha, I mean 1000 flats with only 5 empty 995 full then!! Ha ha and only because the 5 left and no voids because these 5 are all under maintenance. All the tenants have paid you three months cash rent deposit up front which even we assume your properties only yield the minimum of £500 a month rent is = 3 x £500 = £1500 x 995 tenants = makes wow !! £1.492.500 (I hope you put it in a deposit scheme) and then all the employer references are fantastic but we understand that in this economy eh !! hahaha, and then they all gave you one year’s tax returns showing fantastic returns to pay the rent hahahaha this joke gets better all the time, and then they all scored massive on the credit rating report with no defaults hahahaha and then as if I could not take any more laughter they all paid you cash up front 2 months agency fees cleared in your account before they got the keys, so again you bagged another 2 months @ £500 = £1000 x 995 tenants = double wow £995.000 in commission, and all in a recession too amazing, I can guarantee you john that was the best joke I and all my member landlords have heard from anyone in a long time !!!! I have sent them all this link, you have cheered us up, I said you you could be the labour parties spin doctor, but you could be their book keeper as well, it sound like we could all do with a john working for us “SUPER JOHN”– Keep up the good work its getting us more members than you can imagine and if anyone wants to be a super millionaire in property “Call big John” ha ha ha ha ah x

John,

Today 37 new members signed up to LRS, so I would like to think that we are doing something about it. The majority of our landlords and agents do have all systems in place such as the ones John has mentioned but the problem is that none of these checks tell you how a person is going to treat your property, the most perfect tenant on paper can often be the tenant from hell in reality. You yourself said ‘do your homework first’ and that is exactly what our members are doing.

Your problem free success seems to put you in a minority. Not all people can afford what you require in deposits and it would be unfair to suggest that they would therefore be unworthy tenants. Is somebody’s earning’s a clear reflection of the way they will treat your property? It is not my intention to argue with everything you say; but “crying over spilt milk” is definitely not the phrase that springs to my mind. For many small landlords their property is their income, with no guaranteed end of month wage, so a rogue tenant can be destructive to their lives. I am the person that deals with upset landlords that have been hit by a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” so I know that this is a service that landlords appreciate.

There are a number of methods available to landlords seeking references for their tenants such as credit agencies, employers, family and friends but none of these will say how a tenant conducts himself, for example whether he pays his rent on time and the kind of lifestyle he has.
Therefore this sytem operates on what the tenant doesn't say with the site stating that 'the previous landlord can give a one hundred percent unbiased and informative opinion as they have one to one experience in dealing with the tenant first hand'.

What interests me the most about this service however is the fact that ARLA tried to create a central database of information on landlord/tenant behaviour, rent arrears, condition of property, etc to be shared between private landlords and managing agents. However, this was considered to be an intrusion into the privacy of both landlords and tenants. The Information Commissioners office said that the creation of such a system should be a necessary and proportionate response to a problem that is sufficient to warrant the creation of such an intrusive system.

I obviously don't condone the actions of tenants that do nothing but trash places and deliberately fall into arrears because paying the rent is somewhere near the bottom of their priorities.
But is the problem serious enough to warrant the sharing of tenant information without the correct Data Protection checks and balances in place, especially if ARLA could not do so?

Kind Regards
Sharon

http://www.leaseholdlife.info/

Your writer above has quoted, “But is the problem serious enough to warrant the sharing of tenant information without the correct Data Protection checks and balances in place, especially if ARLA could not do so?" Firstly obviously the problem is serious enough for the 1000s of landlords and their agents who are joining our site, I believe the saying is "the proof of the pudding is in the eating” and regarding the question of data protection, we have registered with the ICO and covered the nessasery and required lawful registration of our data with them. And thirdly ARLA was a, name them and shame them formula which is wrong and detrimental to some tenants, Landlord referencing does not openly name and shame and its data is thoroughly checked against its landlords and is not a dangerous automated system that allows for mischievous and incorrect upload of tenants names and their defaults by rogue landlords.

Landlords you choose which one you trust to give you the best reference ????

The faithful diligent 52 year old landlord of 100 properties and 1000s of his own previous tenants
and who built his own portfolio from nothing and wears the scars and yet STILL charges you nothing!!

Or the wet behind the ears letting agent kids @ http://tenantvet.net/about_us.php who charge you £50 to put you in touch with yet another automated credit reference agency search !!

THERE IS ONLY ONE LANDLORD TO LANDLORD-- DATA CONTROLLED--- REFERENCING AGENCY IN THE UK TODAY www.landlordreferencing .co.uk

10,000 members and 1000s of registered rogue tenants all registered by the landlords who know them personally.

Being a tenant, at least with TenantVet I have consented that my data is held by TenantVet.

ICO and the Data Protection Act are a laugh. Any company can sign up, a get listed with the DPA. Does that mean anything? No it doesn't. Not one bit. The government isn't checking whether you play by the rules at all.

So, ultimately, when you decline my tenancy and I find out that it was because my data is kept in an obscure place that I didn't know about, I'd be on the pen to my lawyers.

TenantVet circumvents this, as it is clear from their login page, that I can access the data they hold about me. Now, I've actually called them, to ask whether the above statement was correct, and the sales person I spoke to, Lorna Rose, actually confirmed it.

So, I'm part of the process, not some random parameter to it. If a landlord complains about me on TenantVet, I have the right to reply. Both the landlord's complaint and my right to reply are visible for all members of TenantVet.

And as such, another fib from the sales person: TenantVet does not make a decision for landlords. TenantVet just holds information on whether I paid my rent, trashed the place, sublet it illegally, etc. It is up to the landlord to make the decision so as to rent to me or not.

So all in all, TenantVet being really forthcoming with that kind of information, makes me think that my name should be on TenantVet rather than in the obscure world of LRS. And yes, I've tried calling LRS too, but nobody picked up the phone, effectively rendering an obscure scheme even more obscure.

Oh, one last thing: you’re blaming TenantVet for charging £50? Check their homepage, Paul. They’re running a similar campaign to LRS: if you sign up now, you’re free of charge for 6 months. Much like your article on http://www.residentiallandlord.co.uk/news2350.html says that signing up in 2010 will not cost you anything (but it doesn’t answer the question whether LRS is anyways ever going to be a charge. TenantVet makes it clear that there is going to be a charge, and, according to their T&Cs, the charge will be £50).

Yes, I’m a tenant, and no I’m not affiliated with TenantVet.

Regards,
John