September 14, 2010
Almost one million people have been the victims of scams carried out by private landlords, a housing charity has warned.
Shelter estimates that as many as 946,000 people could have been the victim of a scam while renting a property in the private sector, with one in 50 Britons ripped off by landlords over the past three years.
Research carried out by the group uncovered five common scams that rogue landlords were using to get money.
It said in some cases con artists were breaking into empty properties and then renting them out to unsuspecting tenants, who were asked to hand over large sums of money as a deposit and rent, before the fraudster disappeared.
Other cases have involved landlords billing customers for hidden charges that tenants were never told about, such as charging a £35 fee for a letter or £90 for a telephone call.
In some cases, landlords asked people who wanted to rent their property to wire a sum of money to themselves or a friend or relative to show that they could afford the property.
The landlord would then ask for a copy of the transfer receipt as proof, but would use the code included on the receipt to transfer the money from a holding account to themselves.
Shelter said that although it was a legal requirement for landlords to put deposits into a tenancy deposit scheme, some were failing to do this, and were then withholding it at the end of the tenancy.
In other cases, landlords did not demand a deposit but instead asked that a friend or relative of the tenant acted as a guarantor. They then pursued these guarantors at the end of the tenancy for costly repairs to the property.
If you’ve fallen victim to illegal property practices, approach our solicitors today and discover the options that are available to you as a tenant.
