A widow who was anxious to sell her home quickly and approached a specialist firm has told of her horror when she found it had registered a charge on the property, despite not having purchased it.
There is no suggestion that the firm has done anything illegal.
The widow, aged 73 and with disabilities, wanted to move from her home in Surrey. She also had the property on with a local high street firm.
She approached Property Purchased Fast, an arm of a firm called Littleborough Property.
She said she was given a contract which was “onerous to say the least, but I stupidly signed it”.
She says her property was then put on with an agency in Oldham, 240 miles away from her home, at £360,000 although the local agent had it on at £375,000.
She cancelled the contract within seven days, thinking that she should have had 14 days to do so. However, she was told that she could not cancel, as there was no cooling-off period.
Part of the contract said that during the option period, “the buyer has the option and exclusive right to buy the Property on the terms set out herein and, therefore has the right to register the option with the Land Registry”.
The contract appeared to suggest that by paying £10 to the home owner, Property Purchased Fast acquired this right. The widow says that this payment, when cashed, appears to tie the seller in for three months. She received the cheque, but says she tore it up and returned it.
A charge was duly registered by Littleborough Property, says the widow, and she raised the matter immediately with the Land Registry.
She also approached EYE and we in turn approached Property Purchased Fast.
Yasir – he would not give his surname – confirmed to EYE on the phone that it was correct that his business did not offer a cooling-off period.
The firm then apparently rung the client, wanting to cancel the agreement. Subsequently, we understand that the widow – anxious to have the Land Registry charge removed – signed a ‘gagging’ agreement.
However, by the time she did so, EYE had been passed a bundle of all the relevant documentation.
By email Yasir subsequently told EYE that the matter had been dealt with expeditiously. He understood the complainant was “satisfied with our decision”.
We have invited him to comment further if he wished.
The Land Registry has confirmed to EYE that there are no charges currently on the property.
A spokesperson said the Land Registry could not comment on individual cases, but advised all property owners to sign up for the free property alert service, which allows citizens to monitor up to ten registered properties in England and Wales.
When there is certain activity on a monitored property, an email alert is sent to the subscriber.
Comments (16)
obviously, she didn’t care about her property and didn’t find information before, she should register some services to warn and give essential information https://2player-games.io/
To prey on a widows vulnerability to make a profit and fill his fat pockets is not shocking when you look deeper in to the amount of inactive companies this person has accumulated over the years a good business man with integrity would have done the honourable thing and not targeted her in the first place, good to see justice prevailing, sounds like a man without a conscious who enjoys targeting and exploiting honest folk to feed his bank account and dishonest lifestyle. Well done PIE!!
P.S. Coincidentally, we are currently running “Business Risk Mitigation Week” on Property Tribes all this week to educate landlords about these issues.
Today we have David Cox, CEO of ARLA talking about the importance of working with a reputable lettings agent and tomorrow we have Richard Bowser of Property Investor News talking about the importance of due diligence.
Friday we feature Sean Hooker of the Property Redress Scheme giving an overview of the various risks landlords face and some further advice on how to mitigate them.
Well done again to Ros – I know that Ros does a lot of work behind the scenes in terms of protecting consumers and investigating suspicious activities!!
Well done Ros and EYE.
This kind of “community self-regulation” is often all that stands between consumers facing financial loss or not.
At Property Tribes we have two threads about nefarious Rent to Rent Serviced Accommodation deal sourcers – Jason Cunningham (a convicted fraudster) and Lee Pemberton (who is also operating an unregulated collective investment scheme imho).
Again, these are just the tip of the iceberg imho. Bullies and shysters keep a lid on people who have lost money by threatening them with defamation or legal action.
Peer to peer lending and investing in crowd-funded developments is also another huge area of concern in terms of “investors” losing money.
People must do intense due diligence before agreeing to anything or handing over large sums of money. Google is your friend and will help protect you.
Talk about having your fifteen minutes of fame…
Littleborough Property trading as Property Purchased Fast seems to be owned by the same person as Rain Properties trading as Property Purchased Fast which appears in another PIE article this morning (“Property listed on portal not for sale…”).
And they say there’s no such thing as bad publicity…
Sharp Practice?
Trading Standards surely?
Quick to resolve, Quick to hide?
Strong Whiff of “Tip of the Iceberg” in this story.
Well done Ros & Co
Exactly – this lady noticed the charge and took swift action. How many other vulnerable people have they done this to and got away with it.
As soon as you see the words ‘refused to give his surname’, you know it’s shady.
I have dealt with one of these companies on a development that I am the freeholder of.
The vendor took a £24,000 reduction for “a quick sale”, on a property that they now want £85,000, they gave the vendor £61,000.
Not a bad profit for less than 90 days of ownership.
Parasites in every industry these days.
If you refuse to give your surname, many people will conclude you have something to hide.
The surname is Shyster.
Just google the person’s first name together with the registered address of the ltd company, and draw your own conclusions
Well if PIE had a ‘Cad’ of the week I think we would have found them.
Well done for helping this woman out. Nice to see some positive news.
Yeah definitely, great work. But no cooling off period, unless the lady specifically waived that, then under contract law there is a cooling off period, you cant just state that one doesnt exist for your company.
Cooling off period only applies to contracts signed in your own home I believe, if sent by post it wouldn’t apply.
Good work Ros xx