Wilsons not paying mortgages

chucknorris

mayonnaise wrote: »

Envy.

.....

Although I have thanked you, I have to admit that I think they are far from being decent landlords. But I would add two more comments:

1. wotsthat raised an interesting point about the way the Wilsons may have been treated by the media:

wotsthat wrote: »

I Even then I fear the media are manipulating me because I don't know what a normal rate of complaint or legal compliance issue is for any other company of such a size.

It made me think, perhaps they might have had a 'bad press'? But it is getting towards the scale where you might have to think, did Hitler have a 'bad press' too?

2. I certainly think that the envy of some posters has played a part.

Graham_Devon

The first time I saw the wilsons probably stemmed from a post on here.

Anyway, he was being interviewed by an investor programme and one of the questions was "how do you become so successful".

His answer was quite simple - "Be ruthless". He then went on to explain what he meant by that.

"It's not my problem if one of my tenenats is pregnant, her partner has left and she is £50 short on the rent - you have to be ruthless in this game, she is out and someone who can afford the rent is in". You could see his excitement building up, licking his chops at the prospect of some pregnant women scrabbling around for a home before she pops.

He mentioned one widower, recently lost her husband, couldn't afford the entire rent that month due to funeral costs etc. "Dispatched of", he remarked.

It was while mentioning these scenarios - scenario's he never needed to mention, but chose to do so himself, that he became engrossed in the interview - as if it was the part of BTL he enjoyed the most. I.e. the power he has over individual lives.

Much later on, he ran to become the police commissioner, again, a position of power.

My view was formed of the Wilsons from that one interview. Interviews since has followed the same pattern - many of you will remember the time that he was on the ITV news doing all he could to tell the nation how he was chucking everyone on benefits out of his houses.

But was that enough for Fergus? Oh no, he had to qualify it by stating "I feel sorry for battered wives who have come to us because we are very much consigning them to go back to their husbands to be beaten up again – but the situation is it cannot go on".

Wasn't enough to say he's chucking out benefit claimants and leave it at that, he had to go on and say "I'm going to throw abused wives back to their abusers". Why would you even say that!?

You just don't go on national TV and tell the nation you are a complete tool and will punish benefit claimants because you can unless you are proud of it.

My dislike of them isn't envy, as much as some landlords may wish to make out. It's simply the fact that he revels in telling us all just how ruthless he is, needlessly bringing up real world scenarios to prove his point.

These pair are hardly the victims of poor publicity. They are the creators.

Graham_Devon

Oh and his latest wheeze is evicting any family with more than 2 children - or a granny who comes over to stay for a couple of weeks.

He wrote to the guardian off his own back to tell them. Again, no real need to write to the guardian to let them know your doing this.

wymondham

The Wilsons are not offering social housing... it's a business. The fact they happen to rent housing rather than rent TV's makes it more emotive for people, but ultimately its just business....

chewmylegoff

wymondham wrote: »

The Wilsons are not offering social housing... it's a business. The fact they happen to rent housing rather than rent TV's makes it more emotive for people, but ultimately its just business....

This is quite true - but as graham rightly says above - they seek out notoriety for the sake of their own self promotion. They are the landlord version of Katie Hopkins and unsurprisingly that makes them unpopular. There is really no reason that anyone should have ever heard of them. If they just kept their heads down and got on with running their business rather than seeking out press interviews and saying nasty things I doubt they would ever have been mentioned here.

stator

wymondham wrote: »

The Wilsons are not offering social housing... it's a business. The fact they happen to rent housing rather than rent TV's makes it more emotive for people, but ultimately its just business....

There is no such thing as "just business". Every decision you take has to be morallly defensible or you are nothing better than a slave trader. I can just imagine them saying many of the same things I head landlords say "It's nothing personal, it's just business". My business happens to be destroying your life, get over it whilst I go home to my huge mansion sleep in my comfy bed.

wymondham

stator wrote: »

There is no such thing as "just business". Every decision you take has to be morallly defensible or you are nothing better than a slave trader. I can just imagine them saying many of the same things I head landlords say "It's nothing personal, it's just business". My business happens to be destroying your life, get over it whilst I go home to my huge mansion sleep in my comfy bed.

I disagree I'm afraid. The Wilsons are not responsible to their tenants for creating a business empire. There is no social responsibility as long as they obey the laws. If they choose to have a heart and behave morally then that's a bonus and obviously preferred, but its not a requirement to run a business.

I didn't see the bankers having much morality in 2008 ??


The fact the Wilsons seek out to make bad press makes me think they have a bit of an ego, or an odd sense of humour...

chucknorris

stator wrote: »

get over it whilst I go home to my huge mansion sleep in my comfy bed.

I've rarely lived in our most expensive property (I did once for 2 out of the 24 years that I have been a landlord), currently we live in the joint 4th (out of 9) ranked property, and we have been here 10 years.

LydiaJ

wymondham wrote: »

I disagree I'm afraid. The Wilsons are not responsible to their tenants for creating a business empire. There is no social responsibility as long as they obey the laws. If they choose to have a heart and behave morally then that's a bonus and obviously preferred, but its not a requirement to run a business.

I didn't see the bankers having much morality in 2008 ??

The fact the Wilsons seek out to make bad press makes me think they have a bit of an ego, or an odd sense of humour...

Are you really saying that as long as people behave legally, it's irrelevant whether they behave morally, and that nobody should think badly of them if they don't? Do you live your own life that way? And if so, do you apply that reasoning to your personal life, or just to "business"?

princeofpounds

If you ever watched 'Benefits Tenants' on C4 then you will know that a LL can get a higher rent for a benefit tenant than for a worker looking for a private rental property.

This is down to the Tories setting a rent cap for those on HB which the LLs now see as the 'standard' rent.
In fact, this capping has created a whole new business model not previously considered worthwhile whilst at the same time removing properties from the private rental market as far as the working person is concerned.

Are you kidding? This is a huge misconception.


The rents are boosted by the LHA rates, which used to be assessed at the median rent for the type of accommodation in the area.


This then became a floor rental rate (as if you could always get an LHA tenant in, why bother renting to anyone in the bottom half of open market pricing?). Rinse and repeat for a few years (especially as they calculated these rates by simply asking letting agents!) and you end up with upward pricing pressure and a massively compressed bottom end of the housing market, making rental housing more expensive for ordinary working families.


The coalition government moved the assessment from median to the 30th percentile, and capped the total amount. If you think that reduction in subsidy drove rental prices up, you are innumerate and/or have little knowledge of housing policy history.