Tuesday, Oct 21, 2008
Poor BTLers
BBC: Repossessions: your stories
Sam, 29, was earning £20,000 a year, as well as receiving income from two buy-to-let London properties.
"I spotted a deal in a property magazine, for five flats in Birmingham for the price of just four.
It was irresistible so I bought the flats in 2005 with a 90% mortgage. They said I could get a rent of £750 a month.That turned out to be rubbish. With £15,000 I went for voluntary repossession for all five. I went bankrupt in December 2007. I have lost everything. It is so sad. I am an accountant, but may not be able to work for five or six years.
I wish the government had better protection for consumers as I had got my original mortgages for the Birmingham flats in minutes. Government should stop these unscrupulous deals.
Posted by little professor @ 06:13 PM (2058 views) Add Comment
37 Comments
- If you do not have an admin password leave the password field blank.
- If you would like to request a password allowing you to add comments and blog news articles without needing each one approved manually, send an e-mail to the webmaster.
- Your email address is required so we can verify that the comment is genuine. It will not be posted anywhere on the site, will be stored confidentially by us and never given out to any third party.
- Please note that any viewpoints published here as comments are user's views and not the views of HousePriceCrash.co.uk.
- Please adhere to the Guidelines
1. Ralph said...
I have no sympathy for this person, just one word Greed!
2. japanese uncle said...
I wish the government had better protection for consumers as I had got my original mortgages for the Birmingham flats in minutes. Government should stop these unscrupulous deals.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Simply beyond words! I suggest this accounttant should train for mopping the floor, or maybe collecting cockles. Better than begging for benefit.
3. Mikeysharpey said...
Why are people buying houses for hundreds of thousands and they don't have jobs? I really don't feel sorry for these people. reckless lending maybe, but this is complaining to the manufacturer when you dry your cat in the microwave !
4. Gor said...
Poor Sam, naughty government !
Still, he can always "use the benefits system"
Being a startup small 'actually making stuff' business, coming to the end of an 18 month R&D period ... this annoys the cr@p out of me
There's been not a penny of assistance !
Our whole economy and culture is built around 'stuff' - yet in the UK, we can't see the relevance of developing anything but more abstracted well-heeled office roles
5. Adrian said...
How is the government to blame for his greed?
With any investment there is a known saying, is it 'Do Your Own Research'.
He only has himself to blame.
6. unplugged said...
Sams behaviour and his subsequent denail of his own idiocy just helps to highlight the fact that the masses are not grown up enough to take responsibilty for their own lives. Not satified (or perhaps more accurately - completely unaware) that the powers that be have helped create this sorry state of affairs, he cries out for more!
7. last_days_of_disco said...
I keep running into 20 somethings who have had their formative years in this boom and I get the feeling they are so incredibly naive this is going to be the toughest lesson of their lives. Lambs to the slaughter. They are so weak and
searching for approval from authority figures. No backbone. Its so sad. They are all bonking the hell out of each other but seem devoid of any ability to take responsibility for any of their actions.
I need a drink, its so depressing.
8. Yoss said...
Hey every generation falls for the profesional promises from people in smart suits.
Be it dodgy mortgages, dodgy pensions or dodgy property portfolio's.
Seems preying on other peoples greed for a fat commission is a no lose line of business, there rarely seems to be any comeback on those arranging such deals.
9. Dorsetrich said...
I'm also an accountant, this guy should know better ! It was plan to see that when property prices get to the multiples of salary they have, something has to give ! This happens time and time again, NOw I'm in a position to buy a property at a sensible price.
10. Stevie Dee said...
Nevermind love.. You could have diversified. If you used your brain or accounting skills, you could have run 5 brothels. And you could employed the same logic to the punters as was adopted by yourself, as in "visit 4 times and get the 5th visit free"... bless..
How is mum & dad by the way?
"They are all bonking the hell out of each other but seem devoid of any ability to take responsibility for any of their actions"
Nice one last days, they (today's femmes) were either screwing someone my dad's age or some civil servant, or wealthy chap. The drugs helped too.
11. renting2 said...
LDOD - I've had a drink and it'sstill depressing.
12. stillthinking said...
Look at this line !!!!
"We had to pay interest at 9.8%, which I was advised was the best I could get at the time because of credit problems, as neither my wife nor I were working. "
When you realise the basis of the UK you have to be shocked. The best deal you can get when nobody is working, he goes on later to say he wished he had stayed in subsidised housing ! And his poor son has had to start working ....
Lambs to the slaughter my a(r)se, lambs with their hands out. I agree with last_days_of_disco it is depressing, for me, because I have been paying the taxes to keep this absurd state of affairs going.
This guy got a mortgage deal with nobody in his family even having a job, and that is after having landed the cushiest give away possible, council housing at half the commercial rent. I feel like punching my monitor in.
13. Stevie Dee said...
@Gor,
I'm an entrepreneur, very proud too.. will get through this disaster... my biz, is about doing something constructive, not being greedy or worshipping money, for me the satisfaction is about making something functional that works.
Didn't get a penny from the bank, they wouldn't be interested anyway... and as for the likes of Business Link & Co.. a waste of taxpayers money.. wouldn't surprise me if they Bought To Let too, the advisors I mean.
14. stillthinking said...
He had a 16 thousand pound subsidy from the government as well. I wonder whose pocket that landed up in.
Can't pay. Won't pay. I am the living financial reality of that short striker from the Carry On toilet factory film.
15. I Wanna House said...
Makes you wonder about the training needed to be an accountant.
16. drewster said...
He obviously wasn't a terribly good accountant.
17. japanese uncle said...
This kind of rats are prepared to change their status at their convenience. Sometimes, declaring themselves to be 'professional property investors' while sometimes 'poor vulnerable consumers'. Collecting cockles may be much better than tricking people.
18. Toldyouso said...
This gave me a chortle on the way home.
1. "I wish the government had better protection for consumers"
So do I. But if you're an accountant running a seven-property portfolio then you're not a consumer, you're in business. You remind me of the endowment complainants who claim they were mis-sold their policies, only for the files to reveal that these "victims! were in fact financial advisers at the time, who set up their own policies (trust me, it happens)!
2. "Each property was £145,000 but cost me 20% less with the discount, so I could pay my mortgage deposit with the money I had effectively saved - with money left over."
And the band played believe it if you like... It's not a discount, it's mortgage fraud. Well, it would be if the banks weren't complicit in these ponzi schemes to start with.
3. I cannot get a skilled job. I may have to use the benefits system, which I have never done and don't want to.
Loose translation: "If earnings reality doesn't measure up to my expectations then why bother when I can sponge",
4. "I went for voluntary repossession for all five"
Bravo. The more members of the BTL brigade who do this, the sooner property values will have their correction and the sooner we'll come out the other side of this mess.
19. Matthew_henson said...
what is worse is that for each of these morons is a messed about tenant, these guys are the silent victims who get evicted when these idiots enter a business they have no cluse about
20. plato said...
An accountant?.............. Who put an 'o' in there?
21. yoyo1 said...
'I bought the flats in 2005 and went bankrupt in December 2007'.
Clearly the housing market peak and downturn came at the same time as interest rates rose in 2006.
22. theboltonfury said...
my God it's sad we don't have the stocks anymore.
Sam would make a fine target
23. Bobbyald said...
He probably bought stocks too :)
24. Fence said...
"I wish the government had better protection for consumers as I had got my original mortgages for the Birmingham flats in minutes. Government should stop these unscrupulous deals." And you, 29 years old accountant Sam, should just grow up!
25. Panda said...
I'm sorry for this man. He doesn't have the viewpoint that we have; and would say also that he is not used to thinking of his activities as predatory. Never heard the phrase "every fire lit in the streets is a vote for DeGaulle"? It's a great shame, but we are all paying for a warped and genuinely ignorant moral base here. Buy to Let was preached here as morally equivalent to any other form of work - in fact, one was seen as engaged in moral turpitude if you didn't join the bandwagon.
We have to deal with the backwash from this - the elevated taxes - the political extremism (Boris Johnson uber alles) and all the resurgent Thatcherism that made this possible in the first place. I said before that we will face an extended era of shoot the messenger - or nowadays, haul them up on economic terrorism charges - and every single instrument of state will be brought to bear to prop up the heaving, quivering mess.
Jungle Book? King Louie and the temple?
Stand by.
26. Neil said...
New apartments in Birmingham sell for upwards of £120,000 with a 90% mortgage you should have well over £100,000 in your bank from the transaction. Maybe if you had sold the 5th property and used the profit to cashflow the other 4, allowing you to require a lower rent, you would still have the other 4 properties (and your reputation). being an accountant you should know that cashflow is king in any business venture and dont deserve any sympathy.
27. Orwell said...
"I am an accountant..."
Are you really Sam?
Shame on the Accountancy Exams then.... And I thought it was only the Law Exams that now spoon fed students and allowed them all to be solicitors now! I once heard a 'new uni' student say that part of her 'law course' (LLB?) was to go and view work in an office????!
Oh dear oh dear oh dear... Not much point in studying Land Law or Equity and Trusts then, there are alternatives...
28. mountain goat said...
poor little parasite, can't we bail him out?
29. phdinbubbles said...
Yes, I think we should have a whip round.
Can I be the first with the whip.
30. notaneconomicsguru said...
Hmmm!. I am now left wondering who is the naive one. Me or him.
I am a multiple of his age and have worked very hard for a very long time so that I now earn several multiples of his salary but yet I only dream of owning one fairly modest house, because after all is said and done and after all my hard work and pay rises that is all that I can realtistically afford.
How dumb I was all those years ago when I started out? I genuinely thought I had to be able to pay all the money back to the nice bank AND do it all by myself AND all by my own sweat and labour. How silly of me not to realise that by getting into totally stupid amounts of debt I could get some other nice people to do that for me and then if horror of horrors by some totally unforseable misfortune it didn't work I could blame the banks, the government and everyone else. Because after all I would have been so smart to think of such a thing it couldn't possibly me that was wrong could it?
31. Maihem said...
I see why this guy has lost everything. He buys loads of houses, operates them as a business in a cut-throat market, then calls himself a "consumer." What a twit. I bet his friends saw that coming to him.
32. phdinbubbles said...
I'm quite worried that he'll be allowed to work as an accountant again, let alone in five or six years time.
33. Eternal Sceptic said...
"It is so sad. I am an accountant, but may not be able to work for five or six years"._ It is not sad, it is crimminal that a person with such financial acumen should even be allowed to spell the word accountant, let alone practise as one. Perhaps basic finance should be taught in primary school along with the times tables. Then the delights of compound interest can be drummed into the masses in secondary school. I have a nagging sympathy for the fool because the modern educational system no longer educates.
34. inbreda said...
32. phdinbubbles said...
I'm quite worried that he'll be allowed to work as an accountant again, let alone in five or six years time.
Damn right! Who in their right minds would employ such a numpty!
35. Mr Gerbil said...
He claims he was an accountant on £20,000 a year. I am a Chartered Accountant, and I know that Sam's remuneration is only half the salary one would expect a properly qualified accountant to earn. I suspect he was merely a student accountant or an accounts clerk, and was not a qualified accountant at all. Few accountants would have been daft enough to take such a huge unhedged risk, especially as you are automatically thrown out of your accountancy body if you are made bankrupt.
36. Chilli said...
167000 pounds mortgage and no work? Boggles the mind.
I can't believe this guy ever thought he would pay it off. I can't believe someone actually loaned him the money.
37. Orwell said...
Why are all these people blogging here not involved in the setting of standards for education? !! ?