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Friday, November 29, 2013

Another property fable - rent to rent

This years property fable has had it's usual sad ending.

'Rent to rent', remember that one, it was the one before 'rent to buy'

Well, we were never very keen on this 'rent to rent' scam that some - landlords ( can we call them that or are they tenants of landlords who sub-let? ), anyway here's the latest story from the 'sector'.

It turns out that one of the 'rent to rent gurus', a Daniel Burton has gone bust. The young (know it all - clever clogs ) who'd put himself up as the sector's poster boy, giving out the typical cheesy "you can make a fortune just like me" webinars and courses, where wannabe investors could learn all his tricks for a few hundred pounds. You know the scene, a few biscuits, punch the air whilst shouting "we can do it!" and not spilling your tea, some powerpoint graphs and folder with a ten point plan. Well, he has closed his London company having gone bust.

According to Channel 4 the 'rent to rent' tycoon, who once boasted of £35,000 a month profit has gone back to Scunthorpe with his tail between his legs owing a load of money.

He has promised to pay back the £60,000 he admits to still owing. He described how he had been forced to sell his car.

Now the question is, having once been making £35,000 a month in profit, how can things go so quickly wrong? It wouldn't be that this property guru's claims were exaggerated, unrealistic - or even untruthful?

I mean, surely a property guru promising to show you how to make a fortune if you attend their £400 a day property seminar wouldn't have lied - would they?

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was happy reading this until the last sentence which seems to have been written by a 10yr old - it's "wouldn't HAVE lied" not "wouldn't of" - muppet!

Hawkeye said...

Manamanam - doo doo doo dooya!

Anonymous said...

I think this was a very poorly written blog. you seem to be of the class of person who likes to see people fail. you do not say why he went bust, he might have earned £35k a month but if he spent £36k a month you don't need to be a genius to forcast the result. Donald trump went bust 4 times, are you now saying if a successful person goes bust then that whole industry is wrong. for a property man you are giving a lot of credence to the anti's.
my parents own 2 care-homes that have just been converted to HMO's and our company lets the rooms out and are doing very nicely thank you. does this mean care-homes don't work? Obviously not as I own a third care-home which our company is currently expanding. our company R2R all three of the buildings. we also have some shops one of which is a hair dressers and they rent out chairs, so they do R2R.
If you look around rent to rent is everywhere.
If you have normal HMO's then you could get called a scammer by others with as much validity of argument as you have have done with R2R.
There is more than one way to make money with property, just because you don't like to do one, don't slate it
Rob P

Hawkeye said...

Hi Rob,

Thanks for your comments.

It appears you don't agree with our dislike of rent to rent. Well, that's fair enough. However, your examples don't seem to address what we most dislike about the sector - i.e. - the deceit.

When tenants are let a property presuming that one person is the landlord when they are not, then this is a deceit. When a landlord lets a property thinking that the tenant will be living in the property and then they go on to sublet to others without the landlord's knowledge, then that is also a deceit.

I'm guessing the examples you have provided from your own businesses do not operate with any kind of deceit.

Though I am happy for people to make money from property, I do prefer that it is not done at the cost of others.

The blog post is only our opinion of a news article that we have put a link to. If you wish you can find out more details on the story there.