RESIDENTS at a plush riverside development have been sacked by their factor - because so few of them are paying for communal areas to be maintained.Things sound pretty bad:Glasgow-based factor Life Property Management says it was forced to pull out of Kingston Quay, Tradeston, at the end of last month because only a small number of owners are paying for shared services such as electricity, water and repairs.
The rest are absentee landlords who rent out their flats and don't bother paying factors bills - leaving the development more than £110,000 in debt.
Of the 370 flats only around 100 owners pay up. And more than 70 flats are in the process of being repossessed.
"The lifts have been broken for two years, there's no security entry, the communal parts are filthy and there's holes in the walls.So what's really going on here?"People feel afraid for the safety of their children. Neds drink in the communal corridors and last year a drug addict overdosed in the doorway.
One of the commenters writes:
I once viewed an apartment here when the development was still very new - two different estate agents told me to avoid it as the Buy To Let flats had been taken over by anti-social tenants who had been evicted from elsewhere, drug dealers or were being used as brothels - at the time (about 3 years ago) there were apparently at least 3 on the go.It seems to me that there is no market failure here despite the anti-capitalist statements one reads. The problem is those "anti-social tenants" who are housed in these "plush" flats courtesy of the taxpayer, including the residents who do pay their factoring charges. In other words, we have the antithesis of a market, and the decent folks are getting it in the teeth.
God damn the Scottish Labour party.
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Neil Craig
I got this email on the Red Road flats which points to the same issue in the direct state sector. In fact the flats are relatively cared for, with doormen 7 all, but are nonetheless going to be knocked down because blocks of flats are politicaly unfashionable:
"I was brought up in the Red Road. I started my first Company from my flat in Red Road court. I had a warm, secure, well appointed home. I loved the place, but was forced to move in 1990 because the council were letting it slide just too far.
The place is in the state it's in because of WILFUL neglect on the part of the City Fathers; no other reason. They let the buildings rot, effectively condoned the violence and drugs and deliberately used the place as a dumping ground.
The original posters proposals won't see the light of day for one reason and one reason only; Those holding the controls want their skin; their wedge off the top. Nose-in-the trough time for the City's fatcats and to hell with the ordinary weegie!"
16 February 2008, 17:33:47 GMT
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Sam Duncan
There's Something Going On here.
My MSP sent out a letter a couple of weeks ago calling a public meeting about factors, and informing a grateful populace that she'd put forward a bill that would require them to provide impartial arbitration (at their expense) among other things.
A few days later, the Evening Times ran a front-page investigatory piece into the factoring business ("Are they providing value for money?" I think was the line), and is now running stories like this.
What a coincidence.
Looks like nanny wants to stick her nose into people's private business. Again.
12 February 2008, 23:45:24 GMT
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