r/Scotland • u/TimesandSundayTimes • 15h ago
Revealed: the great property factor scandal
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/revealed-homeowners-face-big-bills-from-factors-they-cant-hold-to-account-cqj888hc5?utm_source=reddit&utm_campaign=scotland&utm_medium=story&utm_content=brandedOne year after Kristian Stevenson bought his first flat, the 34-year-old received an unexpected demand for £4,000.
The property factor who looks after the roof, garden and maintenance of his tenement flat in Cessnock, Glasgow, claimed that he was liable for a debt owed by somebody else in the building.
The letter from 91BC, which manages almost 4,430 properties, said: “Our role as factor is to facilitate communal works and charges relating to your building. We have exhausted our debt collection process and as a last resort, we must reapportion this debt to you.”
The £16,000 bill for the building, which Stevenson said was run up before he purchased the two-bed property, had never been mentioned in conveyancing and he was liable to pay £4,200. Nothing existed in the title deeds to suggest he would be culpable for somebody else’s debt. The factor said the deeds were outdated and he must pay the bill according to their written statement of service, which he said he did not receive until two years after moving into the property he bought for £180,000.
The statement of service did state that homeowners were jointly liable for debt, even if they did not cause this themselves, as is the case for most property factor contracts.
Stevenson, a freelance TV and film production co-ordinator, pays about £130 a month to 91BC and said the “absurdly high bill” included £6,000 in late payment fees and legal fees the property factor paid when chasing the other owner’s debt.
“If I was to pay this off it would wipe out any savings I’ve rebuilt,” he said. “A substantial bill without notice, consultation or even a real explanation is both unethical and a poor business strategy.
“Dealing with a massive sum of money like that puts significantly a lot of pressure on me.”
There are hundreds of thousands of property owners like Stevenson across Scotland collectively paying tens of millions of pounds each year to factors who are almost impossible to hold to account.
A long multi-step complaints process, which requires homeowners to compile evidence and documents and often take legal advice, has been blamed for poor regulation and accountability of property factors.
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u/Scotsburd 14h ago
We got together as a residents group. Sacked the factor and had the council adopt the common ground. Paid nada after that.
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u/Alasdair91 Gàidhlig 13h ago
How did you go about getting the Council to adopt your common ground?
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u/Alasdair91 Gàidhlig 14h ago
We have just taken our factor (Newton Property Management) to Court. Absolute ghouls who charge us roughly £80,000/pa for fuck all.
In the North I know off the top of my head that James Gibbs, HHA, FirstPort and Taylor & Martin are all rip-off merchants who provide abysmal service.
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u/Inside_Ad_5143 10h ago
Newton are bastards the ammount of work they charge for that’s never been carried out is criminal
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u/abz_eng ME/CFS Sufferer 14h ago
James Gibbs,
We ditched them last March and still haven't had a full and final bill
They are claiming we first have to pay them for the non payers then we can individually sue each non payer for the £2 or less they owe
Getting hold of anyone is impossible
FirstPort
were Peverel and oh yes they were looking to expand ya dee dah etc etc except the development was aging and they were actually going to have to oversee communal repairs - they dumped us and refused to do any work that was concerning work that would be undertaken after the contract finished
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u/Alasdair91 Gàidhlig 13h ago
Newton contracted paintworks for £13,500 to Bell Group. They did an atrocious job, charged owners £750 each and it still hasn’t been remedied 3 years later. We also have outstanding roofing issues, grounds issues, drainage issues, pest issues, waste issues, outstanding complaints… the list goes on.
The court system is so backed up because, surprise surprise, all factors are shite. The Government won’t intervene unless factors break the PFEOs the Court serves them. But owners can’t get PFEOs served because the Court is a mess. Catch 22. Meanwhile, factors get to keep taking money and doing fuck all.
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u/ElJaffacakeo22 8h ago
A Factor cannot contract works, only the homeowners can. Sounds more likely you have issues with your neighbours
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u/Alasdair91 Gàidhlig 8h ago
Our factor previously contracted all work in our development and had a policy of “if we don’t hear from you within 5 days to say no we go ahead with it”. Which obviously works in their favour as mail takes time to arrive and a whole bunch of owners here are absentee/rich so don’t care. We also know from speaking to people that they also don’t look at their mail or invoices so stuff just happens 🤦♂️
Luckily we set up an owners group, but getting anything done is like getting blood from a stone with Newton involved - and they will only ever find one quote that costs the earth. It’s a constant fight and pushback with them. It’s taken us almost 2 years to get a bin light changed (via the Council) and to get Newton to finally put together 98% of a set of access keys for the development. It’s beyond a joke at this point.
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u/Creative-Cherry3374 5h ago
Oh yes, I used to live in a development they were in charge of. We were getting communal electricity bills for houses (not flats) where there was no communal electricity. Eventually got them to rescind the bill, with (fake sounding apologies), following threats of legal action, only to receive another bill for the same a month later. And so it goes on. And on.
Trying to get an entire housing development to agree to changing a factor is an effort.
All they do is arrange grass cutting and bin collections. God knows why we didn't get money off our council tax as the council didn't want to collect the bins when planning permission was given for the development. Buildings insurance too (very expensive) and supposed communal repairs. I'm glad I sold up because the houses were coming up to about 15 years old, and I could imagine them inventing "essential" roof repairs and so on for their cronies.
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u/Alasdair91 Gàidhlig 5h ago
Newton has overseen (and I use that word lightly because they’ve all but ignored it) an absolute disaster unfold with our communal electricity billing. We are currently £8,449 in alleged debt to various electricity companies (despite assurances we only had 1) and Newton cannot account for why this is the case. Upon further inspection, one stairwell has never paid for electricity and some were being charged £1,250 a quarter for electricity - to power 8 emergency lights and a fire alarm system. My stairwell apparently uses as much electricity per month as my 2-bed flat where we both work from home; Newton don’t seem to think that’s an issue worth investigating…
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u/Creative-Cherry3374 5h ago
We think the communal electricity charge actually relates to the social housing part of the development (which is supposed to be managed entirely separately). It should be an easy enough question to answer, since none of us have any communal electricity, but James Gibb seem to have run up thousands of bills for it.
We don't have any communal stairwells or emergency lighting. All the houses have their own front doors.
It seems to be quite a nice little earner for them. How they think they can get away with such thieving is a mystery, but they are clearly confident enough they will never be brought to account.
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u/Alasdair91 Gàidhlig 5h ago
They get away with it because 1) the law is written to benefit them, 2) the First Tier Tribunal system is in undated with complaints and can’t move things forward at pace and 3) the Scottish Government ultimately won’t intervene (we have this in writing from the Office of the Housing Minister).
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u/Creative-Cherry3374 5h ago
Was a reason given by the Housing Minister for that?
Other that too many snouts in the trough?
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u/Alasdair91 Gàidhlig 5h ago
They told us that:
“The Scottish Government is unable to intervene in disputes between parties as the Tribunal is the appropriate route of redress that is available to homeowners who have a dispute with a property factor. It is right that that the justice system remains independent of the Government.”
The issue is that the system isn’t working and ultimately, the Scottish Government and Ministers make the laws and can intervene (which a FOI from 2022 we found shows they have done in the past), but instead they just sit back and ignore the problem. Upon raising this situation and need for further protections, they said:
“With regards to your final question, there are no legislative or regulatory reforms to provide homeowners with greater protection against negligent property factors under consideration at this time.”
Basically, good luck losers.
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u/Creative-Cherry3374 4h ago
Amazing how all those MSP's managed to get legislation passed for their special interests in the property market, particularly rental properties (and have mainly succeeded in making rents more expensive and in the creation of super-landlords and gigantic Edinburgh HMOs (50 person or more) which didn't exist before the raft of legislation.
But its all "oh no? Legislation? Never heard of such a thing. You expect us to pass legislation to solve a growing problem in a particular market? Thats not what we are here for!"
They do like to control people's lives, don't they? The peasants must not be allowed too much freedom.
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u/ElJaffacakeo22 8h ago
You've listed 4 Factors there and claimed they are all rip off merchants. Do you have first hand experience of any of them?
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u/Alasdair91 Gàidhlig 8h ago
Through our owners group digging for info, speaking to other homeowner groups and meeting with some of the companies, we’ve discovered horror story after horror story. Just go look them up on the First Tier Tribunal site or Trustpilot/Google.
FirstPort tried to poach us (in person), then we discovered last week they don’t even have a local Development Manager that would look after us if we’d have moved to them! They just treat people like they’re idiots in the hope of making another buck…
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u/Creative-Cherry3374 5h ago
I remember asking a couple of people I spoke to at James Gibb if they had any relevant, formal qualifications for their roles. That went down like a lead balloon. Cue pointed silence and then an angry attempt to change the subject and then hanging up.
I took that as a no, but there are what I would call informal qualifications, similar to the ones letting agents have to "achieve". God knows who they get in to teach them.
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u/Alasdair91 Gàidhlig 5h ago
Newton has a “school” (yes, they actually call it this) that their employees apparently go through. God knows what they teach them because of the 13 different people we’ve dealt with over 20 months they’ve all been as useless as each other.
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u/Creative-Cherry3374 5h ago
I think I can imagine what they teach them. Day 1 - how to deal with clients by bluffing your way and the finer skills of waflling nonsense word salad. Day 2 - which charges are the best to inflate? Day 3 - how to deal with challenges - i.e. charge clients for getting things wrong and making more mistakes.
Entry Requirements - as few Standard Grades as possible and preferably school leavers at age 16 with no qualifications.
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u/Alasdair91 Gàidhlig 5h ago
Our DM freely admits they aren’t equipped to deal with specific issues and is in over their head. It’s an utter failure of Senior Management in dumping years of issues on untrained junior staff and expecting them to fix it all. Meanwhile, the SMs all just vanish into the ether and ignore you…
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u/_TheChairmaker_ 14h ago
My limited experience of trying to get factors for a tenement property wasn't a total disaster but left a general feeling that on the scale of usefulness they are somewhere around 'chocolate teapot'. Not completely without function since you can still eat a chocolate teapot. Competence is another story again.
But the problem without them is a lack of building fund and trying to organise communal repairs, which frankly in my experience gives cat herding a bad name.... And then eventually you start getting letters from the council about the state of the property and after a protracted period you end up being rinsed by the Council and their contractors when they step in.
I'd actually like to see some kind of SG mandated-factoring scheme or NFP, or some pretty heavy-handed regulation. Sure there are protections in law for getting people to agree to communal repairs but honestly who has the energy to go all the way to small claims not to mention annoying your neighbours?
Frankly horror stories about factoring in developments isn't exactly new. IIRC there have been cases of people being fleeced thousands for none existent grounds keeping and all kinds of things.
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u/Creative-Cherry3374 5h ago
We self manage our own tenement building and its pretty straightforward. We don't really have non-payers any more after taking a small claim against one. They paid up before it went to court. Its certainly easier than dealing with property factors in another property I had. It also means we can get best value by getting our own quotes, rather than the cowboys who deliberately don't fix stuff and create more work for themselves and their pals the next year.
We have a couple of commercial properties (a hairdresser and a pub) on the ground floor, and they're the best payers but now (after several years), all flat owners are pretty good. We also bypass one set of useless letting agents and send any bills direct to the owner.
Theres a Tenement Management Service you can adopt in current legislation, but I must say we have never had to. We had a big roof repair a couple of years back and it all worked out smoothly.
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u/AltoCumulus15 14h ago edited 5h ago
I had this issue recently with my factor - they’ve put a letter out to say if they can’t recover the debt then the rest of us will have to pay.
I looked up the legislation and unfortunately the Scottish Government has allowed this in law. So the factor is liable for almost no risk, which is then distributed to the other owners.
The only way to change this it through legislation to give owners some rights over the factors.
Thankfully in my case the debt is low, but a friend has had a much larger demand come through.
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u/Creative-Cherry3374 5h ago
Agreed. New legislation is very much needed to end this racket. Theres no way these factors (and also letting agents) can effectively manage the number of properties they have on their books. Not that they're interested in effective management, as opposed to making easy profits.
I really think it should be something the Scottish Government would be interested in. Its making so many peoples' lives a misery, and its happening right in front of their noses. But is it the ethos to stop people being responsible for their own properties, and force them to put it under the control of a third party?
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u/jimbo5451 13h ago
Why would the factor be liable for any risk? You owners need to maintain your building. It's a hassle so you contract a factor to do it for you. Then when an owner doesn't pay their share, why would the factor take that the hit?
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u/AltoCumulus15 12h ago
And why should I be liable for someone else who fails to take responsibility for their home/obligations?
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u/ElJaffacakeo22 8h ago
Read your Deeds, that's literally what happens when you purchase a piece of common property. Why on earth would a Factor, who has no vested interest in the property, be liable for any charges related to it?? Mental.
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u/AltoCumulus15 5h ago
They take on the risk of non-payment of fees like any other business - why should factors have the explicit right to demand that all of their customers pay up because someone else doesn’t? I have read my deeds, I’ve read the legislation, it doesn’t make it right.
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u/ElJaffacakeo22 1h ago
Fees and repairs are two different things. Scottish Law permits Factors thwbright to recover their costs like any other business, if you don't like it, self Factor.
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u/mata_dan 9h ago
Because it was literally the factor's job to handle that. Hence the point in the factor.
If they didn't go through the courts to get a lein off the property when it changed hands with a debt in place from the owner who clearly had that asset to liquidate to pay with, that's their bad imho.
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u/gibchris 14h ago
I lived in a large block of flats in the Southside of Glasgow, which had a significant amount of non-paying owners which led to a huge amount of debt being racked up. The previous factors tried to charge owners on purchase of a property for the unpaid debts but for whatever legal reason I can't remember were unable to. The new factors were able to tie the debt to the properties which didnt pay, which means that when the property was sold, they lost the entire debt amount (again through legal terms that im unaware of) which to me seemed like a good option to recover the money which penalise the other tenants.
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u/Apprehensive-Mix7192 13h ago
My son’s factor is pretty useless. The building needs a new roof and guttering cleaned as water comes in his top floor flat. The factor put it to a vote!!!! Obviously the people one the ground floor don’t care so out of nine properties only 3 voted yes. It does state in the deeds that everyone should be liable for common repairs but the factor won’t push that point. So nothing is done and there is still water ingress. Apparently the council can’t intervene unless the roof is actually falling down. Ross and Liddell is the factor.
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u/Illustrious-Welder84 10h ago
Unfortunately that is not the factors fault. They are there to facilitate things, they cannot force the owners to act. I've been the surveyor in jobs like that and we can only help the factor communicate why it is important. Your son would be best to talk to the others that are objecting.
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u/Apprehensive-Mix7192 10h ago
I guess but if it is on the deeds that you are required to pay for repairs and such like why put it to a vote?
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u/ElJaffacakeo22 8h ago
So the Factor has to take the risk in underwriting repairs for a block of flats they do not own?
This classic lack of understanding is why people give Factors such a bad name. If owners are not willing to pay their share, that's on them.
It is the responsibility of the co-proprietors to uphold the conditions of their deeds, not the factor.
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u/Illustrious-Welder84 7h ago
I really feel people don't understand this exact point. If there's an issue, the owners need to agree among themselves first the way forward. Most of the successful jobs do so because there's a united way forward agreed before the factors are even involved. The worst jobs thankfully never go ahead, but generally are meetings attended by the two top floor or bottom floor flats (depending where the issue is) and you never meet any other owners because they don't care
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u/Illustrious-Welder84 7h ago
Because people can argue until the cows come home if work is really required, or even that work is required, but what's planned is excessive, or not competitive etc.
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u/mata_dan 9h ago
But the law itself says all properties under the roof where works need done are liable, end of.
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u/Illustrious-Welder84 7h ago
But people can argue until the cows come home if work actually needs done.
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u/mata_dan 7h ago edited 7h ago
They can try but it's just factual and has a basis already in the industry through qualified licensed surveyors, and in the courts. I've been right through the weeds on this twice from landlords who never did any maintenance at all whatsoever, e.g. not repointing a non double insulated exterior wall within a maximum of 15 years is automatically incorrect end of no discussion and the industry has standards on this going back many many decades - if it's less than 10 years and some people argue it needs done and some argue otherwise there could be a grey area until a surveyor says nope decision made.
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u/Illustrious-Welder84 3h ago
Are you saying a traditional external wall needs to be repointed every 15 years? That is such crap like I've never heard
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u/mata_dan 2h ago
It was from a document from a Scottish tenements management association of some sorts, it had a lot of other details - properly about the structural elements and fire safety details during maintenance and standards of closes and everything including case studies and technical materials details etc. - and that was about the only one I could remember decently, I might try to find it though similar things aren't hard to look up. I had to quote it in the past to get my letting agency to stop being idiots.
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u/fdasinwtgtls 9h ago
Having previously dealt with Newton Property Management, and now experiencing Ross and Liddell at a new property, I genuinely doubt either company could tell their arse from their elbow.
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u/Tin-Ninja 11h ago
Not surprised to see 91BC named here - they pass everything on to their tenants - including that time one of their owners wanted to start his own business so they just raised £250k by adding a one off ‘software development’ fee and giving it to him.
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u/Ecstatic-Highway-663 10h ago
Seen that, shocking way to treat your customers.
People need to bin them for that type of pish patter
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u/el_dude_brother2 12h ago
If we want people to live in flats which are easier to build and take up less space, we need to sort out factors rules in Scotland.
It's basically a racket where they can charge whatever they want at the moment.
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u/Creative-Cherry3374 5h ago
On the continent, a lot of blocks of flats have their own live-in caretaker/housemeister, who is in charge of it all. Seems to work very well.
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u/unix_nerd 12h ago
Strikes me that if I were buying a property with a factor I'd ask my solicitor to get a confirmation from the existing tenants and factor there was no debt and that if they were the old tenants were still liable.
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u/TheManyFacesOfDurzo 11h ago
Most people (myself included) would just assume that was the case. It would never cross my mind to ask. However, it would be good if solicitors made it part of their standard checks.
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u/unix_nerd 10h ago
It's a bit negligent if they don't frankly. Indeed I wonder if there might be a case for negligence in these circumstances?
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u/Colleen987 3h ago
It’s in the Scottish standard clauses. In order to not have the protection for two years after you purchase you have to have a solicitor that actively deletes it.
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u/DINNERTIME_CUNT 11h ago
I find it amusing that a Murdoch rag is publishing something that makes the kind of people Murdoch loves look bad.
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u/SaltTyre 11h ago
Factors and letting agencies are the next PPI scandal. It’ll take a BBC docudrama before anyone takes action
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u/Creative-Cherry3374 5h ago
Lets hope people pay more attention to it than the expose the BBC did of the Edinburgh statutory repairs scandal. Its an ongoing, repeating problem in Scotland, and there seems to be a lot of vested interest in keeping it that way.
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u/mata_dan 9h ago
We've mostly managed to force letting agencies to be less shit now, it's the propeties that simply can't and will never keep up with demand so something has to give and that burden is picked up by or outsourced to agencies.
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u/So_Exec 5h ago
Yup - I have no doubt some factors (for groups of flats etc) are sometimes useful. However some of them are absolutely at it. At a previous property I challenged our factor to what they were actually doing after the joint space they looked after was adopted by the council. Subsequently they admitted - nothing - but the requirement of a factor was specified in the deeds so they knew they had us by the balls.
Fuck you James Gibb :)
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u/AwillOpening_464 13h ago
I can't remember the factor for my tenement building but it's now the local housing association
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u/Potential-Season1890 13h ago
My block of flats has just changed factor due to them being incompetent, and it turns out they are trying to pass on a debt of £2500 owed by one of the homeowners to all of us. From the comments it seems this is fairly common.
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u/Connell95 11h ago
Depends on your factor really.
Our one is decent enough: does the work needed fair promptly for a reasonable price, and with pretty much zero hassle. Can’t complain about that.
Having lived in tenements with no factors in them and owners reluctant or refusing to pay for necessary repairs, I’m pretty happy to pay for someone else to just get on with it.
If your factor is shit (some seem to be), it’s reasonably straightforward to change to one of the decent ones, and definitely worth doing.
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u/Ecstatic-Highway-663 10h ago
If you have driven owners who are happy to pull together, organise contractors, and pay what is required to maintain where you live all good.
Problem is when you have a lot of owners, or dodgy landlords who refuse to pay, even though they love having a nice place to market to their tenants.
The big boys, as stated in here and everywhere else, are not shy to bend you over for a shit service.
Why we binned CW for doing heehaw, and took on a startup factor who decided to do things differently. Been 2 years now and saved a few quid, and they discuss with you what needs to be done, and when it'll be done.
Only do Edinburgh though, AboveBoard Homes.
Worth a look, or do it yourselves
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u/AwillOpening_464 5h ago
Well Renfrewshire council grit all the roads and pavements around here where I live ,they g
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u/ElJaffacakeo22 8h ago
9 times out of 10, people who moan about Factors don't understand their role or the role their neighbours play (or don't play) in getting work done.
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u/Alasdair91 Gàidhlig 5h ago
No, we moan because we do understand their role and they completely neglect everything and continue to take money for very little. Our Factor (Newton) has been taken to court 30 times in 4 years and lost 57% of the time. Hardly a ringing endorsement, is it?
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u/ElJaffacakeo22 1h ago
When you say "taken to court" you mean to the First Tier Tribunal? That's not the same thing and a Factor will "lose" a claim even if a letter has a name spelled wrong on it.
I'd really love to know what evidence you have that your factor is charging you for things they haven't done.
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u/Alasdair91 Gàidhlig 1h ago
The FTT is an independent judicial system that has the power to decide whether the law has been broken; that’s as much a court in my eyes as anything else. And you’re clearly being obtuse in your claim, because when factors do lose their case(s) (and its always a fight to get to that point, as opposed to it being trivial as you jest) it’s often for major infractions of the laws they are supposed to follow.
Our factor has a history of taking our money (they love to increase the management fees endlessly) and actioning nothing in return or when works are finally actioned they are done to poor standards and they vanish - after they’ve taken their additional 10% “large work fee”, of course. Alternatively, they just accept invoices from contractors with no due diligence and breach their own internal policies and then bill everyone in the hope people cough up.
Maybe if factors weren’t so universally shit (as this thread shows) then we wouldn’t be so fucking fed up of them all? 🙂
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u/YOF626 14h ago
Factors are an absolute racket.
They make a fortune for doing very little.