Crackdown on housing rentback scams
Updated on 01 July 2009
From today the Financial Services Authority is to regulate property sale and rent-back arrangements. Ben King reports.
It sounds like an offer too good to refuse. If you cannot make your mortgage payments, a helpful company will buy the house off you and then rent it to you as a tenant - allowing you to avoid repossession and stay in your home.
But for many people who take up sale and rentback schemes, the offer quickly turns sour.
The industry is plagued with unscrupulous operators who lure desperate customers with low initial rents, buy their houses at knockdown prices, then evict them when their six-month secure tenancy is up.
The case of Jean Turner from Norwich was highlighted on Channel 4 News last October.
She sold her house to a sale and rentback company in 2006 after her husband became unemployed. They never received a tenancy agreement, and their rent was doubled within months of the sale completing.
Then she found her house being repossessed when the sale and rent-back landlord failed to keep up with the payments.
From today, sale and rent-back will be partially regulated by the Financial Services Authority, which will impose stricter rules on companies which advertise these services.
Sale and rent-back companies will have to pass a "fit and proper persons" test and obtain accreditation from the FSA before they can do business.
Customers who feel they have been wronged by sale and rent-back operators will be able to take their cases to the financial ombudsman to seek compensation.
The FSA will be able to fine or ban companies which persistently break the rules.
An FSA spokesman said: "The key consumer message here is that people should only deal with authorised sale and rent back firms - otherwise they will not have access to the official complaints process."
There are thought to be thousands of companies operating in this marketplace, from private landlords with a small number of properties to relatively large companies.
The National Landlords Association estimates that almost all of these will exit the market as a result of this legislation - leaving just two dozen or so big companies in the market.
