For a Sunday afternoon thought provoking post I’d thought I’d post about the current mortgage crisis in the UK, and what mortgage companies are doing about it. I hope none of this info has changed, because this post was written last Tuesday and set to go live because I’m on holiday this week.

Yeah, I’m probably pissed right now.

Anyway, back to my point. I recently looked at getting a mortgage through C&G for a property in Manchester, and a few months ago was told that I could get a 90% mortgage, which would mean I’d need a £9,000 or so deposit. No problems.

However, C&G, despite offering the 90% mortgage package on their site, aren’t actually offering 90% mortgages at the moment. Instead the best they’ll offer is a 75% mortgage, which means I’d need around £22,000 for a deposit, which I don’t have at the moment. Who does?

But… Lloyds TSB, who are C&G for the sake of arguing, will offer me up to £25,000 as a personal loan, which I could use as a deposit! So, they won’t offer me the £77,000 as a mortgage, secured on a property, but they will offer me the amount if it’s split up, and £25,000 of it is unsecured.

What the heck’s going on there?

No wonder there are people being repossessed left, right and centre. Lenders are giving the people the money, but in two lumps, making repayments higher, interest rates higher, and offering them unsecured.

Sort it out C&G and Lloyds TSB.

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The recent Watchdog programme on BBC1 showed a great number of students in Leeds who were unable to get their deposits back on lettings they’d taken out with Providence Properties and Tariq Zaman. We’ve received a great many comments and emails on the subject, with some people suggesting that Providence Properties had setup under a new website, Myhomez.co.uk.

In the Watchdog programme, Providence Properties stated that the deposits paid by students were paid to a company called Providence Lets, who they said were nothing to do with them, which is why students were unable to get their deposits back.

This all sounds fair enough; Providence Properties, Providence Lets and My Homez are all separate companies.

However, if you’re a bit of an expert online you can find out certain things that many people wouldn’t be able to. For example, Providence Properties domain name, providenceproperties.co.uk, is registered to Mohammed Ishaq. According to the Whois database, the registered address for Mohammed Ishaq is: 72, Victoria Road, Leeds, LS6 1DL, GB.

Nothing strange there.

Myhomez.co.uk however, is registered to Mohamed Ishaq, with the registrant’s address of: 72, Victoria Road, Leeds, LS6 1DL, GB.

The same person, with the same address. If you think back to the BBC Watchdog programme, where Providence Properties distanced themselves from Providence Lets, you might wonder if there is a website for Providence Lets as well. There isn’t, but there is a domain name: providencelets.co.uk.

Have a guess who that’s registered to… that’s right, Mohamed Ishaq. The registered address for providencelets.co.uk is 72, Victoria Road, Leeds, LS6 1DL, GB.

Incidentally, the website for Providence Properties, providenceproperties.co.uk, is hosted with 1and1 Internet, on the server with the IP address 87.106.210.120. An IP address for a server signifies the specific web server that the website is hosted on. If it’s a shared server there could be dozens of websites on there, if it’s a dedicated server there might only be one or two.

Domain Tools shows that there is one other website hosted on the same server as providencelets.co.uk… care to hazard a guess at what that website is?

That’s right; myhomez.co.uk is also hosted with 1and1 Internet, on the server with the IP 87.106.210.120.

They are the only two websites on that server.

If you look at the source code for the website providenceproperties.co.uk, you’ll see that the meta tags for the Keywords and Description form thus:

<meta name=”description” content=”Leeds student and professional letting estate agents providing student & professional accommodation and commercial property in Leeds City Centre, Headingley, Burley, Hyde Park and the surrounding areas.”>
<meta name=”keywords” content=”providence, properties, providence properties, letting agents in leeds, estate agents in leeds, student lettings, professional lettings, commercial lettings, professional accommodation, student accommodation, commercial property, corporate property, property for sale, sales, leeds, headingley, burley, hyde park, city centre, west yorkshire, uk”>

Nothing strange there, a letting agent in Leeds would have keywords like that. I wonder if the meta tags for myhomez.co.uk are very different. What do you think?

<meta name=”description” content=”Leeds student and professional letting estate agents providing student &amp; professional accommodation and commercial property in Leeds City Centre, Headingley, Burley, Hyde Park and the surrounding areas.” />
<meta name=”keywords” content=”MyHomez, properties, myhomez properties, my homez, letting agents in leeds, estate agents in leeds, student lettings, professional lettings, commercial lettings, professional accommodation, student accommodation, commercial property, corporate property, property for sale, sales, leeds, headingley, burley, hyde park, city centre, west yorkshire, uk” />

That’s pretty similar. It’s almost as if they were the same company, but of course they’re not.

In my industry, SEO, it’s very important that if you want two websites to appear unrelated from each other that you register them with different Whois details, with different registrars, host them with different hosting companies and on different servers. Otherwise it’s very easy for someone, or indeed Google, to identify that the websites are owned by the same person.

I’m not suggesting that that’s what Providence Properties and My Homez have done. I’m sure they’re completely unrelated websites, unrelated companies and have just been unlucky to end up on the same server, at the same host, registered to the same person, with the same meta tags.

Just unlucky I guess.

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You can tell I’ve got a week off when I’m complaining about Bargain Hunt, but why are they all so stupid? It’s a simple premise, you buy something cheap and sell it for a profit, yet so many of them fail. Why?

Bloody simple, they keep buying ‘antiques’ from dealer stalls at markets and from antique fairs, and try to sell them at auction. Where do they think the antique dealers bought the stuff from in the first place? From the auction!

If you want to make a profit in that game, they’re doing it the wrong way round. Buy from the auction and sell at the antique fair or market (like I’ve done in the past, and like my brother still does now).

It’s not frickin’ rocket science. If they want to sell at auction, they can do that if they buy cheap enough. Knocking a dealer down by £20 on a £100 vase isn’t going to make a profit at auction. If they buy the vase from the back of someone’s car outside the market, in the car boot sale area, for £5, then sell it for £80, they’re quids in!

You can’t buy from an antique market and sell at auction to make a profit. Idiots.

Yet still they keep doing it, week after week, almost always losing money (note the spelling, one ‘o’ in losing) or if they do make a profit it’s not enough to cover their seller fees and petrol.

Leave the antique dealing to the experts!

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I guess it has to happen. If you post about Providence Properties apparently scamming students out of money and Tariq Zaman refusing to give them their money back, despite being found guilty in court, you’re going to attract some attention. The two posts have received loads of comments from students who have had their money withheld, and I’ve had some very interesting emails with inside information too (which I’ll post shortly), but I’ve also had the odd threat, like this one from some idiot who thinks writing in uppercase helps him get his point across.

YOU MAY NOT BE AWARE BUT THERE IS SOME SERIOUS DEFAMATION GOING ON ON THIS SITE. NOTHING TO DO WITH THE SUBJECT MATTER WHICH I HAVE NO INTEREST IN. BUT THERE WILL BE SOME SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES FROM THIS SITE WHICH YOU WILL BECOME AWARE OF ONCE YUU READ IT, ALLEGATIONS AND PEOPLE’S PERSONAL DETAILS.

REGARDS. J KENNEDY

What a retard. If there’s one thing I don’t respond to it’s threats of legal action and accusations that I have performed defamation of character. Those who take legal action take legal action, those who threaten legal action may as well be sat in a dark room playing with themselves, as I imagine ‘J Kennedy’ is… and no, his real name isn’t J Kennedy.

Incidentally I’ve also had a threatening and abusive comment posted on one of the threads, slating one of the students. It was also posted in upper case… then, straight after it, and using the SAME IP ADDRESS someone (heh) posted a comment claiming to be the student, saying how he’d made it all up.

What sort of idiots have we got here? Like I’m fooled by some twat pretending to be someone else, who can’t spell or write a sentence properly.

Whoever you are, and I have a hunch buddy, try giving the students their money back instead of posting your intellectually challenged comments on my site and sending me threatening emails.

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At the moment I’m in a rented house in Manchester, and would much rather own my own home than rent, so I made the mistake of enquiring with a few estate agents. One of them was Bridgfords.

Now, a few years back when you contacted an estate agents about finding a house they’d never call you back. They couldn’t be arsed. Now of course the boot’s on the other foot. The tossers won’t leave me alone, they’ve called every single day this week, from different offices around Manchester, trying to sell flats I don’t want.

For christ’s sake, sod off. I don’t want estate agent’s hounding me just because they’re struggling to sell properties. They’re like hungry dogs, as opposed to the fat lazy bastards they were a few years ago.

Be careful giving your details to Bridgfords, they just won’t leave you alone when they think they might be able to sell a house to you.

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I was just talking to some students from Leeds the other night, after the BBC Watchdog programme about Tariq Zaman and Providence Properties. It seems that the student union is well aware of both Providence Properties and Tariq Zaman, and has contacted him on numerous occasions to get deposits back that rightfully belong to students, without any joy.

It’s disgusting how someone can exploit the needs of students for accommodation, and can steal their money, in the way that Tariq Zaman and Providence Properties seem to have done.

As I mentioned in my last post, I’m a landlord myself and wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I just stole people’s money and avoided the courts when they ruled against me. In my opinion it’s because of people like Tariq Zaman, and Providence Properties, that the housing market is so low at the moment. By having over 600 hundred properties, as Providence Properties state on their website, regular folk can’t afford to buy a house, and when students graduate and can’t their deposits back as Watchdog state, they’re starting life off with another debt on top of their student debts.

Providence Properties should be run out of business for their actions if they’re true, and hopefully as a result of the BBC Watchdog programme, coverage online and the help of Leeds University, students will boycott them.

More importantly, if landlords boycott the service they offer they’ll go out of business. There are many decent letting agents around, without having to use Tariq Zaman and Providence Properties.

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As a landlord myself I’m very interested in the property industry and very keen to hear about news relating to the letting industry, and the news I just saw on BBC 1’s Watchdog about Providence Properties in Leeds was quite shocking. It seems that Providence Properties have been withholding deposits from students in Leeds, refusing to give them back, despite court orders against Tariq Zaman to the contrary.

Through the letting agent Tariq Zaman, the property company have been keeping thousands of pounds in deposits from students, even though the courts have ruled in favour of the students and issued CCJs against Tariq Zaman.

This is theft, but Tariq Zaman didn’t seem to care when he was filmed on Watchdog proudly boasting how he had loads of CCJs, and that they were worthless.

It would seem that they are indeed worthless, as despite being ordered to return the money he had no intention of doing so.

This is worrying for any students looking for flats to rent in Leeds as it seems unlikely they’ll get their deposits back if they use Providence Properties.

The real worrying thing is that students who paid money to Providence Properties were asked to pay the money to Providence Lettings, who they were then told by Providence Properties were nothing to do with them when it came to get their money back.

Providence Properties, or Providence Lets it would seem (who are a different company according to the film on Watchdog) are keeping the students money and don’t seem to care about it. Anyone looking for a property in Leeds should give them a very wide berth if the news on Watchdog is anything to go by.

Has anyone had any dealings with them while looking for residence in Leeds?

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