Sep
4
Warnin: Beware of Taylor Tate Limited!
Filed Under General, My Rants | 2 Comments
I’m a landlord and I’m going through a situation right now which is sucking up masses of my time to
deal with, again caused by a so-called lettings agent called Taylor Tate Limited of www.taylortate.com. Everybody beware of this company, they are a bunch of shysters.
I placed and advert on Gumtree and within a few days received an enquiry from this company claiming they could let my property out in a week on a no let, no fee basis. I rejected their advance at first on the basis I did not want any agents acting on my behalf. Frankly they are ALL useless!
Then this guy, John Phillips from Taylor Tate Limited, got back to me and said he would only charge me £500 plus VAT to let the property. I thought why not, nothing to lose. How wrong was I!!
The long story short is this: the agent was instructed by me to find FOUR sharers. They found FIVE sharers and proceeded to mislead me into agreeing a tenancy to five students. Now anybody that knows even a little about HMO regulations knows that a property of 3 storeys or more, with 5 or more sharers forming 2 or more households is an automatically licenceable HMO, with all the expense of sinks, fire doors, fire alarm system etc etc.
Well apparently Taylor Tate didn’t know this and then tried to dupe the prospective tenants into signing up to an agreement illegally by signing only four persons but he told them “it would be okay to move 5 people in, just don’t tell the landlord”. This is an illegal act and I was liable for a fine of up to £20,000 plus all the rent paid by the tenants was returnable!
So the five boys paid Taylor Tate nearly £5,000 and so far they’ve only got back £2,046, a loss of just under £3,000! Taylor Tate are refusing to refund them all their money back and threatening legal action against me for breach of contract. Of course there was no valid contract so I’m not going to pay them any of their fee for non-performance. I’ve lost no money other than the fact I could’ve had four rent paying tenants in the property a week ago, so until I find some new tenants I’m losing money.
To summarise, everybody (landlords and tenants) beware of Taylor Tate at http://www.taylortate.com as they are fraudsters, pure and simple.