I could pretend to have some thoughtful, considered response to this, but in all honesty I just want everyone involved in this company, from the investors to the people answering the phones, to suffer horribly and at length.
ETA: on the company’s website, the content under “Tenant Assured” is currently lorem ipsum. I wonder if it was like that before the Gawker article appeared?
Makes me even happier that I never use my real name online. “I don’t use social media, Mr. Landlord. Go ahead, google my name, you’ll see for yourself.”
Why not just ask your tenants to friend you? Why all the underhanded tactics?
American landlords stupid and bigoted enough to use this service will be essentially hanging a “sue me for housing discrimination” sign around their necks.
What could possibly go wrong?
No online presence means you’re a non-person means no housing for you.
This will dovetail nicely with my start-up offering bespoke social media accounts, tailored to your needs to present the image you need.
Well, this is some fuckin’ dystopian shite, innit?
If this isn’t already a thing, it will be soon. (Although you’d have to automated it somewhat, as it’s not the wealthy who will need this.)
Would it be frightfully naive of me to ask how this complies with the Data Protection Act (1998)?
After he’s done destroying renters’ lives…
No hyperbole there at all.
My guess is, he’s an Outer and hopes the DPA will be repealed by Bojo, at the behest of his controllers - Murdoch and the Barclay Brothers.
To be fair, tenants do have rights in the UK. (I live in rented property, because there’s no way I’ll ever be able to afford to own a house).
Mind you, I don’t live in London like Cory did (does?), and London is a whole different level of fucked-up-ness compared to the rest of the UK.
I’m going to show this to every annoying libertarian I encounter online. Freedom of contract! Freely surrender your privacy or freely go live under a bridge oh no wait that’s illegal too now in most places. You wouldn’t want you freedoms taken away by horrid socialist states that prohibit any undue burdens in contracts with tenants, would you?
As if it isn’t bad enough that property developers and serial land-barons buy up all the property, now this?
Just restrict ownership to 2 properties and kill these parasites before they can do any more harm.
Building enough houses to satisfy everybody would have a knock on effect because they would then be much less attractive to “investors” and landlords.
It isn’t as if there is not enough room. Surrey has more land given over to golf courses than housing. As back gardens now provide a significant part of biodiversity, housebuilding isn’t even necessarily a negative for the environment. Among the problems are that (a) unlike, say, Belgium, the UK doesn’t really see itself as part of Europe and so integrated into the wider economy, (b) there are votes in high house prices and (c) we have a big underclass with no respect for the built environment.
Despite all the people trying to get at my money, I refuse to invest in any housing other than owner occupied (via Building Societies.) The result is that I don’t care if house prices drop significantly because I have to live somewhere, so if I move the marginal cost is no worse. But an uncontrolled drop would cause major economic dislocation - as we may be about to find out.
I have a cousin who is in the rental business. He makes no money at it because he looks after everything properly, attends to insulation and heating, rents to people who are not very well off and then forgets to collect the rent if they have problems. He behaves like an old time Labour council because it gives him something to do in retirement. If the system could be changed so that landlords were all people like him, there wouldn’t be a problem. Simply enforcing the law as regards the condition of houses, and bringing in a requirement to insulate and treat damp would be a good start. But whether it’s Cameron, Bojo or a Blairite government, they are part of the problem, not the solution.
They will just reduce the number of titles.
I’m not sure what you post publicly on social media under your real name is protected, on this respect, by data privacy laws. Ah, wait, the startup creates a nominative record, so the law applies.
You’ve never had a landlord tell you to your face that he doesn’t care about your clinical depression or pneumonia, and then try to friend you on Facebook, to pick a not-entirely-random example. There are some truly awful people in the world renting out property.
