Mortgage Solutions editor Victoria Hartley speaks exclusively to Chris Bramham, director at Kings Group, the property firm that both let and sold property in that building (pictured) on the corner of Lansdowne Road and Tottenham High Street.
“The first thing we heard was from the tenant who came in the day after the riots broke out to tell us she had lost everything. The landlord immediately refunded her deposit and August’s rent and put her up in a hotel nearby,” says Bramham.
“It’s the human cost of the riots. She came in with just the clothes she had on her back after losing everything in the apartment.”
King’s Group had also just agreed a deal to sell 50% of another Shared Home Ownership flat valued at £92,500 in the same building, which is still advertised on the website. Now, the blackened building is set to be demolished after being judged unsafe.
King’s Group, which employs 20 brokers, has estate agency buildings all over riot-hit North London, including Tottenham, Walthamstow and Enfield Town. The Tottenham office, opposite the police station, had shutters so was unscathed, but has been closed since the riots.
Bramham laughs ruefully that he was in the process of trying to buy another office in Hackney, also hit by looting and rioting on the Monday night.
“We pick up bits of intelligence obviously from our police contacts. It could all calm down, it could all kick off again, but it’s most uncomfortable for the people stuck right in the middle of all this,” he adds.
The massive rental shortage in London is adding to the havoc. With roughly 12 homes above the burnt out building in Tottenham alone, all of those people will have to be re-homed, he says.
“Roughly four tenants compete for every rental property in the UK, but in London its closer to 10 to 15 – there just isn’t enough property to go around in the private rental sector and the riots aren’t helping,” he says.
For a timeline of the riots in London, click here
