(Re)Posession is 10/10s of the Law

“At least it will make a good blog”, said Sal, on Friday night shortly after I had accidentally opened the letter intended for the woman we have been paying rent to for the privilege of living in our tiny space in Camden, only to discover that she hasn’t been paying the mortgage.

Actually, I’m not even sure that I can write a good blog about our discovery that our wonderful landlady is in arrears on her mortgage account to the tune of almost four thousand pounds. Assuming that our rent is enough to cover the cost of the mortgage (she’d be spectacularly stupid if it wasn’t, but you never know), then she has not paid for at least four of the five and a bit months we’ve been living there.

Understandably, perhaps, her building society are rather keen to get their money back, and as such they have instructed their solicitors to begin possession proceedings.

In the best case scenario, we will have to move at relatively short notice, with all the hassle and upheaval that entails. In the worst case, we could lose our deposit, and some of the rent we’ve paid to this woman.

There are no words to describe how angry this makes me*. Why, I wonder, should Sal and I have to pay for the mistakes of some stupid person who overstretched herself because she thought that purchasing buy-to-let properties at the top of a stagnant property market in an environment of rising interest rates was a good idea? Why should we have to suffer when the worst thing we’ve done is to pay our rent on time and keep the place tidy?

I’ve never actually had any real contact with our landlady before, as we acquired the flat through a managing agent, but it turns out that our only means of contacting her is through a mobile phone that appears to be permanently switched off and her postal address in Wales. I’ve already tried directory enquiries, and it appears that her landline is ex-directory (although 192.com is more than happy to provide me with her details from the electoral roll).

So I suppose we just have to go home and wait for the eviction notice to arrive.

Which is nice.

* Of course that’s not going to stop me from using these ones to try.