The Observer
54 09.01.22 Cash
Landlord faces £150,000 bill after
tenants turn homes into drug farm
Her properties were
wrecked, but Shreena
Shah says she can’t
fi nd any redress in an
unregulated market,
amid calls for reforms
of letting agents, as
Anna Tims reports
W
hen Shreena
Shah went to
check on one
of her rental
properties, she
says she was
greeted by an unlikely scene – a man
dismantling equipment used to pro-
duce cannabis.
It was not the fi rst shock she had
to endure. Shortly before, the police
had discovered a cannabis farm in
the other rental property she and her
family own.
Now, she says, she faces bills
mounting to £150,000 for repairs,
and the letting agent has been
accused of negligence by the family.
The case comes amid concern about
the lack of regulation in the property
sector, despite a government consul-
tation which recommended tighten-
ing rules two years ago.
The properties, in different London
boroughs, were used to cultivate
drugs but, the family says, they had
been unable to get any enforcement
agency to help them.
“The house and fl at were pretty
much destroyed in starkly similar cir-
cumstances, and I’ve been shocked at
how little recourse I have,” says Shah.
“We have been left fi nancially devas-
tated and no authority has been will-
ing to investigate.”
Shah says she and her family usu-
ally manage the rentals themselves
once their letting agent fi nds suita-
ble tenants, but, when their tenants
moved out in 2019, the agency, ABC
Estates, offered to take over the man-
agement of both properties for no
extra charge.
Shah says that she was told that
both sets of new tenants had had
bruising experiences with landlords,
and wanted the agent to collect the
rent and carry out maintenance
and inspections.
She claims that, despite repeated
requests, she was only sent the signed
tenancy agreements and tenant refer-
ences for both properties in January
2021, 18 months after the fi rst ten-
ants moved in. “It appeared that ABC
had done barely any checks on the
tenants,” she says.
In summer 2020, Shah claims ABC
Estates notifi ed her that the tenants
in the house were leaving, and paying
rent in lieu of notice. Shah inspected
it with the agent and found it in good
order. “A couple of weeks later, I was
told that the same tenants wanted to
come back and I agreed,” she says.The fi rst cannabis farm was dis-
covered by police at the house last
November after concerns were raised
by a neighbour. “Concerned for the
second property, I immediately went
round and found a man dismantling
cannabis equipment,” she says.
Shah claims that ABC Estates
acted negligently in failing to safe-
guard her properties, an allegation
the company denies.
Her experience appears to show
the lack of protections for purchas-
ers and vendors in an unregulated
property sector. Two years after a gov-
ernment-appointed working group
recommended a mandatory licens-
ing scheme for estate agents and
an industry regulator with enforce-
ment powers, there has been no word
on reform.
Estates agents do not have to have
qualifi cations , despite handling life-
changing sums of money and assets
on behalf of clients. The only require-
ment is that they are signed up to a
redress scheme that can mediate in
individual disputes with clients.
Local trading standards teams are
responsible for investigating if an
agent is in breach of the Estate Agents
Act 1979, and the National Trading
Standards Estate and Letting Agency
Team (NTSELAT) can prohibit an
agent from trading if breaches are
serious. However, redress schemes
have limited enforcement powers,
and complaints can take more than
six months to be heard, while yearsof under resourcing appear to have
left trading standards ill-equipped to
take action.
Moreover, all three bodies can
only react to individual com-
plaints, rather than proactively
vet agents to minimise the risk of
potential misconduct.
Shah escalated her complaint
against ABC Estates to the Property
Redress Scheme (PRS), a government-
authorised service which considers
consumer complaints about property
issues. It told her that her allegations
were beyond its remit as they involved
the cannabis farm and were of a crim-
inal nature, and referred her to trad-
ing standards.
Her local trading standards depart-
ment told her that since the properties
were in two different local authority
areas, it could not help and claimed it
was a matter for the police.
The Metropolitan police declared
that it would not be possible to iden-
tify the cannabis growers and that her
complaint was therefore a civil issue.
When she contacted NTSELAT shewas referred back to her local trading
standards department.
ABC Estates – which is regis-
tered with Companies House as
Aldermartin Ltd – has three offi ces
in London and was featured in daily
adverts on LBC talk radio in the past,
including a video endorsement by
presenter Nick Ferrari.
The agency insists it had no knowl-
edge of the cannabis production at
the two properties it managed.
Documents seen by the Observer
appear to raise questions about the
agent’s procedures. The employment
reference that it obtained for one ten-
ant stated that she worked for a com-
pany that currently has the same
director as ABC Estates.
Rental payments for both proper-
ties were made in cash to ABC Estates,
which, Shah says, suggest to her that
it had not sought bank details for
either party.A
BC Estates is one of
a string of similarly
named property com-
panies established over
the years by Richard
(Raziel) Davidoff. In
August, a fi rst-tier tribunal (property
chamber) concluded that Davidoff
had breached his fiduciary duty
after overcharging leaseholders in
a block managed by ABC Estates
for repair work that was not carried
out. Investigators found that he had
charged nearly £100,000 for works
that had been estimated at £10,000,
and transferred service charges and
reserve fund money into the account
of a dormant company he owned. It
disputes the tribunal ruling.
In a statement in November,
Davidoff told the Observer: “Many of
the facts as you portray them are dis-
torted. The clients clearly have not
advised you that after a whole year,
they asked the tenant to leave, and at
the checkout they found the property
was in immaculate condition.
“They then allowed the tenant
to move back in a short while later,
thereafter the property was found
to be a cannabis farm. We cannot be
held responsible for that. We were as
shocked as they were, and we do not
condone such behaviour.”
In the autumn questions about
Davidoff’s record as a manag-
ing agent for leasehold properties
were raised in parliament by Sir
Peter Bottomley.
Bottomley, who is co-chair of the
all-party parliamentary group on
leasehold and commonhold reform,
urged the government to heed
whistleblower allegations from for-
mer staff of ABC Estates, and called
for urgent regulatory reform of prop-
erty agents. He told the Observer:
“ Police and trading standards must
work effectively together to avoid
exploitation of a fragmented system
which does not work.”
The Ministry of Housing,
Communities and Local Government
told the Observer that it was consider-
ing the recommendations of the 2019
working group report.
A spokesperson for Nick Ferrari
said: “These adverts were filmed
more than five years ago in a
standard commercial agreement.
These are serious allegations and
Nick will seek ways of having the
adverts removed.”Shock
discovery ...
equipment
used to turn
one of Shah’s
properties into
a cannabis
farm.‘The house and fl at
were pretty much
destroyed,and I’ve
been shocked how
little recourse I have’
Shreena Shah, landlord