My buy-to-let nightmare has cost me move to Australia
Ms J.I. writes: I am a widowed 62-yearold. I sold my house so I could go to Australia to be with my daughter and grandchildren, and I paid a deposit of £26,000 on a buy-to-let apartment in Kingsway House in Liverpool. Conversion of this office building to apartments was due for completion in March 2020, but more than two years later I am still waiting.
THIS is a real horror story. After the developers failed to complete the conversion, you told them you were pulling out of the contract and wanted your deposit refunded. Instead, late last year, they demanded that you pay the balance of more than £184,000. Meanwhile, you have been left living in a mobile home, still in England rather than Australia.
The conversion work is supposedly being carried out by Kingsway SLG Limited, a company headed by controversial Liverpool businessman Lawrence Kenwright, who has overseen a number of other similarly disrupted projects in the city, as well as in Manchester and Belfast.
Kingsway SLG’s sales agent told you in January 2020 that your apartment would be completed in March of that year. It wasn’t, and in September 2020 he viewed the building and told you the developers ‘have deliberately misled us’. Major building work was unfinished and there was no way tenants could move in. Despite all this, Kenwright’s solicitors claimed last November that your apartment is ‘ready for occupation’, and they demanded that you pay the balance of the purchase price. But their claim was false. According to Merseyside Fire Service, the building did not meet fire safety regulations.
Worse still, Liverpool City Council found that Kenwright has carried out unauthorised work not allowed by the planning permission he was granted. Part of Kingsway House, including the ground floor, was supposed to remain as commercial premises, but Kenwright allegedly began building more apartments without planning consent.
I visited the building recently, and although a sign on the main door suggested that residents were admitted, there was no sign of any, the door was locked, and there was evidence of unfinished building work. I asked Kenwright and his lawyers – Liverpool-based MSB Solicitors – to comment. The solicitors told me they were in touch with Kenwright and would get back to me with their comments. Since then, silence. Liverpool City Council, in contrast, has been very open. When its building control department found out about the unauthorised work, it asked Kenwright’s company to make a proper application if it wanted to stand a chance of legalising it. A spokesman for the council told me: ‘Building control has received no response to date and we are about to instigate formal enforcement proceedings against Kingsway SLG Limited.’
While it is possible that some individual apartments may be complete, the building itself is neither complete nor safe, so no apartments can be occupied. Council officials gained access to Kingsway House for an inspection ten days ago, and one told me: ‘There is no evidence of any occupation. We still need a retrospective planning application. Without this, safety regulations cannot be signed off.’
Against this background, why should you pay a penny more to people who make false claims, break planning laws, and risk tenants’ safety? But given Kenwright’s record of failed projects and collapsed companies, you may be lucky to recover your deposit. Land Registry records show Kingsway House is heavily mortgaged, so even if you sue his company and win, it may already not have the money to pay you.