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Having fraudster Simon van Houten manage our flats cost us £100,000

September 24, 2012 by

Fraudster managing agent Simon van Houten, 31, (left) told residents  he had dismissed their caretaker … only for them to discover that the man was still on the payroll two years later. The £32,000 in wages had been secretly paid out of their service charges. This shambles was only one incident at Sunlight Square, which for five years was managed by Van Houten when he was an executive with Rendall and Rittner. In July he was jailed for 30 months at the Old Bailey  for stealing £122,000 out of leaseholders service charges.

He used a bogus decorating company to issue numerous invoices that he then authorised for payment. He used the money to fund a luxury lifestyle in Chelsea, on the proceeds of funds he stole from leaseholders in east London.

Van Houten pleaded guilty before the trial began and as a result there was no evidence presented or cross-examination.

[Read more...]

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Rendall and Rittner ‘confident’ to prevent another Simon Van Houten fraudster

August 24, 2012 by

Managing agents Rendall and Rittner has “initiated a series of internal and external reviews of our systems and procedures” following the jailing last month of its employee Simon Van Houten, 31, for stealing £122,000 of leaseholder’s funds.

Richard Daver, the managing director of the company, is quoted in today’s Property Week, as saying the company is “confident we have strong procedures in place to prevent a reoccurrence”.

In the same article, which covers the mounting pressure for leasehold reform with the Channel Four Dispatches programme and the CentreForum report, Sebastian O’Kelly of the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership is reported as saying that the Van Houten case was “to a large extent bad luck for Rendall & Rittner”. [Read more...]

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What is LKP?

August 1, 2012 by

The Leasehold Knowledge Partnership exists to protect ordinary leaseholders from being fleeced by landlords and their agents. They exploit the many opportunities offered by this flawed form of property tenure.

The LKP seeks to identify and accredit property managing agents who sign up to open accounting and straight dealing.

They charge a clear fee for property management – often on behalf of the residents’ own management companies – and do not pocket commissions offered by insurers, energy companies and assorted service providers.

In short, they don’t collude with others to cheat the residents, which is particularly depressing to encounter with the elderly in retirement developments.

To be accredited, LKP managing agents must sign up to a 35-point accreditation process, and residents in the blocks they manage are selected at random to provide references.

LKP also provides an editorial service for leaseholders.

Leasehold is a murky little corner of residential property, but with 1.8 million leaseholders and £3 billion a year spent on service charges there is huge scope to cheat unsuspecting homeowners.

Redress is complicated and expensive and, if you lose, all the freehold landlord’s legal expenses – barristers are now routinely used in LVTs – can be reclaimed in the service charges.

The trade bodies involved in property management – the Association of Residential Managing Agents (ARMA), the Association of Retirement Housing Managers (ARHM) and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) – have been well aware of abuses in leasehold management for years.

They all have codes of practice that are feeble and discretionary, and that have well attested loopholes – even RICS, which is the only serious professional body among them.

Following numerous leasehold scandals – often involving ARMA and ARHM members – they now parrot “transparency” and demand regulation. Previously they were silent, and neither ARMA nor ARHM has ever publicly expelled a member.

LKP is also lobbying for legislative change in leasehold, particularly to regulate managing agents who control vast sums of money without any supervision. We have instigated debates in both the Commons and the Lords on these issues.

Of course, the ideal solution to leasehold is to stop building any more of it, and instead to build commonhold – which is what applies in the rest of the world, outside England and Wales.

There is a mass of information on this site and we hope it is useful.

We welcome inquiries from ordinary leaseholders and have a network of supporters and sympathisers who have dealt with everything from £500,000 LVT bust-ups, to contested Right To Manage applications.

LKP provides no services for which there are charges. It is funded by the accreditation of participating managing agents.

Sebastian O’Kelly

Leasehold Knowledge Partnership
sok@leaseholdknowledge.com
07808 328230

 

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Fraudster managing agent gets 30 months jail for using East Londoners’ cash to fund high life in Chelsea

July 26, 2012 by

Simon van Houten, who was paid a £42,000 salary, used East London leasehold accounts to pay for a “life beyond his means” in Chelsea

Simon van Houten, 31, was given a 30-month prison sentence at the Old Bailey this afternoon after pleading guilty to stealing £122,000 from leasehold service charge accounts held by London managing agent Rendall and Rittner.

Van Houten carried out the fraud for two years between 2008 and 2010 by issuing invoices for a bogus maintenance company, “London Decorating Services”, which he subsequently approved and paid.

Thirty payments were made with amounts varying from £2,100 to £7,300. VAT was also added, with Van Houten using the VAT number he had lifted from a legitimate company.

By plundering the accounts of 1,400 units under his management in east London, Van Houten was able to live the high life, “beyond his means”, in Chelsea. Although the fraudster did not use the cash for any single large purchase, none of the money has been recovered.

[Read more...]

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Van Houten abused trust of clients and colleagues, says Rendall and Rittner

July 19, 2012 by

Simon van Houten can expect ‘custodial’ sentence next week

The property management company Rendall and Rittner has made a statement to LKP about its former executive Simon van Houten, 31, who faces jail next week after pleading guilty to stealing £122,000 at the Old Bailey.

A spokesman for the company said: “Mr Van Houten abused the trust of both clients and colleagues. Rendall and Rittner Limited immediately reimbursed the small number of clients involved and we are delighted that the police have successfully prosecuted the case we presented to them in 2010 and that justice has now been done.”

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Executive guilty of plundering £122,000 from managing agents Rendall and Rittner

June 21, 2012 by

An executive with managing agents Rendall and Rittner pleaded guilty on Monday to stealing £122,000 from his employers’ accounts.

Simon van Houten, 31, from Southend in Essex, used bogus company invoices to scam the company, which manages some of the most prestigious residential buildings in London.

Van Houten, a parish councillor at Paglesham, carried out the fraud over two years before he was rumbled.

He pleaded guilty just before the trial began at the Old Bailey on Monday, and is now awaiting sentencing on July 26.

The case is a reverse for Rendall and Rittner, which has been on a roll this year. It recently won the management of several prestige developments for the Berkeley Group and Redrow’s One Commercial Street, just east of the City. It also manages the upmarket eco resort the Lower Mill Estate in the Cotswolds.

Only last month Rendall and Rittner won a Property Week Resi award for turning round St George’s Wharf, built by the Berkeley Group, where residents received £1 million last September in settlement for over-charging. The complaints occurred when the site was under previous management.

The company, which is FSA regulated, is run by ex-barrister Duncan Rendall, a former chairman of ARMA, and Matt Rittner.

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St George’s under new management

May 16, 2012 by

After the £1 million fiasco at St George Wharf, new managing agent wins an award!

Last September, the Berkeley Group paid out £1 million to residents at the landmark St George Wharf (left), in Vauxhall, who had complained of loaded service charges, inter-company contracts and inflated insurance contracts.

Nine months on, the new managing agent Rendall and Rittner wins the Property Week Resi Award for “property manager of the year” at a black tie dinner in central London last night.

Many congratulations to them, for having cleaned out those particularly whiffy augean stables … and commiserations to LKP-accredited managing agent JJ Homes, who made the short-list.

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Redrow boss Steve Morgan talks to LKP

May 3, 2012 by

Redrow’s One Commerci Street

It was back to the boom days last night for a champagne reception at the top of the Gherkin tower in the City. The event was hosted by Steve Morgan, legendary founder of Redrow, who was launching his exclusive ONE Commercial Street just to the east of the City.

The apartments are to be managed by Rendall and Rittner, which manages 27,000 units and raises £70 million a year in service charges.

Morgan was happy to give LKP a tour of his new scheme and we discussed the issue of property management, which is not traditionally high on a developer’s agenda.

“After we have sold the units developers don’t usually think much about it, although it obviously carries reputational risk if things go wrong,” he said.

He was interested to hear of LKP’s meetings with other housebuilders and its passion to get a consumer-oriented approach into property management, as well as LKP’s accreditation process.

In other words: straight dealing, transparency and not having a laugh with stealth charges and sneaky commissions. England and Wales offer uniquely rich pickings here because, alone in the world, they retain leasehold tenure, which puts homeowners – or tenants, as leaseholders are in law – in a permanent position of vulnerability.

There were plenty of Far Eastern potential buyers at last night’s do, and estate agents will admit that it is a hurdle to get them to lay down £1 million plus for an apartment and then be told that they are just tenants. They go along with it in London because they have a general faith in English law and realise it is the local way of doing things.

But they don’t like it at all, and they would like it a good deal less if they were aware of the scandals surrounding the property management of high-end London sites, as revealed in LVT rulings.

LKP suggested to Rob Perrins, MD of Berkeley Homes, that buyers at its new site in Kensington High Street would probably be only too happy to pay a little more for commonhold – if it meant avoiding the time-consuming hassles with property management and the freeholder experienced by residents at St George’s Wharf or Chelsea Bridge Wharf.

It is a new departure for Redrow to build luxury flats in London, and another large scheme is being built at Kingston, in Surrey.

LKP has discussed the issue of leasehold management with the chief executives of Berkeley Homes, Barratt, Persimmon and Bellway.

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