Keep Calm And Carry On

Three days from the end of our holiday in Porto, and just 5 days before we were due to move into our flat in London, we received a very blunt email from our Estate Agent informing us that our tenants would not be leaving our property.

Initially, we thought they didn’t have a leg to stand on, given that we’d served notice some two months earlier, but, after appointing a solicitor to deal with the problem, it became very clear that these people could not be physically removed by us, or anyone else except Her Majesty’s Heavies - namely a Court appointed bailiff. 

We decided to do some digging around to see who we were dealing with, and after a quick visit to a neighbours house, we discovered that our tenants are in fact Brazilian, and aren’t the girlfriend and boyfriend that we were led to believe they were. They’re a family of four with two children aged around 10 and 14 who are both regularly seen riding their bicycles around the Close.

It also transpired after a visit to the Estate Agent that these people are refusing to leave purely because they’ve discovered a loophole in British Law - a ruling that suggests that they are guaranteed to jump to the very top of the waiting list for a Council property if they are evicted by the Court.

People like this make me (and most others) very angry. Not only are they depriving us of moving back home, but they’re also depriving others of a much needed affordable Council house - people who have possibly waited patiently in line for many years. It’s a blatent fiddle of the system, and to make matters worse (if that were at all possible), us, as landlords, have just one route to getting our property back - through the Court. 

If we interfere with them in any way at all, our case for repossession will only take longer - anything up to a year. As it stands, we could be homeless for up to 4 months. 

We can’t change the locks or cut their power supply, or send in anyone else to chase them out - in fact, we can’t even knock on the door and have a polite conversation with them without risk of them saying we’re harassing them. 

As tenants, they have the right to remain at the property until a Court orders them out. As landlords, we have almost no rights at all.

Interestingly enough, despite us suddenly being homeless, despite us having a child under the age of two and despite us being the lawful owners of the property (which is full of furniture owned by us), we aren’t entitled to emergency Council housing.

Why? Because we are homeowners.

Rulings like this often cause people to get physically violent, and whilst I don’t believe we will, it does get more and more tempting with each day that passes whilst they still live in our home. Almost all of our friends, and most of our family has mentioned at one time or another to ‘change the locks’, and even the lady on the customer service desk of the Nationwide (our mortgage provider) told us to ‘send in the heavies’.

It seems we are not alone in thinking the law in the UK does not work as it should. 

It equally seems that a man's home is only his castle once he's spent almost a thousand pounds of his child's college fund, and waited several months to repossess it.

A Brief Introduction To Porto

After our stay in Stratford Upon Avon, we found ourselves with 10 days to waste away before returning to our London flat, and so parted with a very overladen Croissant and boarded an Easyjet flight to Porto in Portugal. 

Porto is a wonderful place, still extremely rough around the edges, and full of mostly locals rather than tourists. Many menus, flyers, and signs are in Portuguese only, but with a little effort in the local language, the people of Porto are ridiculously friendly, especially with a toddler in tow.

There are apparently roads in Porto that are steeper than those of San Francisco, and after dragging 2 suitcases, a backpack and a push-chair from the tram stop to the hotel in blazing heat and along the cobbled streets, we soon realised this wasn’t going to be the peaceful, stress-free break we thought it would be.

Portugal is clearly in recession. Many of it’s shops are closed down, and urban decay is around each and every corner. Graffiti is rife in Porto too, adding to its incredibly run down look. 

But it does hold a certain charm. As wooden doors and windows flake and rot in the relentless sun, life goes on. Cafés buzz, there are trendy arts in every second store, and there are small businesses squeezed into the tightest corners of the city churning out a whole gamut of goodies. 

A deep ravine cuts its way through the centre, bridged by superstructures designed by amongst others Gustave Eiffel. An ancient tram system with vintage stock rattles its way through the tiny filthy streets, ringing it’s bell constantly at illegally parked cars blocking the rails. Porto is home to possible the worlds most beautiful bookstore, with a staircase like I've never seen before, and many of it's buildings are covered with stunning ceramic tiles.

By pure luck, we were there during the São João (Saint John) festival, whereby quite literally the whole of Porto parties in the streets. Locals release fire fuelled lanterns up high into the sky and spend the evening hitting each other over the head with large plastic mallets.

We loved it!

However, our brief introduction to this town was abruptly ruined, with a very blunt email from our estate agent back in London, telling us that ultimately we would not be moving back home any time soon.