This is a new area of our web site.

We will try to bring upto date news about what is happening in Burnley and the surrounding areas on a regular basis

A totally trashed house in Burnley - How we manage the situation.

In October 2006 we received a call from Burnley Council informing us that one of the properties we manage for an overseas landlord was open to access and they were going to make it secure.

We went to visit the property on the Monday morning.

We had to take our builder with us to get access, even he was appalled by the utter devastion inside.

They had stripped every piece of copper from the building, the central heating boiler was gone, the bathroom suite gone, graffiti all over the walls, water streaming down walls and dripping from light fittings. Needles littered the floors. Floorboards were used as firewood in a makeshift fire, presumably because the central heating was no longer there.

The police were informed and after a couple of days had elapsed they came to our office and viewed the photos we had taken.

They asked who the tenant was and when we told them they said she was well known as a heroin addict. Incidently this was a tenant we inherited from a previous letting agent.

We now had the unenviable task of informing the landlord, who not only had lost a tenant but had had a nice house with central heating double glazing nice kitchen and bathroom completely trashed. He was not happy.

We reassured him by asking him to send us a letter of authority along with his insurance document and we would work on his behalf to sort everthing out.

We then worked with an independent insurance assessor who we have worked with on several occasions in the past.

He came back three weeks later with the good news that the insurance company would pay out for the full cost of all repairs and two months loss of rent.

So we are starting work on this major refurbishment on 11th December and we will be documenting the project with photographs in a new section of the website entitled “Projects” over the next few weeks.