I came back from a few days away last week to find a notice through my door saying that my rental flat is in receivership and I needed to ring the new management company ASAP to confirm my right to live there.
I rang them and they said that the landlady had defaulted on her mortgage and therefore they were now managing the property. They instructed me not to pay any more rent to the previous letting agents and took a load of personal details from me. Like an idiot, I provided them with all my personal information as well as bank statements showing my rent payments and our tenancy agreement.
I confirmed this with the original letting agent who were very confused and confirmed with the landlady that she had been making mortgage payments as normal.
Now I think about it, the behaviour of the company does seem suspicious - asking me to set up a direct debit pay them the rent and send a screenshot when it was done, asking for details like my Mother’s Maiden Name, telling me that there was no need to get in contact with the original letting agents, not properly explaining what was going on, etc.
My questions are -
If the property genuinely is in receivership, what proof should I be asking for them to provide? I don’t want to pay rent to the old letting agent if the property genuinely is in receivership.
Is there anything I can do to protect myself from them using my information? They have my account number and sort code, as well as personal info such as address, email address, DOB, etc. Is there anything they can do with the info they have? Do I need to ring the bank and make them aware?
Generally I am quite tech-savvy and alert for scams but this is a completely new one on me and I feel like a complete idiot so any advice would be really appreciated!
Submitted May 20, 2019 at 07:59AM by Mini-mushroom http://bit.ly/2EmyrMe
