Last month, Melanie Edwards was browsing the property site Rightmove when something caused her stomach to drop. It was a flat, in the same building where she had just bought a flat, except this flat was cheaper. In fact, it was a lot cheaper.
Edwards and her partner, who live in Portugal, had bought their property — in the Northern Quarter’s Market Buildings — just six months before for around £170,000. It was intended as a place for them to stay while visiting their elderly parents in the UK. But the flat Edwards had just come across was some £65,000 cheaper, despite being the same size and in the same building. Had they grossly overpaid?
Her eyes flitted around the listing trying to figure out what was going on. “It was frighteningly cheap,” she told me over the phone recently. After a while, unable to fathom how a flat that was essentially the same as hers was suddenly selling for so much less, she decided to contact the lettings agent: Alesco Investment Properties. Alesco mostly specialises in off-plan, buy-to-let developments, where investors put down money on flats that haven’t been built yet, then rent them out when they’re completed.
Edwards spoke to a man named Adrian who told her the flat was so cheap because the building had cladding issues. Edwards told him she had just bought a place in the same development, and wasn’t aware of cladding issues. Flustered, Adrian told her he’d get some more information and be in touch. When that didn’t happen, Edwards called again and Adrian told her the seller had taken it off the market.
But when she checked, the listing was still there. Her partner enquired about the property, betting a different name would elicit a different response. This time, Alesco said the flat had been sold.
A few days later, the listing was still live. Edwards scrolled through the promotional pictures and stopped on the one of the bathroom and took it in. It was familiar. The whole flat was familiar. It was, after all, in her building. But the bathroom was really familiar, the small round mirror was one she particularly recognised. Edwards dug out the brochure for her own flat, the one she had bought in September.
It was then that it dawned on her that something else was happening. Alesco wasn’t just listing a flat in her building at a vast discount. The flat they were listing was hers.
Hey, Jack here, the writer of today's piece.
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