A home-owner has spoken of his profound shock to find that his house had apparently been put up for sale without his knowledge.
The agent, Circle Sales & Lettings of Birmingham, has admitted that it happened but said that it made a mistake.
Paul Arthur, a freelance photographer, bought his home in an area of south Birmingham only last August.
But earlier this month he found it had been advertised on Rightmove, although his home was not for sale and he had not instructed the agent.
Mr Arthur said: “At the beginning of June, my neighbour phoned me and asked me if I was selling my home. I said no, and she said, ‘That’s funny, it’s on Rightmove’.
“Sure enough, it was being advertised at £500,000.”
Mr Arthur says that he and his wife, who had recently had a baby, were both extremely upset and worried.
The pair had bought the property as a Halifax repossession. It needed work done on it and the couple moved in last November, and have continued to work on it since.
“Obviously, we were extremely concerned that something might have happened which we did not know about,” said Mr Arthur.
He says that after raising objections with the agent, his house was then taken down from Rightmove.
“However, a couple of days later it reappeared on Rightmove as being sold subject to contract,” he said.
Mr Arthur has also drawn the matter to the attention of Rightmove.
We spoke to Ruby Kaur, a sales consultant at Circle, who invited us to put our questions to her.
She accepted that the property had been put on Rightmove. “That was a mistake,” she said. “We then took it off the system and the matter has been dealt with.
“I did speak to the owner of the house and have given him my sincere apologies.”
Asked about other properties on Circle’s books, she said that everything now listed had an instruction from the owner.
She was unable to discuss The Cloves, a property in Sutton Coldfield bearing a strong resemblance to a property in Oxfordshire being marketed by Savills, saying she did not have the details.
As the owner of this property himself, I can't help but have further disappointment at the words and actions of Circle Sales & Lettings. Putting my home on the market was not a mistake, it was a deliberate act designed to deceive the public. When questioned by friends of mine, Circle said that they had sold the property for the asking price, only days before, and then once it had reappeared on Rightmove and when we questioned Adam Kahn about it, he said "We bought, redeveloped and sold this property some time ago, and so we aren't doing anything wrong by advertising it as having been sold by us". This sale was in 2008, six years before the agency opened, so even this is untrue.
The only grain of truth in that is that one of the directors of Circle Sales & Lettings is the previous owner of the property, and the person from whom the property was repossessed, so they knew full well that it wasn't for sale, and that they weren't instructed to sell it. So any assertion that it was a mistake, must be false.
Another disappointment is Ruby Kaur's statement that she has spoken to me and has apologised. We have had no apology from Circle Sales & Lettings, and in fact we have had no communication from them at all. It appears that once again, the company is lying in order to save face or make themselves look better than they are.
I think it is telling that Rightmove have removed the agency from their site entirely over the weekend. This isn't an acceptable way to run an estate agency.
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Birmingman –
If you feel aggrieved by this – and you absolutely should! – then, for your and others' sakes, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!
Go to Trading Standards.
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I can see the The Property Ombudsman getting their teeth into this one – http://www.tpos.co.uk/
Interesting that nothing comes up when searching for Circle Sales & Lettings on the ombudsman's site.
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Peter
Apparently that "Agent" is NOT a Member of TPO. Or NAEA.
Or RICS. Yer typical 'fly-by-night'.
More grist to the mill, unfortunately, for those that enjoy publicly criticising our profession.
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Let's hope Zoopla and others follow suit as Circle Sales and Lettings were also advertising this and other fake properties on their sites too. Please check out this link for proof:
http://circlesales.wordpress.com/
It is shameful to see Ishfaq Ali Hussain and Ruby Kaur continue to act in this way. Only months prior to this they operated another company called Clinic Republic on the same premises at 99 New St, where they defrauded many, many people. Please see the facebook link:
https://www.facebook.com/ClinicRepublic
They did not pay their employees or the tradesmen that help set up the 'Clinic'. So all Circle employees, make sure you get paid!!
Shame on you!!
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Hi Sherlock – good finds!
Massively impressed with the FB page for the beauty parlour – three posters raving about the place – who apparently all 'found' facebook on the day they posted and who all look straight off the front cover of Vogue!
Looks like making up identities is the forte of the guy behind all these companies – and that 'james elliott' is simply another example.
There's a surprise…
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Advanced Sleuthing Tip
Did you know that you can drag any photo onto the Google Images search bar and it will show where else on the internet the photo has been used?
If the 3 new facebookers have photos from other facebook accounts that will show up. If they are indeed professional models they might like to take up the isse with Mr Kahn/Elliot
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an example Rebecca Lewis on Facebook could almost be twins with Jordan Loukas
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Kelly Smith seems to look like a chubby japanese marshmallow girl (I am not making that up)
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and Joseph Bates has a double who can be found modelling for Hipster Hairstyles alongside David Beckham.
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What goes around comes around!
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Unfortunately, Peter, no it doesn't in a great many cases…
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Circle!!!
Oh well.
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BOOM BOOM TSSSSSHHHHHH!
Sorry – am a bit slow today…
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Watchdog?
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the sleeping dog – lie; no teeth nor bark
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Mmmm what an interesting house and in particular it's price history.
WITHOUT PREJUDICE
18 December 2005 sold at £320,000
31 October 2008 sold at £675,000……..Spooky!
Public notice Summer 2013 £235,000
Over to you Ros!
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18 December 2005 – purchased by Ishfaq Ali Hussain
31 October 2008 – purchased by Kassim Ladha
3 September 2012 – repossessed through the County Court where Ishfaq Ali Hussain attended the hearing pretending to be Kassim Ladha….
My, my, Ishfaq….director of Circle Sales….you have been a busy boy!!!!
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Do you have the details of this case or a reference – can't find it anywhere on the net?
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This is not an isolated case or new practice. In our small area we have several agents who regularly 're-invent' properties both For Sale and To Let to improve their Rightmove ranking. We have reported this to Rightmove and supplied them with evidence but they say they can't do anything about it. When looking for a property for myself I asked one of my fellow agents about a particular property which they were advertising on Rightmove. The response from one of their directors was 'oh sorry that one doesn't exist, ****** has been playing around with properties again'. I just wonder how they have the time to do this never mind the front!
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Hello Angela, part of my brief is to protect decent agency from 'not Estate Agent, Estate Agents' I have run out of examples I can use to test scripts on with Circles so if you have any more I can use for testing please ask Ros to put you in touch with me. I want to see if it is possible to red flag these ghost properties and have them suspended before they are made live. That would leave the portals and the Ghosters with the problem rather than the victim Agent.
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I think Trading Standards could throw a book at these people if they had the time or inclination. Some things a TSO may want to look at:
Are they are member of a redress scheme?
Are they registered with ICO for data protection?
Why aren't the fees clearly shown on the properties they are letting?
Why are they not bothering with EPC's?
Some of the claims made on the website are simply not true
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This Ishfaq Hussain has registered multiple companies that everyone needs to avoid like the plague.
A list of his companies:
Circle Emergency Ltd in Birmingham, United Kingdom
Private Limited Company
Company Director
February 21, 2014
Circle Energy Ltd in Birmingham, United Kingdom
Private Limited Company
Company Director
February 13, 2014
Circle Legal Ltd in Birmingham, United Kingdom
Private Limited Company
Company Director
February 13, 2014
Circle Sales Ltd in Birmingham, United Kingdom
Private Limited Company
Company Director
February 13, 2014
Blue Circle Property Ltd in Birmingham, United Kingdom
Private Limited Company
Company Director
February 13, 2014
Circle Retail Ltd in Birmingham, United Kingdom
Private Limited Company
Company Director
February 10, 2014
Circle Lettings Ltd in Birmingham, United Kingdom
Private Limited Company
Company Director
February 03, 2014
East Restaurants Europe Ltd in United Kingdom
Private Limited Company
Company Director
January 15, 2014
Circle Homes Ltd in Birmingham, United Kingdom
Private Limited Company
Company Director
January 14, 2014
Circle Commercial Ltd in Birmingham, United Kingdom
Private Limited Company
Company Director
January 14, 2014
Circle Construction Ltd. in Birmingham, United Kingdom
Private Limited Company
Company Director
January 14, 2014
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