Patrick Collins - part II

Patrick Collins was not happy with the blog article I posted on him on 28/8/2012, and so sent in the e-mail below, to which I have added bold "[The Editor]" comments.  The original quotes from the previous post are in red. I am quite prepared to update the 28/08/2012 blog article in due course if more information is made available, but the blog article as it stands is an accurate reflection of the e-mails we exchanged at the time. I would have preferred not to have posted this response to Patrick Collins' e-mail as a blog article, but e-mail sent to info@patproperties.co.uk gets rejected with "Quota exceeded (mailbox for user is full)".

The Editor

On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 1:07 PM, <info@patproperties.co.uk> wrote:

Dear Mr Tempest,

I have recently read your blog for the first time. With relation to your blog of 26th August about me, I would kindly ask you to review some comments that you have made about me and question them. I was happy to give you honest answers and expected you to write an honest report; this has not been the case.

(1)So Patrick Collins LIED when he said he never had any dealings with Novocastria

At no point did I lie to you throughout any of the questions you asked me. I would not clarify handing over a property for management to another agency as having dealings with them as in your example of 2 Dronfield Road. In your own words;

[The Editor]: The handing off of C&B owned properties that had a steady revenue stream all the way through to July 2012 to Novocastria Lettings constitutes dealings - it required interactions between you and Novocastria Lettings to make it happen  If it didn't, then how on earth were the management company switches effected?

According to the IFS blog entry http://collins-bone-investors.blogspot.ca/search?updated-max=2012-05-08T14:05:00%2B01:00&max-results=10&start=10&by-date=false, the account of Dom Smith's daughters rental of 2 Dronfield Rd., Salford clearly states that your involvement with this property was up until end November, not October 2011 as you have alluded to below. Please clarify.

Moreover, Dom Smith's daughters are, as far as I am aware, still awaiting their rental deposits back, which runs counter to you statement to me that "There are no deposits owed to any Collins and Bone tenants who rented through Patrick Properties". Please provide your comments to Dom Smith's account, and what happened to his daughters' deposits.

'Tenancy Agreement for 41 Albert Road; Moreover, within 24 hours of me bringing this to his attention, Internet searches for the above four mentioned rental agreements no longer showed up, which is clearly not a coincidence and perhaps an indicator that Patrick Collins has something to hide'

As I stated this was an honest mistake as throughout this month there were over 300 different tenants moving in to properties and the staff were under a huge amount of pressure. I have had no dealings with the properties not showing up, nor do I know who has had dealings with this. I would kindly you asking you not to accuse me of having something to hide, as when you asked me the questions, I clearly answered them to you.

[The Editor]: When rental agreements have readily appeared on Internet searches over a period of many, many months (we're talking at least the past 6 months), and within 24 hrs of you being sent the link to one of them the searches disappear, that is no coincidence. I'll leave others to draw their own conclusions. I'm sorry if you don't like the conclusion I drew.

(2) who was collecting the rental monies from these properties if not him, he simply stated:
" I can not advise who has been managing the property since then."

That, quite frankly, just will not do!

As I was no longer managing the properties from October 2011 onwards, I had no idea who was dealing with the rents. it is not a case of not remembering, as you have quoted, but more of a case of not dealing with this properties anymore and so not having a role in the management of them.

[The Editor]: Are you seriously telling me that you did not know that Novocastria Lettings took over management of, say,  2 Dronfield Rd. in November 2011 from Patrick Properties Management Ltd.?

(3) It strikes me as rather suspicious that after managing C&B properties for nearly 9 months, Patrick Collins formed a limited company only to stop business one year later with debts - one could be forgiven for thinking that the sole motive for forming Patrick Properties Management Ltd was to bury debt

The company was trading for over a year before it became a limited company. As the company grew I was advised that it would make sense to become a limited company. The company grew on the premises that we were very good at managing Properties, and the downfall of the company began when becoming involved with Collins Bone Properties etc. At no stage was the company created to 'bury debt'.

[The Editor]: In previous e-mail exchanges with you you indicated that your involvement with C&B properties was for a 1 year period spanning December 2009 through to December 2010. Given that your Ltd company was formed in September 2010, please explain the above statement because the timelines simply don't marry-up.

I would kindly ask you to edit these details, or ask further questions instead of write incorrect details that could be classed as slander.

[The Editor]: I had asked you a number of questions, but you declined to answer them on the basis that this would require time & effort on your part to delve into your records, something that you would require payment for, and which I am most certainly not prepared to do. If you are now prepared to answer these additional questions, then all well and good. The following questions are outstanding:

• You made the statement that your involvement with C&B owned properties terminated circa December 2010. So why are there rental agreements arranged by you for C&B owned properties in June/July 2011?
• When the management of 2 Dronfield Rd. was handed over by you to Novocastria Lettings ala Dom Smith's account, who were your discussions with at Novocastria, and into what bank account were the rental deposits transferred? You have made the statement to me previously that "There are no deposits owed to any Collins and Bone tenants who rented through Patrick Properties", so these deposits had to have been transferred.
• Since the posting of my blog article on you, a number of landlords who previously had their properties managed by you have been in touch claiming that they are either owed rent by you, and/or have otherwise not had rental deposits paid back to tenants. You had made a previous statement to me that no rental deposits are owed to Collins and Bone tenants. Is this also true for all other landlords? I'll be happy to put you in touch with these landlord(s) assuming that they agree to my doing so.
• I have supplied you previously with a list of C&B owned properties, and asked you to comment on which of these properties you managed, and when. You replied:

"All of those properties were managed by me at some stage but i'm not sure what dates they were handed over as it was constantly changing."

Why was the management company for any given C&B owned property constantly being changed, and who was orchestrating these changes, and for what reasons? David Bone Jnr? Liam Collins?

Kind Regards

Patrick Collins

Patrick Collins - part I

If readers of this article find anything contradictory in what Patrick Collins has stated given their own experiences working with this individual/Patrick Properties Management Limited, please get in touch with the Editor.

Now that both partners have been made bankrupt, the emphasis has moved to:

• The filing of alleged charges against the partners with Martin Faulkner, the Official Receiver.
• The continued mining and supplying of information to assist the authorities in bringing this fiasco to a conclusion as fast as possible..
• Closely monitoring of the ongoing Official Receiver's investigation.

If you have any information on the partners that may be useful to the Official Receiver's investigation, please send this to Martin Faulkner, or contact myself/the IFS blog if you prefer. And if you feel that you have been wronged in any way by the partners, then you really should be thinking carefully about filing alleged charges with Martin Faulkner if you have not already done so.

In terms of finding out where the monies have gone, an obvious place to start are rental monies. It should also be one of the easier sources of revenue flow to track as the C&B property assets are known. What follows below is information supplied by Patrick Collins of Patrick Properties Management Ltd. - his was one of a number of companies that let C&B owned properties.

Patrick Properties Management Ltd
Company # 7365820
Date of incorporation: 3/9/2010
Petition to wind up: 14/05/2012
Order to wind up: 10/07/2012
Official Receiver:

Gary Owen,
The Official Receiver,
1st Floor,
Melbourne House,
Pandon Babnk,
Newcastle Upon Tyne,
NE1 2JQ

Tel. 0191-260-4600
E-mail: gary.owen@insolvency.gsi.gov.uk

Patrick Collins confirmed the following with Editor in a sequence of recent e-mail exchanges:

• Patrick Properties supposedly acted as a letting agency for the Collins Bone partnership for a period of a year, from approximately December 2009 to December 2010, although this does not gel with signed assured shorthold tenancy agreements found on the Internet (see later). Rent was always paid to landlords monthly minus the management fees charged. He could not give the details of the properties due to data protection act, but I pointed out to him that the list of properties that the Collins & Bone Partnership own has been made publicly available by the partners, and an earlier copy of these assets posted @ www.collins-and-bone.blogspot.com "C&B assets - negative equity" article. So the addresses of these properties are not an issue for the Data Protection Act - they are well known to all C&B investors. He offered to identify the C&B properties that he managed, but on being presented the list although he confirmed that all the properties had been managed by him at some stage, he could not remember the dates when the various properties were handed over as it was constantly changing.

• The properties were in the hands of LPA Receivers when he took them on. However, there were a number of mortgage lenders involved, and therefore different LPA Receivers, and without delving into his records he could not tell me which properties were in the hands of LPA Receivers when. And given that this would take effort on his part to mine, he would require payment for providing this data. ... the Editor declined the offer. When the properties came out of receivership, this was due to getting arrears paid off and proving to the LPA Receivers that the properties could be properly managed and that mortgages could be paid.

• Asked whether when the C&B owned properties came out of LPA Receivership in April 2010 the properties were profitable, or whether the partners had to inject additional monies to make this happen, Patrick Collins stated:

"When the properties came out of receivership, yes this was due to getting arrears paid off and proving to the receivers that the properties could be properly managed and that mortgages could be paid. As a number of properties were with different mortgage companies, and so different receivers, I am not 100% sure how the whole portfolio was managed in terms of payments. I would deal with each house individually and was never involved with paying the mortgages. This is always the responsibility of the landlord, not the agent. There may have been money injected to contribute, but if so I was not aware of this. I would not agree that the properties were profitable in April 2010. Throughout the whole portfolio, the properties were at the stage where they could just make enough money to cover mortgages. However many of the properties were old in terms of decor and furnishings and boilers etc and so every month there were a lot of maintenance charges. Also there was money spent on the houses in order to make them more habitable to be rented out and so there was never a stage where I would class the houses as profitable. Some houses had low mortgages and high rents, some where empty, and others had high mortgages and low rents and so throughout the portfolio, there was never a stage where I would say that over all there was a profit, but more a case of just getting by each month."

This raises a huge question mark over the solvency of C&B at the end of 2009:

• Liam Collins & David Bone Jnr already had a number of CCJs against them (the appropriate searches have been done).
• Their property assets were in negative equity, and they were behind in their mortgage payments as well.
• Even when the properties came out of LPA Receivership in April 2010, rent collected barely covered the mortgages.

So a question must be raised over the commercial valuation the partners placed on their properties, and how this valuation was derived at, because it was this highly inflated valuation that effectively allowed the partners to continue trading and to solicit additional monies through PNs.



• With regards to deposits, all deposits received from C&B owned property tenants were paid through Patrick Properties and registered with mydeposits.co.uk . Once a tenant moved in, the money was stored in a separate client account held by Patrick Properties, the deposit registered, and the tenant provided a certificate and number. Once Patrick Properties handed over management to Diggs, all deposits were transferred over, or paid back to tenants if they were moving out. According to Patrick Collins, there are no deposits owed to any C&B tenants who rented through Patrick Properties.
• He estimated that during this 1 year period, occupancy rates were at best around 65%, but at times a lot lower.
• During this 1 year period, C&B were struggling to pay the mortgages on their properties.
• After the 1 year period, the properties were passed over to Diggs Lettings, with Loughborough based properties being managed by Rami Hariri. He is not aware if any of C&B's properties were subsequently taken over by Novocastria ... again, this does not gel with signed assured shorthold tenancy agreements found on the Internet (see later).
• The company charged management fees for managing the properties at 8% a month for each property:

"For charges, all agencies charge between 8% to 15% management fees. Anything lower than that is generally too cheap for the amount of work that needs to be done, any anything higher than that, the landlord will not pay. I am not sure what Novocastria charged but it would have been between 8% and 12% and the same for Diggs, but I imagine they would have charged 8%."

The fees cover the costs to collect rent, advertise and rent properties, and to deal with any maintenance on a monthly basis. All remaining monies were payed to the landlords who were responsible for making any mortgage payments. If a property was not let in a given month, the company got nothing.

• He has never had any dealings with Novocastria.

Patrick Collins would not provide the following data:

• Details of debts owed by the company.

• Supply working e-mail addresses for Mark Black, David Bone Snr & Rachael Bone, as these individuals need to be questioned over C&B properties that they managed and rented out yet never paid any rent monies to C&B for. In an e-mail from Liam Collins on February 22nd 2012 he states:

" I get nothing at all from them (Novocastria Lettings) ever as they are running at a loss most months.".

The Editor tried contacting these 3 individuals through their respective Novocastria Lettings & Novocastria Developments Ltd web-portals but never got a response, and even phoned Rachael Bone who refused to even specify her role in Novocastria Lettings, and its relationship to Novocastria Developments Ltd.

• When these payments were made, what payment label(s) were tagged against these payments as they would appear on the landlords' bank statements? E.g. "Rent: <property post code>?

• Were payments made on a per property basis, or in one monthly lump-sum payment to any given landlord (given that a landlord could have multiple properties with you)?

• In the case of Collins & Bone, into what bank account(s) were the monies you paid to the partners deposited?

• The Company has, according to Patrick Collins, been closed down since September 2011. Four assured shorthold tenancy agreements have been found, and there are almost certainly others, associated with C&B owned properties and issued by Patrick Properties Management Ltd. as follows:

10th June 2011 -> 30th June 2012, 2 Dronfield Rd.
25th August 2011 -> 30th June 2012, 11 Queen Street
1st July 2011 -> 30th June 2012, 41 Albert Rd.
1st July 2011 -> 30th June 2012, 60 Dundonald Street

All these tenancy agreements showed up under http://img.findaproperty.com/novocastria/Newcastle (e.g. the tenancy agreement for 41 Albert Rd. can be found at http://img.findaproperty.com/novocastria/Newcastle/m110852507.pdf?v=2). Hmmm, Novocastria .... I thought Patrick Collins never had any dealings with Novocastria? And then there is the IFS article "MORE ABOUT THE DIGGS DEBACLE" on 25th April 2012 written by Dom Smith whose daughter co-rented 2 Dronfield Rd during the above period, and who has confirmed that management of 2 Dronfield Rd was taken over by Novocastria Lettings at the end of November 2011. So Patrick Collins LIED when he said he never had any dealings with Novocastria.

The tenancy agreement for 41 Albert Road was particularly interesting because the landlords are shown as "Franklynn Management c/o Patrick Properties" as opposed to C&B. When I brought this to Patrick Collin's attention, he said this was an honest mistake and that nothing should be read into it. Moreover, within 24 hours of me bringing this to his attention, Internet searches for the above four mentioned rental agreements no longer showed up, which is clearly not a coincidence and perhaps an indicator that Patrick Collins has something to hide. The Editor has soft copies of all four of these rental agreements, and will make available on request.

When Patrick Collins was asked if his company had closed down in September 2011 who was collecting the rental monies from these properties if not him, he simply stated:

" I can not advise who has been managing the property since then."

That, quite frankly, just will not do! Here is Patrick Collins running a company with debts, and he cannot remember what happened to properties that were providing a steady income stream all the through to end June 2012?

It strikes me as rather suspicious that after managing C&B properties for nearly 9 months, Patrick Collins formed a limited company only to stop business one year later with debts - one could be forgiven for thinking that the sole motive for forming Patrick Properties Management Ltd was to bury debt. And as part of what business entity was Patrick Collins managing C&B properties in the period December 2009 through to 3rd September 2010 when Patrick Properties Management Ltd was incorporated, and have all rental monies owed to C&B for this period been paid?

The Editor