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5/12/25 4:43 pm
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A landlord who mistakenly believed his property had been licensed by a rent guarantee firm which scammed him out of £15,000 has been handed a hefty Rent Repayment Order.
Stevan Gorgievski had previously been told to pay £33,668 in September 2024 by a First Tier Property Tribunal but, following his appeal, an Upper Tribunal set aside the decision and allowed a new hearing where he was told to pay £21,770 - 60% of the rent paid.
The tribunal heard that Gorgievski had previously used a rent guarantee firm - Kingsman Property Ltd – and believed it was an “express term of that agreement” that Kingsman would apply for any required HMO licence. However, by mid-2019, Kingsman owed him more than £15,000 and went into liquidation, so he started to manage the property himself. It transpired that Kingsman’s director Samuel Eustace had improperly taken £6.7 million from investors in what was effectively a Ponzi scheme.
Gorgievski told the tribunal there were signs in the property which suggested an HMO licence [was] in place, including a framed document on the wall next to the entrance which looked like an HMO licence.
The landlord checked London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham’s website and was able to confirm that an HMO licence application had been made. He only became aware it was unlicensed in November 2022, following an email exchange with the council, and completed a licence application the same day.
However, the judge said: “It clearly could not have been an HMO licence, because there is no evidence to suggest that Kingsman obtained such a licence. The information Mr Gorgievski saw on the council’s website…was a record of an incomplete application. That cannot reasonably have led him to conclude that an HMO licence was in place during the relevant period.”
Gorgievski explained that his five former tenants didn’t take care of the house in Biscay Road, London, that the toilet was regularly left blocked or dirty, they broke a door and removed a carbon monoxide filter. They also left the property in such a poor condition that a cleaning contractor refused to clean it.
Photo: Google StreetView
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