Britain’s biggest landlord Fergus Wilson and his wife Judith Wilson have been caught up in the rout of the British Housing sector following Britain’s decision to leave the European Union last Thursday.
The Wilsons who aggressively built a property portfolio since the early nineties, have been trying to sell their £250 million property portfolio of around 900 houses to a collection of foreign buyers and wealthy individuals. However, the Daily Telegraph claimed that Mr Wilson is seeing the cancellation of many sales following Thursday’s Brexit vote.
The Wilsons are perhaps models for Britain’s buy-to-let frenzy and are no strangers to controversy. In 2009, Judith Wilson saw a court case thrown out by a judge for demanding £3,000 for a new bathroom suite from a tenant who had damaged a cistern lid which the tenant offered to replace. In a written judgment, Judge Christopher Cagney branded the claim “exaggerated”, and said he “had doubts” that work to replace the bathroom suite would ever be carried out. Mr Wilson was also found guilty in 2014 of assaulting an estate agent when a boiler in one of his properties failed to work despite a court plea that he was “too fat to hit anyone”. Earlier in January of that year Wilson sent eviction notices to every tenant that received housing benefit saying he had lost around £800,000 because of them.
Undeterred by the market turmoil caused by the Brexit vote, Mr Wilson claims that buy-to-let investors will become richer as Britain leaves the European Union because tighter immigration policies proposed by Boris Johnson and Michael Gove are “likely to improve the quality of tenants.”
According to Mr Wilson: “Ten years ago I housed a lot of single mums and battered wives who were a good category of tenant. They were pretty good at paying the money and looking after the houses. But then in about 2005 the eastern Europeans started coming and they made really good tenants. I haven’t advertised a property for five years because they always ask – can my friend move in?”
Despite the Wilson’s optimism, the housing sector was one of the worst affected industries following Britain’s decision to reject EU membership with shares in housing giants Taylor Wimpey, Redrow and Bovis Homes Group each down around 30% since the vote.