Channel 4 showed an interesting story concerning the life and times of
Daniel Burton, the man who brought the concept of ‘rent to rent’ into the
media spotlight. Sadly, despite many years of successful trading, Daniel
Burton and his company have disappeared into the ether—along with an
awful lot of cash owing to disgruntled tenants. So what happened?
Get Rich Quick
Rent to rent was viewed as a ‘get rich quick’ scheme. Daniel Burton
wasn’t the only landlord to jump on to the bandwagon, but he was perhaps
the best known. At one point, Daniel Burton was reported as making around
£35k per month. He even ran seminars to help instruct those eager
wannabes who wanted to emulate his meteoric rise to property letting
success. Unfortunately, tenants were less than impressed with his
business blueprint.
Rent to Rent
The idea behind rent to rent is simple. People like Daniel Burton rent a
large property from an existing buy to let landlord. They then sub-let
the property to tenants looking for individual rooms. To make the scheme
pay, tenants are packed into the properties like sardines in order to
maximise rental income for the sub-letting landlord. If there are
problems with the property, the sub-letting landlord doesn’t have to deal
with disgruntled tenants; instead he directs their complaints back to the
original landlord owner of the property.
Sadly, it all went a bit wrong for Daniel Burton and his company. Channel
4 eventually tracked him down to sunny Scunthorpe in the north of
England, which is a far cry from his previous stomping ground of London.
But if you want to know the ins and outs of Daniel’s story, check out
Channel 4.
