r/Glasgow Tools

The council really should be doing something about them. Frankly I think the entire concept of factors should be illegal or regulated to the point where it might as well be, but it's one of these problems that seems sensible until they start bending the rules.

Generally speaking a factor's job is to maintain communal areas and manage communal issues like buildings insurance for a multi-owner building. And I'd say therefore it's fair for them to take a fee just like any other cleaning employee or mediation service.

Trouble is in the city centre they know you're never going to get rid of them so they do as little as possible and demand as much as they can get. I've seen places in town with a dingy unlit close that hasn't seen a mop since the late 80s and they're asking for £100 a month from each resident for "administration". The place I'm temporarily renting right now is charging the landlord £90 a month and the place is literally falling apart. Moved in 3 months ago and the secure entry system was broke when I got here and still is.

Currently, there are rules governing factors. Specifically, if 51% of the property owners vote to have them evicted, they need to go. That sounds good in theory but when more than 50% of the properties are owned by landlords that don't care or actively WANT factors, it forces everyone else to comply. Especially when they don't want the headache of dealing with the firm's last stand threatening severance fees and whatever else they can pull out their pasty backside. These are legal firms and will not leave quietly in most cases.

As for how much they can charge you, they're really only limited by their imagination. Once the property owners reach breaking point and stop paying on time to the point where the debt collection isn't cost effective is when they stop raising their prices. If the building needs work done that isn't covered by insurance, don't expect to pay the standard market rate. They'll call in some under qualified family friends to do it for twice the price.


While there are some success stories of people kicking them out, landlords generally don't want them gone. They just add the cost onto your rent so it doesn't affect them in the least, and it's less paperwork for them to worry about.


As for properties being cheaper across the river. Generally speaking that's true but if the city centre was half the price it is now, how much cheaper would those places on the outskirts be?

That's going to force people further back than they would otherwise need to be in order to find somewhere to live the closer you get to the poverty line, and that gets compounded by the increasing costs to reach the hub of employment the further away you have to move from it.

Places like Govanhill break that rule a bit. Since it's cheaper than Shawlands which is further away. However the hypothetical still stands that it would be *even* cheaper if the city centre also was. That way the folk who live there on the bread line would at least have a bit more disposable income for ~heroin~ quality of life.

It's also not that the housing is unaffordable. Everything's affordable to *someone*. It's whether or not the situation is manageable, and the number of homeless folk around the UK would suggest to me that it isn't personally. 30 years ago people were buying flats using student bursary money and anyone with a minimum wage job could afford to be a home owner. These days it's a hell of a lot harder to be a home owner with the largest percentage of renters in recent history.

That's not to say "the good old days" were better. We're precisely in this situation now because in the good old days financial companies were frivolous and irresponsible and now we're paying for it.


For actual proper debates with sensible adults, I haven't got a clue. Most of my debates happen when the guy at the opposite end of my office gets bored of being productive and sends me a message on Skype, "Here, you know what I think..."

Or in the pub. After 5 pints I jump head first into conspiracy theories though.