The unexpected auction: A London fund manager is selling Merseyside homes from under their tenants

Dear readers — Last week, residents of properties across Merseyside received a strange knock on their doors. They were informed their homes were being auctioned off in just two weeks time, and were offered £2,000 to move somewhere else.

The news came as a shock. Before last week, nobody had told these residents — many of whom were previously homeless or struggling with mental health and addiction issues — that their houses were being sold. As a result, one resident told The Post they felt so distraught they'd been unable to get out of bed for days. “I’ve just cried and cried and cried,” they said.

For the residents, the story is intensely local and personal: it’s about their lives potentially being upended. But we’ve been examining the details of the auction, and found that it connects to a financial scandal in the City of London that has seen vulnerable tenants treated as an afterthought by financiers chasing property profits. 

It also might be an indication of something broader: what one leading housing lawyer told us is a “a race against time” for landlords to evict tenants before new renting rules come into force this year.

But before we get into today’s story — here is your Post briefing.

Your Post briefing

Remember when 90% of people opposed the plan to end city centre parking, but the council went ahead anyway? Well, Nick Small, the cabinet member for growth and economy, says the council "has listened to hospitality, especially around Hope Street and pre-theatre venues". The city council has now approved a plan to increase parking charges, with the cost of on-street parking rising by up to 20% in some areas. The price of a two-hour stay will increase from £6 to £6.50, and parking before 6pm will be limited to four hours, and five hours after 6pm. The results of a statutory consultation done by the council in 2023 revealed that nearly 90% of respondents opposed plans to end free city centre parking after 6pm, with businesses in the food, drink and leisure sectors particularly vocal in their opposition. The council went ahead with the change anyway, and now the cost of a five-hour stay after 6pm will rise from £10 to £10.60. Cheers, Nick! 🥂

A new 10-bed ward for terminally ill patients has been opened by Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and the Cheshire and Merseyside Integrated Care Board (ICB). It follows the closure of Marie Curie’s 26-bed hospice inpatient unit in Woolton last year despite the efforts of staff and campaigners, including specialist palliative care nurse, Garston councillor and now Your Party affiliated Lucy Williams, who helped lead a vigil to Marie Curie’s London headquarters. Marie Curie staff have been seconded to work on the new 10-bed ward, which is temporary. Your Party issued a statement welcoming the news but reiterating that the closure of the Marie Curie inpatient unit was “a huge betrayal [of] our city” which “should never have been allowed to happen.” A spokesperson for the charity said it was committed to working with the ICB to "provide the people of Liverpool with high quality palliative and end-of-life care".

And finally, Eat the Rich (but maybe not me mates x), the play by Wirral comedienne Jade Franks, has received this glowing review in the New York Times. The semi-autobiographical one-woman show, which debuted to great acclaim at the Edinburgh Fringe last year, concerns the character of Jade, a chatty 20-year-old from Liverpool who chucks her call centre job to go to Cambridge. Eat the Rich is playing at the Soho Theatre in London through 31st January and will soon be adapted for Netflix — following the same Fringe-to-streaming path as Fleabag and Baby Reindeer. The Times’ critic Houman Barekat describes Franks’ treatment of a “quintessentially British ambivalence about social status” with a “charismatic blend of righteous indignation and self-effacing wit”, and places Eat the Rich in the tradition of Brideshead Revisited and Shirley Valentine as British drama dealing with class. 

The City of London asset manager selling Merseyside homes from under their tenants

*name has been changed at the request of the deceased’s family

It was just past 1pm last Monday when Rosey Edwards received a loud knock on her door. Nearly 60 years old, Rosey is the kind of person who lives by an ordered routine, and she’d spent the morning doing dishes and folding her laundry. She wasn’t expecting visitors.

When she opened the door, she was greeted by a slim man in his late 20s, wearing a baseball cap. Her home, he said abruptly, was up for auction, and he was here on behalf of a prospective buyer to see if she’d move out in return for a £2,000 lump sum.

Rosey stood there, shellshocked. An auction? Her home?

She immediately broke down in tears. The man, surprised at her reaction, said he was under the impression she knew about the sale. As reality dawned on him, his expression changed from one of indifference to panic.

Rosey invited him inside for a cup of tea, anxious to hear about this auction and the prospective buyer he was representing. He told her that his boss, a private landlord in Liverpool, found her house listed on the auction website Allsop, along with 16 other properties in Merseyside. His boss had instructed him to go to these houses, and offer each tenant £2,000 to move out. His plan was to lease these properties to councils as supported accommodation (publicly-funded housing that provides vulnerable people with support and supervision) once the purchase had gone through, so he needed them empty.

You may not recognise Rosey’s name, but for some Post readers, her story might ring a bell. I’ve been speaking to her every month or two for the past three years, and she appeared — albeit via a pseudonym — in the first story we wrote about the Big Help group back in 2024. That story turned out to be one of the most consequential pieces we’ve ever published, setting off a whole investigative series that has brought down the interlocking firmament of charities and companies operated by former Labour councillor Peter Mitchell.