Property fraud firm boss lives in luxury as customers face eviction

Mar 30 2009 by Sophie Doughty, The Journal

HER thousands of customers face losing the modest homes they have worked their whole lives to pay for.

But today The Journal can expose the luxurious lifestyle of the boss of a company at the centre of one of the biggest property scandals to hit the region.

Customers who rent from North East Property Buyers are waiting to find out if they will be thrown out of their homes while Grace Darling Purdie, the co-director of the firm which is now subject to a major fraud investigation, has been keeping a low profile at her £1.6m mansion in Darras Hall, Ponteland.

Officers from Northumbria Police’s Economic Crime Unit executed search warrants at houses and offices connected to North East Property Buyers and Newcastle Home Loans on Thursday, amid claims the businesses had defaulted on mortgage payments.

Ms Darling Purdie’s home on Runnymede Road was among those raided.

The companies, based in Gateshead, offer people in financial difficulties the chance to stay in their homes by buying the properties and renting them back to their former owners. Its thousands of customers now face eviction.

But our pictures show that Ms Darling Purdie has no such worries.

We took a peek through the keyhole of her former home, in Rickleton, Washington when it was featured in our Homemaker supplement three years ago.