The Evening Times reports that a development of luxury flats in Glasgow’s Tradeston is going to hell in a handcart, mainly because absentee landlords aren’t paying their share of communal bills – so the residents who do pay expect the water and electricity to be turned off any day now.

It’s a ridiculous state of affairs, but one detail in the story jumped out. The developers offered cashback to purchasers, so one company bought 40 flats (in the one development) and netted £200,000. And now the company has disappeared.

Is the housing market so overheated that developers don’t think “hmmm, 40 flats in one block is an unusually large purchase. Better do some background checks before handing over a fifth of a million quid. Who knows? The company might just take our cash and disappear!”