Facebook is fast becoming the online repository for photographs. We all now get the chance to see what our friends and family have been up to without the need to call around and browse photo albums. However, one landlord got more than she bargained for when browsing photos taken at a house party.  It was her house and the tenants were wrecking the joint.

Facebook announced in October, 2008 that its users had uploaded 10 billion photos to its servers. Which makes it bigger than dedicated photo repositories such as Photobucket and Flickr. Many of these pictures are of low quality and show nothing more than people getting drunk or falling out of a club. But some tell a bigger story.

According to The Telegraph, Carolyn Lorimer, a 26-year-old first-time landlord, has Facebook to thank for helping her discover how her sitting tenants were treating the apartment, or “flat” as we Brits call it.

After having bought the apartment in 2004 as a buy-to-let property, she enlisted the help of a lettings agency in finding her suitable tenants. This they did, or so she thought. But the “pleasant and well behaved” young couple turned out not to be neither of the above, wrecking the house and much of its contents.

Lorimer told the newspaper how she was on Facebook innocently browsing photos taken at a party attended by a friend when she realized she recognized it as her own property. Taking slightly more interest after that, she spotted people dancing on tables, holes having been punched in the walls, and her television lying broken and upended in the corner of the front room.

She immediately issued an eviction noticed but the tenants had already realized the game was up and had fled leaving unpaid bills and a clean-up costing thousands of pounds.

When I logged on to Facebook and saw the pictures I was absolutely shocked. I recognized it as my flat straight away and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing – people jumping on the furniture, dancing on the kitchen table, holes in the walls and smashed TVs. It looked like a slum. It very quickly dawned on me that they were actually a bunch of massive chavs.

This former estate agent is a little stupid for not having checked out the tenants before this, for not having taken out contents insurance, and for generally not being a very responsible landlord. Lucky then that Facebook exists and could help her discover the truth before things got any worse. Facebook – Helping landlords evict tenants since 2009. And for that, we love it.

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Entry was posted on Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 at 10:49 pm under Opinion, Social Media, Technology.

Read more entries by Dave Parrack.
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