Estate agents consistently rank highly in lists of most hated professions, often trumped only by parking wardens and bureaucrats. From my dealings with this Derby based agency, it is very easy to see why they have such a bad reputation. Agents are supposed to take away the hassle of letting a property - in my experience, they created all the hassle. If I had to sum up my experience with this company in a sentence, it would be:
DO NOT USE THIS AGENCY.
But allow me to explain.
I have been letting two properties with this company for just over a year. Here are a few issues that I have faced, although let it be known that these are a few of the problems amongst the whole page full I have had with this company.
- Property 1: After having taken fees (in the hundreds) from both myself (landlord) for check-in and rent-guarantee, and from the tenant for check-in, background checks, credit checks etc. When the tenant disappeared some way through the six month, I was left four months rent out of pocket. Despite having taken rent-guarantee which apparently would have protected me from this, I was unable to receive any rent as the managing director of the company Taj, was on holiday and because he is the sole person with access to the bank accounts and funds, nobody else is this company is able to help resolve this. After having to physically chase Taj every day with emails and phonecalls, I was finally told that I could not claim on the rent-guarantee because of an administrative error that was made by his staff when completing the initial applications. After some further digging, I found out that the company had never performed any credit or background checks on the tenant and therefore this meant the guarantee was void. To date, I have not received a single penny for those four months from this company and no refund of the money I paid for the rent guarantee. I was told by Taj, "Michael, if you were in my shoes, what would you have me do? I cannot find this person and therefore you cannot receive the money". His comment might have been more appropriate if the company hadn't sold me rent-guarantee, although a comment like that shows the infancy of this company and how little experience they actually have at managing properties.
- Property 2: I went to do a little gardening at another property I was letting with this agency, as I do every few months to keep them seasonally tidy. I bumped into the tenant who was currently on month eleven in the property. They queried why I had decided to put the rent up on the property by £100 since month seven. I said that I wasn't aware of an increase in the rent and asked for some further information from them to verify the amount they had been paying. The tenant showed me their bank statements which showed their payments to the agency had indeed increased by £100. I had not been receiving any increase in rent from the agency so I took this up with Streets Ahead. Obviously none other than Taj could answer my questions because, despite having numerous staff at the company, the only person who knows vaguely what is going on in this company is the MD. He first tried to tell me he had emailed me to say that we could put the property back on the market at a higher rate, but after searching his emails he realised he hadn't sent this (also this doesn't answer my question?) and then repeatedly said "isn't it better that we are making more money" but he hadn't quite grasped that he had first lied to both myself and the tenant by increasing the rent and not telling me, thinking he could get away with this and pocket the £100 extra each month for himself (on top of the company's extortionate management fee).
If you are thinking of using this company, please don't. It is easier letting all by yourself (privately), you can download a free model tenancy agreement on the gov.uk website and you can advertise the property on a number of different websites like rightmove or openrent which is what I have done and I can honestly say I have never looked back. read more
