“I started out extremely optimistically when choosing to rent with ......”
2 Star Review
Aug 24,2014
By:
'Alex'
Aug 24,2014
Branch: Chichester, 3 Northgate
Services: Lettings (Prospective customer)
Rent PCM: £1175
Would you recommend?: No
Postcode: PO19
Branch: Chichester, 3 Northgate
Lettings (Prospective customer)
Rent PCM: £1175
Postcode: PO19
7
people found
this helpful
I started out extremely optimistically when choosing to rent with Leaders. I received a recommendation from a work colleague and was looking forward to dealing with a helpful and professional agent. My partner and I are planning our own home-build 6 months from now and were looking for somewhere to rent for those 6 months.
We found a property with a mutual friend of ours (to help us save - we are on a strict saving budget as plots of land aren't cheap!). We passed all of our referencing and paid our fees. Unfortunately our mutual friend had to drop out of the property as the rent was too high. This was a shock to me and my partner. We returned to Leaders and apologetically explained the situation. We were on a strict time schedule as we had tendered notice at our current property, expecting to move at the end of August. We were assured that they would do everything they could to find us a property and even said they wouldn't charge is fees again as we wanted to go through Leaders.
We began looking at houses slightly cheaper so we could still rent with out mutual friend. We viewed multiple houses, which were appointments in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week. I work 60 hours a week all along the South Coast, so you can imagine how convienient this was to fit around my diary. But still, I changed meetings to view these properties - we had 3 weeks to confirm a new house before we became essentially homeless. I would view these houses, confirm within the hour that we wanted the property, and every single time we were told the landlord doesn't like 'young people', or 'sharers'. I understand this, but I'm a 24 year old, salaried manager, and my partner an international film composer. We are evidently hardworking, professional people, which I doubt was explained to the landlord. It is the landlords house after all; they need to be happy with the people living there. But why was I travelling hours to house viewings in the middle of my working week when there wasn't a chance of us living there?! This happened twice in one week! Surely Leaders should know this landlord criteria before causing me to cancel half a day of meetings to view somebody else's house?
But yet I sighed an air of stress and carried on. After all, they seemed helpful and were recommended - it can't be this bad.
We arranged more viewings of houses, with an appointment being cancelled by email in the AM of the viewing. Nothing screams professional like notifying a customer by email a few hours before a viewing to let them know it isn't happening.
At the point I started seeing properties on the Leaders website of suitable houses for us that we weren't being notified of, despite being promised by David that he had his best man on our case. I had the sudden realisation that they might be deliberately being unhelpful from the logic of 'we've already got their money. If they want a property, they can do the legwork'. So after David's heartiest promise, I've received a whopping 2 emails from Simone of 'properties matching out criteria'. These houses were thousands of pounds more a year to rent than our stated budget. Is this a joke? I was under the impression we went to Leaders initially to work with a team of professional lettings negotiators.
The end result? Nothing. David did not deliver on his promise. We have not rented a property with Leaders, but be assured this is not from lack of bloody trying!
Long winded, I know, but I just wanted to express my genuine and warm thanks to all at Leaders for your help and support in our housing endeavour, especially to David for his kind promise that stopped us from finding another estate agent sooner.
What agent could do to change your mind?
Act on what you say, and operate as a professional business.
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