Yazi doesn’t use protection! (the deposit kind that is)

We had the unfortunate pleasure of renting with Yazi Kayhanian, the house had recently been refurbished so we were pretty happy with the find. However this man is a nightmare to deal with, he doesn’t provide you with deposit protection details (probably because he doesn’t protect them) and is elusive when you need to contact him for any repairs and especially so at the end of the tenancy. Having now googled him I think we got off lightly, we got a partial refund of our deposit but that was after months of chasing him around the city.

Rent: £350
Deposit Returned?: Partially

Capital Crisis

We rented a house through Capital Properties in Cathays. We have rented with CPS and 2let2 before and neither compares to the experience we had at this house. When we first moved in the house was in an absolute state. Mouldy curtains, thick black mould in kitchen, YEARS worth of filth, brown and orange stains, broken furniture (beds missing leg frames and completely collapsed, wardrobes damaged and held together by chewing gum) and stained mattress covers. It was so disgusting we wrote and called repeatedly until they came and repainted the bedrooms. As for the black mould – the roof needed structural repair. After being told the bathroom renovation and roof would be done within around 10 days, I can tell you now this was an absolute lie. Months later the work was finally done, only to discover the newly fitted shower and the existing one upstairs didn’t work. Straight away we knew we had an issue with the boiler as the showers wouldn’t get warm, and it took them MONTHS to even send someone out to see what the issue was.

The maintenance man – a shoddy, untrained, unprofessional, misogynistic man who barely fixed anything and regularly fly-tipped broken furniture we forced them to remove from our property. Not only is he a maintenance man – he is a part-time bailiff – after one of us locked ourselves out of our room (we were still in the house) at 10 am on a Saturday he attempted to charge us £80, when we refused he waited outside our house for almost a week demanding to see my housemate. When asked why the charges were not £30 as in the tenancy agreement, he shouted: “that’s nothing to do with me!” – a professional at heart.

The landlords aka ‘Capital Properties’ – Anne Marie Hamzelou and Nader Hamzelou routinely take it in turns to direct Capital Properties, who conveniently have no public office you can visit and reliable phone number to reach them on. Interestingly, a quick search on Rent Smart Wales (the governing body for rented properties) will reveal that neither our landlord (Nader) nor capital properties held a supposed license to rent our property to us in the first place. After lodging a complaint with RSW and speaking to the council, they came and inspected the property – concluding that one of the rooms was actually not permissible and required structural change. We presume the council’s recent enlightenment was the only reason we were able to get the majority of our deposit back.

[Rent Smart Wales is a great resource and you can find their landlord listings here, if your landlord isn’t on here and own an HMO then they are breaking the law.
https://www.rentsmart.gov.wales/en/check-register/ ]

The year we rented with Capital Properties was the most stressful I have had to date, they are a shambles of a ‘company’.

DO NOT rent with them.

Rent: £340

Deposit returned?: Partially

Damp on the Horizon.

Which problem do I start with?

I have been with Horizon for two years, at two different address. Both as bad as each other. One of the landlords was V Al Khafaji. The list of things wrong throughout each tenancy just keeps growing.

Both had mould problems; the kitchens were disgusting; the house wasn’t cleaned properly, yet blamed us when moving out for it not being clean (it was spotless). The second house had rats, cockroaches, holes in the floor. The bed broke, there was a leak in the kitchen, a hole in the extension roof that was apparently ’fixed’ during lockdown (they lied).

All in all, don’t rent from horizon unless you like constant contact with their automated email and a shoddy manager that cares more about her Bentley then human lives.

Rent: 350

Deposit returned: Didn’t have one

🎵 5 Taps leaking, and 4 fucked radiators, 3 unhappy tenants, 2 toilets leaking and a Completely broken bed!!! 🎵

Keylet’s motto is ‘let’s open doors together’ but what they don’t tell you is, they’ll also slam them right back in your face and jam your fingers in them while they’re at it.

We moved into our property with the sofa having rips in it, marks on the walls and carpet, but overall the flat seemed lovely..for now.

5 taps a leaking, 4 fucked radiators, 3 unhappy tennants, 2 toilets leaking and one completely broken beeeeeeeed ( as well as the door dropping from the hatch). And we’d had enough. Called them up, only to be told you absolutely HAD to send it through fixflo ( oh but don’t forget, you can ONLY submit once otherwise the staff get confused…you have to question their intelligence level if THAT confuses them)

When we moved out, these problems still were not fixed and we actually now ALSO had a broken window. You love to see it.

The place was SPOTLESS. And I mean there was not a sign of dust anywhere…so with a spotless flat but multiple problems reported to Keylet that they did not fix. We didn’t expect the whole deposit back knowing their track record.

Please enlighten me as to how we got charged for none of these problems, despite them not being fixed. But had over £500 removed from our deposit in ‘general cleaning’ and ‘paint retouching’ when we provided proof the wall markings were there when we moved in? £300 to paint tiny marks? Are you hiring someone to paint one stroke a day? Will they be flying from Antarctica to do this paint job? Are you reincarnating Van Gogh for this? The marks were barely noticeable!!!!

In addition to this, we didn’t even see our deposit for 2 months and were repeatedly ignored in emails and rudely spoken to when we called to chase up on it.

For your own sanity, don’t rent with Keylet.

P.S. They walked into our flat unannounced on numerous occasions and once we were all asleep in our rooms and they still came in x

[Editors note: Creepy and illegal by Keylet]

Rent: £370

Deposit Returned?: Partially

It’s habitable! So habitable that we’re taking it off the market, so no one new can rent it!

Where do I begin?

Firstly, we were promised that the bathroom would be redone but didn’t get this put in the contract meaning that we couldn’t force them to do it despite the promise.

Once moved into the property there were several issues such as severe mould and damp, a broken gate onto the street, a broken window that faced onto the street downstairs and if a burglar saw it could easily break in, cupboards unclean, broken dishwasher, cupboard under the sink disgustingly mouldy and damp, carpet torn, stuff left from painters and a barely functioning front door. There were also damp issues across the entire house.

So what did cps do?

After emailing and calling at least once a week and going in, the window and front door were fixed… in January (only 5 months after we moved in…). Why did they fix it? Because we called the council and had them come round and they threatened to take away the HMO license. Only reason CPS/the landlord did anything about that.

I will give credit that our dishwasher was fixed within a month which for CPS is pretty decent.

With regards to the mouldy and damp kitchen – the landlords excuse was that he was redoing that following summer. That is a bullshit excuse for the condition.

So we had gotten the council round and they sent a report to CPS/landlord. And so they organised to do works which we were told would be minimal and not disruptive, and would also only take a couple of days.

They started the works about 6 weeks ago… it’s still going on. They tore off the outside render, made holes in our house, completely tore up our back garden and filled it with builders crap. Our neighbours actually had to complain because the builders knocked bricks down their fireplace. Due to the holes in the property, we got rats and had to have pest control. This is all happening during lockdown.

CPS have been unhelpful in communication and take about a week to reply. We have asked for compensation especially as one of us is still living in the property during lockdown and having to live in this shithole. CPS simply stated that the property was habitable because there was someone living there – this is not the definition of a property being habitable. We are worried we won’t get our deposit back because of the damage that the damp had done. The builders have stated that they would never have called the work they are doing minimal and that the damp was diabolical. Which considering half my house has asthma and other lung issues, is extremely dangerous.

The property was actually taken off the market after one of their employees came round for a mid tenancy inspection because of the actual house itself. If you have to take a house off the market, surely there is a bigger issue here?

We pay £330 for the house, if I were to price it, I wouldn’t pay more than £280 and during the works, the rent should have been halved. Because of the works we have no garden during lockdown and can’t even open a window in the hot weather because of the dust.

I know CPS is a hit and a miss. But whatever you do, DO NOT GET A PROPERTY THAT IS MANAGED BY CPS AND NOT THE LANDLORD!!!

Rent: £330

Deposit Returned?: Still living at the hole in question

CPS: Oops! We forgot to tell the previous tenant, that we’re renting to someone new!

Move-in day:

  • One tenant was still living there as CPS ‘hadn’t had time to check the property and go over the inventory with them’
  • Got that sorted, then they gave us all the keys… or so we thought. No front door keys were given, meaning all the previous tenants still had theirs. Had to get the locks changed and give in new keys to CPS (which they claim we never gave them).

House Viewings:

  • All viewings of our house were given less than 24hrs notice, and one was literally 30mins before they turned up at our house, and started banging on windows to get us to let them in. [Editor’s Note: If someone does this in the future call the police and report them for harassment.]

House condition:

  • A leaking tap, all year even though we emailed repeatedly about it
  • Radiator not working & leaking all year (again, having phoned & emailed about it regularly)
  • Bathroom door didn’t close (was by the kitchen) and though we literally emailed them 20 times about this, servicemen just came around, stated ‘you need a new door’ and left, without any resolution.

2/10 do not recommend to a friend.

Rent: £315

Deposit Returned?: Still living at the hole in question

Raining Bigotry with a routine appointment for the shitter

Very poor service. Didn’t clean the property before we moved in. Had no communication with the landlord and blamed it on the tenants. Tried to charge £25 for sending an automated email. Only took the male tenants seriously. Dead named and misgendered a trans tenant constantly despite knowing from day one they were trans. Refused to fit a new toilet, instead we had a plumber come over every time it broke, which was every week, and fix it to work for another few days. He told us we needed a new system but Umbrella were refusing to pay. Tried to refuse giving us a new oven when ours became dangerous, despite the contractor who viewed it saying we needed a new one. On more than one occasion argued with tenants about the lay out of the house that we lived in.

Admitted they didn’t know how to deal with non-students when we challenged bills and charges. They want tenants they can charge for anything. During the deposit system they refused to take tenants seriously, refused to allow us to join them on the inventory, accused a tenant of lying (by shouting in their face). They then tried to charged us £40 for blu-tack on a varnished door and removing a carrier bag from a room. Refused to answer emails, constantly lied to make us concede to the charges. They also refused to give us redress information to complain. They don’t treat tenants like paying clients they treat them like pests in their properties.

If I could give them zero stars I would. I would highly recommend avoiding this company like the plague.

Rent: £300

Deposit Returned?: Partially

Pinnacle being the Pinnacle of shite

Pinnacle Lettings Agents are by far one of the worst companies I have dealt with in any capacity.

It would take me an age to describe all the things that have happened in our dealings with them, and you would most likely fall asleep or fall ill before you have finished reading it, so I am going to summarise slightly.

When we first went to move in to the house, moving truck and all, we arrived on the doorstep on the agreed move in date to a house with very few floorboards and full of builders, and were then told the house is not ready to move in yet. (no call or text or forewarning.) They put us up in a hotel for a few days (as per an agreement we put in to the contract because it was getting a bit sketch) and ultimately when the work was hurried finished we were moved in when they told us the house was ‘habitable’ as we could cook (just one microwave) and there was running water (the shower didn’t work, so wasn’t actually habitable) ((we had to pay for the hotel, it took them two months to refund us))

All the rooms were covered in dust and plaster and the house in general seemed previously derelict.

Despite weekly ( and sometimes daily ) emails from us (bare in mind the house was empty for over a year before this, they had a lot of time to do this)

The downstairs toilet had backed up sewage for the first month or two (full to the brim), god knows how long it was like that before we moved in. It was cleared but never cleaned, toilet was unusable and smelled of sewage, it was never cleaned, just cleared. Never functional, they said it was okay because of the amount of us we only needed one toilet.

Before we moved in the house was not cleaned to any standard, we had to attempt to transform it from a building site into a home.

The loft bedroom was not insulated well (some fancy people came round and investigated) so it was always melting hot or freezing cold.

Garden was never cleared and uninhabitable from last tenants. (they sent a contractor round but only paid him to sorta look at it and start bagging it)

When we moved in the freezer was not functional, we had to wait two months to get one.

When we moved in the oven was not working for six weeks. (they said it wasn’t a problem as we had a microwave)

[Editors note: If the inventory list has an oven on it, it’s under the assumption it’s working, your landlord has responsibility to make sure these things are working before you move in.]

When we (like the fools we are) resigned for a second year, we had to pay £100 resigning fee each, in which we resigned the literal first contracts again, dates were not changed at all – paid £500 for photocopier use.

Severe damp on some of the rooms, bed bugs, closets filled with the rubble, them not sending contractors to fix things, or sending people without giving us any warning at all.

There are so many more, these are just the ones that come to mind. Some of this is also the fault of Felix De Giles, the person who owned the property – in which I will do a separate post for.

[Editors note: if the house was rented and marketed to you on the basis it had 2 bathrooms, both bathrooms should be working. Your house should be in habitable condition before you move in. Its your landlords responsibilty to repair these things. If this isn’t adhered to, this is cause enough to exit your tenancy agreement]

Rent: £270

Deposit Returned?: Yes