This review has come to our attention today and we are both shocked and perturbed as statements made above are both condemning and fictitious. It makes no sense that we have received no formal complaint from this landlord, in order to resolve any issue or complaint that he may have had either at the time or thereafter.
We are a reputable company and work with both independent and multi landlords and developers all over London and have received no other such complaints. To our knowledge, this is the only bad review of our company / service that exists.
Initially we would like to clarify that we advertise our services both online and in local newspapers. The Guaranteed Rent Service is designed to be hassle free for landlords. The main terms of the service are to guarantee rental payments, whilst having an agent deal with the day to day management, for landlords to remain unaffected tenants defaulting on rental payments and not have costly management commissions / fees or any other administrative fees.
With reference to the comment that any customer (client, tenant, landlord or any other service user) could be misled, we would like to confirm that our tenancy agreements, terms and conditions and other documents clearly stipulate the terms of our services and therefore we do not believe there to be any possibility of one being misled.
With regards to works carried out and contractors used, as with all agents, we have numerous contractors (for different types of maintenance) and all are approved contractors of whom we hold copies of qualifications / certifications and relevant insurances. We do not have either friends or family members on our list of approved contractors as this is a conflict of interest. It is my understanding that this landlord enlisted the services of a contractor (who may be related to our company director) with no involvement on the part of Willow Estate Agents.
We strive to use quality contractors at reasonable prices and have not found that our independent or multi landlords are displeased with either their work or costings. We do recommend that any landlords either concerned about unexpected costs or who have ongoing maintenance issues (more common in aged properties) that they take out a maintenance contract with British Gas or another provider to cover appliances, plumbing and boilers.
All maintenance works are detailed on a landlord statement which is emailed to a landlord automatically upon processing of any rental payments. Comments that expenditures are not disclosed is entirely false as they are automatically sent to landlords.
We do not charge any administrative fees or monthly / annual commission for the guaranteed rental service. Any deductions (such as maintenance deductions or periodic safety tests) are detailed in full on landlord statements. This is stipulated in both our Terms and Conditions and Tenancy Agreement and is in place for several reasons.
In order for us to guarantee the rent we must ensure that maintenance is carried out in a timely manor and should a landlord not have a maintenance contract / policy in place we are able to go ahead with works to avoid occupants being left with maintenance issues or emergencies not being dealt with, which could in turn result in them withholding rent or making a complaint (as this conflicts with the terms of our agreement with them).
It is common for agents to have such terms in place (commonly known as a spend limit) to ensure small or emergency maintenance issues can be dealt with swiftly, however, given that this service guarantees the rental income it is imperative to be able to deal with maintenance efficiently.
All properties are cleaned and any necessary works carried out (in order to be returned in the same condition less reasonable wear and tear). Properties nor their contents would ever be returned damaged.
We managed three properties for this landlord, two of whom were management takeovers, which we came to realise the properties were without proper planning permission and had ongoing issues with tenants and maintenance issues. We supported and assisted the client with court proceedings against his tenants. There were issues with there being no separate utility supplies. There were issues with disrepair that the landlord refused to action and eventually resulted in us returning the property to the landlord. These were not on our guaranteed rent service.
We also managed a six bedroom property for the landlord (which he converted into a HMO and instructed us to let the rooms in the building) and the landlord was again unreasonable in his responsibilities to carry out maintenance works and refused to acknowledge that one should expect far more wear and tear in a large building with six rooms and shared facilities, than in a family home or rental property that is not a HMO.
Although we do not believe it is professional to discredit a landlord we feel that we must highlight the actual facts in this instance in order to defend ourselves again such slanderous claims and comments.
In summary, we are disappointed that a landlord would feel dissatisfied with our service, but even more disappointed that they would choose to write such a condemning and largely fabricated account of events rather without even raising any such issues previously. The statements made both slanderous of the company and its employed individuals, which we believe to be both abhorrent and unnecessary.
We trust that anyone reading this review or our response shall understand that one can make such statements without being justified in doing so. We absolutely deny the claims made in this review and reiterate that we have a large amount of properties both on our management services and guaranteed rental service and have had no such complaints about our services.