8th Oct 2024 (9 weeks ago)
I hope this review will be helpful especially for the TENANTS as my experience was as a tenant
It started with our move in date; I called 2 days before moving to confirm the time, when they told me the move in was cancelled blaming the landlord. Northwood said they didn’t know until late which is why it happened this way. However it took ME to call THEM to find out about it. This could have been true but in my opinion it looked like the reason was because their paperwork wasn’t done. The following week they were asking my guarantor to go to the office to sign paperwork that needs signing before they will give me the keys. On top of this they sent me all of the documents i needed to sign whilst I was sat in front of the house waiting for the keys. Even for this the manager couldn’t turn up on time.
Some months went by, we always paid on time etc. In the end we had to leave after being given a section 21. We don’t know the reason for it but ultimately that’s the business of the new landlord who had just taken over the house.
There was a dispute about paperwork as we weren’t given a gas safety certificate which is a legal requirement for the section 21. Whenever I managed to get hold of the manager who was always ‘out of the office’ when I called she said I don’t need one, which is a different story from what I heard from ‘shelter’, ‘citizens advice bureau’ and the local council. I don’t know if the reason was because our gas certificate was out of date or something else, but I feel Northwood will tell you anything to get you off the phone. I was told I’ll get it via email, fobbed off for weeks, then told I don’t need one. Eventually I got one weeks later.
After leaving we waited almost 3 weeks for details of the checkout inspection which happened apparently 3 days after receiving their keys.
Their inspection showed many inaccuracies, things ‘missing’ that were found in the house and things ‘left’ in the house which were there when we moved in.
More than a month later they sent their quote which was did not fully match the problems from their ‘inspection’.
Months later, another quote coming from the landlord this time. The prices had changed a lot, for example the cleaning went from £335 to £90 in order to make space in the budget for new kitchen drawers £232.43 as now (3 months later) they are broken which wasn’t seen by us before we left or in the ‘inspection’ by Northwood.
You can say almost the whole list of problems was different than the other two we had received from Northwood but luckily this would easily be proved wrong by the before and after photos.
I told Northwood I want a dispute on Tenancy Deposit Scheme as I was SURE about the evidence I had for everything.
They acknowledged that they knew I wanted a dispute however they did not let it happen.
They failed to respond over a month to my repayment request, following that they failed to respond to the statutory declaration so in the end I rightfully got the deposit back.
I wrote a complaint to Northwood, mostly about the manager who actually dealt with the complaint. I tried to get in touch with the director Sean Farrah. I was told he was looking into my case and he will phone me so I can only assume he is still looking 3 weeks later
In the end I will give advice to tenants to take photos of every single corner of the house. I have since moved with another company who really showed me how unprofessional and difficult Northwood really are... Read more