9th Mar 2024 (19 days ago)
If you’re thinking of letting your property through Cowen’s, don’t.
Our property was an 18 month old new build and in excellent condition when we decided to use Cowen’s as our letting agent. Three tenants have rented the property since 2018 with the last one moving out in December, 2023. Cowen’s “inspected” the property after each tenant and sent a report stating that the property was in good condition and let the tenants leave with their financial bond.
When we regained access to the property we discovered a huge amount of damage and unauthorised (bad) decorating, removal and installation of fixtures inside and outside the property; too much to list. The three worst were: fitting an aftermarket central heating control to the boiler, replacing the perfectly working original, which we will now have to pay an engineer to remove. Second, a Sky dish was in stalled with cables running through the house. Third, one of the tenants had drilled through a central heating pipe in the living room resulting in a bodged paperback book size hole which was covered over with a mixture of Pollyfiller and cereal box cardboard! There is much more, ALL of which was not authorised by the owner and NONE of the damage and unauthorised removals/installations was picked up during the “inspection” by Cowen’s. If Cowen’s had compared the before and after photos they could easily have seen the many faults and unauthorised work.
When we complained, Mr Cowan came to inspect the property himself and claimed it was “wear and tear” and fine to re-let! He did offer to repaint the walls back to their original colour but only if we re-let the property with them again, which we will not do. We are now over two months and many pounds into repairing the property before we sell it.
Very unprofessional of Cowen’s letting the tenants go with their bonds which is supposed to be retained to compensate the owner if the property is not returned in the same condition as when they started renting it. Avoid.... Read more