I want to HIGHLY NOT RECOMMEND Petermans Real Estate Agency (unfortunately I cannot with 0 stars). This is a very cheeky, greedy and irresponsible agency. I lived under a Petermans Herne Hill flat for a year, but my flatmate lived here for about 2 years and a half. Just to point out that, as the building in which we lived belongs to the Council of Southwark, there were some issues that you could only fix calling them and arranging visits with them.
The first issue with the agency was that the landlord had installed a radiator in the toilet which burst. Thankfully, no one was at the flat at that time, so there were no injuries reported, but this was a negligent act by the landlord and agency. The explosion caused damaged to the bathroom, but also to the main entrance of the flat. The council came really fast, as it was reported by the neighbour, and had to break in breaking the window on the entrance, and put a wood plank where the window of the door was. The agency, for 2 years, never really pushed the council to fix the entrance (despite we did pressure both the council and the agency to do this), and was only now, when we left the property, when the agency had sent an email to the council to follow up this incident with the main door, because, of course, the house has to look nice to be rented.
The second issue was the hot water. Since the explosion of that radiator, there were several problems with the hot water in the house and the heating. For the year that I lived in the flat, 9 months, out of 12, I had issues with the hot water. Sometimes I was without hot water for one or two weeks or even more, including during winter time. The agency did not take responsibility for calling the council and allowing the workers to come in and fix it, but we were told it was our responsibility, even though this was not anywhere in the contract. It was very difficult every month to arrange a visit from the council because we mostly worked outside of our house, and we had to stay for many days trying to fix the problem. The agency took no responsibility. But again, since we gave our notice to leave, they suddenly showed a higher interest in fixing this problem, as, of course, they have to ensure their property is sellable.
Finally, at the end of our tenancy, this agency wanted to take from our deposit £600 to repaint the house due to scuff marks and blu tack and some made up stuff (e.g., they said we had made drill holes, which we hadn’t), so we had to reject this offer and counteroffer much less money. As they knew that what they were claiming was extremely excessive, they had to accept what we offered in the end.
As you can see, money comes first for this estate agency, and people and their needs, of course come last. This is one more example of how bad is the Estate Agency sector in London.
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