Reviews of house or flat to rent at
34 Carver Street, Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham, B1 3AS
Average Property Rating: 4
★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆
Number of times reviewed: 1
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34 Carver Street, Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham
Reviewed 28 January 2019
★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆
The property itself is okay. You can tell there were a lot of corners cut on the finishing, they're described as 'luxury' apartments but don't come with a dishwasher, and half of the block has radiators, the other half has electric heaters, we were in one with radiators. Our bathroom had an obvious space where there was going to be a shower cubicle but that didn't get put in. The extractor fan for the bathroom and stovetop was controlled with one switch in the boiler cupboard and the false cupboard door above the extractor in the kitchen was prone to falling off if a curious hand tried to open it.
Positives included the plush carpets and very solid floors and ceilings, meaning very little noise comes from neighbours above or below. The induction hob was excellent as was the fact that we never received an electricity bill because they forgot to put in separate meters for each flat so the landlord had to pay for that. They have more recently tried to bill everyone in the block for electricity used in a '3 month period' in 2018, the bills range from £300 to over £3,500 but do not name the tenant, also they're not actually from an electricity supplier, merely from a billing company.
Negatives were the cheap finish of stuff, the paint faded and rubbed off the walls (no splashback on the sink), the washing machine was noisy and didn't have a timer on it so it couldn't be set to run during the day and be finished just before we got home, and the only door into the property was incredibly flimsy with only a one point lock. Easily kick-in-able.
Outside of the property we were assured before we moved in that the unfinished entrance and entry to the car park would be sorted. The entrance was unpaved sand/gravel which got inside the entrance hall so much that it was never clean. The entry to the car park involved mounting the kerb, which forced one tenant to have to change his car because it was getting scraped underneath every time he drove in/out. Eventually a workaround was agreed with the builders of the project next door (entirely unrelated to this building, we just had a bit of luck that the site director was a decent chap and helped where he really didn't need to) who poured a bit of concrete to make a small ramp to help out whilst SDL got their act together. Because of the amount of dust from the unfinished entry, the electric gates were permanently getting jammed either open or closed. This was the only way in/out with vehicles so there was one day when several people (including nurses/doctors) had to either taxi into work or lose a day's holiday as they couldn't get their cars out. One person got a parking ticket for parking on the street when he couldn't get in at night. But those issues are minor to what eventually happened. A direct result of the gates being jammed open for weeks was the fact that the only line of security to the flats was the doors to the flats themselves, as mentioned before they're flimsy. The car park is covered by CCTV but only the car park and entrance lobby have cameras - I'll come back to that in my review of the agency themselves who were known as SDL Bigwood, but now appear to just be SDL Property Management. Three of the apartments were broken into by someone who walked in through the car park, through the doors from the car park into the block (which were unlocked at all times, no one had a key for them) and into a secluded portion of the block on the back away from the street. One kick was all it took to break the door around the lock. No one was home at the time thankfully, but the thief made off with thousands of pounds worth of jewellery and laptops etc. By the time the thief was found, tried and sentenced the doors to the apartments concerned still hadn't been fixed.
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Positives included the plush carpets and very solid floors and ceilings, meaning very little noise comes from neighbours above or below. The induction hob was excellent as was the fact that we never received an electricity bill because they forgot to put in separate meters for each flat so the landlord had to pay for that. They have more recently tried to bill everyone in the block for electricity used in a '3 month period' in 2018, the bills range from £300 to over £3,500 but do not name the tenant, also they're not actually from an electricity supplier, merely from a billing company.
Negatives were the cheap finish of stuff, the paint faded and rubbed off the walls (no splashback on the sink), the washing machine was noisy and didn't have a timer on it so it couldn't be set to run during the day and be finished just before we got home, and the only door into the property was incredibly flimsy with only a one point lock. Easily kick-in-able.
Outside of the property we were assured before we moved in that the unfinished entrance and entry to the car park would be sorted. The entrance was unpaved sand/gravel which got inside the entrance hall so much that it was never clean. The entry to the car park involved mounting the kerb, which forced one tenant to have to change his car because it was getting scraped underneath every time he drove in/out. Eventually a workaround was agreed with the builders of the project next door (entirely unrelated to this building, we just had a bit of luck that the site director was a decent chap and helped where he really didn't need to) who poured a bit of concrete to make a small ramp to help out whilst SDL got their act together. Because of the amount of dust from the unfinished entry, the electric gates were permanently getting jammed either open or closed. This was the only way in/out with vehicles so there was one day when several people (including nurses/doctors) had to either taxi into work or lose a day's holiday as they couldn't get their cars out. One person got a parking ticket for parking on the street when he couldn't get in at night. But those issues are minor to what eventually happened. A direct result of the gates being jammed open for weeks was the fact that the only line of security to the flats was the doors to the flats themselves, as mentioned before they're flimsy. The car park is covered by CCTV but only the car park and entrance lobby have cameras - I'll come back to that in my review of the agency themselves who were known as SDL Bigwood, but now appear to just be SDL Property Management. Three of the apartments were broken into by someone who walked in through the car park, through the doors from the car park into the block (which were unlocked at all times, no one had a key for them) and into a secluded portion of the block on the back away from the street. One kick was all it took to break the door around the lock. No one was home at the time thankfully, but the thief made off with thousands of pounds worth of jewellery and laptops etc. By the time the thief was found, tried and sentenced the doors to the apartments concerned still hadn't been fixed.
