Tenancy review for 55 Sillwood Street in Regency, Brighton rented from Richard Appleberg

Landlord rating: 3

When my housemate told the landlord politely that they thought he'd been ripped off (BC whoever did the work in the shower didn't grout between the tiles, but rather all over them), landlord responded with "well it's not like you're paying for luxury accommodation"

Before we moved in the landlord thought it was appropriate for us to leave the £600 rent in cash on the side and he would just let himself in and picked it up. This didn't fly with us and he did eventually relent to allowing us to direct debit the rent payments to him.

Once the landlords wife decided it was appropriate to just let herself in with no forewarning while I was at work and my housemate was asleep, causing my housemate to have a panic attack. Landlord was very defensive at first, but hasn't done it since and relented to always giving us 24 hours notice.

It's clearly to me he sees this property as a business venture and not as a home. I rarely see my landlord, and I prefer to keep it that way. He often takes months to carry out simple tasks. It took him 2 months after we moved in to replace the broken window even though we asked him to replace it before we moved in. The heating still doesn't work, although he's claiming he's waiting on something from the council but never actually specified what. He's polite if not subtlety condescending in face to face conversations. I do not trust him further than I can throw him.

Property rating: 2

My landlord owns the company I'm letting from, so it's a double wammy.

Advertised as a two person property. The entire flat is two small rooms, one bedroom, one kitchen/living.

The hot water lasts about 40 seconds and trickles out the tap painfully slowly. The flat was not professionally cleaned before we arrived. Nor did the flat have fire alarms, fire doors, or heating. We've lived here around about a year and a half now, and radiators have only just been installed two months ago, they still don't actually work since they're not hooked up to anything and it's now December and I'm not looking forward to another winter line last year; I could see my breath and actually feared showering or changing because it was so cold. Often times it's colder in the flat than it is outside.

There's a leak in the skylight, it drops when it's raining and is encouraging black mould to grow up the walls

Just under a year into our tenancy we realised the entire building (4 flats) had a bed bug problem that according to the longest resident, has been ongoing for nearly a decade. We were told we'd get three fumigation treatments. One to kill the live bugs, the second to catch any eggs that hatched and the third as a precaution. Safe to say landlord tried to get out of doing the final two. The fridge in the flat leaked regularly until we demanded a new one. No cleaning service for the communal areas. Promised to redo the bathrooms and carpets before we moved in. They did not remove the carpets, just lay the new one on top of the old one. As for the bathroom, nothing was done besides regrouting the shower, despite the landlord claiming "were gonna completely redo this" prior to our moving in. I've since found out that a lot of the maintenance work is done by other occupants, I assume because they can't be bothered to wait for the landlord

The property was not licensed as an HMO when we moved in, in fact in was licensed as a single occupancy (let me say it again for emphasis: 4 flats in all. With 6 people living within the building) and none of the flats had working doorbells even though the topmost flat was on the second floor, far too far away to hear any knocks on the door.

The value for money in the flat comes from its location, not it's facilities or homliness

Area rating: 9

Slap bang in the middle of town, barely 100 steps from the beach with bus links to everywhere and a 15 minute walk to the train station, you couldn't ask for a better location

Parking is a nightmare, if you live here, it's best not to drive at all