Tenancy review for The Old Sunday School The Strone in Idle And Thackley, Bradford rented from Daniel Kondras rented via Hardisty & Co

Landlord rating: 1

If I could give 0 stars I would.

As above the landlord has been in the day before I moved in and left the flat absolutely filthy and hadn’t moved anything that we had agreed.

He was a nightmare from start to finish and very unreasonable at anything we asked for. Comments were made from the agency about trusting tenants of our age (22 and 23) like we were some young party animals. We were both young professionals who moved there to be closer to work and were studying professional exams.

Upon moving out he claimed we had put some pictures up on the walls and wanted some of our deposit to repair it. The pictures in question were there when we moved in and were even in the pictures on the property brochure when we moved in! They were photos of half naked women that I certainly would not have chosen to put up myself. He then claimed we had damaged the front door and wanted some of my deposit for that too. This was damaged when the agents sent somebody out to fix the lock that was broken when we moved in.

I phoned the agents many times and begged for me to speak to the landlord directly so that I could explain all of this and he refused to speak with me and hid behind the agents.

The only plus side was the experience put me off of renting forever and I got on the property ladder at aged 23 so I would never have to go through this again.

Agency rating: 1

Awful. The woman I dealt with frequently appeared to me as being power hungry and a bully and had to make everything very difficult.

We had arranged to sign the lease a month before moving in and had booked a day off of work to do so. I got a call from the agent asking if we could do this sooner so that the landlord could remortgage one of his properties. We both lived 30 miles away at this point but as a favour we drove to Leeds on a weeknight in rush hour traffic to sign the contract early with no thanks at all. We were stuck in traffic and we’re told my the agency that nobody would wait behind for 10 minutes for us and that we would have to come back the following night. We made it just in time and had comments repeatedly from the above woman about how inconvenient we had made it for her not getting there earlier.

The boiler stopped working in January when it was snowing and I was told to try fix it myself before they sent somebody out as I would be charged - as a landlord do you really want tenants trying to mess about with your boiler?! A week later they finally got somebody out to me after I’d had to go live at my mums as it was too cold.

I was contacted 3 months before the end of my lease to ask if I wanted to renew. I hated living there but it was very close and convenient for work so I asked if I could have a week to think about it. I was then contacted several times a day in that week with threats of terminating my lease if I did not make a decision there and then.

I had so many problems after my tenancy with the landlord and the agency were absolutely useless at providing me with any sort of help.

Property rating: 3

Benefits
Nice spacious apartment in a nice area of Bradford. I liked that the apartment was in an old Sunday school and had character and very quirky. Also benefited from 2 bathrooms.

Drawbacks
The day we moved in the apartment had not been cleaned and it took me 2 days to get it liveable. It was absolutely filthy, there were loads of dead flies on all of the windows. Property came fully furnished (albeit the furniture was old and in a bad condition) and we asked as the terms of signing the lease for some of the furniture to be removed before we moved in. For example in the spare bedroom there was a bed and I wanted to turn it into a home office. Upon moving in nothing I had asked to be moved had been moved and I was told by the agent to just forget about it. The wall to next door was so thin and had a noisy neighbour - you could hear EVERYTHING.

Area rating: 7

Apperley Bridge is a lovely sought after area. Lots of local restaurants and pubs. Transport links are great and there was a train station close to the flat.

We had 1 nightmare neighbour who got very abusive and threatening when we asked him to keep it down but in general most of the neighbours were lovely.