Tenancy review for 3 Humber Street in Weaste Seedley, Salford rented from Sara Elisabeth Huck rented via Quay Property

Landlord rating: 2

The Landlord, Sara Elisabeth Huck, is a director of Quay Property Investments.
Because of the difficulty contacting the letting agency, and because we had had the landlord's contact details from the outset, we would sometimes contact them direct.
I have to say that I thought that being able to deal with the landlord direct, when they were themselves a director of the letting agent, would be helpful. I have rarely been more wrong.
They were slightly odd but fairly friendly at the outset. However, they became increasingly brusque and unfriendly. Repairs were rarely carried out in an efficient manner and it always felt as if we were being blamed for anything that went wrong. This meant that we stopped reporting problems, especially with mould or any breakages (eg a doorhandle which broke and which we were charged for out of our deposit)
So any mould was our fault, despite a neighbour in the street telling us that the whole row of houses had a persistent damp problem.

We struggled to get back any deposit as they claimed 150% of the deposit as damages! In the end the arbitrator returned two-thirds, but only after many hours spent rebutting the landlord/agency's baseless claims. Most tenants would not have had the time, or possibly the life experience to fight this.
We spent £270 getting the place professionally cleaned and they then wanted to charge another £100+ as they said it was not done properly. The damp/mould was said to be our fault, but we now know that previous and next tenants had the same heating and damp problems.

Agency rating: 2

I would NOT recommend using this agency. It is awful.
The Agent was dificult to contact in general and for maintenance, impossible, except by using a very prescriptive system called fixflo, where every problem had to be videoed and uploaded to their site. On one occasion the power failed in the middle of the night on a Sunday so it was not of much use. It turned out to be a problem with the freezer which constantly blew the fuses. We ended up not using it for the last 6 months of the tenancy. We had to pay for the electrician call-out as (of course) we were unable to arrange it via fixflo (the problem being impossible to video because of the dark!)

We struggled to get back any deposit as they claimed 150% of the deposit as damages! In the end the arbitrator returned two-thirds, but only after many hours spent rebutting the landlord/agency's baseless claims. We spent £270 getting the place professionally cleaned and they then wanted to charge another £100+ as they said it was not done properly. The damp/mould was said to be our fault, but we now know that previous and next tenants had the same heating and damp problems.

Property rating: 5

The was a traditional two-bed terrace, so front bedroom bigger than second (middle) room.
Perfectly good bathroom and kitchen. In warmer months (when we moved in) it was fine.
But it had ancient storage heaters which turned out to cost a fortunee to use and which did not adequately heat the house. There were also two gas fires which we were told were for atmosphere rather than heating, but neither of them ever worked and when we did get a gas engineer round, he condemned one and failed to make the other work.
Mould was a persistent problem throughout the tenancy, once the first winter arrived (2020-21). We did ventilate, especially the bathroom, but there was persistant mould in the main bedroom and downstairs front and back rooms. It was impossible to keep warm.

PRICING
When we moved in, in July 2020 during Covid, the rent was £650 pcm. In January 2022 it was raised to £725, and then in June 2022 we were given section 21 notice to quit. Before we moved out the house was readvertised at £825, so the priee was lifted by more than 25% in less than a year. The Landlord had not improved the property during the tenancy so this was just profiteering.

Area rating: 3

Right next to a Manchester Metro stop. Very few amenities in the area and not much sense of community, which did become more of a problem over time. We moved in during Covid (July 2020) so it was hard to view places and there wasn't much choice.