Flat 1, 62-66 Victoria Road

I rented a property at 62B Victoria Road, Cambridge, through Bush Letting Agents several years ago. It's taken me a long time to feel comfortable writing this review, but I think prospective tenants deserve to know.

Having recently moved to Cambridge, I deliberately chose to rent through an established letting agency because I assumed this would offer some degree of security. Unfortunately, that couldn't have been further from the truth.

The property was advertised as a studio flat, but it was essentially the boiler's room at the back of a Victorian house. It was in poor condition, noisy and generally unpleasant. I was never entirely sure whether 62B was even recognised as a separate address, as I wasn't allowed to receive post directly at my entrance. Instead, all my post had to go through the main house.

The tenancy agreement named Graham Hegarty, so I initially had no idea who Susan Hegarty, the woman who would subsequently behave as my landlady, even was.

The problems started almost immediately. After signing the contract, I began moving my belongings into the property and spent my first night there. I then returned to my previous accommodation to collect the rest of my things. While I was away, Susan apparently decided she wasn't satisfied with the inventory, so she entered my new home without my knowledge and took photographs of my personal belongings. I only found out about this one or two days later.

This was only the beginning of a complete disregard for my privacy.

Susan would routinely announce that she wanted access to the property with almost no notice. Sometimes she would send an email and turn up less than an hour later. If I didn't answer the door, she would simply let herself in.

On one occasion, I hadn't seen her email and was in the middle of a remote work meeting when she entered the property.

It's worth emphasising that this was a studio flat. The entrance door opened directly into my living and sleeping space. There was no hallway or separate room to provide any privacy. Imagine paying to rent your own home, only to discover that your landlady apparently considers herself entitled to walk straight into your bedroom whenever she pleases.

This happened not long after the pandemic, when working from home was particularly common.

Then, a couple of weeks into the tenancy, Susan decided that the agreement I'd already signed wasn't enough. She presented me with a new set of conditions that she expected me to sign. Among these were restrictions prohibiting anyone from staying overnight. Even more absurdly, if I had visitors, I wasn't allowed to leave them alone in the flat, not even for five minutes to pop to the corner shop.

One of the main reasons I'd chosen to move from renting a room to renting a flat was precisely so that I could accommodate relatives when they visited, which doesn't happen often at all. I had paid for what was advertised as my own self-contained home.

The general condition of the property didn't help matters. There was a garden immediately outside, and on one occasion, after someone had been working on it, I noticed cutlery left to one side, apparently having been retrieved from the garden. Interestingly, this seems consistent with something mentioned in another review.

I also had occasion to enter the main house to collect my post and was shocked by its condition.

I had initially wanted to make the flat more pleasant and turn it into a comfortable home. Instead, within weeks, I found myself dealing with an intrusive landlady, a property in poor condition and increasingly unreasonable demands. Oh, and she'd also park her car in the middle of the road during these unannounced visits.

The only reason I was able to leave was that I refused to sign the additional conditions Susan attempted to impose after the tenancy had already begun. Otherwise, I could have found myself trapped in a tenancy for a property where I had neither the privacy nor the independence I had specifically paid for.

I was fortunate that my stay was relatively short, but the experience was appalling. I had expected a professionally managed tenancy and instead encountered a "landlady" who didn't know the difference between renting someone a home and allowing a guest to stay in her house.

I would never rent from these landlords again, and I strongly advise prospective tenants to be extremely cautious. Nobody should have to go through this simply to have somewhere to live.

The kitchen was decent and the bathroom was big. Cold but big.