Tenancy review for 34 Carver Street in Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham rented via SDL Property Management
“Non-communicative, slow to repair, no concern for security.”
Overall Tenancy Rating: 2
★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆
Moved In: 15/11/2017
Rent: £850
Date reviewed: 28 January 2019
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Letting agent review for SDL Property Management, Birmingham
Agency rating: 1
One of the problems with the block was that there was one agency looking after the flats and another looking after the communal areas. This review is for SDL Property Management (or SDL Bigwood) - the agents for some of the flats were fairly bad at communicating and went through a huge number of staff but SDL were the major problem as it affected everyone in the block.
The communication with SDL was atrocious, some neighbours took to Twitter to voice their concerns to anyone from SDL who was willing to listen after getting nothing back from the reps who were about a 5 minute walk from the property.
There were some expected teething problems. Some of the flats were being rented on a short-term stay website and therefore being invaded at the weekends by giant groups of teenagers having parties until 5am. This meant that the place got trashed fairly quickly, and the fortnightly cleaners didn't appear for a very long time. The doors to the bin store were broken, meaning the bin men couldn't get access to empty the bins for weeks and after someone wrenched them open it allowed for another un-secured entry point to the block.
But then some things just went on for ages without being sorted. There was one corner of the block where every time the tenants opened their doors into the corridor, a blue liquid (who knows?) dropped from the ceiling in great gulps. This problem was fixed 15 months after being reported, in the meantime a lot of their visitors got covered in the mystery stuff.
But the biggest issue was the fact that no one was sorting the gates when they got stuck (once they were stuck with one half closed, the other half open, once fully closed but often they were stuck open for weeks).
This directly led to burglaries and thefts from cars. With the gates being left open for weeks there was no line of defence between the street and the flimsy front doors of the flats. The gut-punch that came after this was the 'at least we have CCTV' angle, when it transpired that SDL/Bigwood had lost the password for the CCTV system. The culprit was found, tried and sentenced without this but the one slight reassurance of there being CCTV was taken away. More recently there have been homeless people sleeping in the corner of the car park due to the gates being jammed open since before Christmas. SDL again are trying to get out of having to fix them by blaming the constant breakdowns on the building dust and saying that the contractors building the adjacent blocks are liable, despite the fact that most of the dust that's getting in is from the unfinished footpath/non-dropped kerb entrance to the car park. They are now fixed, but in the intervening time, more cars have been broken into and more people have been chased out of the car park after being caught attempting to break into cars by concerned residents.
They honestly don't seem to care that they are affecting people's lives, there are single people living in the block who are now scared at night knowing how insecure their flats are.
More reviews for SDL Property Management ⇒
The communication with SDL was atrocious, some neighbours took to Twitter to voice their concerns to anyone from SDL who was willing to listen after getting nothing back from the reps who were about a 5 minute walk from the property.
There were some expected teething problems. Some of the flats were being rented on a short-term stay website and therefore being invaded at the weekends by giant groups of teenagers having parties until 5am. This meant that the place got trashed fairly quickly, and the fortnightly cleaners didn't appear for a very long time. The doors to the bin store were broken, meaning the bin men couldn't get access to empty the bins for weeks and after someone wrenched them open it allowed for another un-secured entry point to the block.
But then some things just went on for ages without being sorted. There was one corner of the block where every time the tenants opened their doors into the corridor, a blue liquid (who knows?) dropped from the ceiling in great gulps. This problem was fixed 15 months after being reported, in the meantime a lot of their visitors got covered in the mystery stuff.
But the biggest issue was the fact that no one was sorting the gates when they got stuck (once they were stuck with one half closed, the other half open, once fully closed but often they were stuck open for weeks).
This directly led to burglaries and thefts from cars. With the gates being left open for weeks there was no line of defence between the street and the flimsy front doors of the flats. The gut-punch that came after this was the 'at least we have CCTV' angle, when it transpired that SDL/Bigwood had lost the password for the CCTV system. The culprit was found, tried and sentenced without this but the one slight reassurance of there being CCTV was taken away. More recently there have been homeless people sleeping in the corner of the car park due to the gates being jammed open since before Christmas. SDL again are trying to get out of having to fix them by blaming the constant breakdowns on the building dust and saying that the contractors building the adjacent blocks are liable, despite the fact that most of the dust that's getting in is from the unfinished footpath/non-dropped kerb entrance to the car park. They are now fixed, but in the intervening time, more cars have been broken into and more people have been chased out of the car park after being caught attempting to break into cars by concerned residents.
They honestly don't seem to care that they are affecting people's lives, there are single people living in the block who are now scared at night knowing how insecure their flats are.
Property review for 34 Carver Street, Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham
Property rating: 3
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.
More reviews for 34 Carver Street ⇒
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.
Area review for Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham
Area rating: 8
Really well connected to local amenities, bars and pubs. A 20 minute walk into the city centre. Just on the edge of The JQ so quite close to a deprived area of Brum (Ladywood) and in the middle of a building site for most of the time we were there.
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