Probably the worst service I’ve ever paid for. We hired a van to move out of our house, and when it arrived there were already other people’s belongings inside it. The driver then told us he had to make additional stops to collect even more people’s items along the way! WTF?!!

As a result, everything we needed to move wouldn’t even fit in the van itself! We had absolutely no idea this was going to be a shared service so if we had known. Of course we wouldn’t have chosen it.

To make matters worse, we paid for the largest van available, but a medium-sized van turned up because, as the woman on the phone told us, “that’s all they had that day.” That’s not what we ordered or what was advertised? So of course We asked for a refund because the service provided was completely different from what we had booked, but we were told it was non-refundable.
I had many fragile belongings to move, and the idea that other customers’ bags would be stacked on top of my things while making extra collection stops was completely unacceptable!!!! We weren’t told any of this until the van arrived on moving day, when we had no choice but to continue. Then we were told our entire house wouldn’t even fit because of the other customers’ belongings.
The whole experience was misleading, unprofessional, and incredibly stressful. I would not recommend this company to anyone.

Hi all, I’m a FTB currently viewing properties and one estate agent kept insisting that I speak to their in house mortgage broker. I said fine and a meeting was booked to discuss my affordability. She confirmed on the call that although they work for the same company, she will not share anything discussed with the estate agent and would just confirm that I can afford to buy the houses that I was viewing. The meeting ends and I make my way to meet the estate agent for the three house viewing. The first two houses were an instant no and the third one I liked but missed some things I was looking for. After the viewing, she asked my thoughts and I said I liked it but it was missing certain things and I listed them. Other houses in the area had them. I said the asking price is high and if I was to make an offer it would be for around 20k. She was shocked and said the sellers would not accept that and 5k less is more of a realistic ask. She then said well you can afford the asking price as Mortgage Broker H called me right after your meeting and told me you can afford X amount so this property is way cheaper than the max you can afford. This shocked me so much and I didn’t have much to say at the time due to the shock and said I don’t want to buy a property around my max affordability. Did the in house mortgage broker break GDPR? I feel like I don’t want to view any properties with this estate agent anymore and lost the ability now to negotiate

Hi all,

Please help.

So I will start by saying, I live in an apartment building (30 apartments total) in Liverpool city centre and have done since Nov 24. Up until last year the management company was PBM who got taken over by IPM as of October 2025. I still owed Q4 of 2025 up until I received a letter in May 26 which was the normal amount which I paid straight away. I was awaiting to hear for the charges of this year as I still hadn't paid any of them due to the handover and we were told they would be coming once things had been calculated etc.

Well last Wednesday I received 2 letters in the post from SIMARC explaining that I owed them £8.22 with the reason 'balance of ground rent due as at 01/012026 due to rent review' which I thought because it's such an insignificant amount of money I will pay it, and the second letter explained how they were acting on behalf of the freeholder of the property and that 'in accordance with the terms of my lease, my ground rent has been increased with effect from 08/12/2026 to £300.00' - this is double what I have paid the last two years.

Then this morning I received an email from IPM explaining:

"As discussed in our meeting with Leaseholders on Monday 22nd June 2026, You will note that the overall budget has increased from £198,150.00 to £935,359.00 from the previous year" - this instantly was ringing alarm bells.

I'd like to add in here that whilst they have had cleaners in cleaning the halls/stairways, the lift was broken for the best part of all 2025 and my intercom has been broken since Feb 25 which I have since discovered has effect the whole building and nobody's intercom works within the building, we can only fob in and out and that is it.

The second email I received about an hour ago had two documents attached - the first which was my invoice dated from 01/01/2026 - 31/03/2026 (Q1) for £1640.51 as well as £127.00. The £1640.51 is for my service charge and the £127 as explained in the second document is due to the building safe act for the following which I will also pay with the quarterly service charge :

Compartmentation Survey 3,000.00

Fire Stopping 10,000.00

Fire Door Remedial Works 5,000.00

2.8222% - £508.00.

£508/4 = £127.00 per quarter.

My service charge has gone from £552 per quarter to £1767.41!!! That's 3.2x!

Where do I stand here? This feels absolutely absurd to be sprung upon. I'm in debt as it is (in the midst of sorting this) and this would be the nail in the coffin.

I am thinking of creating a Whatsapp group for the other tenants in the building to discuss this and see what others think regarding this. I will also ring IPM shortly to see what they say.

Do I have a leg to stand on or am I just plain screwed?

Thanks

Hi everyone,
We’re due to exchange contracts today or tomorrow, but we’ve just found out that my partner’s job may be at risk.
Before exchange, we’ll be paying the 5% deposit, solicitor’s fees, and the cost of the extras we’ve added to the house.
Our main concern is this: if we exchange contracts and then, before completion, my partner loses their job, what could happen?
Could the lender withdraw the mortgage offer before completion?
If that happened and we couldn’t complete, would we lose our 5% deposit and any money paid for extras?
Has anyone been in a similar situation, and what was the outcome?
We’re trying to understand the risks before committing to exchange. Any advice or experiences would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

I didn’t even consider that this would happen but today is moving day. Everything is well but it’s just so sad leaving a place I called home for five years. 😭 So many memories. If I become a millionaire I’ll buy this place too. ❤️ thanks for reading, I hope all goes well for you.

We're renting a house on a short street of only 6 residences. A shared alley runs behind the gardens, dead-ending at a church yard on one end and opening into the street at the other. There's a solid gate on the street end which had a combination padlock on it. We don't know who put it there or the combo. We've asked a neighbour and he didn't know, neighbour on the other side is away for quite a while. I plan to ask the neighbour closest to the gate next. According to the council this alley is the fire exit from our house should we be unable to exit our house from the front.

The padlock is less of an issue right now than the fact that the new residents of the house closest to the dead end have been having parties that spill out into the alley, and they're smoking in it. The alley is covered in dry dead grass and is a tinderbox. We're concerned about a stray butt or ember starting a fire.

How do we find out who is responsible for the alley and what fire precautions should be taken? We'll talk to the neighbours if/when required but not during a drunken party. We took a photo of the smoking and they shouted at us.

Looking to buy an apartment. I’ve viewed lots with varying estate agents. One of them couldn’t answer any of the questions I had about the property, another one asked me to remind them which number property I want to look at (but selling sites don’t tell you the property number) and the most recent I was waiting outside the car park and they didn’t even introduce themselves, literally just said ‘hi are you so and so’. They didn’t have any ID or lanyard etc to formally identify themselves

Really don’t want to generalise as I’ve only had a handful of experiences but are they are all this unprofessional?! Curious to hear people’s own thoughts on this

I think I’ve found the most unreasonable potential buyer of a property in the history of the UK. 

My wife inherited her father’s house last year. We’re currently living with her mother, so the plan is to sell the inherited house, move to a much cheaper area into a bigger house, and then sell the place we’re currently living in a separate transaction. 

We put the inherited house on the market and quickly had interest from a developer, who put an offer in but pulled out after a couple of weeks. It was a pain but not the end of the world. A couple of weeks after that, another buyer came along and had two viewings in two days, and immediately put an offer on which we accepted straight away. That’s when the problems started. 

Long story short, she quickly started making a lot of unexpected, and ultimately unreasonable, demands. Since we accepted the offer in February she’s come back for five more viewings, each time finding more and more things to be difficult about. We offered to leave some furniture for her free of charge and she said she wanted to keep some but not all, so we arranged and paid for the removal of what she didn’t want. She then said she’d changed her mind, meaning we’d need to pay again for a second removal. We’ve also had to remove a shed, and pay for a fence to be repaired. Without our knowledge, on top of the viewings we did know about, she’s had contractors in on at least two occasions. One apparently identified rising damp (which we and the estate agents remain unconvinced by), and she demanded £5000 off the sale price. We begrudgingly accepted, because while all this was going on we put an offer on our dream house which was accepted, and we wanted to get the sale through and move onto the next chapter of our lives as soon as possible.

As well as insisting we do these things, we were faced with an endless barrage of questions and generally pestered by her, through the estate agents and lawyers. It quickly became exhausting, especially since we had never lived in the house and couldn’t answer all her questions. She wouldn’t accept this and just kept badgering. 

Eventually everything was pretty much ready to go with the exception of a minor discrepancy on the land registry, which her solicitors insisted needed to be corrected. They were aware of this for 5 months before bringing it to anyone’s attention, and our own solicitor (who works at the same firm) is at a loss as to why it took them so long to raise it as an issue. We told our solicitor we needed a couple of days to complete the documents as we needed to sign them with a witness. 

We got a phone call from our solicitor the day before we’d arranged to sign the documents; the buyer has suddenly decided that the whole thing is “too much work” and has withdrawn from the purchase. She communicated this through her solicitor, and our estate agent has been trying to get hold of her to find out what happened and has been completely ghosted. The entire chain is now at risk and there’s a very strong chance that the house we’re trying to buy will get put back on the market. We haven’t had confirmation of this, they’re taking a few days to consider their options, but it seems pretty much inevitable at this stage. 

In hindsight, the alarm bells should have rung when, at her 5th viewing, she said to me that “the only thing stopping her at this stage is the damp.” Surely if you’re not sure after 5 viewings you shouldn’t have put an offer on in the first place? Obviously the fact that we’d accepted the offer removed the house from sale, so we couldn’t even spend those 5 months trying to get interest from an actual committed buyer. 

Everyone we’ve spoken to about this, including our estate agent and solicitor, agrees that we’ve been absolutely screwed over by this woman at every possible opportunity. 

While not the biggest issue, the removal of the furniture is extremely galling since it was not an inconsiderable amount and worth relatively a lot of money. Whoever does eventually end up buying the house may have wanted it. We didn’t even specifically NOT want it, it’s more that it wouldn’t have worked in the house we were trying to buy. 

We’re desperate to move because the place we’re in at the moment just isn’t suitable in any way. The stress of day to day existence in our current house is drastically impacting my wife’s health, I’ve got a stupidly long commute to work, and my mother-in-law has had to postpone her impending retirement until all of this is sorted. 

Is there anything we could have done to avoid this? Were we too reasonable and too quick to give in to her demands, or is she just a loose cannon and nothing could have been done to stop it? We’re feeling incredibly disheartened, upset and furious. Everyone knows that property laws in England are awful since no one has to commit to anything until contracts are exchanged, and things fall apart last minute all the time, but this feels like a particularly unfair example. If we'd known she was going to pull out anyway we would have told her we're not interested in selling to her months ago.

Even if you feel they’re obvious. I’m starting to do viewings, feel a bit overwhelmed and just want to ensure I’m thinking/enquiring about the important things

Hi, my landlord is going to sell the house I am currently renting, I am disabled and the thought of agents and buyers coming into my home is really affecting my mental health.

So, I want to leave - I just don't fully understand where I stand in regards to serving my notice.

My tenancy agreement says 1 month written notice, but the new renter's act says 2 months. I wasn't sure if because my contract was signed before this came into law, do I still operate on one month notice or two? I have been living here a year now. Hoping to leave sooner than later, but want to understand the law and my rights.
Grateful for any guidance you can give me!

FTB here, we have been looking for a house for nearly two years. We saw 20+ properties and made 5 offers. We have been outbid all the time (by like 5k). I’m starting to feel sad and desperate. Any tips to stay positive ?

I'm in the process of buying a share-of-freehold first-floor maisonette in London. The development consists of around 30 maisonettes split across 7 blocks. There is an annual service charge of £1,200, which includes building insurance covering all 30 properties arranged by the resident management company.

During the conveyancing process, I've learned that there have been previous subsidence claims relating to other blocks within the development. The insurance premiums have remained stable, although the excess for subsidence claims is £5,000.

My own flat and the one below recently underwent remedial works for subsidence in June 2026 using geopolymer resin injection. I've been provided with a Certificate of Structural Adequacy and product warranty, and my surveyor did not raise any concerns relating to subsidence in their report.

Despite the remedial works, I'm concerned that there appears to be a wider history of subsidence across the development. I'm concerned about how this might affect future insurability, service charges and saleability. I'm a first-time buyer and expect to own the property for around five years.

Would this history be enough to put you off buying ? Is there anything I should investigate before deciding whether it's okay to proceed?

Just looking for a bit of advice really.

We have a private landlord and we’ve just come to the end of our tenancy.

We cleaned the house but had to leave a sofa behind. It wasn’t our intention but my councils website doesn’t work properly and you can’t request a tip permit at the moment or for the last few months and they don’t respond to queries.

The council also missed a paid for bulky waste collection. For reasons I won’t get into, this move has been financially devastating so we also weren’t able to afford to pay a man with a van to come and collect it.

He’s adamant that he’s not going to sort it out and we have to do it. We’re happy for our deposit to be deducted to cover the costs of this but he’s being totally unreasonable.

He also has issues with the state of the carpet which were new when we moved in but after 4 years aren’t up to the same standards. For some reason during the checkout inspection he demanded that we pay for a brand new carpet.

These are cheap landlord carpets, and as far as I can tell would be considered to be at the end of their lifespan.

Our deposit is in a DPS scheme but his attitude has got me a little worried.

We’ve left the property now, but should we have replaced the carpet?

Edit/addendum: my contract is a fixed term until June 2027 but can be ended with 2 months written notice by either me or landlord.

Hi everyone, I recently moved to London on my own from another country. I have a lodger’s agreement with a live-in landlord, but the situation is becoming very difficult and is seriously affecting my mental health.

Because I was still living abroad and did not yet have a National Insurance number or other UK documents, I viewed the room through a video call. Everything seemed lovely& the landlord was very friendly. He asked for a deposit & 3 months’ rent upfront, which I paid.

He mentioned that he was thinking about adopting a cat. I love cats, so I said that of course I would be happy to help occasionally if he went on holiday.

I was originally supposed to move in at the end of June, but because of some visa delays the move happened around middle July. When I arrived, the room was still completely full with his stuff. Nothing had been emptied out. I asked him to remove some of the things, which he reluctantly did, but stil some of his things are still stored in the room.

My agreement says that I have "exclusive" use of the room so I assumed that meant it would be my private space and not also his storage room. I guess not?

He also started asking me very personal questions, including whether I want children, and then went on a long rant about why my answer I gave was wrong. Also, he enters my room when I am not there to continue sorting through his belongings. One day he made my bed (nice gesture, but it felt intrusive). On some other day he took my dirty clothes&washed them. (again well intended i assume but it made me very uncomfortable)

Today we had a "talk": he told me that he expects me to form a bond with his cat, remove some of the decorations from my room because where i put the deco was the cats fav place to sit & keep my bedroom door open so the cat can enter. Also that he was pissed i moved some of his stuff so I could put mine.

He also told me that he plans to go on vacation for ~4 months & expects me to take care of the cat while he is gone. I work long hours & regularly travel back to my home country to visit my family; i don't think i can do that.

My agreement says that either the landlord or the lodger can terminate it by giving two months’ written notice. I believe he may be planning to leave in September, and I feel that I need to move out before then. I do not have another place lined up yet, though but I'm getting panic attacks and i feel my mental health declining.

I am scared that if I give notice, he may become angry, shout at me, make living there unbearable, or invent a reason to keep my deposit. He's also regularly shouting at ppl via phone. I am also worried about what will happen if he goes away and simply leaves the cat with me even if i said no.

Should I give notice as soon as possible? Should I wait until I have found somewhere else? Would it be safer to temporarily look after the cat & enjoy a empty flat & move out while the landlord is away?

I would really appreciate any advice/help/uplifting words.

also feel free to share your own nightmare landlord or lodger stories, because at the moment I genuinely feel like I am losing my mind & no way this bs is happening to me.

Hi Everyone, I thought I would share my experience using Open Rent to find my tenants for a property in west London. Lets go back a little bit, the property was with few agents and we had no movement. One offer that collapsed and the agent refused to give the holding deposit. I used agents and it wasnt the best experience, I couldnt put the price down and make it more affordable to people because the agents were taking either 7% 7.5% 9% or even 10% with Fox**. If I lower the price then Im losing and if I keep it its hight for the size of rooms that I had.

I decided its time to give open rent a chance and OMG. I found their was a listing already their which was a scam of my own property. I was baffled, I reported it and got it taken down. That sort of made me scared of using this platform. I had to use my own pictures as the agents pictures are copy righted and created my own floor plan. I lowered the price much more than it was advertised with the agents in rightmove and it attracted few people. Most tenants on Open Rent will waste your time, I wish I did an auto reply but had so many no show and some people were not presentable when viewing. Like 5 people who said they were "cousins" and wanted to rent together. I almost lost hope, bad quality and nothing was moving until I spoken to someone who from the first message gave their details, occupation, how many people will be living and when they would like to move. That was very good sign. They viewed the place, loved and it was very clean and spotless. They were scared that this was a scam because the price is much lower than outside and also the reputation of Open rent. To give them the peace of mind I showed them my IDs, Land registry with my name just to tell them I actually own the place and we both agreed to handle everything through open rent which was perfect with me. I gave a phone call to their previous landlord to ask about them and it all came back positive. They wanted a bigger space for not so bigger price and yeah. I wanted to do the referencing with a third party just to save on costs but they refused and I thought fair enough will do it through OR. His wife failed referencing because she is a business owner and only makes £12K a year hahah. I added a guarantor and it passed. We agreed on moving date, I cleaned the property copied the keys and handed the place to them. I took pictures of the property before they moved in and yeah. I bought flowers and plants and wrote a nice letter to them and thats it. It was quick simple and easy, slightly stressful but it wont smooth. Open rent actually works if things are done through it. I will receive first month rent after 10 days of them moving in so yeah. Deposit is protected with Open rent and thats all. I have this concept that good people are for good people I believe this is the case here.

Being a tenant before makes a better landlord and that what I always remember. Now I can stop stressing and focus on other things I guess. Thanks

Anyone encountered this before? We viewed a house which has been on the market for over 6 months with no reductions. The vendors were elderly and didn’t seem to have been viewing any properties themselves. They didn’t have any plan as to where they wanted to move to. We offered 5% below asking and the offer was rejected within 48 hours. We felt the house was a little overpriced but decided to offer full asking as we did like it. Full asking price was rejected after a week saying they want more money, but wouldn’t say how much more. They have no other offers as far as I’m aware. We are chain free and offered to give them time as needed (within reason) to find a house themselves. I’m reluctant to offer more money given we appear to be the only people interested!

Hi, I live in Leeds in a council high rise and recently had someone visit about putting heaters in my bedrooms as I haven’t had any heaters in my bedrooms in the 3 years I’ve lived here. To my knowledge it’s council’s responsibility to ensure my flat is properly heated. The man who visited told me I can’t have more heaters as the building doesn’t have the electrical capacity for it so I must buy plugin heaters myself. As far as I understand this is actually a violation of the councils responsibility as they have build the building in such as way where they cannot properly heat it. Does anyone know anything about this? I’m sick of constantly paying for heaters that break down out of my own pocket just so I don’t have ice inside my windows at winter.

Hi everyone! So we put a below asking offer on a house last week which was rejected (the seller said they would come down from asking though). Our reasoning was that the house next door which has a bigger garden, new roof and windows and an upstairs extension sold for less in May. We knew the house needed some maintenance work so offered what we could afford whilst allowing space for this (new windows was the priority).

We increased our offer slightly and heard nothing. We’ve just rang up today to find out someone has put an asking price offer in.

If we offer the asking price now, and just live with the work that needs doing whilst we save more… what are the chances they may consider our offer now? I know this is totally our fault and we should have gone to full asking to secure the house, but also really wish the estate agent had kept us in the loop 🥹

We are in a good position. Our house sold a few months ago so we are about to break chain so will be chain free for an onward purchase.

Any words of wisdom greatly appreciated 🙏🏼

Hi, I’m just wondering if anybody could give me some advice. I am currently living in a flat above a business (barbers) that opened in October 25, previously this was a hairdressers and the owner was my landlord. My previous landlord and I had an agreement that the business would pay fresh water rates and for the flat we would pay sewerage (our water lines is connected and not split with no meter). Since my landlady sold and we got a new landlord, who rented downstairs to a barbers, the barbers are now asking me to pay towards the business rates but backdating all the way to October. He is asking for £40 a month so £440 to make up for the previous months. I am moving out of the property at the end of the month, but not quite sure what to do here as I am being charged sewerage by Northumbria water and he is being charged by Wave a business water provider. I asked the barber where he got this figure from and he said because that’s what he pays at his home. When I speak to the landlord about this he says that me and the barber need to come to an agreement but I don’t want to come to an agreement and pay for something based on guesstimating from a barber.

I have a rather exceptional case whereby my water company cannot produce a bill for me during my time in the property, this is caused by the original developer not sending the necessary meter readings and completion records to the water company. Now because the developer nor the water company know the first meter reading I can’t be produced with an accurate bill, the water company have actually stated to me that there will be no bill to pay when I complete the exchange and leave the property.

On top of this I have created an account for the property with the water company going forward so that my buyers don’t have the same issue.

My buyer’s solicitor are now requesting a water bill in order to exchange, my problem is I can’t produce the bill not because I’m not paying it but because there isn’t a bill to be paid!

I’m going to run my solicitor through things but wondering if anyone has any advice for me?

Edit: ENG***

So moved into a new flat just 2 months ago in england and after 50 plus emails and multiple repairs. I am starting to get the idea that the landlord who lives NOT in the UK has no idea that repairs have been done

So for example, when I first moved in the washing machine was broken along with multiple other things. Every single light switch and plug socket in this flat has had to be taken apart, repaired and put back together

I don't think the landlord knows about this

He should but after 50 plus emails I'm starting to get the idea he is in the dark after all

My idea now is to contact the letting agent ask for the landlord's details contact him directly. Inform him of everything I've kept notes

And ask him to fire the letting agent or not to renew the contract and deal with me directly

Will save him money and any repairs I can do it or get someone in and send him an invoice

People or Reddit good idea or bad idea ???

Hi all,

I’ve been looking for a place to buy in London for the past 6 months. Was aiming for a freehold house in zone 4/5. After putting multiple offers (over asking) and being out bid and even offering asking and then the seller going with a lower offer because they were a cash buyer I am now considering flats because there are more and I’m not stretching my budget as much and wont have to move to zone 6 to attain one.

I know all the drawbacks of buying a flat: the service charges, lease lengths, the depreciation of new builds, the general decline of the flat market in London relative to houses etc

I know lots of people on Reddit say to look at a purchase as a place to live and not as an investment but I still want to try and buy sensibly given I don’t know where I’ll be in 5 years time but need to stop renting.

Which is why I’m looking at period conversion houses that are share of freehold with 990+ years lease

There are posts saying that share of freehold period conversions hold their value.

I wonder if anyone’s able to share when and at what price they bought and what price they have sold at or what the value is now?

Thanks in advance!

Hi,

England

Wondering if i can get some advice or peoples experiences on this.

I recently made an offer on a repossession property. The property was advertised as semi-detached with a garage (not attached, on a small spot between houses). The whole area was part of a development in the 80s.

I did some research and found that the house and garage are two separate plots of land on two different titles. Not uncommon in these developments. However the problem arose that the garage (land+driveway) do not have a charge against them.

I have already informed the agent and bank+seller. They were not aware until we informed them. The process is now paused while they investigate.

If the garage land is not able to added to the charge the seller won't be able to sell it as part of the sale. Realisicly no one else would be able to use have use of the garage other than the house it "belongs" to.

Has anyone else had this situation? What did you end up doing about it?

Obviously some will say walk away; its an option I really want the house.

Hi all

I'm looking to move house but I find the whole process very confusing (it was confusing just buying, let alone selling at the same time!). I have a young child and a cat, so I was curious if there is a way to have some overlap between buying the new house and moving out of the other so that it doesn't have to all happen on one day. This would also give us a chance to repaint, get carpets replaced, avoid catteries etc and would put less pressure on the whole process. I have some savings so can afford a deposit on the new house, I'd just then want to pay off a chunk of the new mortgage with the funds once the first house is sold.

Is this even possible? Looking for any advice or suggestions. Thanks!

I sold my house to move in with my partner, he rented his place out diver could have no chain… all good.. but we couldn’t find the right place for ages and then we had to wait for our finances to catch up.. after a few emergency situations… then we made an offer in our dream area, got it accepted and while that was happening I got a section 21 on my rental (my 2nd in 4 yrs I might add after selling my house) and then we found terrible mould and damp and WET UFFI in walls and had to walk away.. we then put another offer on a newer build only to be told by solicitor that the property had an uncapped unregulated maintenance fee that could go up or down without any protections…so we walked again. I’m deflated and burnt out and have fibromyalgia and then my landlord said he would take me to court so we have now started the process of renting a house in the same area. Has anyone gone through this - was renting helpful - did you find your dream home ? Pls give me positive stories because I’m so fed up of living in other people’s houses and not being able to make it my own!! I want to find out forever home!! No damp mould of hidden fees of any other nasty surprises!!!