Live London Love LiFE

We have been living in London for more than 6 years and have never encountered such a bad experience with a real estate agency.

It seems we are not the only ones who had to deal with:

- FABRICATED CLAIMS at the end of tenancy for additional deductions from your deposit (if you don’t have any other choice than signing with them, photograph everything straight away and keep their emails, at least you will have valid proof). We would even recommend paying a third party to inspect the property before moving in to get an unbiased review.

- THEY DON’T GIVE DEPOSIT BACK on time (it took us 7 months to receive part of our deposit back!)

- Don’t know how to handle situations, we’ve been LEFT WITHOUT OUR DISHWASHER AND WASHING MACHINE working for a month and a half (didn’t even treat this situation as an emergency, even though we obviously paid the full amount of rent which is supposed to include a dishwasher and a washing machine that work, didn’t offer to reimburse dry cleaning and laundry fees)

- We were supposed to receive a FOB to enter our building, turned out they gave our FOB to someone else (how professional!), we were left without a fob for more than a year and had to enter the building using a code instead (despite our constant calls and emails asking them to fix the situation). One of them suggested we contact the police to report the FOBs as stolen when they handed them to someone else in the building in the first place!

- MASSIVE STAFF TURN OVER, we had a new property manager every two months which does not look professional at all.

It is by far the worst experience we’ve ever had with a real estate agency, please avoid at all cost! They are uneducated, incompetent, liars and frauds!

Highly recommend Life Residential purely because of our property manager; Christopher.

He is extremely responsive, highly competent and excellent at his job all round.

Having had experiences with fairly poor real estate agents in the past, he has set the bar extremely high.

The sole reason I gave 4 stars was because of my Property Manager, Christopher Lazarides. I have dealt with a few issues in the past 2 months, and he was nothing but helpful, diligent and would continuously update me on the progress of my request.

I was in need to a significant repair to be done on my flat, one which took several weeks to resolve, and during this time, Christopher maintained constant communication, was always very responsive of my emails, and followed up with me on the progress of the repairs. I am very grateful for his diligent work.

Most of the positive reviews on here probably come from people who have only just started letting - when we first accepted our property, the agent who'd arranged the deal heavily nudged us to go and write him a positive TrustPilot review. Given that we'd only just signed and had at least a year to see how things developed, I thought I should wait. And boy, I'm glad I did.

From the start, they were extremely unresponsive when we reported various issues with flat maintenance. Life Residential (LR) blamed it all on the landlord not responding to communications, and may well be right. But I can't review the landlord, and LR get to choose who they work with and under what terms. If you can judge someone by the company they choose to keep, this does not make LR look good.

They also showed no signs of putting pressure on the landlord to fulfil his contractual obligations, and often ignored our emails altogether, or responded just to ask us for photographic evidence of the issues that we'd already provided to the previous property managers (who seemed to be a revolving door).

Fast forward almost a year - the issues we reported within the first month are *still* unresolved, and the contract renewal was coming up. Despite all the issues, our place was decent enough, and we wanted to stay there. So we said to the agency we'd renew, subject to the issues we'd reported actually getting fixed. Their response, from person A (I won't name guilty parties) was the standard year-old line that the landlord wasn't reachable and they would keep trying, and from Person B was that the landlord had got in touch to tell them to raise the rent. Oh, and when we pointed out the discrepancy, we were told that 'we should think of these as separate things'.

So we should have left then, but we let them call our bluff. So now we finally have moved out. Unsurprisingly, they've sprung some ridiculous charges that we can't feasibly disprove on us (£180 to replace a couple of lightbulbs)!

But what really was the last straw to prompt this review was charging us for the communal electricity in the apartment block. This is clearly not mentioned anywhere in the original contract (I checked, thoroughly) or any subsequent communication until after we'd moved out (and is unprecedented in any apartment block I've lived in).

But originally this was just presented as a nebulous 'electricity' charge, without giving us any of the details. We waited patiently to receive them, for several months, they finally told us where the charge had come from - as mentioned, nowhere.

In the UK our deposits are now protected, so this shouldn't be a problem, right? Well we hadn't realised, because neither the agency or the deposit protector (My Deposits) had told us, that this protection expires three months after the end of the tenancy. We received an automated email from My Deposits the same day LR finally confirmed what they were trying to charge us for, presumably because they'd finally released the partial deposit to us, and in *that* email, for the first time, we were told of the time limit - after it had already expired.

I immediately submitted a claim to My Deposits with evidence of all the timing above, asking for consideration in the circumstances - they responded dismissing it without even looking at the details. Thanks for nothing, guys.

It's London, the selliest of sellers markets, so 'don't use' is probably not helpful advice. But if you have to rent with these guys, don't trust them. Don't think that abstract requirements on them in your contract are meaningfully binding. We sought legal advice from Shelter, who confirmed that renters have basically no protection in this country - we cannot withhold rent etc. If you possibly can, insist that LR put specific consequences for failing to meet their obligations, ones that you can realistically enforce. Because they sure as hell won't.

[ETA] Both the claims in their reply are misleading. The contract mentions the 'property', not the 'complex', and I've checked the documents we originally received and found no mention of the three-month limit.

During this difficult time, he managed to deal with the tenants renewal and provide a good service months before hand although he is working from Home !!! I am very please about his service.

We had an excellent experience at the Greenwich branch with Kyle Yousif, Vanessa Hope and Faye Lewis. The LiFE team was very helpful and efficient during our letting process, always promptly responding to queries and making sure that the move went smoothly. This was particularly important given the extra challenges posed by the covid-19 pandemic and the lockdown situation during which our move happened. Would highly recommend.

Rebecca S has recently become our Property Manager and has been diligent, swift, and efficient in all her dealings with us. We are extremely happy that she is managing our properties.

I would like to say that Szilvia Nemeth our property manager is brilliant. She done a very fast and really good job with our renewal of tenancy agreement. Thank you again while you was so kind and helpful with us.

Five stars for Cristina Luntraru. She always gives me the most prompt and efficient service. I rely on her 100% and she never fails me. She’s a lovely person too!

Working with Life Residential about a year a an oversea landlord and I am very pleased of their service and cooperation. I want to thank again to Mr. Jack Piggot for his assistance at the renewal period of contract. With his help my contract with tenant renewed smoothly.

All the services that were provided by Life Residential up to the point of leaving the apartment were ok, the problems started when we tried to reclaim our £5,000+ deposit - 7 weeks after the end of our tenancy Life Residential is refusing to return it.

Let me explain, the tenancy agreement says that if you dispute the amount retained by them for cleaning and any damages they return the undisputed amount and the case goes to be resolved by an independent company, My Deposits. Life Residential deliberately don't do this and retain your cash until you agree to their charges. The dispute procedure takes three months, hence they have you over a barrel if you need the cash to pay for the deposit on your next place.

They are best avoided if at all possible.

Jack Piggott at Life Residential has been very helpful in renewing a tenancy at one of our properties in London.

I would like to commend Jack Piggott, one of the staff of Life Residential. He has shown excellent professionalism and has provided outstanding customer service. He is very effective and efficient. In particular, I am most impressed with his responsiveness and friendliness. He makes the interaction with Life Residential very pleasant. I am very happy with the service of Life Residential and very glad that the company has excellent staff like Jack Piggott.

1.5 year with Life Residential was very smooth. They always arranged engineers if there were any issues in timely manner and professional. Our building manager was great and nothing was too much trouble. We were lucky to also have fantastic landlord who proved to be very flexible. Due to current situation with Covid, we decided to move out of London. I was worried a little bit initially once I've seen some of the reviews. They proved to be wrong in our case. End of tenancy could not be smoother and easier, and big thank you to Nick dos Santos and Kelvin Fleming. They were great. Talk us through the process, supported along the way and never for a minute made us feel like we are less important than current tenants because we are finishing the contract. Deposit came back almost intact and check-out was as easy as anyone could wish for. Honestly once back to London would not hesitate to use Life Residential again. Great service from start to finish. Nick and Kelvin I hope you're well and your boss will recognise your amazing people skills. All the best. This also might be my first review ever, so I was definitely a happy tenant.

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