John Lambon in Belfast

This man is everything wrong with the private rental market personified. Terrible attitude, borderline or outright illegal conduct, constantly giving you the runaround for basic repairs.

A list of some of the worst things we had to put up with:

- Rising damp in every room causing mould so bad that when I put a leather jacket into the wardrobe provided it was literally eaten by mould within a couple of months and fell apart, it grew inside the back of framed pictures on the wall and disintegrated sentimental photos, it grew inches away from the bed right in front of my face for me to breathe in every night. Despite being sent multiple emails with pictures of the absolute state of the apartments walls, the only response was for his personal handyman to be sent out to look me dead in the eye and say "it's because you don't open your windows enough, Belfast is full of damp every house is like this" I then said they were already open all day every day his response was to essentially flee the building and ignore all follow up emails. The damp was just so so, bad and clearly structural - there were literally salt deposit crystals (efflorescence) coming through the inside walls of the property and dark tide marks along most of the walls where the damp was clearly seeping upwards.

- Thought it was somehow fine and legal to let himself and two other grown men quietly into the house with no knocking or prior notice they were coming, then all three came into my bedroom where I, a 20 year old woman was sleeping alone half naked in my bed, and he had the cheek to act like he didn't understand why I was startled and upset.

(I had also caught him quietly letting himself into the property with no notice once before but the other time I had been awake and sitting a few feet away from the door to see it swing half open and get stopped by the chain latch)


- The property was absolutely filthy upon moving in, every surface was covered in grime and the entire place needed a deep clean which I had to do by hand before we could even begin to unpack. At the end of the tenancy he would then go on to pull out the deposit in cash, thumb through it and take a sizeable portion out and say "let's say this is the cut for cleaning, not so bad when you consider it's £XX amount each" I absolutely refuse to believe a penny of it went to cleaning in either the first property or the second I also had to deep clean. Why were we in a second property you ask? See the next in the list to find out

- We got moved to a second property of his in the last 4 months of our tenancy because he either intentionally or unintentionally altered the small print of the agreement at a certain point without us realising, and we signed the final version. This managed to happen because he never provided a copy of the tenancy agreement, but we had taken a photo of it when it was in front of us, but somehow between us taking a photo of the pages and the actual thing being signed, the date was altered by 4 months. I'm don't know why or how this happened on his end or whether it had any ill intent behind it, but I will say given his other conduct I don't want to be charitable here. (Like who leases a place for 8 months??)

Once we noticed he was going to be bringing new tenants in 4 months earlier than planned we panicked and contacted him about this as we already had a new rental lined up at the 12 month mark, we were assured it's okay even if "we" made a mistake because he has a spare property we can rent until it's time to move out. Fantastic, we get to move house twice in the space of four months in the summer heat. Even better, the next house was even filthier than the last, it was so bad some of the rooms looked like an abandoned outdoor shed, the front yard was piled up with litter, and the compost bin was filled with rotting food that stank so bad when I emptied it I almost threw up.

Those are just the highlights, I could go on about the rats, the water pouring down from the ceiling at one point, his repairman pouring a bucket of dirty bleach filled water down the side of the building all over our clean windows and into my flower planters (yes they died), the oven that leaked water every time you used it, the outdated boiler and how it broke for 2 weeks so we had to take cold showers until it was eventually repaired, the furniture that was falling apart and ready for the dump

I sincerely hope someday this man will have to answer for his awful conduct, but for now I just warn anyone I come across to avoid him like the plague.

Most unpleasant landlord I’ll ever meet, snarky, rude, lying, holds house viewings against your knowledge, let’s strangers into your room when you’re in it with no warning.
Money thirsty. House is completely overpriced for what it is.

Worst landlord I've ever had...so many issues from never taking repairs seriously...the flat itself was in a rotten state when I found it and when complained he essentially said "what do you expect for a cheap flat?" (£430 monthly) aye dead on pal.

Didn't care about the tenant as long as rent was paid.

Day of lockdown I asked for another heating repair to be done and when I came back from work the day the £300 TV I had was cracked and damaged. Landlord/Agent didn't care about it...said coronavirus would prevent his investigation yet still wanted people to come a view the place during lockdown illegally.

Would not recommend.

Did not seem to care one bit as long as rent was paid, rent was collected with 12 pre-dated cheques on the first day. Would always say 'call the handyman's number instead' with regard to any issues. Pressured us to make a decision on wether or not to renew the lease in January even though our lease ended at the end of August. Before he got an answer from us, we got an email stating that our house had already been signed to someone else for the next coming year. We had no choice but to move otherwise