Tenancy review for 58 Abbey Street in Duxford, Saffron Walden rented from David Human rented via Intercounty

Landlord rating: 1

The best thing about the landlord, David Human, is we saw little of him as he lives in Birmingham. I think it's fair to assume he is somewhere 'on the spectrum', but that's no excuse for being so money-orientated that he'd re-straighten used nails! On our very first encounter his (almost) first words were an accusation that we'd broken the house gate post! Erm, you mean the damage that was already there? The house hadn't been cleaned when we moved in and over our 5-year tenancy he broke several of his contractual tenancy agreement obligations. He allowed a large and structurally dangerous outside flint-stone building (barred from use for the final 18-months of our tenancy, without any rent reduction) situated in the properties garden to remain hazardously unstable and unfixed, even though it was pointed out that it was starting to crumble back in 2015, thus potentially putting us/the tenants at risk. The bathroom remained unfixed for almost the last 2-years after the side of the bath and rear plasterboard wall were ripped away, exposing the bare pipes and outside wall. Worse thing though is that he attempted to change certain points of our tenancy agreement to suit his own needs and attempted to retain almost £500 of our deposit money for alleged rent arrears, when in fact we'd actually managed to 'overpay' the man! After a drawn-out process an independent inquiry found we did NOT, after pointing it out numerous times with bank statement evidence, owe any rent money and our deposit was returned, yet he kept the rent money we'd overpaid. David Human owns and rents out numerous properties in the area and I've never met ANYONE who had a good word to say about him.

Agency rating: 1

We rented Orchard Cottage in Ickleton for just shy of 5-years and Intercounty, Saffron Walden acted as the 'middle' company we dealt with only at the start of the tenancy and then the end. Initially the set-up was fairly straightforward, they took their pretty big chunk of change for doing very little and we got on with moving in. However toward our moving out date 5-years later it came to light that our (the tenant’s) follow-up comments to the original, and quite poorly evidenced, check-in inventory had never been filed/saved, and they’re kinda' necessary to back-up any potential issues, especially when you have the type of landlord who’ll re-straighten used nails, circling for potential extra cash to pick up. Now to be fair, e-mails from the particular Intercounty employee we dealt with were answered reasonably quickly, yet every single one was just a simple 'I cannot comment' fob-off, and it's really hard to see why we even had to deal with Intercounty at the end of the tenancy. Anyway, the biggest gripe is, Intercounty (or rather this individual employee) filed the paperwork to return our initial deposit, which was 2-months worth of rent, but this was done with a deduction of 27% for 'alleged' rent arrears. Fact is though, with bank statement evidence we could prove we were not in any arrears, in fact we'd manage to over-pay rent slightly so were actually owed money by the mathematically challenged landlord. But Intercounty were not interested in this 'evidence' and merely took the landlord’s say-so without him supplying any evidence to back up his fictitious claim. So it’s interesting to note that Intercounty state 'If deductions are proposed we do understand this will not always be received well however there will always be supporting evidence in relation to this'. Erm, really? So where was the supporting evidence we were due? Intercounty, I shall repeat, just sided with the landlord based solely on his say-so without him providing ANY evidence, whereas we have full black and white financial statements showing exactly how much was paid and when, proving NO money was owed by the tenants at the end of the tenancy agreement. So we were needlessly stuck in a 3-month wait for the remaining 27% of our deposit to be returned, which it eventually was after an independent third-party inquiry, as bank statements do not lie (unlike landlords). Yet with just an inkling of common sense and the brief time to look at our hard evidence Intercounty could've saved all parties the time and hassle incurred because, let's face it, the only side Intercounty are currently making money from is the landlord, David Human (and his many, many properties).

Property rating: 3

Old (16th century approx) stand-alone cottage in Ickleton, Cambridgeshire. Low ceilings, very drafty. Stripped of its original character on the outside, it's not the prettiest house on the street, yet it could've been. This COULD be a really nice property, but the slum landlord, David Human, is ridiculously tight and repairs/upgrades have all been done on the mega cheap or half-finished.

Area rating: 6

Ickleton is a fairly quiet village, although the narrow B-road running through it (including Abbey Street) can get very busy/grid-locked at peak hours, resulting in many a beeping car horn and angry shouting! It's a 20-MPH zone, but this is largely ignored by drivers racing through the village. There's one small shop, where personally I didn't find the management/staff particularly friendly and a pub that should be so much better than it actually is. Many of the Ickleton residents I found to be a pretty insincere bunch, with a few two-faced types thrown into the mix.