Update: we notice that Martin & Co have responded by claiming our review is fake. I can assure readers it isn't. It is also worth noting that nearly all of their positive reviews appear to be from landlords, not tenants. Original review continues below... We had a terrible experience with Martin and Co. You can expect the usual dubious practices, such as exorbitant up-front fees for ‘referencing’. They also sent us an invoice for £125 to renew the lease (i.e. for them to print, sign and send a new contract), and immediately threatened to evict us if we didn’t pay. When we pointed out that a new fixed-term contract was unnecessary because the tenancy would automatically become ‘rolling’ they backed down, which just goes to show they were trying it on. A more unusual practice, however, was that they required us to take out an insurance policy that covers the landlord’s fixtures and fittings. We found no conventional insurance company that offers a policy like this to tenants, and Martin and Co admitted that effectively the only option was to take out the policy with their commercial partner, Homelet. The policy is completely pointless because the landlord is required to have buildings insurance themselves anyway, which should cover fixtures and fittings. We discovered that this part of the contract is likely to be unenforceable under the guidance of the Office of Fair Trading. The house had clearly been decorated nicely at some point, but was lacking essential maintenance over what must have been a long period. The radiators barely got hot, meaning that it was impossible to get the house warm on cold days. They made an attempt to fix this, but it didn’t work. One snowy day we had a water pipe leak in the roof space, which the plumber confirmed was due to poor maintenance. We had water leaking through the ceiling over shelves containing, amongst other things, computer equipment. Martin and Co offered no apology or compensation. Also the cooker kept failing, and was discovered by the repair man to be a dangerous fire hazard. It could not be repaired so as to work reliably, and it took them over a year to eventually provide a new one. The final insult came when we moved out. The check-out inspector made us sign a piece of paper confirming meter readings, and then later attached it to the end of her report so it looked like we’d agreed to everything she wrote. They were trying to charge us the most ridiculous cleaning fees, even though we left the house in better condition than we took it. E.g. one of the complaints was a single crumb supposedly found on a shelf. Thankfully, we were able to use some photos to get partial relief from the fees after taking it to the dispute resolution service. Martin and Co were thoroughly petty and unpleasant to deal with throughout the process, and ignored the statutory timeframe to respond to our claim.