Overall Northwood was easy to deal with. They were professional at the initial viewing and conducted individual viewings rather than group ones which shows they actually care about the tenants they choose. The agency was generally quick to respond to emails and phone calls, but there was no particular person assigned to my property so I never knew who to call. Also, when there was a maintenance issue with the boiler, I was required to call the insurance company, which I would have thought was the landlord's responsibility. My main issue was that an initial 150 pounds was added to my first month's rent to cover the landlord's "expenses" without any warning. Northwood framed it as the landlord's decision; however, as a letting agency I don't think they should allow their clients to be taken advantage of in that way. Other than that, however, there were no unexpected charges.

really helpful and positive at first communicative and supportive but seems like they're doing some weird stuff low-key wrangling us out of money and sneaking extra charges and costs on us, and being really edgy about rent changes and pressuring us to spend £700 on specialty cleanup crews in order to get our deposit back. idk good customer service but shady money handling.

I really don't like to complain, and I don't want to rate just one star or 2 because I am at the end so happy I have got this flat!! The good thing was I've never had any issues with the flat so I didn't have to much to ask from the agency so I cannot say they are good or bad at customer service as I didn't have too much to communicate with them. Those I spoke to were nice and polite. Fiona in particular was really nice, she was the one who showed me the flat and processed my application. A lovely person. Stuart was also nice and released my deposit very quickly. But I feel I also have to say the negatives: 1. When I moved into the flat the intercom was not working and I was told it would be fixed. 1 year and a half after and the intercom was not fixed. 2. I have had several times when I was sleeping and I woke up with someone in the house. Apparently there were gas engineers and someone to change the smoking alarm who were given a master key to enter the property but who didn't bother to knock the door. I am a light sleeper and always hear when somebody knocks the door so it wasn't that I was sleeping like a log and I couldn't hear them knocking. I heard when they turned the key to open the door and when they came inside and I was in my pyjamas, imagine how awkward. One time a lady from the agency phoned me after the gas engineer came into the house like that and she apologised that they had forgotten to mention that the gas engineer would come and do the routine inspection to the boiler. Not very nice to be invaded like that. Has never happened before with private landlords. 3. Apart from sending us notification letters with them undertaking routine inspections every 3 months, I have had almost no communication with them for 1 year and a half. Initially we have signed a contract with them for 1 year. 2 months before the end of the lease they phoned asking if I wished to extend the lease for another 6 months which I was more than happy to do because I really liked the flat and I didn't want to move out. HOWEVER they have never ever mentioned the owner WAS SELLING THE FLAT!!! No mention of that. Well after that no communication at all with Northwood. After a few months they emailed me telling me the owners would come and measure up the windows. Nothing more. Well the owners came and asked us where we would go next, what our plans were. We were kind of astonished..looking at the owners not knowing what they were talking about... .Eventually they told us: "Well we are selling the flat, did the agency not tell you that?" Well...no, they didn't. That was the most awkward moment. The owners were lovely people, I liked the flat so much that I decided to buy it. Towards the end of completion of purchase I have found out that Northwood actually wished to CHARGE THE SELLER a percentage from the selling price because "THEY INTRODUCED THE OWNER TO ME". What a joke. So they have HIDDEN from me the fact that the owners wanted to sell the flat (they were aware of that when they asked me to extend the lease for another 6 months), made me just extend the lease (it would have probably been more difficult to find a tenant for just 6 months) and gave me and my boyfriend I was sharing the flat with a notice to REMOVE ourselves FROM THE PROPERTY one week before Christmas...that's when the letter of "REMOVAL" came. Our lease would have ended on the 4th of February and they sent us that letter before Xmas. Again without mentioning anything about owners selling the flat. I was already in process of purchasing it but imagine if the owners had never come to measure windows. We would have found out one week before Xmas that we had to evacuate the flat at the beginning of February. I would have never had the chance to buy the flat if I hadn't met the owners. It was just my luck I met them. And they want PERCENTAGE from the selling price. Fair enough if they had told us about owners selling the flat, they would have deserved the money but they haven't so beware what you sign as they will not help you sell but only charge you.

Poor communication, not recommended.

I would not recommend renting from this agency. I had mould in the flat that i was renting from Northwood. The mould was affecting my physical health so I notified the agency and they did nothing about it. Really irresponsible given that they are under legal obligation to treat the mould in the properties they rent.

Very bad service, I moved into a flat with Northwood recently, the flat has a prepayment electricity meter but I was not given a key to use for the top up or any details about how to do that, we were told the tenant shop would contact us and that we didn’t have to do anything regarding utility or council tax, the tenant shop was absolutely useless and stalled us for a week, by that time the electricity meter ran out and I had to find out what company I was this, after contacting them turns out I had to travel an hour by bus to get a key in order to be able to top up my meter. I was also disppointed with the cleaning of the apartment as it was clearly hand cleaned and had dusty surfaces all over. Connecting my broadband was another issue as the apartment had no outlet but just a wire sticking out of the wall, did I get any help from Northwood regarding my utilities, council bill or broadband? Of course not, the only thing this agent did was set up my rent payment, deposit and hand me over the keys. Even when I had plumbing issues in the kitchen and bathroom they took forever to respond and I still haven’t gotten anything repaired. Extremely disappointing service, and having just moved from a flat with Murray & Currie I can FEEL the downgrade.

Avoid

More than one month ask them to solve a problem with radiator. Only get responses that landlord is informed but nothing done yet. The same situation with sockets which was removed and new one weren’t set up. On promises and zero work.