AVOID NICHOLAS HUMPHREYS We signed for a 12-month contract with half rent for July/August, as they were renovating the house over summer. The work was not completed by the initial move in date (1st September) so we weren't able to move in until the 7th, with some rooms not being completed until after the 11th. (Photo included of bed not even taken out of it's plastic casing, 11 days in to the tenancy) We were not compensated for this, and a month later, whilst we were still living in the property, the builders came back and continued with unnecessary, disruptive work, since they weren't going to get paid until the landlord was satisfied with their work. They trashed our house, breaking shelves (which we were blamed for), drank our beers and ate our food, and were planning to repaint the entire kitchen (photo attached of where they started to repaint) and re-plaster the hallway. Only when we persistently intervened did Nicholas Humphreys pull the builders off and fire them. There was repeated failure to give 24 hours notice before showing up, and we were often ignored for weeks at a time when trying to contact them regarding the many faults with the house. These include poorly sealed showers which leaked on to the bathroom floors, and in the case of the upstairs bathroom, lead to a large hole in the ceiling, which caused a leak to drip on to the fire alarm (see attached photos). We have been repeatedly blamed for faults with the house, when it is clear that building work was not satisfactorily completed. DO NOT USE NICHOLAS HUMPHREYS.NegativeResponsiveness

Nicolas humphreys are by far one of the worst ever estate agents I have ever come across. This year my best friends at university stayed in one of their properties and from the get go their whole service was ridiculous. They were given a house with no fit state to live in. This took so much time for them to repair it and firstly they want the girls to pay full rent for an unliveable house? Forgetting about the state of the house in the first place, the ethical side of the agents was really poor. My friends wear hijabs and one time the agents came into the house to show people around for a viewing, without giving any prior notice my friend luckily enough ran upstairs before anyone could see her without her hijab. Issues like this just show how unprofessional Nicolas humphreys are. Secondly I have been in the house when the girls have been on the phone to the agents and the way they spoke to them on the phone was out of line, they were talking down every single time they could. I just think Nicolas Humphreys is a miserable excuse of an estate agents and anyone who uses them to put their property up for rent are purely using them as they are probably charge less fees compared to other estate agents. They are honestly the worst estate agents I have seen in Manchester.NegativeResponsiveness, Quality, Professionalism

Very disappointed with Nicholas Humphreys, I am the mother of one of their tenants in Manchester, I went to collect my daughter and her possessions at the end of term. Needles to say that because of Covid 19 she had not been living there since March but rent was collected till the end of the tenancy without discount. The agency is withholding the deposit even though the house was left in a clean condition but with the natural wear and tear occurring after a year of usage by six people. What I found shocking was a number of repairs that had not been carried out and that were in my opinion dangerous. Specifically the upstairs shower leaked copious amounts of water into the hall to the point that part of the ceiling had dislodged. This was apparently rectified once but the repairs were inadequate and the leak reappeared. Despite numerous requests this had not been rectified again. At the beginning of the tenancy the house repairs were not completed, the moving in date was postponed for more than a week without discount to the tenants. As the works still needed to be completed builders were sent to the house to shoddily carry out repairs for about two weeks. They intruded in the students lives by spending time in the kitchen/living room and helping themselves to their food and drink and turning the place into a building site. They entered the students bedrooms unannounced and made inappropriate comments to my daughter (the only female tenant). They made a mess, did not clear out rubble and rubbish and eventually were sacked without completing the work. No compensation was ever paid to the tenants for this shocking behaviour. The hall was never replastered and the kitchen diner never repainted which were jobs that the builders were supposed to carry out. In spite of this the students are now being charged for replastering and painting due to damage. In their final review the agency was criticising the students for normal wear and tear and for scratches to the furniture which were clearly pre existing their tenancy according to photographs taken by the agency itself.NegativeQuality, Professionalism, Value

I wish giving 0 stars was an option for this company. Must be the most incompetent, rude and useless letting agents in the whole of Manchester. Our property manager, Glynne, was arrogant and rude to us the whole time - this company will do everything they can to take advantage of the fact that we are students and expect to get away with creating their own book of rules as and when they please. They will do anything to keep your deposit and rob you of your money - definitely worth going through the TDS and also reporting these guys to the property ombudsman. Disgusting and so unprofessional!NegativeResponsiveness, Quality, Professionalism

AVOID NICHOLAS HUMPHREYS: They exist only to exploit students withholding deposit after abysmal treatment of the tenants throughout the year. Renting with Nicholas for the past year has been an absolute nightmare. It was a bad start with renovations not being completed which delayed our move in date by a week, whilst we still payed full rent through this. Then when we arrived at the property some rooms were still not liveable with one room not even having a bed frame. Later the builders returned to do disruptive and unnecessary renovations (we later found out this was because the landlord would not pay them in full until they were happy with their work). For the weeks they were in the house, living there was almost unbearable. They were constantly in our small kitchen+sitting room which was now filled with rubble and building materials meaning we could never relax. We would come into the kitchen to find them drinking our beers and they would barge into our rooms, sometimes in the morning while we were still in bed. They also picked up some of my dirty laundry to move it out of the way making a comment that they’d “seen it all before” which I found inappropriate. After we found out that they were planning to repaint the kitchen and completely replaster the hallway we insisted to Nicholas they must go and they finally ceased the work and fired them. This was not the last of our problems, the shoddiness of the work resulted in many problems including shelves collapsing and blinds falling off, many times we were blamed for causing the damage when it was clearly the result of the poor work. The worst problem caused by the builders work was a HUGE hole in the hallway ceiling caused by the improperly fitted bathroom above, which constantly let water through to leak onto the fire alarm and was never repaired for the remainder of the tenancy (this was months). Whenever we had maintenance issues it would never be a prompt reply, with work that should have been classed as urgent taking days to be addressed. To top it all off now they are withholding our deposit, with some ridiculous cleaning claims such as a smudge on a mirror, or cobwebs when we had to deal with and clean the rubble left by the builders (when they were fired they just left this and building materials in the house). Or they are charging for “damage” to furniture for allowable wear and tear (especially when accounting for the quality of these items) citing that “it was new at the start of the tenancy”, as well as trying to charge for damage caused by the poor work, such as mould around badly fitted windows. NEVER CONSIDER RENTING WITH NICHOLAS HUMPHREYS edit: Also Nicholas Humpreys did not respect our privacy by frequently not giving 24hrs notice for house visits

Please if you are a student STAY CLEAR of this company. It seems their aim is to take advantage of students and you will have never ending problems for your whole tenancy. Since our move in day, the property was in a state and after numerous attempts by us to get thing replaced/repaired, a year later these things still haven't been sorted. Communication is non existent and they claimed they are 'too busy' to reply to our emails. They made it seem as though the landlord was at fault for communication/maintenance issues but after we finally got in touch with him, this was clearly untrue and simply down to the lack of professionalism from NH. Since lockdown happened, negotiations were made with the landlord however NH manipulated these and made it seem as though it was an error on our behalf which it was not (yet again blame the students). It's a good job we have all these emails as written evidence as now they are trying to take our full deposit plus extra on top for general cleaning/wear and tear... when we left the property in 100x better state than we received it! They are quick to demand their money through threats but will never reply to your queries.NegativeResponsiveness, Quality, Professionalism, Value

If you value your money, time and dignity stay far away from these awful letting agents. ESPECIALLY as students! From the start, Nicholas Humphrey's sold us dreams. We were promised a clean, refurbished house for us yet when we first moved in, nothing was ready. The bedrooms had dirty mattresses, broken blinds, damp and mould on hallway ceilings, missing and broken furniture, the kitchen lino was torn and stained the list could go on - we were bewildered as to what we had paid the half rent for during july when they claimed they were doing maintenance on the house. From then, it took months for some of those things to be sorted (mainly the carpets and mattresses) and for the rest of the year we were making do with broken blinds and missing furniture. My bedroom in particular had very little privacy as a result of missing blinds, which as a female student where my many neighbours had a clear view into my bedroom window, was very distressing. Furthermore, the contractor hired for the carpets tried contacting me separately a few weeks later after the job was done, which I found highly inappropriate and frankly, scary as he knew my exact address. In October, there was a viewing for our house and we had no prior warning, which is a legal necessity! This is also a running theme from the other reviews which is shocking as to how they have managed to get away with this! Throughout the year our various complaints were dealt with extremely slowly (if at all). Our fridge was broken for over 5 months since APRIL and we sent multiple emails asking for this to be fixed yet everything was outright ignored. Nicholas Humphrey's now have the audacity to deduct the cost of replacing the fridge from our deposit. This seems to be another running theme where they attempt to keep student's deposits, when we know for sure we left the house spotless and in a much better condition than we found it. These letting agents do NOT care about you as students, as tenants and as people. They will address you in the most patronising, rude manner and will try in any way they can to exploit you once you sign their contract. Unprofessional company, awful experience.NegativeResponsiveness, Quality, Professionalism, Value

Not responsive at all to numerous maintenance requests for the leaky , cold and downright hazardous house. Wonderfully on the ball when it comes to collecting rent in the middle of a pandemic and wilfully ignoring requests to discuss alternate plans at a time when many renters are suddenly out of work. The amount of times our emails and requests have been ignored borders on hilarious. Friendly staff though. I have decided to add to this review now that the landlord has decided to deduct over £200 of our deposit to "clean" a property they have not bothered to fix whilst their tenants were freezing all winter. I wish I had more information at this time, but every email to this company extends the wait time by a week whilst the staff decide whether or not to respond. As such I look forward to finally divorcing myself from Nicholas Humphreys hopefully by the end of the year, though I am not holding my breath.NegativeResponsiveness, Quality, Professionalism

I had a joint tenancy with another student in one of their properties. The property manager assessed things that needed replacing when we initially moved in, most of which were not fixed or replaced for the entirety of our tenancy, despite phone calls & emails being made to ask for these to be sorted. They rarely got back to us at all & would pass on blame to other staff that had conveniently stopped working there. We had a mould problem caused by the boiler, we were left without hot water, with ceilings leaking & the mould problem for nearly 6 months. They only came to fix it because I filed a formal complaint explaining (for perhaps the fifth time) that I was pregnant & couldn't live in a property that put my health at risk. I was advised by citizens advice to request the landlords contact details to resolve the issue directly with him but this was also ignored despite it being my right. After we moved out, our contract stated that they had 10working days to complete the report & raise any issues with us that may require deductions from our deposit, it took 2/3weeks of me repeatedly emailing & phoning them to receive the report after they conviniently kept misspelling my email address & ignoring me. Once the report was received there were several inaccuracies that mostly showed issues that were already there before our move in date, that they had neglected to repair. One contractor in particular had actually told us the reason he hadn't returned to finish a job was because Nicholas Humphreys didn't pay him. Once I disputed these with proof in my emails that it was their fault for not fixing issues I had reported & telling them I would prefer to use the Tenancy Deposit Protection Scheme, it then took them a month of me repeatedly having emails ignored to get back to us, where they stated IN WRITING no deductions would be made from our deposit & that we should expect payment in the next 7-10days. Upon receiving our deposit almost 2 months late, I discovered despite having evidence that they had still taken nearly £100 from my part of the deposit. I'm still waiting to find out how much they have taken from my flatmate. Update: I contacted them again & was informed the Finance Team had made a mistake & deducted money from us that was meant for the previous tenants. I have asked for written proof that the rest of our money will be returned by tomorrow.NegativeResponsiveness, Quality, Professionalism, Value

Glynne our property manager takes weeks to reply to our emails and is quite frankly a very rude person to talk to. After reading these reviews it is clear we weren't the only ones who found it difficult to communicate with NH. Glynne we are still waiting for you to reply to our email sent to you on the 22nd of July 2020! We understand you must be busy but taking more than 6 weeks to reply is just unprofessional. Glynne has caused us a lot of stress and honestly I wish someone would have told us to avoid this company before we naively signed for our student house. Property wasn't ready for the move in date. After reading these reviews it is evident this wasn't just us it happened to. Maintenance issues still not fixed even now that we've reached the end of our tenancy. again a running theme in the reviews written on here. Viewing was made with no prior notice given at all. As a house of girls this was very scary. After complaining we received an apology however after reading these reviews again it is clear this hasn't just happened to us. No empathy shown during Covid at all and didn't believe us when we told them we were struggling to pay rent. Tricked us into accepting an offer that was only explained in full after we accepted it again after reading these reviews dishonesty in contracts is a running theme with this company. Now they are charging extortionate amounts for "general cleaning" and "appliance cleaning" when we spent hours cleaning the property before we left! They have also charged us for a broken fridge which we were trying to get fixed for weeks but glynne was ignoring our emails in regards to this? They also took incorrect arrears off our deposit! We most defintely left the property in a much better condition than it was given. So please dispute this if you are in the same position. They just bank on the fact that they think students wont dispute these claims. Again after reading these reviews this has happened to so many people so please avoid at all costs as you wont get your deposit back. Avoid Avoid Avoid.NegativeResponsiveness, Quality, Professionalism, Value