Please avoid Belvoir Newbury. We’ve been trying to buy a property with them but they have lied through their teeth at every stage. There was a legal problem with the land registry docs which means the owner cannot legally sell the property without a signature from his “evil ex” (term frequently used by Belvoir. Very professional…) We have been lied to at every turn. They finally tried to force us to exchange with no evidence the legal issue was sorted (totally against our solicitor’s advice) or they would re-market the house, which they have done, waiting for another buyer to not notice the land registry issue. Don’t touch them, and please don’t be fooled into wasting time on the property we were ready to buy. Belvoir / Tim, don’t bother to come back and make excuses on this review, you know non of this was above board. Thanks for wasting our time and money.NegativeQuality, Professionalism

Do not be a tenant - you will get nothing but grief and your deposit will be stolen

Avoid! Tim was unpleasant to deal with and unhelpful, and threw unexpected ridiculous charges at us on multiple occasions which we did not pay, but he will try it anyway! Strongly advise avoiding Belvoir!

AVOID!! Particularly Young Professionals We leased a brand new flat on Newbury Racecourse through Belvoir and although we encountered virtually no issues with the flat all year (the flat was brilliant and I couldn’t recommend the racecourse development enough!), interactions with Tim, the owner of Belvoir were not so good. Although he initially comes across very polite and professional, he seems to have an issue with younger people and was frequently very patronizing and condescending towards us throughout, and upon leaving tried to throw numerous ridiculous surprise charges at us. Id like to say at this point that everyone else we dealt with in the Newbury branch were pleasant and helpful at all times. We signed up to a 12m contract, but had an opportunity to travel arise and ended up leaving after 11m. We agreed the early departure with Tim giving around 3m notice and he advised it would cost us nothing so long as they could find a new tenant to move in and take over the contact, and that we’d only have to cover ‘landlords out of pocket expenses’. As we expected, the flat was let within days of being listed to the first people who saw it, who wanted to move in as soon as possible. 2 weeks before move out, I contacted Tim to confirm the amount owed for our final rent payment (expecting 1/4 months rent for the week of the month before the new tenants moved in) and he then attempted to charge us with a £360 re-let fee. This was the first mention of such a fee, which was very frustrating after I had previously asked for clarification on all costs by email, phone to Tim, and checked our tenancy agreement to make sure there were none of these costs involved in us moving out early. The charge was quickly dropped, but I had a suspicion that he may try and recover it through our deposit and that is exactly what happened next. We then received our end of tenancy check out report, in which everything was perfect except for some small scratches on the bottom of the bathtub, which we had never even noticed. Belvoir were attempting to charge us over £600 for a new bathtub, because of some barely visible scratches! I was told that a plumber had diagnosed the scratches as unrepairable so we had no choice but to pay the full amount. I asked for the details of the plumber who had given this diagnosis, and after multiple times asking Belvoir eventually provided them. I phoned him and he said that he’d never advised that the bath was unrepairable and that he’d never even seen it, he’d simply been asked to quote for a new bath, and that he’d assumed worst case scenario when fitting (damp, rot, etc.) because he hadn’t seen it. I then emailed Belvoir with this info, and copied the plumber in on my email. They ignored it completely and began a dispute process with DPS. I reluctantly offered to pay for a full repair of the scratches, and asked the same plumber to quote to do so - he said around £100-£120 (2hrs labour plus a £40 kit). Belvoir refused this and continued the dispute process. I became a little concerned at this point because the google reviews of DPS were 1* and they always seemed to side with the landlord. However, 2 months later we’ve finally won the dispute and been given all of the remaining deposit back, which I never really doubted would be the outcome, but did put us £600 out of pocket at the beginning of our travels and meant we had to borrow money from elsewhere. Tim is deceitful, and often unpleasant to deal with. The flat was brand new and we kept it absolutely immaculate throughout our tenancy- the quarterly checks all support this. I would never use Belvoir again and I’d advise anyone, particularly young people to avoid them completely, and if you do have to use them, make sure you gather evidence of absolutely everything, get things in writing and make sure you stand your ground so they can’t con you out of money. I’ve used many agents in the past and never had any issues. I’d never normally leave reviews but felt compelled to warn people of Belvoir - there’s plenty of other better, honest agents in Newbury.

Very slow at getting back to you when you request something or make a complaint. You find yourself as the tenant doing the agency job and chasing things up constantly. Tim's customer service was rude and borderline useless when it comes to emails he has continually blanked requests to email me on an almost constant basis. Would never in my life recommend this agency due to his conduct. I wish I could rate lower.