CPS Homes estate agents in Cardiff

Hi Dominika,We’re sorry your experience with CPS Homes hasn’t been positive.When occupants report issues, we seek permission from the landlord to get the work done, as they’ll pay the bill. Some landlords give us the authority to automatically proceed with everything without needing to contact them, but others give us a maximum spend per job or want to be contacted for everything. We categorise reports as a repair or an improvement. A repair is something your landlord is required to do, such as fixing an appliance that came with the property or remedying a health & safety issue, whereas improvements are discretionary, i.e. even if it makes total sense to do it, your landlord doesn’t have to agree to it as long as it’s not a health, safety or hygiene problem. With repairs, the time between your initial report & completion of the job can vary due to various factors.- Fridge & oven: 2 weeks after you moved in, you reported issues with both. When we conduct inspections, we perform visual checks. Time constraints mean that we cannot use each appliance & check they are fully-functioning, but if something is visually wrong, we endeavour to resolve it. If these particular appliances were issues for the last occupants, they should have been reported. Either the previous occupant didn’t tell us or they only became an issue 2 weeks into your tenancy. Whatever the case may be, on the 1st working day following your report, your landlord instructed an appliance company to call-out. They attended on the 4th working day following your report & reported back that, due to a system fault, the fridge should be replaced & the oven needed a couple of parts. They quoted for these & your landlord authorised them. On the 11th working day following your report, both issues were resolved. We don’t consider this to be an unreasonable response time, given that we needed to wait for an appliance specialist to become available to call-out, diagnose the issues, quote, order the replacement appliance/parts, wait for them to come in, then wait on the same engineer to become available again to install them.- Leak from communal soil pipe: Your apartment is a leasehold property within a purpose-built block of many apartments. The issue stemmed from the communal soil pipe, which is the legal responsibility of the freeholder of the block, not the leaseholder (your landlord). To fix the issue is therefore outside of the landlord’s & CPS Homes’ remit. We explained that First Port, specialist block managers appointed by the freeholder, manage the block & are responsible for the repair. Unfortunately, neither the landlord nor CPS Homes can influence something that is not their legal responsibility, though we will always endeavour to pursue them & press them into action.- Washing machine: Again, your landlord promptly authorised an appliance engineer to attend when you reported this problem. They attended on the 3rd working day following your report & advised it'd be a non-economical repair, so quoted for a new appliance. Your landlord authorised the new appliance. The engineer did experience a delay in receiving the appliance from their supplier due to stock availability, but it was still installed on the 14th working day following your report, which we don’t consider to be an unreasonable response time.- General: We have always communicated your reports to your landlord. Where the responsibility lies with them, they've always authorised a repair or replacement within a satisfactory period of time. When a contract-holder reports something to us, we will always endeavour to have a contractor attend, even if it’s same-day in some cases, as we know most occupants would like the issue resolved ASAP. We’re sorry if you were given too short notice that a contractor was available to attend same-day. You're always welcome to advise that such short notice is inconvenient for you & they will liaise with you to arrange an alternative time.Kind regards, CPS Homes.

Hi Stu,Thank you for your review.Whilst we sympathise with your son for having to make what we’re sure was a difficult decision not to continue in university, we think it’s important to point out that entering into any contract, especially one where the liability is shared with several others, is a serious matter and should not be done without a great deal of consideration. Traditionally, due to the competitive nature of the student property market, groups of students do sign for properties several months in advance of moving in. This is a risk, especially in a large group, as experience tells us that the group may not know each other very well at this early stage in the university year, which enhances the chances of something happening to prevent the existing make-up of that group from eventually wanting to move into the property as agreed: whether it be a falling out, a switch to another group, or leaving university earlier than intended: as was the case here.Once fully signed and executed, landlords are not required to allow a contract-holder, joint or otherwise, an early exit from their contractual obligations. Indeed, many contracts, whether they be housing or not, don’t allow an early exit. Some do, but they often require payment of the entire term upfront first. As per Welsh Government’s guidance, “In situations where a tenant wants to leave a fixed-term tenancy early, the landlord or agent is fully within their rights to expect to be paid for the entirety of the tenancy. However, there are situations where the landlord or the agent may come to an agreement with the tenant to allow them to leave early … The Act does not prohibit any agreement that a landlord and tenant may reach should the tenant wish to leave the tenancy early.”In this particular case, the landlord was agreeable to ending the contract early, providing certain conditions were met. They could have politely declined and insisted that the rent was paid each month for the entire term as originally agreed, but they chose not to. Instead, they agreed that provided a far smaller sum of money was paid, the contract could end early. Given that a legally-binding, fixed-term contract was in place that could have cost your son several thousand pounds in rent without even taking up occupancy, we would argue that a payment of £480 was a favourable outcome compared to the alternative.A landlord doesn’t need to state why he/she may require this sum to end a contract early because, as stated in the guidance, any agreement can be made. However, to provide some insight, when the group were originally found and signed up, CPS Homes charged the landlord, like we do every landlord, a fee for the service. When a new contract requires drawing up, we charge for our time like any business does, and the landlord can very reasonably expect not to have to pay another fee for something that is the creation of the contract-holder(s) he/she thought were committed for the length of the fixed-term they signed for. Therefore, we believe it is very reasonable for a landlord to not be out of pocket for something that wasn’t their doing, whilst at the same time offering the contract-holders an early exit at a significantly cheaper cost than being tied into the whole fixed-term.Kind regards,The CPS Homes Team.EDIT - In response to the question posed in your edit, no, it would still be £480 total. The figure does not multiply by the number of contract-holders who wish to leave early.EDIT 2 - In response to your second question, £480 was paid to cover our cost to the landlord for drawing up a new contract. Provided nobody else wishes to leave the contract early at a different time (which would require another new contract drawn up), the landlord won’t require any further costs paid.

Hi Sivaramakrishna. Thank you for your review. We'd like to know more about what we've done (or haven't done) to deserve this rating, especially as we cannot locate you on our database, so have no record of any dealings with you. Please share the details of your experience with us via feedback@cpshomes.co.uk. We look forward to hearing from you. Thank you, The CPS Homes Team.

Thanks for the five stars :)

Thanks for choosing us, Edward! Your kind words are very much appreciated.

Thanks Oliver!

Great to hear - thanks Lucy!

Fantastic to hear! Thanks for your kind words Catalin :)

Thanks so much for taking the time to leave your thoughts Richard - so happy we could help!

Thanks Isabel :)

Hi Emma, thanks ever so much for these thoughtful words and taking the time to share them. We're so happy you had such a great experience with our team, you know where we are if you ever need us in future :)

Hi Nima, Thank you for your review. We're sorry to learn that your experience with CPS Homes was a less than positive one. We'd like to learn more about your experience, so we can do our best to improve things in the future. We'd appreciate further feedback being sent to feedback@cpshomes.co.uk. We should point out that a lot of landlords choose to handle reported maintenance issues themselves, or via somebody they know, so whilst we will always pass on reports to them, we cannot physically arrange the work ourselves without their permission. This is because they hold the purse strings, rather than us. However, our communication to you in this regard, i.e. keeping you up-to-date and informing you where our powers start and end, should always be positive, and we apologise if it wasn't. Kind regards, The CPS Homes Team.