CPS Homes Cardiff reviews

Thank you for taking the time to leave us feedback. We are sorry to read that you are unhappy with the experience you have received. Could you email us at general@cpshomes.co.uk so that we can look into this further and try to resolve this with you? We would like the opportunity to address your concerns. Thank you, and we look forward to hearing from you. CPS Homes

Hi Jo, we very much appreciate you taking the time to leave us this wonderful 5 star review. Thanks so much for these fantastic comments and we will be sure to keep up the top level of service :)

Thanks for your kind comments Rob and taking the time to share them. Very pleased to hear you've had such a great experience with us - 'stress-free' is exactly what we're aiming for when it comes to looking after and supporting our managed landlords.

Thank you for taking the time to leave us feedback. We're glad you had such a wonderful experience with us! We do hope we can be of assistance in the future. Take care! CPS Homes

Good Afternoon Carly,Thank you for taking the time to place your comments on record. We’re sorry to learn you haven’t had a positive experience with CPS Homes.Looking at our records, it appears you let a property through CPS Homes where we acted in a tenant-find only capacity for the Landlord, so you came to us seeking accommodation and we matched you with a property that you liked. If you were dissatisfied with the viewing and/or tenancy signing process, we apologise and would appreciate your feedback via lettings@cpshomes.co.uk. If your dissatisfaction came after this, then I’m afraid CPS Homes cannot be held accountable as you dealt directly with the Landlord for everything, including rent payments, maintenance issues and the deposit return.Thank you again for your feedback.

Dear Angel,We are sorry to hear that you haven’t had a positive experience with CPS Homes. We have had a look into the matters you raise in your review and we hope we can provide some insight on the issues you have highlighted.We feel that we must firstly clarify CPS Homes’ role as a managing agent. Whilst we do manage the property on your landlord’s behalf, we don’t own it, so we take instruction from your landlord on how to proceed with matters. The vast majority of our landlords agreed with our proposal to refund tenants their deposit in full if they signed for a new term, but there were a handful who were not prepared to offer this.After you expressed an interest in staying for another year, your landlord notified us that he was not prepared to refund the deposit as we initially suggested. We notified you of this in good time before you signed the new agreement, so that you could make a considered decision on whether you wished to stay or not. The last thing we would want is for you to feel that you had no alternative, so we also offered to find you another home with a landlord who was offering a deposit-free tenancy. In the end, you decided to sign for another year in the same property and, as agreed, the deposit has remained registered with the DPS. This is reflected in your tenancy agreement and deposit documentation. Regardless of whether it’s a positive or a negative review, we always look forward to reading our customers’ experiences and learning/improving in whichever ways possible. CPS Homes cannot simply remove a review from Trustpilot. Trustpilot have a robust procedure in place that allows them to verify genuine reviews or remove those that are not, based on evidence (or a lack of). We hope you would agree that allowing a false review to remain on a review website would be extremely misleading.Whether they be students or professionals, as always, we encourage all of our tenants who are experiencing any difficulty to come forward so that we are able to liaise between them and the landlord and come to mutual agreement/plan moving forward. If you or any of your housemates are experiencing any difficulty with arranging your rental payments, please do email us on roath@cpshomes.co.uk or call us on 02920454555 to discuss your position, following which we’d be more than happy to approach the landlord for you.Kind regards,The CPS Homes Team.

Dear Enya,We are sorry to hear that you haven’t had a positive experience with CPS Homes. We have had a look into the matters you raise in your review and we hope we can provide some insight on the issues you have highlighted.Whilst we did send out communication to our tenants concerning property viewings at shorter-than-usual notice, our intentions and reasoning should have been clearer, and we should have provided tenants with a clear option to request a longer period of notice. We hope you will accept our apologies for this. Once you signaled your intent to stay on in the property and your landlord agreed, we ensured the property was no longer advertised for viewings.Regarding inspections, it is standard practice for landlords and letting agents like to document the condition of the property in photos and/or video(s), so that they can be referred back to at a later date if needed. Inspection photos/videos are often referenced where this is a dispute at the end of a tenancy, for example.Finally, deposits are not and cannot be taken "for no reason". In line with legislation, deposits are protected and landlords/tenants must come to an agreement over how the deposit is to be returned. If a tenant disagrees with any element of a landlord's claim, they reserve the right to use the deposit protection scheme's Alternate Dispute Resolution (ADR), where an independent adjudicator will make a decision on the matter.Should you have any further concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us via roath@cpshomes.co.uk or 02920 454555.Kind regards,The CPS Homes Team.

Thank you for taking the time to leave us feedback. We're glad you had such a wonderful experience with us! We do hope we can be of assistance in the future. Take care! CPS Homes

Dear Matt, We’re sorry to hear that you and your daughter haven’t had a positive experience so far. We’ve been able to look into the matter and we hope we can provide some insight what has been done so far to resolve the problems you have commented on. We have completed a check-out inspection for the vacating tenants shortly before your daughters tenancy began and instructed some remedial work; cleaning included. The time we have between two tenancies to inspect the property and arrange repairs is relatively short, so it’s possible some things are not attended to in a quick enough time. Likewise, sometimes it’s not possible for problems to come to light until the property is lived in. This is something we always endeavour to communicate with incoming tenants, and they will have received correspondence around this time to advise them as such, but also to re-assure them that if they have any problems when they arrive, we’ll ensure they are attended to swiftly. The tenants moved in on 1st August and we arranged to meet them on the same day to complete a ‘check in’ inspection. This gave the opportunity for the tenants to raise any concerns they had. At this point we agreed the cleaners needed to re-attend and a handyman was required to attend to a number of issues; both of which were instructed to contractors immediately after the inspection. Whilst the cleaning was resolved very swiftly, the handyman works have, unfortunately, been a slow process to resolve completely. Contractors are in extreme demand around this time of year because of the amount of tenancies ending/starting within a short space of time, so sometimes it’s not possible for problems to be resolved as quickly as we would like. Additionally, as we sub-contract the work, it’s hard for us to dictate when they are attending to jobs. I can see that there is an outstanding, open job for a blind to be fitted. The restrictions posed by COVID-19 means some items are in low supply, and we’ve found that made-to-measure blinds are very slow to arrive. We’ll ensure the tenants receive updates on the progress of this job. A few weeks into the tenancy, the tenants reported an issue with pests, which is not an uncommon problem in Cathays, unfortunately. We instructed pest control immediately. The property was treated and considered clear until recently when the tenants raised that the issue had re-occurred. The pest control company were immediately instructed to attend again and these visits will continue until the property is considered ‘clear’ again. Given that we can’t control the movement of pests in the area, we can’t eradicate this problem completely, but it’s evident that we are doing what we can to improve things for the tenants when any concerns are raised.The landlord has always been happy to fulfil any repair requests raised by us without any threat of withholding rent being raised with them, so this won’t be a contributing factor in the repairs being arranged. We hope you’ll agree that, although things weren’t perfect on arrival, repairs are being actioned when raised with us. We recognise this has taken longer than necessary and that things don’t always run smoothly with our sub-contractors, but with our contractor response times now back to relative normality, we believe the tenants will have a more positive experience for the duration of their tenancy. If the tenants do have any ongoing concerns that our contractors aren’t completing repairs in quick enough time or to a good enough standard, I’d encourage them to contact our maintenance team to let us know. We are available either in person, over the phone or via video call to discuss any concerns. If you wish to discuss the property in any more detail, please contact us on maintenance@cpshomes.co.uk. Many thanks,The CPS Homes Team.

Hi Tess,Thank you for leaving us a review. We're sorry that your experience was not a positive one.Having looked into the matter, we can see that you originally requested the viewing on 21st Sept, and we were able to book you in at short notice for the following day. As we don't yet hold keys for the property, we required the landlord to be in attendance in order to allow access, which fortunately he told us he would be.On the morning of your appointment, we called you pre-9am to let you know that we'd be informed access could not be granted after all. Thankfully, we were able to turn this around soon afterwards and still show you the flat that day, albeit slightly later than originally planned.We're sorry for any inconvenience caused by the possibility of a cancellation, though we are pleased that we were able to show you around on the day as intended. Finally, we're glad that you liked the flat. It is still available, so if you do change your mind and decide it's the one for you after all, we will be glad to assist.Kind regards,The CPS Homes Team.

Dear Stéphane,Thank you for leaving us a review. We have now had the opportunity to look into your comments.The property was professionally cleaned before you moved in, though we do have a record that you referenced a few areas that could do with further cleaning when you took up occupancy.We would not agree that the property was in a "very advanced state of disrepair". Cardiff Council have granted the landlord with a licence to rent the property, which means it was inspected by them prior to granting the licence and meets their strict standards. We note that you reported a few maintenance-related items during the course of the tenancy, which is unfortunate but not unusual. These were promptly communicated to your landlord, who tends to deal with maintenance issues himself or through contractors he knows.The condition of the property upon arrival was documented very thoroughly via the inventory/schedule of condition, signed by both parties. You annotated this where needed, so everyone had an accurate, agreed representation of the condition of the property, that we could then reference when the tenancy came to an end.After inspecting at the end of tenancy, we passed our findings to the landlord, who agreed that there was a significant amount of cleaning required, and certain dilapidations were over and beyond fair wear and tear. We communicated these to you and you agreed; choosing not to use the deposit scheme's Alternative Dispute Resolution procedure.We're sorry that you have had an unhappy experience. Having looked into things, we do believe we have followed the correct procedures.Kind regards,The CPS Homes Team.

Hi Ashley,Thank you for leaving us a review. We're sorry for the inconvenience caused by delayed or poor communication.Having looked into the matter, we can see that there have been considerably longer periods of time between correspondence than we would typically expect. Additionally, e-mails haven't contained the level of detail we would usually aim for. Both of these matters are being addressed internally and we reiterate our apologies for the inconvenience caused.In terms of the deposit return itself, we can see that you disputed the landlord's initial claim amount and instead offered to pay 64% of it. We communicated this 'counteroffer' to your landlord and he accepted. We initiated the return of the agreed amount via the Deposit Protection Service (DPS) in May and, since then, the deposit status has been "awaiting tenant response".The clean of the property was carried out by Simply Clean, who were instructed by CPS Homes following our check-out appointment. During this appointment, we collected photographic evidence that demonstrated which areas of the property required cleaning. We have recently asked Simply Clean to change the way in which they invoice so they are clearer and easier to share with tenants and landlords, but in any case, they did conduct the clean and invoiced accordingly. You have been advised that you are welcome to confirm this with them directly. Their website is https://simplycleancardiff.com/.The DPS are currently awaiting your response in order to progress the deposit return. You reserve the right to use their Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) service.Kind regards,The CPS Homes Team.*UPDATE FOLLOWING REPLY*: Due to COVID-19-related restrictions, we were unable to offer an accompanied check-out inspection at the time. There may not be further invoices to provide as landlords sometimes claim compensation towards the diminished lifespan of an item, rather than replace new. The Deposit Protection Service states that "where an item has had its value reduced or its lifespan shortened, for example by damage, a landlord may claim compensation", rather than the cost of a brand-new replacement. If we can agree a compensatory cost with a landlord rather than a repair or replacement, it will be of benefit to tenants for a couple of reasons. Firstly, compensation is frequently significantly less costly than a repair or replacement. Secondly, it speeds up the deposit return process because it can take several weeks to organise work, then receive and process a contractor’s invoices. Compensation, on the other hand, can be calculated relatively quickly and easily. The Tenant Deposit Scheme goes on to say that, where compensation has been claimed, "it is the landlord's choice as to whether they use any awarded money to fix/replace the item”. They continue: "a tenant may complain that they were charged for redecoration, or the replacement of something (carpet, or curtains for example) yet when they revisited the property with new tenants there, they realised the landlord had not replaced the item they were charged for! Despite tenants perhaps feeling this is unfair, it is the landlord's choice as to whether they use any awarded money to fix/replace the item." We’ll always try and adopt compensation over repair/replacement because of the reasons stated above.

Good afternoon,Thank you for leaving us a review.We apologise for the difficulties you have had since moving in. To allow us to look into your concerns further and attempt to put things in the house right, we would appreciate it if you could provide us with your name, contact details and the property you rent from us. You can do this via e-mail to feedback@cpshomes.co.uk, or answer the message we've just sent you via Trustpilot's private messaging platform.Many thanks,The CPS Homes Team.

Good afternoon,Thank you leaving us a review. We're sorry that you experienced problems with us during the course of your tenancy. We'd like to learn more about the issues you had so we can look into them and put them right moving forward. We'd appreciate it if you could e-mail us via feedback@cpshomes.co.uk, letting us know which property you rented and provide a little more detail surrounding the concerns listed.To address the points made, we did pre-warn our tenants that any item not belonging to the landlord would need to be removed from the property prior to the end of the tenancy. We appreciate that local recycling centres may have been closed on the day you left, but there would have been ample opportunity to dispose of these items before or after leaving. Many tenants made alternative arrangements and did not incur a charge. We'd love there not to be a charge, but we hope you appreciate that a contractor has to visit remove and dispose of the items, for which they require payment.Similarly, a contractor would have needed to purchase and then attend to fit the single light bulb that was out. Whilst £40 may appear expensive, contractors need to make a living like everyone else, so they always charge a call-out fee that typically includes the first hour's work. That's what has been charged in this case. Call-out fees are commonplace amongst contractors up and down the country. We did also e-mail tenants before vacating, letting them know it will be far cheaper to resolve simple issues like this themselves, rather than pay a contractor. Replacing a light bulb was given as an example of this within the e-mail.We look forward to hearing from you,The CPS Homes Team.

Good morning Mr Young,Thank you for leaving a review, and we're sorry that you've found the process of renting a property difficult.Renting to a professional often does take longer than renting to a student because students are usually only asked to provide a financial guarantor. This involves the signing of one guarantor agreement and it's job done. That's a quick and easy, one-step process, but when renting to a professional, landlords require us to obtain references from each employer and current/previous landlord, as well a credit check. So it can take considerably longer, especially if the references aren't returned promptly.We've had a look through your file to see where we may have made things more difficult than they needed to be. Due to your wish to move in relatively quickly after choosing to rent the property, we sent out your reference requests the day after we received your application forms, and the tenancy agreement two days later. Both of these actions are in line with our expected timeframes.We've successfully negotiated a couple of amended start dates to the tenancy with the landlord at your request, and the process has been slightly delayed due to receiving an incorrect e-mail address for an employer.We do believe we have been clear in our requirements from the start and have since spoken to you following your review to discuss any concerns. We can always aim to do better, of course, so we will take the relevant points on board and learn from them.Kind regards,The CPS Homes Team.

Hi F Davies,Thanks for leaving a review, and we’re sorry to learn of your comments.We’d like to learn more about the detail the check-out report contained and the parts you dispute. We’d appreciate it if you could e-mail feedback@cpshomes.co.uk, where it will soon be picked up and reviewed.It’s worth bearing in mind that the check-out report is predominantly photo-based evidence, so it won’t always contain a great deal of words. Without knowing the property you rented, we can’t say anything for sure, but there’s a strong chance we’ve picked up on things that have been deemed your landlord’s responsibility, so there will be no or minimal explanation next to these photos as they don’t affect your deposit return. Where we have identified items that we think are the responsibility of the tenant, we welcome your comments within the section of the report designed for your representations. The process is two-way and transparent. Your representations will be considered by your Case Handler and discussed with your landlord, in the same way the report was discussed with your landlord before being sent to you. Please bear in mind that, in our role as agent, we don’t have the final say over what, if anything, is claimed from your or any deposit; that is always the responsibility of the landlord. We provide feedback and evidence, but we don’t make the decisions.The cleaning company you refer to is not owned by CPS Homes or any Director of CPS Homes, nor are any of the several other cleaning companies we use. The cleaning company highlighted in the show you refer to is an entirely separate entity and is in fact one of very few local cleaning companies capable of managing the number of cleans CPS Homes requires year-on-year; particularly during the busy summer period when thousands of students vacate their properties. They are one of several local trades we have been using for over 20 years to carry out work in properties we manage, so we know and trust them. They price fairly and accurately for their time. Many letting agents opt to instruct national companies to manage their cleans, who typically charge more due to increased overheads and travel time, meaning a higher cost to tenants and landlords alike. As a company born-and-bred in Cardiff, we prefer to issue our work to local people.We feel it's important to point out that it's not uncommon for there to be a dispute at the end of a tenancy. Quite rightly, tenants are keen to receive as much of their deposit back as possible, whereas landlords would like to be compensated for any dilapidation they believe is not a result of wear and tear. So, by virtue of their own standpoints, deposit claims are a contentious matter. Where tenants agree with a landlord’s claim, they reserve the right to dispute. The same is true in reverse. The undisputed amount(s) is immediately returned to the relevant party or parties, so there is no truth or merit in the suggestion that it is CPS Homes’ aim to draw out the process.We hope this response helps and we look forward to receiving your feedback.Many thanks,The CPS Homes Team.

Dear Katherine, Thank you for your review. May we first start by saying that, based on information provided to us by the tenants themselves, we are very glad to hear that the hospital deemed your daughter and her housemates to be well when they visited. CPS Homes takes the safety of tenants extremely seriously and, where we are employed by the owner to fully-manage a property, you will regularly see contractors we use travelling around Cardiff to conduct a whole host of safety inspections. Whilst we understand that you are upset and possibly even angry at the situation, we must explain the difference in roles and responsibilities between properties we manage and properties we don’t. Your daughter’s landlord instructed us to carry out a tenant-find only service on her behalf, meaning that she chooses to manage the property herself. This means that, as the owner of the property, she has decided that rent collecting, arranging all relevant certification, handling maintenance queries and upholding the terms of the contract, amongst other things during the course of the tenancy, will all be her responsibility. This is explained on the front page of the tenancy agreement, which is a contract between the tenants and the landlord. When instructing us to advertise a tenant-find only property, landlords sign our Terms of Business that make it explicitly clear what is required of them, including the legal requirement for an annual gas safety certificate. Notably, the production of a gas safety certificate is different to a boiler service, which is not a legal requirement. Likewise, despite appearing to have one at the property, carbon monoxide detectors are not currently a legal requirement in Wales, so a landlord does not have to provide one. Indeed, the vast majority of properties in Wales are currently without carbon monoxide detectors. We have informed the tenants that if they feel conversations with the landlord are not constructive, they can report their concerns and complaints to the bodies that have the power to legally enforce the landlord does (or refrains from doing) something: Rent Smart Wales and Private Sector Housing. Following the information provided to us, we have reported the landlord to Rent Smart Wales ourselves and will be reviewing our future working relationship with her. We have also asked the tenants if they would like us to try and push the landlord to instruct CPS Homes to fully manage the property, as the infrastructure and procedures we have in place may be beneficial for the duration of this tenancy. Finally, agents charging fees to tenants was outlawed by the Renting Homes (Fees Etc.) (Wales) Act 2019, so we do not profit in any way from the payments tenants make to us. All payments are for either a security deposit or rent, so are passed onto landlords in full. We wish you and your daughter all the best moving forward. Kind regards, The CPS Homes Team.

Hi Mahendra. Thanks ever so much for these kind words and taking the time to leave us a review. Apologies we're a little late responding to you, it really is very much appreciated and we're very pleased that you've had a smooth and stress-free long term experience working with us and our maintenance team. Thanks for the 5 stars!