Rouge Property: Customer Reviews

Reviewed by L. Brown on 15th April 2008

Services: Lettings (Prospective customer)
Property: Residential
Experience: Would you use Rouge Property again? NO

We looked into renting with this agency, but decided not to. The explanation might help other people decide whether to bother with them:

We've been looking for a flat to rent in Harrow from June or July. Most estate agents haven't started advertising places for that period yet, but Rouge had several flats on its books by March/April, so we got in touch. Turns out most of the places are owned by the same landlord -- one of those developers who carve up family homes into soulless little apartments (more like hotel suites) for commuters. (Way too many of those around here.)

Anyway, the first place we saw was smaller than our current flat despite being £200 a month more. It was FULLY furnished, to the point where we couldn't have fit a stick of our own in there. There were no bookshelves, and we have over 600 books. There was a flat-screen TV that came with the apartment, which I'm sure would be a plus for many people, but we have chosen not to own a television for the past seven years -- and it also took up the only spare bit of wall where we could have put a bookcase. (Also, needless to say, the licence fee was not included in the rent.) There was a big ostentatious leather couch (I'm a vegetarian), and no kitchen table, just a wraparound bar-type thing in the kitchen area.

So, not for us. But then we saw that Rouge were also marketing some newly built flats, developed by the same guy, that were advertised as being available either furnished or unfurnished. Worth a try, we thought, so we phoned them again. It turned out the flats weren't "newly built," they were still BEING built. But Rouge's agent (Steve) insisted we could still go look at them.

So on Saturday we went over, and Steve and one of the builders showed us around. It turned out this was a former old people's home that was being carved up (don't ask me where the old people went). The place basically was still a building site, with no realistic picture of what the places would look like when they were finished. Steve kept getting confused (or said he got confused) about which flat was which and what the rent was. A lot of the places were really small, and oddly-shaped as often happens with conversions. In one of them my husband hit his head on the sloping roof, and another was apparently going to have the toilet right under a skylight!

Steve and the builder also kept talking about furnishings even though we'd made clear we were interested in taking a flat unfurnished -- when we reminded Steve of this, he told us we would be better off letting the landlord furnish them, since his furnishings would probably be better than the stuff we chose for ourselves!

We were wandering around in a fog most of the time, but there was one half-built flat that we liked a bit more than the others, mainly because it was bigger. When Steve noticed this, he forgot his former confusion and began insisting that he was sure this one was on the market for £825 (i.e., within our budget). However, he had no paperwork on him to verify this.

At this point, I inadvertently did something smart. The flats were advertised as being available at the end of June, and I asked the builder (NOT the agent) when exactly he thought they'd be ready. He replied, "Probably mid-July, maybe end of July"! We have to be out of our current flat by July 25; if the new place weren't ready in time, we'd be homeless.

Steve, realising the builder's mistake, immediately started damage control. However, when we got outside, we told him we'd only be interested if we had some assurance from the landlord on the completion date and if he made some arrangement to compensate us if the flat weren't ready on time. We also said we were only interested in taking the flat as unfurnished, and that furthermore we wanted to bring our own washing machine and fridge (we're not banking on being able to keep those, but since the appliances hadn't put been put into these flats yet, we thought we might as well request it). He said that would be no problem, and he'd speak to the landlord and get back to us.

On Monday, I got a call at work, not from Steve but from Rouge's owner ("Dave"), who immediately launched into a full-on hard sell. He said he could confirm that "the flat we liked" was £825, and wanted us to agree to take it right away. However, upon grilling him repeatedly, it finally emerged that he wasn't talking about the flat we'd shown an interest in at all, but one of the smaller ones. The one we'd preferred was £860 -- our absolute maximum is £850, and I wasn't sure I wanted to pay even that for this particular flat. He also said that, despite what Steve had told us, there was no way we could bring our own appliances because "that means messing with the plumbing" (huh? With a washing machine hookup?).

I repeated that we wanted an indemnity arrangement in case the completion date were not met. He wouldn't give me a straight answer about this, but just kept going into long variations on the theme of "it'll be ready in time, it'll be ready in time, in fact it'll be ready next week, it's just that the council won't sign off on it till June," etc. He also kept making claims like "If these flats don't rent in the next few weeks, the landlord is going to put the prices up." (The landlord is an Economist subscriber, I take it.) Finally, just to get rid of him, I said I'd talk it over with my husband and let him know on Tuesday.

Well, we did talk it over -- for about five minutes -- and when Dave rang the next day, I told him the answer was no. Did he take that for an answer? Take a wild guess. I told him £860 was outside our budget, and he immediately agreed to drop the price to £850 (gee, why didn't the landlord just wait a few weeks longer and charge someone else £870?). Then I told him we wanted an agreement IN WRITING about what would happen if the property weren't ready on time, and we also wanted to see a copy of the proposed lease. I had him fax it over, and was I glad I did. Turns out that not only were they demanding six weeks' rent as a security deposit (Dave claimed it was standard practice, but that's BS -- I've rented in this area for seven years and have NEVER heard of a landlord demanding more than one month's rent), plus fees of over £300 for providing their misinformation and waffle, but buried in one clause was the provision that every time we renewed the tenancy, we would need to pay the agents another £80 -- for doing NOTHING. Again, we have never had an agent demand this before.

Oh, and the indemnity we wanted in case the flat wasn't finished? Turns out Rouge were offering us a flat sum of £150 if it weren't ready in time -- enough to provide accommodation and storage for, oh, maybe two days in our part of town.

So when Dave called back, I told him no deal, though not before I had spent another 15 minutes listening to him bluff, and not before he had warned us that we would wind up living in a hovel, and that there were no other unfurnished flats in all of Harrow -- that all the agents who were advertising unfurnished properties had just ticked the wrong box on their web sites.

So there you are. If we're living under a bridge in four months' time, I promise to come back and retract this review, but for now, I'm left with the impression that these agents are at best unpleasant, and at worst dishonest.

In case anyone is still thinking of using them, let me also add that they were consistently late for our viewing appointments, and on one occasion (with a less glamorous property that they presumably weren't so eager to push) the agent didn't bother to show up at all, just rang the tenant (who spoke very limited English) and told him to go show us around.

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