Grant Management UK

I rented from them for 8 – 9 months. If you set off with clear delineated guidelines, they are ok. However, they are a business and try to get their money out of you. They were not up front about hidden costs, and I had to consult Citizens Advice in the beginning to understand my rights — I was in the right, Grant Managment weren’t and they relented. Be careful with the cleaning charges at the end. They cleaned out items which belonged to the landlord, and then charged us for the items! I had to protest that — and it took a few months haggling, but got most of the money back.

Never disliked a rental agency until now.
Been with Grant Management for almost 6 years. If I could afford to move, I would have left during the first year.
Whenever I need help with a repair it takes weeks, months or even years to get dealt with. Not sure why they have a helpline when you cant get help when you need it.
I literally have to phone-​stalk them to get repairs/​maintenance or whatever dealt with. I always get told that they’ll get onto the situation asap, but then whenever I call back to check, they have no record of my call and/​or no logged complaints from me. So then I have to place a new request all over again, and get told once again that they’ll get it dealt with asap.
Took several months of calling to get my buzzer repaired, which only took the guy 10 mins. to do. I wasn’t going to give up and pay for it myself since I didnt break it, so I was at their mercy.
During the last inspection, which was around 3 yrs ago, the guy took notes on different things that needed fixing in the flat like the crown moulding detaching from the wall etc. Theres this big gap between the wall and moulding, and you can actually see into the next room. The inspector smiled and took notes and said they’d be repaired shortly. I called several times after nothing was done, got tired of speaking to those people, and just gave up.
So after more than 3 years with no inspections, they called last month to schedule one. This new guy pretty much did and said the same thing as the previous inspector. Walked around, took notes about repairs needed, spoke at length with me about the crown moulding and some electricity issues.
No word yet about the repairs he said they’ll get done. I’m not even worrying about it anymore, I’m tired. I don’t think the crown moulding will fall on us since it’s been this way for so long now, so we just live with it. We’re used to it now. lol
Last issue I had with them was the heating back in December. Atleast once or twice a year the boiler breaks down and they send the same company along to fix it.
So this particular time the guy comes by, «fixes» it, I dont find out until we need the heating later at night that it still doesnt work. I call Grant Management back to tell them it isnt fixed, and they said they’d call the heating guy back again. The next day I call them back, and they said they’d get him out to me later that day. Of course he never showed, and I called them back again the next day and just asked for his number. Found out that they never did call him! We’re here freezing to death waiting for noone! Coldest winter in decades and we have no heat.
Anyway, after speaking with him, he made time to come over that very same afternoon and fixed the problem. My family, which includes children and my sick mother had no heating, hot water etc. for 10 days! Grant Management knew of my situation, but they really just dont care.
Okay, I’ve ranted enough about them I think. I’ll spare you the monetary issues I’ve had with them and so on. hehe
If you can, use any other company but Grant Management! You’ve been warned. ;-)

I am currently with Grant Management and although loads of my friends said that we should not go with them, we were getting pretty desperate and couldn’t really wait much longer and went ahead and signed the lease with Grant management.
When we got into the flat about a month ago, we looked around the flat to see if there were any problems or faults and we found a good few– there is no working light in our bathroom and no replacement bulbs, no vacuum, a broken ironing board, broken clothes horse, broken bin and there was mice. To their credit they did send someone to deal with the mice (they are obliged to in the first 2 weeks of moving in). But the other cases have not been dealt with and we call them a lot, they even said that there is a vacuum in the property although there quite clearly isn’t. We let them know about the issues a good couple of weeks ago, but they really don’t seem to care.
The funny thing with Grant Management is that if you call their designated sales hotline, you will get through straight away, you try and call an existing tenant telephone number and you have to wait for a good while. it is pretty obvious that they care a lot more about acquiring new customers than they do about their existing customers, and it is probably the case that they pry on people who like me and my flatmates are desperate for a new flat. So I would advise against Grant Management, give yourself ample amounts of time to get a new flat.

My flatmates and I are heading into our third year and, after a year in a sub-​standard flat arranged through DJ Alexander, we decided to go for Grant Management. We, like everyone else who’s looking for a flat in Edinburgh, had hear many horrific things about them, however, our friends had had a good experience with them so we went for it. The flat which we found, although not huge, has a decent living area and kitchen.
There have been a few issues though. My flatmates informed me today that they’d seen mice in the kitchen already — not a good sign. GM are sending someone round to patch up any holes which should, hopefully, do the trick.
Further, we got a whole load of clippy emails from their employees demanding payments. You’ve also got to set up home insurance individually which makes absolutely no sense.
On the whole, a decent flat, yet it seemed to take a lot of unnecessary hassle to set it up.

You hear a lot of bad things about Grant Management and on going to them for a flat to rent, we were recommended against using them. Their personal service isn’t the best and don’t expect to be shown round the flat when you move in as any contact will be minimal. Despite this, I can only really report a good time with them as landlords. In our time in our current flat we have had a new bathroom and cooker (the second on request), which took time to complete, but never less are new. Any repairs can be a bit slow, but they do happen despite this and all the builders we have had, have all been trustworthy.
The main reason I like Grant Management is our rent — we each pay only £240 a month for a flat in the middle of town, which given some of the rents other people pay is a great price for a very large flat. On looking for a flat you will firstly be shown round some expensive, but not very good flats (generally basement flats); turn these down. Then you’ll be shown the better flats and these are brilliant value for money. It will take time to process forms and get all the required documents, but unless you can find cheaper elsewhere it’s worth the slightly worse service.

Having used their sister branch in the West, I’m not at all surprised to see that the same levels of incompetence, greed and downright theft are regular elements of Grant Management’s business practice in Auld Reekie.
They get such a wall-​to-​wall slating, I’m surprised they keep going, which I assume is mainly down to business from naïve second year students. If you ever need any maintenance in your flat, expect weeks of calls, strings of broken promises, and the bitter resentment to slowly build up inside you.
We did however, get our deposit back. Some of it.

Some of my brothers friends had warned me about Grant Management, shame I didn’t listen.
I lived in one of their 5 bedroom flats in Bruntsfield for a year, and although it was a nice flat, the same couldn’t be said for the letting agency. They charged an absolute fortune for it and never bothered to get in touch to see if everything was fine. We had to call them directly to confirm that some of the things they had on their itinerary were missing — and they didn’t believe us! When we could smell gas, we had to get somebody out ourselves and when there was a leak we were told we were old enough to deal with it ourselves. Excuse me??!
My flatmate lost her set of keys and was consequently charged £140 pounds for it! WHAT! And although we scrubbed the flat from head to toe — literally everything was perfect — we lost our deposit for ‘marks on the walls’ — which I am still contesting.
Never again Grant Management, never again

Another reason I hate Grant Management and advise anyone to not use them is found in the following tale.
We returned 5 sets of keys here upon moving out our flat. When returning the keys the girl was like «Cheers, thanks, Bye». So I was all like «Eh don’t you need to know what property they are from?» Duh. So after clearly writing down the names of the tenants and the property address I handed over the keys.
Roll on a week later and I get an angry phone call from my ex flatmate blaming me for not returning two sets of keys and advising me I was being charged £250 so they could change the locks on the door.
No joke! Somewhere along the line Grant Management had lost the keys (or so they say) and were charging us for it. After a lot of angry phone calls the keys magically reappeared and we did not have to pay for a lock change. Idiots.

I really do not like this renting agency. There is a reason this place has a bad reputation. About two years ago I came here despite warnings from older (wiser) students. The lady behind the desk was extremely rude to my flatmates and me and had us wait while she seemed to be «busy». Her colleague on the other hand was extremely sweet (maybe too keen?)and took my email address so we would be put on the mailing list for available properties. Going to some of the viewings was awful, as there were crowds of people viewing the properties as well. The guy who was showing us was really vague about things like insulation and heating bills but instead kept commenting about how amazing the decoration was (it was not) and how wonderful the location was.
We didn’t end up going with them, mostly because we were not impressed at all with what they had to offer. And quite luckily too! I have heard countless stories of friends who have used Grant management only to find that as soon as there is any problem with anything in their flat, there is absolutely no maintenance of any sort. Months without a running shower, doors not being secured, even no compensation when there was leakage and damp damage from the flat above. Not only is there lack of maintenance despite the multiple calls my friends have made but at times they just ignored their calls or were very rude on the phone.
Seems like they have too many properties to keep track of, and are far too keen to get you to use them but then as far as property management I have seen none! They advertisements try to show how student friendly they are and how important it is to the to give you the less possible stress when finding a flat (or flatmates) and not to over spend money. As far as I can tell it should be remained to Grand Lettings rather than Management.
In other words, to put it bluntly, stay clear!

Unless you’re only other option is camping, and you don’t own a tent, DO NOT RENT FROM GRANT MANAGEMENT!
I’ve been a student for four years, and I’ve yet to come across anyone that has rented with them and has a single even vaguely positive thing to say about them, myself included.
Nor do I know anyone who’s ever seen a single penny of their deposit back from them. Ever. I can think of better ways to waste the equivalent of a month’s rent, and it would involve much more fun things than having to endure this rental agency for a year.
If you live with Grant Management and something breaks in your flat, I would get used to it, as it’s going to stay like that until long after the end of your tenancy. If, when you go to view a flat they’re adertising and you have questions, such as «will that huge hole in the wall be fixed before we move in?» or «will the washing machinebed/​shower that you claimed was here be here when we move in?» etc then don’t expect answers. Or that the answer to any type of question like this will turn out to be yes.
There’s a reason that the flats you see on their website look too good to be true. Don’t be tempted by the reasonable-​looking rents… you certainly won’t save money in the long run!
If I could give them 0 stars I would.

If grant management were a person it’d happily make its granny homeless in order to make more miserable pennies. The hassle i went through to try and get my deposit back was nothing short of ridiculous. I’d spend days trying to get in touch with GM staff members, even when i prized names and extension numbers out of them they seemed to work such random hours i’d not be able to get in touch with them.
I imagine if you’re nicest tennant known to man who’s happy to live in the same badly furnished GM flat for the rest of your life then you might be happy with Grant management, but if you’re a normal person who for whatever mad reason might (god forbid) want to move house, then GM are going to do their absolute most to hump you for every penny.
extra special petty post script: their hold music/​adverts almost made me gouge me ears out.