Kooky Bishop's Stortford, CM23

Please tell us about the good and bad aspects of living in your local area:

Train station located in front of the building. All main shops and restaurants are all within walking distance.

How has the building management responded to any problems or issues you have raised:

Management is always quick at addressing issues and queries. Our manager, Alicia, is always helpful and understanding. Worth mentioning is also her availability at providing maintenance personnel access to our apartment whenever it requires servicing.

Please share one thing (or more) which you wish you had known before you moved in:

Estimate costs for electrical bills and water bills.

Please tell us about the good and bad aspects of living in your local area:

The range of shops within walking distance are good. It’s unfortunate that the walk from the block to the High Street is poor. This may improve when the end piece of land is developed, but currently it’s often dirty, litter strewn (particularly during/after the weekend when the nightclub has been open) and the initial road crossing is out of action due to the development. Lack of a public bin by the bus stop outside means it is often litter strewn outside. Apartments overlooking the garden are also overlooked by the public multi-storey car park opposite which is often used by youths skateboarding, cycling , shouting or boy racers racing cars up and down.

How has the building management responded to any problems or issues you have raised:

Any issues raised were dealt with fairly quickly although my boiler repair took 4 days to get sorted

Please share one thing (or more) which you wish you had known before you moved in:

If I’d known about how the car park opposite was used by kids and boy racers, I would not have taken a courtyard view apartment.

Please tell us about the good and bad aspects of living in your local area:

Good aspect: great location, furnished apartments, great designs. less than 5 minute walk to town centre. Great amenities close by such as bowling, cinema, gym, swimming pool and train station. negatives: little bit of traffic noise but not that bad. No free parking for guests

How has the building management responded to any problems or issues you have raised:

The building management team have always been quick to respond to any issues which is fantastic compared to your traditional landlords.

Please share one thing (or more) which you wish you had known before you moved in:

Bad insight is the electricity bill is higher than what was quoted. It would be nice to have a more accurate pricing but understandable due to the crisis we are witnessing

Please tell us about the good and bad aspects of living in your local area:

Train is 30 seconds from flat. Great restaurants on the high street. No parking guaranteed with flat

How has the building management responded to any problems or issues you have raised:

Quickly and fast. There is a 24hr service line which is useful on weekends with issues

Please share one thing (or more) which you wish you had known before you moved in:

That it would cost £100 a month to use their car park

Please tell us about the good and bad aspects of living in your local area:

There’s a good range of available shops and restaurants with excellent transport connections into London, but parking in the area is difficult due to an inadequate number of spaces for the tenants and the large station car park behind the property garners quite a lot of anti social behaviour from kids and teenagers screaming at all hours.

How has the building management responded to any problems or issues you have raised:

The management are usually very quick to reply to an issue and do go to an effort to put your mind at ease, but equally so it’s not unusual for a few weeks to go by before anything non-urgent is resolved. I also think the external company used for out of hours emergencies are close to useless as they have no agency regarding issues and are happy to leave it until the building management’s working hours, completely defeating the point.

Please share one thing (or more) which you wish you had known before you moved in:

I don’t feel as though there are any aspects that were concealed from me on my viewing, and that any additional insights outside of that are purely things to expect from living anywhere really. There is occasional noise from the nearby car park that can be annoying, neighbours have a habit of slamming doors and smoking where they’re not supposed to but generally none of that actually infringes on my living in a meaningful way and it’s not something anyone could’ve predicted or known before moving in.