Simarc Property Management Reviews 194

Absolute scum of the earth. Please report them to the ombudsman. Extremely high chargers for single bits of paper, they have you totally bent over a barrel when moving in/out of a house they own the lease on. On top of that, tried to charge me almost £1000 when I told them I had carried out works on the house (removing a couple of walls etc). There is nothing in my lease which says I have to notify them, let alone pay them.

I was unfortunate enough for Simarc to become the agent for my Freeholder, their parent company, Wallace Holdings. My first contact from them was them contacting me in 2015 (3 years after buying the property) stating I owed them £175 plus arrears fees of £432, I refused on the basis they hadn’t contacted me and – in fairness to them, they agreed to waive their charges, it being their/previous freehold managers fault.
Luckily my home was on a low fixed (non-increasing) ground rent of £50 per annum with 970 years or so remaining. The lease was or did not seem particularly onerous, however Simarc started sending letters asking if we had a garden shed or put up a sky dish , such things to bring a host of charges for their consent, obviously they expected these items to be on the property in the year 3000.
I looked into buying my Freehold and after some research valued the freehold between £710-£840 based upon yield values of 6%-7% which were representative of decisions made in the First Tier Property Tribunal in the previous 18 months. I contacted Simarc for a quote, paid their fee of £175 and received a quote of £2750 + Legal Fees of £900. I challenged this and received a reply stating “price in line with similar properties under similar lease terms”. Effectively twaddle, but agreed to reduce the price to £1500. I made a final counter off £1100 (on the basis the informal route would save RICS valuer fees of going down the formal route and that all restrictive covenants would be removed). This was accepted on basis I paid their, inflated, legal costs of £900.
I am now free of Simarc, they are a company who are excellent at extracting every penny from people who know little of property law and are scared they will lose their homes. With their behaviour leasehold reforms cannot come quickly enough to protect the public from companies such as theirs and companies such as Wallace Holdings.
If you are looking at acquiring a leasehold property and the agent is Simarc, expect a tough ride and think very very carefully.

I was selling my leasehold property and had to pay Simarc for a "pack" of information. I asked them what the pack contained, they were very vague and evasive. My solicitor said I needed it quickly so paid extra to have it expedited. I handed over hundreds of pounds and a couple of hours later I received a tick-box form that contained the address of the property and the name of the managing agent. All other fields were marked "we don't know". So I paid hundreds of pounds for info I already had and for Simarc to confirm they know nothing about their own properties. I made a complaint, they replied to say that they manage thousands of properties (irrelevant) and have a right to charge for this service which is a necessary part of a sale and requires a lot of work. They also lied and tried to explain the quick turnaround on this apparently lengthy piece of work that normally takes 2 weeks by saying that their staff started work on preparing the pack as soon as I asked about the cost, which doesn't explain the chasing emails I got from their staff for 2 days after asking about the pack saying they can't prepare the information until I pay the fee. Complete scam and glad to be rid of them. If your solicitor says you need their pack as part of the sale challenge it and refuse to pay for it, it contains nothing of any use or value. Get out of leasehold if you can, the system is designed to milk money from leaseholders and provide nothing in return.

Omg! How are these people still trading? I have just been sent a letter a few months after purchasing an apartment from these cowboys! Not only did I pay notice fees to the management company they are charging me a further fees of £624 for serving a couple of notices! How the hell can these people live with themselves as this is daylight robbery! Makes me so angry that you charging whatever you like which is not on! Going to go to trading standards and take this further. Despicable!!

I tried to write a not poor, but a bad review about Simarc Ltd but noted a red dot appeared at the end of my Review? so I deleted it.
Every bad review about this so-called management co is warranted. I say this because their freehold clients do not have any HMLR reliable evidence to prove their freehold clients own the freehold in our property. However, we still have to pay the ground rent to them because the HMLR & all government agencies ignore this matter In other words, we are being "blackmailed"Simarc claim their freehold client is Bushcharm Limited, who has absolutely no freehold interest in our flat. Come on, Bushcharm Limited or Simarc Property Management Ltd, tell me I am wrong. I bet you won't. TODAYS DATE 24/10/2022

Be sure you do everything by the book with this company or they will fleece you, come to think about it , that's what they do for a business.

Simarc are very good at reminding you of the ground rent you owe them, great automated phone service for paying, other than that, not worth attempting to call them as they are always right and the thousands of poor leaseholders who live in their properties are wrong. Sorry Simarc, but I will never buy another property again where you own the land…

I had to extend a lease with Simarc and they asked for feedback. I did not find the procedure a pleasant one with their phone lines being shut for a significant period of the day and email replies not being quick enough. Something of note was that the quote was done the same day because I paid £180 whereas without this it would have taken 6-8 weeks. When passing information to them they do not have a customer facing office, with covid given as the reason, requiring me to stand outside and wait for the buildings receptionist to assist when I was unable to contact anyone (she was very helpful) whilst I accept Simarc undertake an often unpleasant job I found dealing with them to be significantly worse than was necessary and I would avoid if possible (which of course it is not)

These guys are crooks with pathetic customer service. If your property or ground rent is managed by them beware!!!! Having had our ground rent managed via another company, it was passed onto Simarc without our knowledge and they sent correspondence to my flat which is rented instead to my home address which was used by the previous management company, according to the helpful customer service team this error was my fault, and I am £132 out of pocket as a result.

Been dealing with Simarc for 21 years and its been relatively painless, until now. My Ground Rent bill this year didn't arrive when it should have. I waited and waited, assuming their office was short-staffed or furloughed due to the ongoing Covid pandemic. I finally received a bill by email on 23rd April in the form of a final demand, with added fees, back dated to February.
I contacted them by phone and after providing very little help, the guy asks me to email them and I did. I provided untainted evidence that the bill had not arrived before 23 April and asked them to look into this, with a view to waiving the fees.
The first reply I received was a PDF letter telling me to pay immediately or I would hear from solicitors. I therefore gave up and paid it. A few days later they responded to my complaint by pointing out that receiving their emails is MY responsibility. Determining how I get my bills is MY responsibility (despite them sending it as a PDF by email for 21 years). essentially its all my fault and I was in breach of the terms of the lease (which I have never seen to the best of my knowledge).
I am now in the process of instructing a solicitor to purchase the Freehold from them (likely at great expense) as I now own my house, having cleared the mortgage but can still lose my right to live here if the lease expires or is withdrawn!

Legalised (or maybe not) robbery. I suspect that if you phoned them up and talked to someone in person they would charge you £78 to tell you the time. The sooner there dogy business model is outlawed the better. (one star is more than they deserve).

£240 sale pack what a joke! Rip off stay clear!

Similar to the other reviews. Unnecessary charges that aren’t clear and are excessively expensive.

Simarc have a very simple business model. They buy up freeholds with money borrowed from pension funds; ground rents are then used to service that debt, leaving them free rein to extort as much money as possible from leaseholders through spurious permission fees and other administrative charges e.g. for obtaining a quote to extend a lease. Profiteering at its finest!

When we came to sell our leasehold flat, Simarc effectively held us to ransom. They blocked the sale by preventing us from discharging the ground rent demand until we paid them £288 for retrospective consent for laminate flooring that was installed by the original developer/then freeholder Barratt Homes. Despite spending a considerable amount of time tracking down the original flooring contractor and proving beyond any doubt that the flooring and underlay specification wasn't in breach of the terms of the lease, Simarc still refused to back down. They only dropped the demand once our solicitor pointed out that he would be holding them liable for any shortfall should we be forced to accept a lower offer on our flat sale because of their actions.

In summary, they're a seriously dodgy outfit run by wide boys and you would do well to avoid them if at all possible. If you are in the unfortunate position of having to deal with them then it's best to go through an experienced property solicitor. Don't bother wasting your time trying to reason with the people who answer the phones for Simarc, they function only to frustrate and grind you into submission until you just give in and pay the fees. Do not pay them!

The leasehold reforms recommend by the Law Commission can't come in soon enough. Mick Platt and the rest his cronies have had a good run of it but it's time their shady dealings were stopped. They make leaseholders' lives an absolute nightmare and are our modern day Rachman.

Excellent. Compassionate service :) Much appreciated.

I wish I could give Simarc a zero rating. I recently extended a lease and these were the costs incurred. £120 for them to give me quotes, £900 administration fee, £14,000 leasehold extension cost and now as I'm selling up, £240 for a sales pack to be sent to the buyer's solicitor. How can they justify these costs? They should be investigated by an ombudsman.

I am in the process of buying my freehold and Simarc have been extremely professional and reassuring.

The most unprofessional and inexperienced people I've ever had to deal with, they deliberately delayed any queries so you incurred charges,they dont call back or email back and when you do call back or email back they cant find last conversation.
Please dont get involved with them.

Terrible company with no human feelings, They only feeds on customer late payments and charge you £100 for sending your late payments letter whereas you did not see any letter from them or a reminder. Dubious company, Government needs to regulate their business.