PBM Property Management - Borehamwood

Simon Y.

I had a very disappointing experience with the management company for my flat. Communication was poor; it often took days to receive a response to my inquiries. Maintenance requests were either ignored or took far too long to be addressed, leaving me frustrated and inconvenienced. Additionally, the management failed to keep the common areas clean and well-maintained. Overall, I feel that the level of service provided does not meet the expectations for residents. I would not recommend this management company to anyone looking for a pleasant living experience.

Andy G.

One star feels too generous for this company. I am part of the Residents' Association for our block in London and we actually interviewed PBM for the contract in 2020, so I had high hopes for them and they were initially very professional. Sadly since then everything has fallen apart. Many of our flats have had leaks and water damage for four years; they managed an initial insurance claim but they failed to fix any of the faults and the contractor ran away, and it took us two years to get them to submit a new one. They helped our freeholder collect huge sums from us via service charges to pay his own debts and only corrected the issues when we stopped paying the invoices and threatened them with a tribunal. Their Chief Property Officer didn't even have the courtesy to reply to two formal letters threatening them with court action.

Over the past three years, every single person we have dealt with there has either been fired or resigned in mysterious circumstances, and each time a new person takes over they have zero knowledge of the block or the history. It has now emerged that they have allowed our freeholder to run up £36,000 of debts to the service charge account over several years, and after extensive pressure from us they eventually sent him a letter about it, by which time the freehold company was already going into administration.

I am not sure what has caused them to become so spectacularly bad over the past 2-3 years but I suspect there is something deeply wrong with the internal culture there that causes anyone good to leave. I very much regret backing their appointment at the start and I really hope we can be rid of them once the freehold is sold. A truly shameful company and as others have said, they probably shouldn't even be operating any more.

Michael J.

UPDATE 22/11: Following a few positive emails with PBM, I'll remove/amend this post when the follow-up on the promise for better engagement with our Directors happens.

Original post:
It's hard to know what to say about PBM other than they are an absolute joke. There was one decent property manager in the years we've had them; and she's just resigned.

Delayed/no response to queries. Don't manage the block properly, don't meet the obligations agreed in the block management contract and are just generally rubbish.

Avoid.

Vague W.

Very poor service. Deliberately opaque, don’t answer queries, haven’t sent us our accounts yet from 2023. Apparently they need 13 months to get them to us..
They get defensive and spikey when questioned.
The MD is a weasley individual who doesn’t seem to mind bending the truth.
Their staff turnover is poor, and ex-employees leave bad reviews. Perhaps this is the reason for the poor service?
The whole operation seems a bit cowboy.

Sanjay M.

PBM have been the management company for Signia Court. They are awful. We finally had them sacked only to learn the freeholders appointed another firm with the same employees from here. Jaysam the contractors have made home ownership a real headache where PBM have led many tenants to move out. Very poor quality of service.

Shahin S.

I am the director of a Residential Management Company responsible for a site that PBM has managed for the past few years. Unfortunately, the quality of service provided by PBM has declined rapidly. Over the past year, three property managers assigned to our building have left unexpectedly, leaving the management of our property in a very poor state. There is no accountability or responsibility from PBM and everyday our service qualities are getting poor and poorer. We cannot continue with PBM anymore.

Adam M.

As others have said already, completely useless business. Charge an extortionate rate for service charge that I can’t see has ever gone into repairs (front door still doesn’t work, landing lights still don’t work, trim is still falling off stairs, storage areas have never been cleaned, I could go on and on here). Trying to get through to them through the correct means leaves the phone ringing and ringing, you just have to pick a random option in the automated system and hope it gets through to someone and any queries or requests take weeks to process. After all this had the gall to charge extra for a basic paperwork exercise which is now holding up myself, the bank and my solicitors on my remortgage. The individuals I speak to are always friendly and clearly trying but considering how many property managers seem to leave there’s clearly a deep rooted issue with upper management and the business practices as opposed to the ground level staff clearly trying to do their best despite an obvious uphill battle.

Edit: I’d also like to add that I’ve been pestered by one of their executive directors to discuss my review in more detail. In that time said Executive Director somehow managed to accidentally send me internal staff call stats when replying to an internal email. Sums up my above review quite nicely…

David V.

If you ever come across a property managed by PBM, RUN. This company is a complete disaster. We’ve been paying service charges, yet the building is falling apart. Maintenance is neglected, communication is non-existent, and they clearly don’t care about the properties they manage. I honestly don’t understand how they’re still in business or why anyone would want to work with them. Stay far away.