A Guide to Living in City

Please review your development:

I bought a flat few years back and since then the facilities around has changed. To be honest it was ok before with a lovely park just down the building. I would say that those changes were needed as much.
The design around they made nice and all is clean and well organized.
The only down side is my service charge gone up more than twice high since I bought the flat. And it’s about 400 a month now from 150(when I bought it) , which is too much now and I’ll look to sell the flat cos of that.
Before anyone buy a flat see the future development of the area as the service charge was going up and up every year and now it’s gone up for one year from 200£a month to nearly 400£(which nearly doubled). Too much for me having 2 young kids to look after. And the development does not pay me back as much as I pay for it!

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

I wish I knew the service charges prices at least for the coming 10years before I bought a flat.
They kept increasing every year and this year almost doubled.

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

I didn’t raise any issues. So can’t share my experience regarding that.

Please review your development:

Generally well designed exterior, with lots of balcony spaces. Lovely central courtyard with trees and water feature.
HOWEVER, the execution of the interior building work is AWFUL. We have found countless faults with the way the internal construction was executed (Mount Anvil was the developer). These faults were hidden behind internal decoration, lasting just long enough to go outside of warranty. Examples include:
– significant cutting corners for underfloor structure, resulting in unstable floor which has cracked tiles after only a few years. Entire floor structure in our flat needs to be replaced and developer refuses to accept responsibility despite clear photographic evidence of defective installation. They clearly don’t care provided it’s outside of the 2yr warranty.
– bathroom construction has resulted in leaks; for some reason they preferred to use silicone seal to fix fittings to wall rather than conventional screws
– balcony planks already need replacing
– complex central heating / hot water regularly breaks, resulting in temporary shut off for fixing
It’s genuinely a nice development, but the poor execution, and lack of accountability from the developer, really takes the shine off.

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

That the whole floor structure would need replacing, at significant cost to me.

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

Building management are generally responsive to requests for help. For the construction issues we have faced we have been directed to the developer (Mount Anvil) customer services, who have shown no interest in helping.

Please review your development:

The design of the estate still looks like 60’s mass housing design despite all the money spent by the council to improve the overall look of the estate and its grounds. I can’t help thinking that the money would have been better spent on building more low cost housing, even though new flats were built over the parking area for the flats, there were nowhere near enough to meet the current demand. I am disabled and have been trying to swap my accommodation to a ground floor flat for over 15 years but it is near on impossible to swap a 1 bedroom flat, no matter how good the area is.
Living on the estate for over 30 years now, I have to say, I love the area and it’s central location makes it easy to travel into the west end in 20 minutes. The local shops are very handy and Upper street is only 5 minutes away and full of restaurants cinema, street market (Angel Islington) and shops. The parking is getting more and more difficult with more and more families owning more than one car and resident parking bays are simply not enough. The outdated entry phone system could do with replacing as even when it works, you can barely hear or understand who’s at the door. On the whole, King’s square is a pleasant estate and is always kept very clean and tidy.

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

Don’t expect much from Islington council, they really don’t care about the average person and are more interested in outwardly looking good rather than doing good!

Please review your development:

The building looks beautiful but seems to be cheaply built. We can’t hang anything on the walls like shelves or the TV because there are no studs in the walls and it just falls down. Some of the windows fall out if you open them too far. The interior door handles all broke and fell off within a week of moving in and the council refused to fix them citing ‘wear and tear’. The buzzer breaks at least once a month and takes weeks to be fixed. There’s only one plug in the laundry cupboard so we can’t have the tumble dryer in there. No air conditioning so with the big windows the place is deathly hot in the summer. The door frame around the front door of my flat started coming away from the plaster after the first week or two of living here and again the council wouldn’t fix it. There’s condensation trapped in my living room window so we’ve never been able to see out of it, still waiting for a repair three years later. Although some of these repair issues are down to the council, if the place had been built well enough in the first place we wouldn’t have the issues at all. The balcony is not covered so it’s useless in the rain and a death trap in the sun. The paving stones get so hot that you cant stand out there. The balconies are also right next to the neighbours windows so every time someone has a smoke everyone elses flat is full of it. In all, beautifully presented but an absolute pain to live here. I’m spending a fortune constantly fixing things on a property that I don’t own.

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

With the housing situation I don’t think there’s anything that would’ve stopped us moving in, we didn’t have much choice. I wish I’d known it was going to turn into a never ending DIY project.