Gaye Cawood Realty

I strongly suggest that you DO NOT USE Gaye Cawood Realty!

We rented a property through Gaye Cawood Realty. The only reason for us renting was as our house had been sold & we had not found a property that we wanted to purchase – so we decided to rent until we found a property.

We paid 6 months’ rent in advance. When paying the deposit (a rather large sum of money) to Gaye Cawood Realty, the emails were apparently intercepted & hacked. Identity fraud was committed against Gaye Cawood Realty as the hackers had opened up a bank account in Gaye Cawood’s name & then manipulated the invoice & proof of banking details, when intercepting the emails the hackers even created new email accounts in their name as well so when they intercepted the mails & sent the ‘correct invoice & banking details’ we were none the wiser - we then subsequently paid the deposit into the hackers bank account & not to Gaye Cawood. Gaye Cawood threw her hands in the air & said that the issue was not with her & that it was up to us to get our money back. We then went to the police station opened up a police case & contacted our bank, our bank stated that this issue was not their fault & rather that of Gaye Cawood as she was the one who had the identity fraud committed against her & that she was the one responsible along with her bank to get our money back. In addition to this, Gaye Cawood told us that the hack had taken place through the landlords emails as in the same week the owner had another tenant have the same problem.

The house that we rented through Gaye Cawood Realty was rented on the premise that we would have purchased the property at the end of our lease. 6 months into our lease, we asked the owner if we could purchase the property, he had stated that it was not for sale. We then informed Gaye Cawood & she had mentioned how shocked she was to hear this, but not worry as she would find us another property to purchase. A month later, we found another house that we then purchased through Gaye Cawood Realty.
When purchasing this new house, we noted to Gaye Cawood that we would then need to put in our notice that we were no longer going to continue renting. We gave the owner 2 months’ notice. When signing the documentation for the new property, Gaye Cawood sat in my lounge & reassured me that we do not need to stress about cancelling our lease or about the agents commission as she would take care of this - which would be expected as she rented us a property & then sold us a property knowing what she was doing & that the landlord could be due the agents commission back due to our lease being terminated early.

Then as we had paid six months’ rent in advance, we would need to vacate the premises at the end of October 2022. Gaye Cawood & the owner of the property then decided that as they knew that they had lost our deposits due to the hack on the landlord side & the identity fraud on Gaye Cawood’s side that they would try change our agreed to contract to now state that we had paid 5 months’ rent plus a deposit - which was completely untrue & completely illegal as they were not allowed to simply take our 6 month’s paid for rent & reshuffle the use of our monies paid. Gaye Cawood & the landlord then decided that they were going to play an intimidation game & told us that we needed to either vacate the property a month early or pay an additional month’s rent - which is completely unethical & illegal. We then had to get lawyers involved - at our own expense, to then intervene. Once our lawyers communicated with both of them that what they were doing was not legal, they then quickly backed down & left the situation as is.

The story doesn't end here, the landlord is now expecting us to pay wasted agents commission & Gaye Cawood is once again unethical & has gone against her word of her sorting this fee out as she sold as another property knowing again exactly what she was doing - this matter is now also sitting with our lawyers.