VIVID Reviews 

Good response time for repairs

Although Vivid has been a great Housing Association so far and I have had no issues when I came to ask about installing something to the outside of my house it was an out right no and no individual consideration was given.

From the minute the call was answered, I got a lovely, calm, friendly and professional lady who took the time to listen. She immediately put me at ease and reassured me the matter was already being looked into.

Quick repair time .friendly service

The boys done well clearing my gutters

My enquiry was handled very promptly and informative and politely.

Always happy with everything

Very helpful on the phone and prompt to visit and repair the property.

Going through Vivid emergency number they got somebody out very quickly at 5 am I called and bye 6 am. The plumber was here very grateful the leak pipe was found very quickly and fixed so no more water could flood. The plumber actually felt bad that he had to cut a hole in my wall but by this point I told him it’s absolutely fine. Please do what you’ve got to do to get the leak found as Vivid tenants we are very lucky that they do their best for us and respond quickly especially to emergencies. So only calling their emergency line at 5 am by 6 am the plumber was at my door myself being wheelchair bound I had visions of my entire house flooding and they just floating in my wheelchair. I know very dramatic.🙈

So I already know that most people reading this will be deciding whether or not shared ownership is a good idea, and will probably be reading many horror stories about the scheme, and bad reviews.

When I first read reviews for VIVID I was a little shell shocked and worried as I’d already started my shared ownership purchase. I tried to remember that most people will only write negative comments over positive. So that’s why I thought it best to write my experience.

I will try to summarise.

Buying
I bought alone which is why to get on the property market I needed to go down the route of shared ownership, I personally found the buying quite simple, so much so that my brother ended up doing it in a different estate owned by VIVID a few months after I’d completed the transaction. I used their panel solicitors and advisors which I recommend doing to keep things simple, Phillips law were great.

Living there
As with any housing Association and new build property you get an aftercare team a snags warranty defect period and with vivid, a useful portal. I also had a new homes booklet to help me navigate being a home owner. Now as per standard, teething issues occur and I had a rather big one which was a roof leak being a top floor flat(worth it for the top floor perks). This took a long time to sort but all I’d say is always chase, chase, chase. It may be annoying to do but it’s how things are with any type of developer and new build after care. You have to be the one to anchor the fix. And I managed to get an entirely new roof where the leak was, forgetting it ever happened after the fix. That’s the only thing I’d say can be tedious. Otherwise actually, defects period was simple, snagging was easily sorted, any repairs in communal areas used to be put onto a portal that you could keep an eye one. And the rest was pretty standard.

My neighbours were lovely so I never had any issues on that front. We were all first time buyers so helped each other out.

Service charge is a scary term to any shared ownership buyer, but in my case we always ended up receiving a refund for overestimations and this is the best outcome to have. They pay you back rather than you underpaying and owing them money. Ours also never went up too much (nor the rent) and I believe each year was roughly 20/30 pound extra a month on rent review which isn’t the maximum they can do so it seemed always relatively fair in my opinion. The rent does only go up on a yearly basis but you can always buy more of your share if you need it to go down by stair casing. One of my neighbours did this and seems quite simple.

Selling
After 3 years me and my partner decided we wanted to move out to get on the property ladder together and fully. Without shared ownership and my buying alone, we would not of been able to afford the home we now have. My equity growth was quite substantial for 3 years. We did admittedly have a large top floor 2 bed to sell, which is much rarer than a 1 bed commodity. And we kept it like new with very minimal alterations so our buyer received a like new property that had already had defects fixed. And I do believe that worked in our favour for the quick sale.

The selling was so simple and easy for us. We found a booklet on the portal for resale advice, gathered all the documents we needed, sent them to VIVID and they had a nominstion period to be able to sell our property which ended up taking 30 minutes before we had a buyer who wanted to view it. We cut out estate agents all together as we were buying new again. This is your cheapest option. Estate agents are very pricey. And it’s worth taking the time to make sure your photos are appealing.

The buyer was a first time buyer (normal for shared ownership resales as it’s an affordable way to enter the property market) and so our chain was pretty simple. The sales team emails you with viewing info and progress updates and how to make a good impression and to be really honest I found it all really straight forward. Again I do believe it depends on how well you look after your property and the photos you take matter, as to whether or not you will be able to sell fast, but we honestly had so many worries here and the first enquiry ended up being our buyer. It was super easy and less complicated than I expected.

The sales team, especially Eileen were so helpful and quick to respond to us.

I just think it’s a really good idea to do shared ownership if you can’t afford an outright buy. It’s saves you a lot of money from just renting. But you do have to research it if you’re not ever wanting to buy it outright. I knew I’d want to sell once I had a partner so I only bought 25% to make sure it would appeal to a larger buyer pool when selling. Buy more and you risk loosing affordable buyers if you plan to sell after a certain time

I cannot thank VIVID enough for giving me the chance to afford my own home one day through this scheme.

Had a massive water leak early hours in the morning which flooded my kitchen and living room...rang vivid out of hours to report the issue as an emergency..they was very quick in attending. Jurgen was so kind, helpful, calm and knowledgeable. He found the issue very quickly..which made me feel so much better and reassured and so grateful for his help. Thank you.

Excellent service, very good tidy clean plumber, a credit to vivid.

It was a good experience, especially Eileen she has been amazing helped me throughout the sale of my property.
Many people have negative views of management companies, but mine personally was a very positive experience.

Had an emergency call out to fix my front door as the lock had broken. Visited by Jurgen who called to say he was on his way and managed to do a temporary repair to the front door so at least my property was secure. He was courteous, extremely professional and explained the next steps including that he would put in a request for the lock to be fully replaced and also showed me what the issue was. He is a credit to the repairs team

Jurgen was absolutely brilliant tonight, quickly fixed my locks. Friendly professional and great with my young son!!

The company need to be more respectful towards customers especially Disabled ones the operator I spoke to treated me like an idiot
3 hour job and workman turned up at 11-45 for a three hour slotted job they just don’t care

Everything

Mia helped us on whatsapp and live chat 2 days in a row. She was professional, courteous and friendly.

Pretty much everything is badly fitted, they flooded part of the landing and hallway, someone stole the plug off the cooker, the bathroom tap/shower has amazingly low pressure so the shower attachment is useless, the tiles around all the sockets are out of line, the trim around the kitchen window is shocking, and none of the cupboard doors are level, and the trim around the edges of the all the counter tops is shockingly bad. And waiting for them to show up, only for no one turn up on one occasion. I could go on believe me.

I had a lovely Gent out today to fix the cistern on my toilet,His name was Carll Ellis , he was prompt,tidy professional, informative polite and did a fantastic job highly recommended, Thanks Carl