Principle Estate Management Reviews 

Dealing with property management companies can often be a time-consuming slow process where you never know who you're dealing with, being passed from pillar to post. I have to say, my new experience of dealing with Principle Estate Management, and in particular Charlotte, has been nothing but professional and customer-focused. I'm glad my apartment block has switched to Principle Estate Management.

One star is too high.

An absolutely disgusting company.Avoid at all costs.

Bad communication and wholly untrustworthy.

Doesn’t respond to emails, doesn’t follow through with agreed works, the manager screens/ignores calls from leaseholders.

Refuses to clarify any charges. Charges people for works without fully carrying them out then says they ‘will get a quote’ for the ‘additional’ works even though it has already been paid for.

General unclear billing.

Charges for contractors(cleaning /landscaping etc) which neglect to carry out visits or meet any standard of works and face no consequence for doing so

Sends invites to leaseholder meetings by post after the date of the meeting.

Actually making people sell their homes just because of them.

I’m a leaseholder at a development managed by Principle Estate Management. Over the last few months I’ve had a number of problems getting responses, and the pattern is consistent.

Ordinary correspondence is routinely ignored

Emails about the communal cleaning attendance sheet and a grounds maintenance visit, where I was told an update would follow, remain unanswered.
Written observations on the entrance doors project, sent during the statutory consultation, never received a reply.
A request for the company’s register of members, which has a five-working-day statutory deadline, was missed.

A reply generally only comes once a formal complaint is raised

The register of members request was only actioned after I submitted a formal complaint.
Principle’s own meeting summary from November 2025 recorded that some leaseholders were not receiving responses or call backs. The problem was known and has continued.
The formal complaints process no longer reliably produces a response either. Their procedure promises a response within 10 working days, and my Stage 2 review took considerably longer. A formal complaint about these failures was acknowledged, with a promise of an estimate and reasons if the deadline was missed. Neither arrived, and after a follow-up and being told it had been passed to the Property Manager, I still have no substantive reply over a month later.

Inaccurate statements in formal correspondence

A complaint response said no leaseholders had volunteered for a resident steering group. I had volunteered on the day of the invitation and never received an acknowledgement. Principle conceded this error in writing at Stage 2.
A letter said leaseholders had “agreed” to a key-only door system. At Stage 2 Principle accepted that no formal vote took place and that the wording could reasonably be read as implying one.

Record-keeping and process

The communal cleaning attendance sheet, set up for a fortnightly contract, appears to have been full for over a year, with no sign anyone noticed.
I received two versions of the same “final” Stage 2 response, signed by different people, after asking for an independent review.

I’d welcome genuine engagement and resolution. So far, Principle’s complaints process hasn’t met the standards it sets for itself.

The property manager Rachel Morton reacted quickly and professionally in organizing maintenance services for my apartment.

Neil and Courtney have been brilliant — super quick replies, efficient with everything, and great communication. Really happy with how they’ve been managing my 2‑bedroom flat.

Our apartment block is, unfortunately, managed by Principle Estate Management in Birmingham. Before Principle took over, we experienced PBM and Trinity Estates, both of which were extremely disappointing. We genuinely hoped that Principle Estate Management would be different, but they are the same as PBM and Trinity Estates.

The level of management has been incredibly frustrating. In my experience, there have been slow responses, poor communication, repeated mistakes and errors, lack of follow through and a general lack of care and diligence in dealing with matters affecting leaseholders.

What is particularly concerning is the rapidly escalating service charges. Costs continue to increase, while at the same time the quality and level of service do not appear to justify those costs. In fact, Principle have even increased their own fees. It is difficult to understand how charges can continue to rise while leaseholders are left chasing basic information and outstanding issues.

The situation is becoming increasingly serious for owners. There is a real concern that continued poor management, increasing costs and uncertainty around the building could negatively affect property values and make apartments increasingly difficult to sell. Owners should not have to contemplate selling at a substantial discount, or potentially even at auction prices, because of problems associated with the management of their building.

Another major frustration is the lack of financial information and transparency around costs and expenditure. Yet Section 20B notices appear to be issued promptly. From a leaseholder's perspective, it can feel like an endless cycle: notices and costs arrive, but the clear final information needed to understand and scrutinise those costs does not always follow in a timely manner.

Ultimately, leaseholders are then left having to spend their own time, money and energy challenging costs and trying to obtain information that should be readily available. This is not something owners should have to spend their lives dealing with.

I have already spent a considerable amount of my own time since Principle commenced managing the property dealing with unanswered communications, chasing issues, correcting errors and trying to obtain information. Given the level of service experienced, I will also be looking at the appropriate basis for recovering or accounting for the significant time and costs I have incurred as a result of having to deal with these ongoing management issues.

The whole situation has become extremely frustrating and frankly, sickening to watch. Leaseholders are paying increasingly high service charges and deserve to understand exactly what they are paying for and to receive a management service that reflects those costs.

To be fair, one positive experience has been my recent conversation with Christopher Jeffries, who has so far appeared sort of helpful, has been professional and willing to listen. He has only recently joined the company (approx 1 week ago), however, so it is too early to know whether his approach will result in meaningful improvements.

Overall, after experiencing PBM, Trinity Estates and now Principle Estate Management, it is extremely disappointing to find that changing managing agents has not produced the improvement we were hoping for.

At present, my experience is that the costs are increasing rapidly, the service is not improving, communication is inconsistent, information is difficult to obtain and leaseholders are being left to spend their own time and money challenging matters that should be properly managed in the first place.

It is a complete mess and I believe the level of accountability within the property management sector needs serious attention.

I absolutely do not recommend Principle Estate Management and will shortly be progressing with a complaint through the relevant channels, following up on costs information and will be invoicing them for my time, as their actions are unreasonable and the costs are unreasonable.

Ross understood me and my urgency. He was professional yet friendly. The process from enquiry to contract sign-off and handing over the keys was seamless.

Highly recommend the organisation based on the excellent service and attention to detail provided by Ross, lettings team and accounting team.

Thank you Ross

Aliyah was very helpful & professional when it came to dealing with my query. She resolved the issue very quickly, thanks again!

The gates on our car park have been poorly positioned since it was built and in the last decade or so it's become painfully obvious these needed to be shifted to deal with anti-social behaviour in the area and increase the visibility of people trying to break into the car park as a deterrent. Principle Estate Management took over our property in February 2022 and it's taken them this long, together with some unacceptable delays from Tower Hamlets council (who should have been chased to stay within the statutory timelines) to move the gates.

PEM selected the most expensive bid and leaseholders, me included, have paid 65 thousand in total for two steel electronic vehicle gates with a pedestrian gate alongside it to be moved. One gate has been replaced with a new one but for over a week has been padlocked with the temporary padlock that was used on the semi-broken old gate. The other gate has been left wide open for the last four days giving the local miscreants access to our car park and the back of our buildings - far from ideal in this neighbourhood. The second gate doesn't feature a pedestrian gate either, our property manager has neglected to maintain that access in the design. Even with the narrower entrance this can be done with a gate within a gate - there's an example of this in our road almost in sight.

There was no notice to leaseholders about when this work was about to start. This might sound like a formality but noisy work (they were digging up the tarmac) can be both annoying for residents and highly disruptive for anyone working from home, plus there's the disruption to car park access.

Our property manager states: "we couldn’t know how the old system will work with the new gates until we
fitted the gates". For a 65k project that involves security I would expect the gate contractors to be competent enough to be able to work this out in advance and I would hope the property manager would demand that. It also doesn't seem plausible as a good property manager would have informed us and given us two prices for the two scenarios. Some of the blame here must be attributed to Premier Gate Automation who were prepared to fit a gate in this strange, risky, non-functioning interim state. I imagine we're about to see some more excuses bounce around on this subject.

The communal lighting is still broken in my building. I carefully documented every single light with a photograph and description in a document in July but that didn't motivate any fixing. Most of these are just broken bulbs/starters, i.e. something a handyman could easily deal with and doesn't need a 10 thousand pound mega project to remedy. One at shoulder height still has its cover missing with the exposed mains electricity.

I reported a broken wooden post in our car park about a week ago. The web site allows you to add a photograph which I did as I thought it would be helpful. I see I have an email requesting a photograph of the problem putting the burden back on me to supply the photograph again.

Looking at the response to my last review, this firm appears to have a unique view on graffiti. I am not referring to street art here. Apparently it's better for it to be left on your property. This policy is something you should be aware of if you are considering this firm for property management. It goes against my view, the local council's stated view and one of the businesses which operates here. It turns out that business has been painting the graffiti out on one of our buildings as I suspected to avoid the slum look. On my building, just by the communal front door the "James is a c***" has faded away and has been replaced by a more mysterious haiku-like "Hope. After sucking c**k". If they are blaming the lack of graffiti removal on a decision by "core leaseholders" I would expect them to explain why less than 10% of the leaseholders can make this decision, perhaps by referring to our lease clauses. Why not simply ask all leaseholders if they want the property to be left in this disgraceful state. It's trivial to do these sort of surveys in the modern, electronic world.

A curious recent letter mentions they haven't done our accounts for the period ending March 2026 - it's October. It also states the service costs incurred are 57% higher than the budgeted amount. I'm not sure what to think about that.

Looking at other reviews I wish we had Steve from Southside managing our property, he sounds truly marvellous.

Please read my last review for essential information on how this firm is using abusive review management techniques in an attempt to manipulate the reviews on this site.

Steve at Southside was very professional when I visited the concierge office ⭐️

A shout out to steve from southside he's always is professional and certious, anything that comes up he deals with professionally and nothing is too much trouble credit to the company

Great customer service. Steve at Southside concierge office was extremely helpful and professional during my visit.

Kerry Shugar was very supportive in helping us resolve a fly-tipping problem. Principle have been a good managing agent for our estate.

I have nothing positive to say about this organisation. I sold my flat some months ago and they were literally no help. It took months of continual emails just to get a management pack from them, with my estate agent having to step in the end. Upon calling them to chase for any update, every single option on their phone menu when to voicemail. Voicemails were left multiple times with no response. During this time, they put scaffolding up outside of my flat window with absolutely no prior notification and no detail about what work was taking place and when it would take place. As I work from home, the noise of putting the scaffolding up was incredibly disruptive and I'd have planned to be in the office if I knew it was happening. It was then left outside the property for months after the work was completed, I'm unsure when it was finally taken down as I'd eventually moved out. Again, I tried to call about this but was never able to get in contact with an actual human. I've now been moved out months yet I'm still receiving tenant letters for my old property. Every time I email them back demanding I am taken off the mailing list, however these emails are clearly being ignored, meaning I'm getting these letters and the current tenant isn't.

I’ve been in the property for 6 months and feel it’s a good time to write a review. When I started looking for a property it was at a time of unexpected and difficult change, being quite a few decades since starting out on my own and now I was doing it all again. I had called a few agencies in the process and never felt like I was a human being until Ross showed me around where I am now. He was helpful, understanding, knowledgable and cheerful but most importantly I felt like a person, and felt comfortable from the start, after that Courtney dealt with all the admin and she was also helpful, kind, understanding and patient, but again most of all I felt like a person. Since then Courtney, Ross and Neil have continued to be helpful, answered my questions and resolved queries and any problems when necessary. My experience with them and Principle has made a real positive difference to the changes and upheaval I’ve experienced, so thank you.

Ross, Courtney and Neil make the over experience of rent super easy there were always available to anwser our questions and extremely quick replies we were able to view and move in within a matter of weeks all the then were really nice and professional highly recommend

I own several properties and we were looking at a change of managing agent for one of the buildings where I am a leaseholder - I dealt with James Neale, Senior Business Development Manager and he’s been fantastic. Knowledgeable and quick at responding, which is rare in that industry. Myself and the fellow leaseholders are looking forward to working with Principle

Ross was really exceptional both in communication and proactivity.
I found my move In very easy and well supported
Keep it up Ross👍🏽

Very prompt response to my email by Aliyah Lowe and her team.