Portico Property - Highbury Reviews 

I have just sold my apartment in Bloomsbury with the help of Shyamal Bhatt of Portico, Highbury.

It is a very difficult market with prices sliding month by month. I also had a rather tricky buyer who delayed and demanded lower prices. But it is a buyer’s market.

Throughout the prolonged stressful period of selling my flat Shyamal was always supportive, sympathetic and gave me good advice and guidance. He was a good communicator, always replied promptly, and I much appreciated that. He was also good at communicating with the buyer. In the end he shepherded the sale through. I was relieved to sell as I am of an age where I needed to offload my property and its attendant cares and I am grateful to Shyamal for facilitating that.

I should also say that in retrospect Filiberto putting my flat on at a million pounds plus was way too optimistic. This was in late 2025. The price falls in central London had already started. In retrospect if my property had been priced lower at the start I might have sold it earlier and for a higher price.

Although I like Melissa Mireilles I have to say she was not a prompt communicator, many of my emails were simply ignored. And she told me OVO had told her I had nothing to pay, but I did, and as a result I was harassed mercilessly by OVO and a debt collector which was very stressful.

I would recommend Shyamal Bhatt to anyone thinking of putting their property on the market.

In sum:

- Consistently poor service and incompetent management.

- Repeatedly left without essential services for days, weeks or months.

- £2,000+ deposit unlawfully withheld for over a month, despite no deductions being disputed.

- Initially attempted to pressure us into paying for unnecessary professional cleaning.

- Their poor service was a key reason we left the property.

**We would not recommend Portico.**

In full:

Portico have no qualms in repeatedly acting both incompetently and (in my understanding) unlawfully in equal measure.

Portico’s service has been consistently poor in the last c.3 years of our interactions.

Their property manager has been particularly inept.

Whilst we rented a property, Portico (as managing agents) were consistent slow to respond to any issues, leaving us often without key essentials, like hot water or working appliances for days, weeks, and sometimes months at a time. They required constant chasing just to do their job to the absolute minimum standard.

On returning our deposit, it has been a whole month and we still have not had it returned. This is despite the landlord agreeing to no deductions and us calling/emailing Portico almost daily. Not only is this inconvenient, but seemingly entirely unlawful (deposits should be returned within 10 days). There is nothing in dispute. There is literally no reason, save for Portico’s ineptitude, to unlawfully withhold a >£2000 deposit.

Portico also initially attempted to unlawful pressure us into paying for a professional cleaner, despite one not being required. (In fairness, they later recanted and accepted this was not lawful, only after significant opposition from us).

One of the key motivations for eventually leaving the property was to stop having to deal with Portico in future.

Unfortunately, we cannot recommend Portico to anyone.

AWFUL experience. If I could give Portico 0 starts I would, I truly could not recommend them less. The lack of communication was the first and most prevalent issue throughout our Tennancy (which was cut short due to a hazardous mould issue which was flagged many times before and during the Tennancy). My flatmate and I spent hours and hours of our time trying to draw attention to and rectify the multiple issues with the property, some more serious than others, on many occasions we were ignored and on some occasions the portico employees were actually very rude. I will not name names but a lady in the Highbury office in particular. The ordeal with portico cost us a great deal financially but also in terms of stress, not to mention the health implications of living in a damp flat for 5+ months during the height of winter, in an uninsulated room, where the radiator fell off the wall and the heating did not work initially. I don’t ever leave bad reviews but I seriously believe people should avoid this service. Would not wish it upon others, particularly when you are overpaying for a property and working hard to do so!
The issues were never ending , and I was constantly in awe of the audacity of Portico to try and charge us for various things that we flagged as issues many times to
them and were not our fault. If you have the misfortune of using Portico, I reccomend you keep a record of your engagement with them.
Other problems included a gas leak for the first four months of the tenancy, the flat not being cleaned before our arrival, marks all over the place, broken kitchen appliances and shelves, the list goes on.
I hope portico work to improve their service and treatment of their clients.
This experience was in 2024-2025 but I’m only now able to talk about it without feeling extremely angry and sad.

Just a great group of people, really helpful throughout the process, really recommend them for buying or selling your property especially Gurtegh he is a legend!

FILLIBERTO has amazing customer service skills .
He ticks all the boxes and has a real passion for his job, which i must say he is extremely good at.

He just seems to go just that extra mile where nothings seems to be a problem.

He gives great helpful honest advice and always gets back to you in a timely manner .

Thanks again portico, outstanding customer service 10/10

Filiberto, Magdi and the team at Portico provided very good advice relating to the sale of our flat in NW5. Their service was efficient, personable and professional at all times, with very good communication throughout. The accompanied all viewings which helped us enormously. Highly recommend them.

When I rented a property through Portico, I had high hopes as the experience that I had with the rentals team at the Highbury branch was excellent - they were so helpful and efficient and made the process of finding a rental property in London as pain free as possible.

However, upon moving into the flat and experiencing the property management services of Portico, I can honestly say it is the worst experience I have had with any property management service in London during the 10+ years I have lived here. I raised a limited number of issues with the flat during my 2.5 year stay there, however, on each occasion, the management team failed to engage with the issue or send someone to fix it. I was constantly having to send follow up emails to check in, most of which went unresponded to.

Despite failing to resolve any issues with the flat, Portico were keen to ensure that they satisfied their obligation to do annual property checks and would email me every 3 - 4 months to arrange these. I would provide authority to visit the property whilst I was out at work and would subsequently be informed that these visits had not occurred on every single occasion. When I enquired as to why, I was told that the management company could not locate the keys to the property, which obviously raised significant security concerns. During the course of my tenancy, we then arranged for them to visit and make a copy of my set of keys, which they then also subsequently immediately lost.

On checkout of the flat, there were protracted discussions around deposit deductions, due to the team failing to respond efficiently throughout the process. This was finally resolved 4 months after end date of the tenancy and an email was sent saying that the funds had been released. The funds are still outstanding (over a month following this) and the team has been unable to provide a meaningful or accurate update on the status of these funds.

Whilst I would recommend finding a property through this agent, I would absolutely avoid renting any property that is managed by their property management company.

Magdolna of Portico Highbury has put an enormous amount of work, much beyond what I would expect from an estate agent, and helped me admirably while I was working searching for a property. She was with me every step of the way and proved extremely effective and helpful. Highly recommended!

Excellent communication, efficient and professional. Met my requests and were honest and transparent about what could be delivered. In addition, very personal service. Excellent suggestions and referrals for mortgage and legal assistance. Would have no hesitation using their services in the future.

I dealt mostly with Guy Steenkamp. He was really helpful and professional. Was easy to contact and good to deal with. I was purchasing a property.

An absolutely well organised and structured agency and easy communication. Tom Newman as my agent was always polite and took time for my concerns. I can recommend him to anyone and have never had such a great agent before.

We have been having a very poor service throughout the 7 years we have been renting our flat in Highbury.
Whenever we had a problem we had to wait many days before they replied and took any action.
Most of the times we had to address directly the owner who could step in and unblock the situations.
At the present moment , we are experiencing a huge delay in the return of our deposit:
after one month since we left the property we do not know yet when the founds should hit our account.

Really poor quality service, the whole way through the process.
At the start, I was promised my property would be advertised on social media outlets, and in the estate agent windows. None of these things happened - in the end we only had 1 viewing (which is no surprise, given there was no marketing whatsoever).
During the sale process, I was not warned at all that the process was moving over to a Move Manager, and therefore was concerned of a security breach when a woman from another company had all of my private and personal details as well as commercial details relating to the sale.
Then for some reason it moved back from the Move Manager to the agent, who repeatedly ignored my emails - and ignored my questions. The agent gave access to my property to a surveyor without my permission and without notifying me that someone was coming to the property which from a security point of view is completely unacceptable and from a safety point of view, terrifying that someone had my keys and walked into my property.
There were 5 missed completion dates, and zero communication about the delays or the problems from the agent to me - even when I emailed and asked, my emails were only answered after my nudges (which were normally a few days later).

I picked Portico because I was impressed with the agent on the first meeting and thought we had built rapport but it seemed that once the sale was going through, the agent clearly couldn't care less about the relationship, about keeping me (the client) in the loop with issues around completion, with the delays that the buyers kept incurring, or about giving proper notice when giving a third party the keys and access to my property. Really shocked that Portico took so much money from this transaction when the quality of the service was abysmal as soon as there was a buyer.

We can’t recommend Portico Highbury branch enough! Charlotte especially, was very patient and guided us through the whole renting process. Her knowledge and experience is second to none.

Had a pleasant experience renting through Portico in Highbury.
Louis dealt with professionalism and was always kind to reply to all my queries fast.
Highly recommended!

For the first time renting in London and it was an amazing experience to deal with Louis. Very helpful and the renting process was easy and fully explained. I would highly recommend the Highbury office and Louis especially. Many thanks

My family and I had agreed rental on an apartment at the Highbury stadium square. We had agree a move in date of Saturday and that keys would be given to us at the office. On the friday prior, our lettings agent contact Louis, called me on my mobile which I didn’t have access to , the messages were very abrupt and short stating that deposit hadn’t been received and that it needed to be done immediately. I was told by Louis that this would be done on the exchange of keys being the Saturday. I was in the office at work on friday and I. A client meeting all afternoon. I managed to text him that I was unable to do this in the next three hours or so and he continued to bombarded me with text messages and calls. I found his conduct unacceptable, rude, antagonising and unprofessional. He made the entire situation very stressful. He sent me very short and demanding text messages threatening that there would be no move in date that Saturday , why would he not call me earlier in the week to state this?!? Because he is rubbish at his job that’s why. From a glance at the other poor Google reviews it looks as if the Italian and Spanish speaking colleagues have a bit of a racist attitude toward Hispanic and Latino Americans customers. All the reviews with 1 star are from that cultural background.

As I was not able to respond to him, he kept calling my mobile fully well that I couldn’t answe and left voice mails stating that he had not heard back to me and that the administration office was going to close at 16.30 that fiesta evening and that basically we would be homeless!! How dare they antagonise me in such manner, Utterly unacceptable!! Charlene, Louis’ manager, was also not any help to diffuse the situation she also spoke to me at around 17.45 and said the move would not occur tomorrow morning as planners, made things even more stressful as I didn’t have my credit card with me at my office to make the transfer.

Portico staff are rude, short, aggressive on the phone. And I would advise anyone who is thinking of using this agency to stay well clear. During our tenancy they were slow at answering their emails, of course why wouldn’t they, they are just there to take the money and swipe their hands clean. Awful company.