Hayden Real Estate - Torquay

After being a tenant with Hayden for the last 4 years I'm really disappointed in the service we received.A few of the issues we dealt with during our tenancy were:1. Maintenance requests being ignored.On 11 April 2022, I raised a maintenance issue with our property manager. Despite several emails and phone calls following it up over the course of 9 months, I was met with limited assistance. Upon vacating the property in January 2023, the maintenance issue had yet to be resolved.2. Lack of communication.The lack of communication both to tenants as well as within Hayden Real Estate Torquay is alarming. On numerous occasions, we contacted the office to speak to our property manager about various things during our tenancy, and never once were our phone calls returned despite being told that the message would be passed along. Additionally, whenever the property manager changed (which was several times for us) we were never informed, so when I did need to speak to the necessary person I didn’t know who I was meant to be contacting.3. Arrears issues.This is a really important one to note for anyone currently renting or considering renting through Hayden as it may affect future applications with other agencies. Hayden’s way of processing rent is to set up a direct debit on their side and they are the ones to organise when the money will be debited. For example, our due date for rent was the 3rd of every month, they would process it on the 3rd, which occasionally would fall on a weekend, so was, therefore, not processed until a few days later. As a result of Hayden operating this way, it red-flagged us with other rental agencies for having arrears. When I contacted our property manager at Hayden to discuss the issue and request a letter explaining that we were never late on rent, she was less than helpful making it feel as though what I was asking was a massive hassle for her despite it impacting us greatly. She said that she would do the letter either that afternoon or the next morning, of course, it wasn’t done and I had to follow up the following afternoon as it was an urgent matter for us.4. Disorganisation.We broke our lease 6 months early, however, gave plenty of notice for this. An initial inspection for prospective tenants was arranged and when I contacted the real estate agent a few days later querying how the inspection went and if a second one would be needed so we could plan accordingly, the response I received was:Thanks for touching base the open went well. I am hoping I will not have to hold another inspection as there are some applicants which I will process today.Despite this response, it was to our surprise when packing one day that an additional inspection was held for prospective tenants, in which we were not made aware of despite the Victorian Consumer Affairs stating that agents must give written notice within a certain time frame to hold inspections. This ties in with my point about the lack of communication within the office. We had called 2 days beforehand to speak to the relevant staff member and were told that she was not returning from holidays until the next day and our message would be passed along and they’d get her to call us. We were never contacted, yet had we been she could have given us the necessary notice. I was also informed that the applications that were meant to be processed 2 weeks prior had not been “because her boss sent her on holiday”. Consequently, this severally delayed the process of finding a new tenant.These are only a handful of the issues we experienced during our tenancy, each which I feel was met with what I can only describe as rudeness. In my opinion, it feels as though there is a massive lack of care towards their tenants, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this is extended to their staff as well due to the high staff turnover - which speaks volumes in itself.

5 star rating for Hayden as well as the property Manager - Emma Carletti, very professional service right from the get-go. Emma is very pro active in her approach, friendly and an absolute pleasure. I have never had to follow-up on any queries as she has always got back to me within an hour or two, tops!Definitely a responsive and efficient rental agency - rare to find these days in the competitive market out there!

We were about to withdraw our property from the market after having it listed with Great Ocean Properties for approx 10 months with no sale, after spending $4k on marketing.We had a calamity of errors with Great Ocean Properties, which led to a fraudulent buyer being given access to our property without our consent, having to threaten to call the police to get them out, having to get the locks on the house changed, having to relocate our furniture and move back into the house after we had vacated and thought it was sold..... and if that wasn’t bad enough, having the director of the company insist that they were still entitled to the full commission on the fraudulent sale of $1.87m that never settled..... And that they would... ‘charge us commission again, the next time they sold it’Out of principle we decided to change agents even if it would cost us more to re-list it with another agent.We then engaged Bryan Hayden, Ben Smith and Darcy Bennett from Hayden real estate and our experience could not have been more different.Understanding that we had just been put through the ringer by another agent and that the property had been listed for 10 months, Bryan offered a sensible, low cost marketing strategy and commission structure. With some smart ideas to freshen the place up to get it sold.Ben Smith and Darcy Bennet, then got to work bringing people through. Understanding that we had been running open days for almost a year, the boys put in extra effort to coordinate the open day times to minimise the disruption for us.Within 6-8 weeks it was sold.The sale price, was the same Advertised price that it had been listed at for almost a year.Our family can not thank the guys at Hayden real estate enough. I have never left an online review in my life before, but I felt that the contrast in our experience between these two real estate agents and company directors needed to be highlighted.The sign of a good agent and company director in my mind is what they choose to do in a difficult situation.Do they choose a quick buck or their integrity?These two agents and company directors had a choice. In my mind Bryan chose integrity.Thanks again Bryan, Ben and Darcy, keep up the good work.

Absolutely appalling service - our offer on a house was accepted, it then took almost 2 months to have paperwork/contract etc put together (which included being yelled at on the phone when we called up to enquire about an update). The house was then taken off the market, after our offer was accepted in writing, due to the agents not complying with certain conditions on their contract with the land owners. When we tried to speak to a senior member of staff, I spoke with a disguistinly condescending man, who essentially told us tough luck." Darcy was under-experienced and an extremely unprofessional agent

What can we say, it was a fantastic experience from start to finish, Brent was diligent, highly informed, considered and always provided the right advice even when we didn't want to hear it. Brent's insights and creative thinking and his relentless hard work was instrumental in finding a settlement that was mutually beneficial. He was an absolute pleasure to deal with and we can't recommend him enough,

Wasted an hour driving to look at online commercial listing that has sold sticker on sign in Torquay. Bet if I check again in a week it will still be up! Not acceptable

Hayden have been our Agent for 2 years and they have been a joy to deal with. We had our hot water service burst and our property manager Enzina Crick-Alexander ensured we had a brand new service installed within 3 hours. Amazing woman to have on your side. Highly recommenced.

We recently purchased a property through Simon at Hayden Torquay. From the outset we appreciated Simon's responsiveness, attention to detail and willingness to collaborate with all parties to achieve a win/win outcome. In a highly competitive seller's market, as a buyer Simon's professionalism meant a lot.

Brent Hartigan and the team were first rate and provided great service through the whole purchase process. Recommend Brent and the team for either your selling or purchasing needs on the Surfcoast