Poor customer support and unfair cleaning fee deduction
I rented an apartment in Budapest through NIO Property Investments during my Erasmus, and unfortunately the experience was very disappointing.
While they do provide apartments, their focus seems to be only on collecting rent. Customer support is essentially nonexistent. Whenever you have a question or an issue, emails often go unanswered, and you never get any contact with the actual property owner because they only act as a management intermediary.
One of the most frustrating policies concerns apartment viewings during the last month of the lease. They do not provide an extra key for agents, which means tenants are required to be at home **twice per week** so that their guide can show the apartment to potential renters. If you cannot be there on a requested day, they charge **€50 per missed appointment**. This is extremely unreasonable, especially for students who have classes, exams, or travel plans. In one instance, someone even showed up without prior notice while I was not at home.
The final issue was the **€100 cleaning fee**. According to clause 5.4 of the lease, this fee should only apply if the apartment is returned in an unclean condition. Before leaving, I cleaned the apartment thoroughly even borrowing a vacuum cleaner from a neighbour because the apartment did not have one. During the checkout inspection, their colleague confirmed everything was fine and even recorded a video of the apartment. Despite this, they still deducted €100 from my deposit for cleaning, without providing any explanation or evidence, and they have ignored my messages asking for clarification.
Overall, my experience felt very one-sided: once the contract is signed and the rent is paid, support disappears and policies seem designed mainly to extract extra fees from tenants. I would strongly recommend future Erasmus students and renters to read the contract very carefully and consider other options before renting through this company.
28 June 2025
Unprompted review
