Can I cancel a contract before it is signed...?

Landlord Discussion
1

I see no way to do this on the portal but assume I have the right to cancel an unsigned contract and refund the holding deposit should I want to?

What I thought was a good prospective tenant has had a parent involved and she is Chat GPT nitpicking and delaying the process and trying to get out of being an already approved guarantor which was always an upfront non negotiable. Its also awkward negotiating with someone who isn’t the contract holder and legally iffy?

I’m sure it will be fine but the statutory 15 days is too long and id rather be proactive that wait for this to statutory time out - have several others who want the flat and will just need to cough up for their referencing is this gets sticky. The potential void outweighs that cost. Cheers

2

If it hasn’t been signed then I can’t see why you can’t withdraw your offer to the tenant, surly your 1st step is to send a message to the person on the contract. Mind you I am not a legally trained landlord

3

A contract doesnt have to be signed to be enforcable but provided you havent accepted any rent payment beyond the holding deposit then there is no consideration (which is required to enforce a contract) so there should be no issue in not proceeding.

4

Ive never done this, but assume there is a cancel option on Openrent. I assume though you would have looked for this.

I’ve had a Google, and it says;

Steps to Cancel:

  1. Log in to your OpenRent Account.
  2. Select the relevant tenancy from your dashboard.
  3. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the button to reveal your “Cancel Options”.
  4. Choose the option to end the Rent Now process
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5

Thanks Karl - yes its the terminology that threw me. Not the label I expected for Withdraw or Cancel Contract. Thanks.

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