I seem to be getting many requests from potential tenants ready to offer holding deposit based on only online viewing. Many are even offering to sign a tenancy agreement after online viewing.
I’ve always insisted on at least one face to face viewing before accepting any money until now (so that I get to know the potential tenant a bit, filter out the ones with bad attitudes, avoid ones who will ask for a million changes after they move in etc) but the sheer volume of such online only viewing requests in the last few months is making me wonder if this is a very normal way of renting these days?
Would appreciate if other landlords can advise if they routinely accept holding deposit after online viewing.
Never . I want to meet them and ask further questions . Also if they arrive worse for drink, no chance .You cannot find out much if they view online
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@Priya4
No way.
If they can’t be bothered to meet first to see the place in person don’t even consider them.
You don’t want someone who’s not serious enough to visit, meet you and see how big it is and know what the area is like. They may claim to be non smokers and non drinkers online even if they are heavy smokers and smell of drink at 9am in person. You also don’t want the hassle if they see it and don’t like and decide to move out after 2 months. Would you enter into any other long term financial commitment (takes 6-12m plus to evict if things turn bad) without meeting first?
You are trusting them with one of your biggest assets. You are trusting them to clean and take care of it, report issues promptly but not call you unnecessarily at weekends. You are trusting them to be reasonable with the neighbours. You need to look them in the eye and be happy with their attitude.
You always chose to meet before for a reason. What’s changed?
Maybe don’t bother offering online viewing. Post a video of the place instead and insist on meeting them before accepting any £.
Last an ever increasing number of tenants will have been receiving s21s ahead of may 1st due to LLs either selling up or deciding not to keep more problematic tenants while s21 is still an option. So more tenants of worse quality looking. All the more reason (plus longer eviction periods due to RRA) to be more stringent not less.
Good luck
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Definitely do not accept a holding deposit, particularly from a prospective tenant who hasn’t even viewed the property and who you haven’t met in person !
We adopt a completely different approach to selecting new tenants for our houses. We advertise (via OpenRent) on a Saturday or Sunday. We write the description ourselves with a lot of information about the property, the immediate location, our approach as landlords, and what we are looking for from tenants (that they will appreciate and care for the house as if it was theirs). We set the rent at a little less than the “market rent” for our houses (small Victorian terraced houses in a desirable Conservation Area), and we explain why in the advertising description. We also set out the viewing arrangements in the advertising as follows. We will select up to 6 applicants for viewing on the next Saturday morning at predetermined times and we explain that we will contact the selected applicants by the middle of the week. We do not offer “open viewing” or any random request for a different day or time
We typically get a very large number of applicants (50 to 75 or more by the Monday, when we will “pull” the listing offline). We then select 6 applicants for viewing based on a range of criteria, but including how they respond to our desire to have a careful and considerate tenant - as well as all the usual financial and personal issues.
At this stage we have usually had all kinds of offers to “pay a deposit and sign the tenancy agreement at once”, or asking to view before the Saturday. We always refuse all such approaches and never select these applicants to view.
This method has served us extremely well. We almost always end up with 6 prospective tenants at the viewing, any of whom we would be pleased to select. We meet them personally at the viewing (no agent) and rely on our personal reaction to how pleasant and easy they are to deal with. As a further point (since the applicants tend to be young couples at the start of their working life) we always ask for and always obtain a Guarantor.
This contrasts dramatically with our initial experiences when we first became Landlords and used an agent to choose the Tenants. They obviously selected the first applicants who appeared to “pass” the financial criteria but we were unhappy (and in one case very unhappy) with their choice and resolved to handle everything ourselves from then on. We have never had a single problem with any tenancy since then and could not have nicer tenants.
We appreciate that our business model may not suit all landlords and it only works for us as we live literally a few minutes away from all our houses.
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The behaviour you describe could be evidence that they are people who give little thought to major life decisions, what they do with their money or the LL/T relationship. For that reason, I’d ignore/reject their entire application, let alone the deposit.
The most important part of the entire application for me is the face to face when they view the property… and many don’t even get past the initial phone call.
Finally, I’m a firm believer in not taking holding deposits at all. I’ll leave my reasons for now as your post isn’t about that, but I would advise against them.
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