The landlord can only collect a maximum of five weeks rent . He will be in breach of the Tenant’s Fee Act 2019 and will be fined if he receives the total deposit amount prior to issuing the draft tenancy agreement, holding deposit information, carrying out the right to rent check, EPC , meets all necessary pre tenancy compliance requirements and agreeing a Tenancy completion date with you. Do not pay it and inform him about the fee act, be sure to ask for a receipt if you go ahead.
To pay upfront deposit with no guarantee the property will be rented to you would be idiotic! This is not normal practice and the landlord needs to be checked
3 Likes
quite so, you pay after signing contract not before
Fined on what basis?
A breach of the legislation will usually be a civil breach with a financial penalty of up to £5,000 . However, if a further breach is committed within five years of the imposition of a financial penalty or conviction for a previous breach, this will be a criminal offence.
Im not aware of anything in the legislation that requires the deposit to be taken only after other documents are served.
1 Like
Perhaps you should do some due diligence on the LL, Say you’re happy to pay after seeing the AST, but as he is new , unaware of the LL legal responsibilities and to ensure your security you would like to see utility bills in the LL name and proof of ID.
Now either the LL will say no or be happy and understand your position, it will also set a level of trust. The LL address must be on the AST anyway.
As a landlord I would steer well clear of this! There is absolutely no reason that I can see not to do the whole thing through OpenRent which gives security on both sides. IMO there’s something very dodgy going on if the person wants to take your money outside of the OpenRent system.
2 Likes
@Bella1 Absolutely not true! Many landlords, myself included, only use Openrent purely as an advertising platform and conduct all transactions and paperwork totally independently.
I like full control of each aspect of the process, (nobody does the job as well as me!). I need to know things have been done correctly first hand, I struggle to accept a check box as confirmation.
Why do you want to be reliant and entwined in a platform that could disappear at any point in time? That’s the opposite of security!
3 Likes
I have similar landlord asking me to do this directly with him and was messaging me on WhatsApp but said his friends would be taking over it all as he lives away he wanted £1500 from me and sent me loads of pictures
But the problem is he is new on here to
As above, there are lots of landlords, myself included who dont want to risk letting someone else be responsible for letting and management, as a simple mistake could cost them £000’s. I just use OR for advertising.
1 Like
Openrent once collected the holding deposit for me, just before Easter. They said they will release it to the tenants. I emailed openrent to say the referencing would be delayed due to Easter holidays, but they released the holding deposit on Tuesday. I was in the middle of doing the referencing. The tenants were happy to pay me directly but I just was not pleased with the way Openrent dealt with everything, so I would ask for holding deposit directly to my account. LL should not really ask for the full amount without providing all the relevant .documents such contract, all certificates, How to rent Guide, EPC
You may not be aware that unless a specific deadline is agreed in advance, a holding deposit can only be held for 2 weeks and must then be returned.
1 Like
Dont use openrent for a holding deposit, just ignore it. Lots of threads exist on this one
We also only use OpenRent for advertising purposes though I may try their referencing this time round (maybe!)
We give our prospective tenants a letter with the application forms that says we don’t use OpenRent for payments and to not click ‘rent now’ and to not pay a holding fee to OpenRent as it won’t be accepted and will be refunded immediately.
My reasoning is plain and simple, I don’t see why I should allow a platform to keep my tenants money for 10+ days after a tenancy begins, which could end up being a full month from when a tenant pays (depending on when they wish to sign the tenancy).
This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.