Hi am finding Open Rent hard work to deal with… I have an overseas tenant wanting to move in and his wife is coming to the UK in time once she gets her visa from the home office…
I can’t be the first person to have some one wanting to come from overseas!
So the issue The lead tenant clears the rental income fine… and passes all fine…
his wife does not because she is not employed… ( see above the husband clears the amount needed to rent the property ) so I guess she may just stay home or look for a PT role…
either way, the main lead is happy to offer full payment for the year up front…
so this would in my view solve the issue… and in time when his wife has her visa and is here she can then become a joint lead tenant with her husband… but trying to get that though to Open Rent is hard work!! and really needs a phone call not email back and forth!!!
I’m not sure I am not going to use OPEN Rent on my flat I wanted to move over
I have a couple in exactly the same circumstances and in the end just made the husband the sole tenant with his wife named in the tenancy agreement as a permitted occupier. this is perfectly legal and means you don’t need her to pass referencing. Before opting for this, you should check with your insurance and your lender to ensure that you’re not breaching any rules about all adult occupants being tenants.
You will still need to do right to rent checks for both of them.
Thank you.
I would fully understand the implications if the second person was not legally married to them. Byt they are married and she has a right to live here in the UK with her husband who is ex pat anyway.
Its just a case of waiting for the correct Visa which is in progress.
I find open rents " email only " when your this close with small issues that could be swept up in a 5mins phone call rather than days back and forth only now makes open rent look a service im not keen on reusing again for my other properties. Which i genuinely have and had the idea of moving them all over to openrent.
Im now not in favour of that.
To add to the frustration this morning all i got was a "CUT AND PASTE " Of yesterdays email only with a new name at the bottom of the email…a waste of 24hrs
I will be leaving an honest and factual review of Openrent on Google. Unless they do the right thing and pick up the phone!!!
I also find that the portal is good but lacking in one important area.
All communications for a tenant are viaxemail and not in one pkace on the portal!!!
Am i missing something here??
Sorry if any spelling im dyslexic and not got my gkasses using my phone can’t see half tge screen lol…
I have called the Home Office who where great BTW.
So she can’t leave her home country till she has the VISA anyway!!!
so this makes things in my view very easy…as once she is here I have to meet her to get a copy of her passport and Visa to be able to do a check as a landlord for right to rent… so that solves that issues there and then as I can then get back to open rent to add her to the tenancy…
why couldn’t Open Rent have told me that!
I only use Openrent for advertising myself, but my point about being a permitted occupier is that you cant really add anyone to an existing tenancy. You pretty much have to start again, ending one tenancy and starting a new one with all the attendant admin and costs potentially. You could just include her as a named tenant now, but without her being in the Country yet, its a risk, although it is one Ive occasionally taken myself if Im very confident of the people.
Hi Mark, to clarify, are you having a problem with the referencing part of the process? If so, the referencing is done by a third party called Rent Guard, not Openrent which is why you might be having issues getting a straight answer from Openrent? If the tenant is overseas and doesn’t conform to the rather narrow definition of a “regular” tenant (e.g. permanent employment with many years of solid UK based credit history) then I bypass Openrent’s referencing option and do the checks myself. If you do not select the referencing option on Openrent at the point you accept the tenants’ holding deposit, then you can essentially let your property to whoever you like without needing the tenants to “pass” anything. Alternatively, as David suggested, make the husband the sole tenant with her as permitted occupier (from the start, i.e. this can’t be changed later without making a new one).
I use Openrent for my portfolio of properties and I have found the service e.g. advertising, AST set up, deposit account opening etc, is pretty good, as long as you don’t need to contact them haha.
Rent to him only if you are happy , ensure a clause is included that where any other adult person habits the property, the whole process of the AST and vetting will need to be restarted. You then can decide how this is done.
That sounds like a problem with referencing, which si done by a third party, not Open Rent. But unfortunately the third party they use are not very good. In fact they’re very poor and I’ve used a different referencing agent for some tenancies.