I’ve just paid an £80 holding deposit.
and the landlord said：
If you send us your email address we can send you a contract. We would ask Openrent to return the holding deposit to you and you would instead pay the deposit to us and we would put it in the government DPS scheme.
It’s strange isn’t it. The landlord is trying to override openrent’s and he wants me to transfer money directly to him?
？？？
Have you viewed property? Dont do anything without viewing.
It’s not abnormal for landlords to want the deposit paid direct, I do this myself as do many landlords on here.
Why do I do it? I like having the control, plus nobody does as good a job as I do!
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thank you, because i am in China now so i just ask viewing by online
The note sent to me by my landlord has me worried that this is a scam,
may i ask what should I do to get my £80 deposit back?
openrent customer services？
thanks
The landlord needs to initiate the return of the deposit via openrent.
It still could be a scam though, without viewing property you are at a higher risk. It’s a small amount, I wouldn’t hand over any higher amounts until you are totally satisfied.
Make sure you do thorough checks. You can check land registry to see if landlord owns property for example.
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thank you. I’m going to pay extra attention to this. I do worry about it.
Its suspicious because there is no requirement for a landlord to protect a holding deposit in a government scheme. Any landlord should know that, so are they just lieing to you?
I missed the government scheme part, this isn’t required as David has said so definitely suspicious.
This is what he actually said… and it could be interpreted correctly. LLs can return holding deposit once a tenant is found or they can use it as part payment towards the entire deposit which they then protect.
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We’ve had this situation as landlords. The tenant has to pay the holding deposit by UK debit card as they were living in Canada so it wasn’t possible to do it through open rent as they didn’t have a UK bank account (which is what we normally do)
They may have changed their systems since then but this was the position last year. Check it out with open rent.
Who asked you to pay a holding deposit? I’ve had potential tenants paying one without veing asked to and assuming it gave them some rights or priority. It means nothing though
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I’ve been a landlord for 25 years and what the landlord is asking is completely normal. I’ve never used a 3rd party like Open Rent to manage my deposits and there is a very important reason why. The law with respect to holding deposits and security deposits places the onus on the landlord to handle them correctly and not a 3rd party. I see no reason whatsoever to involve Open Rent in this process - it merely adds another layer of complexity and muddles lines of responsibility. Indeed the law with respect to the handling of deposits is set up to assume that the landlord has been paid and not a 3rd party.
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