No replies from OR regarding your concerns yet?
Or we could get Mr Musk to take over open rent 
But who knows where that would lead
An interview with Donald ……
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I totally agree
There is a mother trying to deal with a difficult situation of an ill daughter but this isn’t the ideal platform for students replacements
So she could lose thousands in rent trying to find a replacement on the wrong platform and never be successful
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Was it the response though that was automated i.e someone generated a complaint that lead to an automated response being issued
As I said, its possible that another forum user took offence and flagged the post, although it was fairly innocuous so I dont think its the most likely reason and moderation is supposed to weed out the genuinely offensive posts. A later similar post is still in moderation without being flagged as innappropriate.
Be aware that despite @Daz not responding to this thread to address users’ concerns, responding to him on threads where posts have been flagged inappropriately will result in…
… your posts being flagged as off-topic 
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Thanks for pointing me to this thread @tatemono, but I have to say some of these posts are… surprising.
Our community guidelines are here and agreed to by all members:
https://community.openrent.co.uk/faq
Where we receive reports, or see posts, that go against these guidelines they will be moderated as you have seen. We have a mixture of automatic and manual moderation. We can’t run this forum without any moderation, because sadly, as many users have seen there are plenty of posts which go far beyond what would be deemed acceptable by these clear guidelines.
If you want to come here and repeatedly breach the guidelines, your account will be suspended. This forum is intended to be a friendly place where landlords and tenants support other landlords and tenants in their journey - not dismiss their questions out of hand, or criticise people directly.
And yes, posting on a thread where a genuine landlord is asking for help, to cross-post about something entirely different, is against our rules and I’m not surprised it was flagged and removed as off-topic. This is covered under keep it tidy.
If any users repeatedly breach these rules then I’m afraid this isn’t the place for them and they will be suspended. We want landlords and tenants, renting for the first time or the 100th time, to feel welcomed and supported here.
If you are not sure your post adds to the conversation, think over what you want to say and try again later.
My response to this post was deleted, but I think Ive made my point anyway.
We live in a time where intelligent people are silenced so that stupid people wont be offended
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Lets see how long Leslie1’s post stays up
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Your response (in a totally new topic that was removed to “keep it tidy”) is here, but I’ll quote it for clarity:
Daz, firstly thank you for replying. Ive read through the forum guidelines and I cant see how any reasonable interpretation of them would have flagged my posts. Landlords or tenants will often ask a question that reveals an underlying issue. To simply address the presenting question would be seriously remiss. Posters on any forum may sometimes be surprised by a reply. They may not always welcome the suggestions made, but provided they genuinely have the posters interests at heart and are not gratuitously rude, I think its vital to make people think beyond their initial query to the bigger picture. My posts may have been brief and even blunt, but I would stand by the comments as being in the best interest of the posters.
“Go find an agent” is not a helpful response, just like “you should have done it yourself” isn’t.
People will post when they have a problem with a high street agent - responding with “you should have used OpenRent” or “Do it yourself next time” isn’t helpful. People will post when they have problems with OpenRent or a different agent, and the aim should be to help solve the problem at hand or point them in the right direction. “Go get training” or “You don’t know enough” doesn’t improve the discussion. I think even yourself @David122, with your years of experience and knowledge, wouldn’t claim to know everything. How would you feel if someone told you something similar after you posted a simple question?
If people receive a response that contravenes the community rules, then it should be flagged and will be dealt with accordingly.
This isn’t a commercial issue, and that kind of statement isn’t additive to the conversation either. If it was commercial we’d automatically respond to every post pointing out OpenRent is “better” in some way. If your aim of being here is simply to attack OpenRent, again, that’s unlikely to be helpful or relevant to the conversation. It also casts doubt onto how genuine your comment is - do you simply have a bone to pick, or are you here to help others and learn from others?
TLDR: Telling people who have a problem using OpenRent to use a different agent, telling people who use a high street agent to use OpenRent, or telling people to “get some training” shows a lack of empathy with their situation and a lack of desire to help. That’s fine, but if you hold any of those viewpoints then simply don’t post on their topic!
Daz, I think you are completely mis-characterising my post, not to mention my motivation. Just for clarity, my post was:
“As so-called accidental landlords you are very vulnerable to what you dont know. I would suggest you dont try to manage this yourself, but find a reputable local agent to do full management.”
The poster described themselves as an accidental landlord, indicating that they’re not letting the property as the start of a new career, but out of necessity, perhaps until their circumstances change. Recommending a long process of training would not therefore be appropriate. However, that leaves them without the knowledge that I believe is required to manage both the tenancy and the let property. Openrent’s RentNow offer is a big step forward for the sector, but I hope you would agree that it doesn’t cover every aspect of property rental end to end. The legislation governing our sector is fearsome and the consequences of the landlord making a simple mistake can be devastating and cost them thousands of pounds or worse, their liberty! My post, admittedly short and not spelling out this rationale, was nevertheless intended to protect them as much as possible from these consequences by suggesting they seek professional management. I would stand by that recommendation and believe that all accidental landlords should opt for a full management agency contract.
If you are saying that this is inappropriate advice, then could you clarify why. If, however, you’re saying that such advice can only be given with a full explanation and that the brief version I posted breaks forum rules, then I would suggest that the rules are too heavy handed and should be revisited. Brevity isn’t necessarily rudeness or offensiveness, its sometimes just expedience.
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If you are saying that this is inappropriate advice, then could you clarify why
Of course and thanks for asking / raising this point of confusion.
Pretty much every discussion on this forum could boil down to a debate about DIY vs. online vs. high street agents. But the questions are rarely asking which is better, they are asking for advice on a specific scenario.
For example, in this instance, the landlord was asking about the pros/cons of rent in advance. Let’s say they go to a high street agent, and the agent presents them with a tenant who they say has no credit history but is offering 6 months rent up-front. The agent asks the landlord if they’d like to proceed. What does the landlord do? They come here and ask for advice.
Saying:
- “Do it yourself”
- “Use OpenRent, they can handle this all for you”
Is unhelpful and off-topic. Just like saying to an OpenRent landlord “use a high street agent” isn’t helpful. Both an OpenRent landlord and a high street agent landlord can ask for advice from their agent - but they’ve come to this community for the perspective of other landlords without skin in the game. And as you can see, there are very differing viewpoints on the subject with no one correct answer.
So, as per my last post, if posts that simply say: “Use OpenRent” or “Use a high street agent” or “Do it yourself next time” are reported they will be removed as off-topic. I hope that is clearer now.
They’re not letting the property as the start of a new career … that leaves them without the knowledge that I believe is required to manage both the tenancy and the let property
Let’s start with some stats:
- Roughly 50% of landlords own only a single property and could be characterised as “accidental landlords”
- This rises to ~80% of landlords with < 5 properties
- Fewer than 25% of landlords use a managing agent or service
Saying all “accidental” landlords should use a managing agent is not representative of what is actually happening in the market. That’s your opinion, and that’s fine. But it’s not what landlords are actually doing.
If you want to start a discussion about the pros/cons of going DIY vs. online agent vs. high street agent, then by all means go for it. That will be on-topic, because it’s what the discussion is about. And to be explicit, this won’t be removed / moderated if reported.
But please don’t turn every post where you suspect the landlord is new to the game into that same discussion. If a landlord has posted here, then they are by definition here to learn, and they’ve shown they want to play an active part in their landlord journey.
Openrent’s RentNow offer is a big step forward for the sector, but I hope you would agree that it doesn’t cover every aspect of property rental end to end
Now, this is really getting off-topic, but yes I do believe OpenRent’s service comprehensively covers every aspect of a property rental end to end.
Our team, which include in-house legal, have helped landlords create and manage hundreds of thousands of tenancies. This is many orders of magnitude greater than any high street agent or landlord in existence. Our team, along with our partners, have seen, supported, and dealt with more edge cases and parts of the legislation than any other agent or landlord can reasonably have expected to. There isn’t a more experienced lettings team in the country, and across our website (ie. Rent Now), help centre, blog, and direct customer support - we offer unparalleled access, knowledge, and expertise.
But I’ve not posted this to users saying: “I used a high street agent / DIY / different online agent and it went wrong, please help” because that’s off-topic. The same rules apply both ways.
Thanks for your reply and for clarifying your position.
My reason for recommending a high street agent was because I believed that they are offering something additional to the Openrent offer and vital to an inexperienced landlord. Most high street agents offer either a let-only option or a fully managed service. The latter would normally include at least the services I’ve listed below in addition to tenant-find and initial contracting.
You’ve said that you believe Openrent’s service “comprehensively covers every aspect of property rental end to end”, which is not off-topic at all, but goes to the heart of my reason for posting. If what you’ve said is correct, then clearly I’m wrong and will gladly apologise. I should add that its not that I believe that high street agents are better at what they do than OR. In my experience, usually quite the opposite. However, a landlord would have legal redress against an agent who had contracted to provide a comprehensive service but failed to do so and as I’ve said, the motivation for my post was the protection of a landlord who is likely oblivious to the requirements of the role and to the financial and other costs of making a mistake.
I’d be grateful for your comments on the list, which isn’t intended to be comprehensive:
This list does not include services that I’m already aware that Openrent provide
- Pre-letting property inspection – important areas to cover:
- Siting and suitability of smoke and CO alarms
- Layout and bedroom sizes, (to avoid legal over-crowding)
- Health and safety issues
- Furniture and white goods requirements
- Heating suitable
- Advice on type of tenant to aim for and rent achievable based on market knowledge
- Inventory creation and photographs of property condition
- Organising Fire Risk Assessments where required
- Establishing ownership/consent to let of the property
- During letting
- Constructing the advert and ensuring consumer rights/equalities compliance
- Conducting viewings and not breaching consumer rights/equalities legislation
- Tenant selection/offer ensuring legal compliance
- Answering tenant queries about the tenancy agreement
- check-in, check-out inspections
- Undertaking Right to Rent checks
- Understanding and applying the limitations of the Tenant Fees Act
- Working with the tenant to establish a Local Housing Allowance claim
- Periodic inspections – important areas to cover:
- Correct notice given to tenant and exercise of legal rights of access
- Unauthorised residents
- Unauthorised pets
- Tampering with equipment
- Damage to the property or missing items
- Need for replacement furniture/equipment
- Fire/CO detection fully functional
- Trip hazards or other health and safety issues
- Cleanliness
- Mold and damp
- Evidence of pest infestation
- Other breaches of tenancy obligations or illegal activity
- Advising on local landlord/property licensing requirements
- Tenancy management
- Dealing with lost keys or broken locks
- Receiving and acting upon disrepair claims by tenants in line with landlord legal liabilities
- Organising routine maintenance and keeping full records of work done
- Organising any routine fire equipment servicing required
- Having an ASB policy and dealing with tenants/advising the landlord
- Dealing with abuse of rent-included utilities
- Dealing with working from home/running a business requests
- Dealing with requests to re-decorate
- Dealing with rent increases using the legally correct procedures
- Dealing with rent arrears
- Advising on and dealing with changes of tenant
- Ensuring the tenants right to quiet enjoyment and no inadvertent harassment by the landlord
- Ongoing advice and query handling to the landlord
- Keeping a comprehensive set of compliance certificates for the property/tenancy
- Ending the tenancy
- Understanding and applying the law
- Checking the validity of a tenants notice to quit
- Selecting and serving the appropriate landlord notice, eg s21 or the various grounds of section 8
- Advising the landlord on the next steps after notice
- Giving tenant references
- Correctly dealing with items left behind
Glad to hear it!
However, a landlord would have legal redress against an agent who had contracted to provide a comprehensive service but failed to do so
Worth mentioning at this point we’re a member of The Property Ombudsman, ARLA Propertymark, a registered agent in Scotland and Rent Smart Wales, as well as have Propertymark client money protection. So, much like a high street agent, there are several avenues for redress for any landlords if we ever failed to deliver on our various services. We list these publicly here.
I’d be grateful for your comments on the list, which isn’t intended to be comprehensive:
Clearly all agents will offer some of these things in your list and not others. It would be incorrect to state that all agents explicitly offer all these items as part of their packages.
There are bunch of things on your list that we deliver, either directly or with our partners. Some of the items on the list come in the form of advice, others we directly control, and others we deliver via a partner. Some examples:
- We directly look at advert descriptions and warn landlords about eg. discrimination
- We don’t directly conduct viewings, but we do offer them via a partner at an additional cost
- We do directly answer questions, and offer guidance about our tenancy agreement to both tenants and landlords
- We don’t visit the property to do a physical inspection, but we do provide advice and checklists for landlords to complete.
- We don’t directly perform check-in and check-out inspections, but we do offer them via a partner at additional cost.
- We do provide extensive Right to Rent guidance to landlords as part of referencing. Eg. this requires physically looking at the real ID document (not a scan) and as such everything is compiled (including scans) and then the landlord is told to do the comparison in person too.
- Rent Now is fully compliant with all legislation, including the Tenant Fees Act, out of the box. For example, if a landlord is close to hitting the Deadline for Agreement, we step in and make that seamless, without them needing to understand or be concerned about the DfA too early in the journey
I could go on here, clearly…
I’d absolutely love you to use our full suite of services and get your feedback. I can see you’ve never used Rent Now or most of our other services. Clearly you have a lot of experience, and your feedback would be extremely valuable. It might also give you a better insight into what OpenRent offers beyond advertising and referencing!
It might also help give me some additional context to this discussion to know your background, are you coming at things from a legal perspective (eg. interested in how we deal with legal issues), as an ex/current agent, as a portfolio DIY landlord, or some combination / some other background?
I actually it boils down to:
Why bother posting advice if only advice approved by OR should be posted?
I don’t agree with any of what Daz says about “X isn’t helpful”.
I’m not here much anymore, but I’m now completely out. Not wasting my time giving advice if I can’t give the advice I think is the best advice.
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We moderate posts that get flagged to us. This is either by other members of the community or the discourse system, but mostly the former.
So really it’s about what other members of the community think, combined with our community guidelines. The latter of which of course we govern.
Thanks for listing some of the Openrent services. Some I was aware of and some I was not, although of course there will inevitably be gaps in any online service. My list was largely pulled together from a government code of practice for agents and similar sources from agent trade bodies. Its the minimum that any landlord should be looking for in a fully managed service.
As I’ve said before, my view has always been that given the variability of high street agents, the best results for any landlord are likely to be achieved through self managing and that might include use of some or all of Openrent’s services. However, I believe that this is only the case if the landlord has the time and the will to learn their trade and plug the gaps. This is not a quick fix and will likely involve a long period or training, reading and learnt experience. This is not just about giving tenants the best possible service, it’s also about protecting the landlord.
Its easy for us all to read about the latest severe penalties imposed on “rogue landlords” and not give it a second thought in terms of our own practise. After all, we know that we are not rogues. I think its widely assumed by our community that any simple mistakes we make will be forgiven by the authorities or will only carry a commensurate penalty. However, its clear from reading the posts of this and the other landlord forums that this is no longer the case. A poster on another forum last year had let her flat to a couple. They asked if their friend could move into the spare room as a lodger. She allowed it without realising that it would make the property an HMO and that their Council had introduced licensing for 3 persons. She appealed for help as the Council were now interviewing her under caution and she was facing a fine or several thousands of pounds and up to 12 months rent rebate for the tenants. They will no doubt refer to her as a rogue landlord in their Council magazine. The simplest of administration errors can cost thousands of pounds in penalties. Not knowing a landlords responsibilities under repairing, equalities or immigration legislation or any of the other 160+ laws could lead to very large fines, banning orders and even custodial sentences. In my view, the era of the amateur landlord is over. We all have to professionalise or give the job to someone else.
I’m not a lawyer, nor a former agent. I’m just a landlord that had a poor experience with an agent in the first year I let a property and determined to learn how to do a better job myself. Luckily most of my mistakes were made at a time when the penalties were not so stiff. I’m now in the process of retiring as a landlord and selling my properties, so unfortunately will not be in a position to use any of the OR services going forward. I’ll probably stick around for a little bit longer though.
I also just wanted to comment briefly on your exchange with Per above. I post on 5 or 6 different landlord forums and its quite striking that the others seem to moderate quite differently to Openrent. If forum users are going to contribute their time and knowledge, they need to have confidence in the moderation. They need to know that a post will not be hidden or deleted just because someone decides to take offence or that the post is considered unhelpful. This is a forum after all and people are entitled to express a broad range of views. What is unhelpful in one persons eyes may actually be an important contribution. I hope that Per and others will continue to contribute because there is no shortage of landlords and tenants using the forums that need the benefit of their experience.
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Here’s a good example of something that makes this forum frustrating to use. I posted what I consider to be an entirely reasonable response to someone asking for advice and for some reason unknown to me, it’s been held in moderation. Would you be able to explain why @Daz ?
… and here’s an example of something that was obviously offensive and was flagged but remained in place
In comparison to that, @David122’s original flagged and rapidly hidden post was absolutely innocuous.
I like forum rules, but I struggle when they are not applied consistently. Recently, there have been quite a few posts that are downright insulting which, if moderated at all, linger for days before they are hidden.
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