Is this a red flag ? Viewed the property spoke to landlord and been talking via open rent with his brother, he deals with the online side.
Get a requests for a holding deposit and then it gets cancelled and then saying they want to do it themselves. It’s a lot of money to hand over.
Thank you.
Many landlords, including myself, use openrent just for advertising and take all payments themselves.
Have you seen the contract?
Have you been credit checked and referenced?
How much is holding deposit and the rent? Holding deposit cannot be more than 1 weeks rent. Security deposit upto 5 weeks rent.
Usually holding deposit is placed at same time as application.
Ask for proof of ownership of the property before handing over any cash and check that yhe holding rent link is genuinely from OR
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You can check with Land Registry who owns a property online for £3
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He said, he wasn’t sure about their process because it’s either all or nothing with them, we use the same deposit company as they do (https://www.mydeposits.co.uk/) and you will be given the certificate straight away. That will simply leave the 1st month rent in advance to pay when prior to moving in and the tenancy agreement which will be emailed to you to use.
Credit checks done and no contract as of yet.
He said £300 as rent is £1,200
Openrent is all or nothing. It’s a bit odd they would lower the rent like that.
The fact he’s done credit checks and only asking for £300 would ring true, hower technically it should only be 1 weeks rent which would be upto £276 in this instance. (For holding deposit). Sounds like hes just divided by 4.
He will also want a security deposit I imagine (upto 5 weeks rent).
To be on the safe side, you should ask for proof of ownership or download details from land registry.
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This doesn’t make any sense. A holding deposit is different to a security deposit so there is no requirement to lodge it in one of the deposit schemes. A holding deposit is also capped at one week’s rent, so with a rent of £1200 a month, the maximum holding deposit would be £276.92, not £300. This landlord doesn’t sound like he knows what he’s doing. I would be careful if I were you.
Holding deposit should be one weeks rent but this isn’t registered at that time . We usually take a holding deposit prior to reference checks after we’ve met at time of viewing and lots of questions on our application form in order to select a preferred applicant. If all goes as it should with reference and we proceed to the tenancy agreement, we work out what 5 weeks rent amounts to and use the holding deposit as part of this .The 5 week amount (which the holding deposit is now part of) is then registered as the security deposit. We usually advertise through Open rent but then handle everything ourselves .
If the preferred tenant fails the reference checks due to giving wrong or false information on our application form then they forfeit the holding deposit.
Holly 20. Have you checked ownership?
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