Moving an existing tenancy to Open Rent

Landlord Discussion Legal
1

I have a tenancy, which started in 2014, not through Open Rent.

I have a voucher for Open Rent, due to a referral I made. So I am happy to pay the £20 to upgrade to the Rent Now feature and move my existing tenancy over to Open Rent, mainly for the simple and fast, digital tenancy renewals, and the new rent collection would be a bonus too.

So, I have been told, the DPS deposit, it is best to repay that, either to the tenant or myself (DPS said this would be okay), & then repay it back to the DPS with this new tenancy agreement I am making with Open Rent.

Basically everything will be the same as the current agreement, same tenant, same property, same monthly rent, just a slightly different tenancy terms I guess but still pretty standard and focused on a normal tenancy AST so the Open Rent tenancy terms should be pretty similar to the first one she signed in 2014.

My question is.

What order to do all these things in, she is happy to meet up on Wednesday, to sign, but should I first, receive the deposit and repay it into DPS (on her behalf - which DPS have said is fine to do).

The monthly rent due date is on 1st of every month so the first rental payment on this new tenancy will be January 1st, is it okay to sign it before then? As I will be going away on January 1st and would like to have the new tenancy signed before I leave.

Any ideas welcome.

Thanks

2

Hi Daniel,

Thanks for your post, and it’s great to hear you would like to take advantage of our renewal and new Rent Collection features.

I have just responded to your query regarding the holding deposit via email, but to answer your question here we do need to handle all of the initial funds as part of Rent Now. This means as well as the holding deposit, we must also collect the ‘first month’s’ rent and the security deposit which we then protect within the DPS Custodial Scheme.

You can read more about this here:

The contract will need to be signed before the payments are made, you can see the full steps of the Rent Now process here:

https://www.openrent.co.uk/rent-now

Please let us know if you have any other questions by posting on here or replying to our email.

Thanks, Elinor

3

So, for example, would it be possible for me and the tenant to sign the Open Rent tenancy tomorrow? And then on her next payment date, which is the first of the month, 1st January, she pays that into Open Rent?

At which stage would the deposit be paid, after signing also? Not sure how long the DPS takes to send a deposit back to the tenant but pretty sure it wouldn’t be paid out in 1 day by tomorrow. Does the full deposit amount need to be paid before the tenancy is signed? Or can it be paid after it is signed?