New Regs comming into affect on 14th MAy 2025 - heafty fines or prison, these new regs mean all financial sanctions checks must be done on all prospective tenants and landlords. Is Open Rents referenciong automatically adapting their proceedures including in their £20 fee to check that the tenant does not appear on the financial sanctions list? If a match is found and not reported to The Office of Financial Sanctions then the agent/landlord can be heavily fined or even improsonment for upto 7 years. How is Open rent implementing this into their referencing to protect landlords?
I am a member of a national landlord association and this is the first time I am hearing of this…
Link to source please…
It means that if Putin applies for one of our properties we cannot rent it to him, as he is a no no
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It appears only to relate to Letting Agents.
A letting agent is describe by the Gov as;
Under financial sanctions regulations, a letting agent is described as “a firm or sole practitioner (“P”) that carries out, or whose employees carry out, letting agency work-
“Letting agency work” is defined as follows:
“letting agency work” means work—
(a). consisting of things done in response to instructions received from
(i) a person (a “prospective landlord”) seeking to find another person to whom to let land for a term of a month or more, or
(ii)a person (a “prospective tenant”) seeking to find land to rent for a term of a month or more, and
(b) done—
(i) in relation to a prospective landlord, from the point that the prospective landlord instructs P [i.e the letting agent], or
(ii) otherwise in the course of concluding an agreement for the letting of land for a term of a month or more.
So, the rules do not seem to apply to Landlords themselves.
That’s interesting as I was only speaking to my agent Wednesday and he said checks are getting more strict and said his solicitor has quoted that it will apply to landlords who find there own tenants by late summer and those who get agents to find tenants but do all the maintenance admin themselves etc but critically have no other forms of income ie payed employment
I believe that you can do a UK sanction check via Gov.UK I’ve not done one but seems to be free. I would also expect it should show as part of a credit check.
yeah but his family members…lots of them everywhere, under the beds
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I have just messaged openrent awaiting their response, I have gone through the website and entered number of names some came up with 1000s of names but not stating the particular name entered, this will account for literally hundreds of admin hours on behalf of Home Office, I will update you once I will have heard from OpenRent.
Hi Sara,
Thanks for reaching out. From May, letting agencies will be added to the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation’s (OFSI) list of “relevant firms” that must report if they have reasonable cause to suspect that an individual using their services is on the government’s list of sanctioned persons.
This means that if we have reason to believe that a tenant who is entering into a tenancy agreement on the OpenRent platform (or a landlord) is subject to UK sanctions, we will be required to report the fact to the government.
The risk of any of the very small number of sanctioned individuals entering into a tenancy for a standard UK privately rented property is extremely low, but we will of course be taking appropriate steps to ensure we meet any additional obligations that apply to us.
Please note that this requirement applies to letting agents, not landlords, so landlords aren’t expected to run anti-money laundering checks on tenants. That said, our referencing service and other tools are always a good way to ensure you have the maximum information about your tenants and are protected against risks that can arise during the tenancy.
The new regulations do apply to landlords as per email fromw
Landlord law yesterday
“This is just a quick information email to let you know, if you did not know already, that the anti-money laundering (AML) regulations have been changed.
This is becuase the government is becoming increasingly concerned about criminals laundering money through property transactions.
Up until yesterday (14 May 2025) letting agents only needed to do checks for properties rented at £8,300 per month or more.
However from yesterday both landlords and agents need to check ALL tenants to make sure they are not on the sanctions list before renting the property to them. Letting agents also need to check their landlords.
Needless to say if the search shows up a problem, you should report this and rent the property to someone else. You should also report any suspicious activities.
I did a quick blog postWhich please read.
I should confess though that this is not really my area of expertise being a financial issue. I will be doing more research on this, but your best source of help will be your accountant.
The fines apparently are horrendous so make sure you do the checks. It would be a good idea also to do a check against your existing tenants - make sure you keep proper records!
I think Tessa has that wrong actually. A landlord would have to be undertaking lettings agency work to be a “relevant firm”, so perhaps also managing other peoples properties.
It’s on the landlord zone website too
From yesterday, 14 May 2025 agents are required to check landlords and tenants, and self-managing landlords are required to check their own tenants by making anti money laundering (AML) checks, these checks are now required to be made against an official list, the UK’s official sanctions list.
Unless all the websites are wrong I’m not sure what to think
er… but…
So all websites aren’t in agreement on this. Is OR ill-informed?
I’m suspecting it is. I just ran this past ChatGPT and it confirmed the rules apply to LLs and referenced three property websites as its sources.
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Is chat gtp reliable😂
I have asked my accountant to look into it
I looked on the government website and it only references letting agents but I only skim read it
Suzanne Smith, The Independent Landlord says that it only applies to letting agents🤷🏿♂️
So does the N R L A. JMW solicitors also suggest it only applies to letting agents. Lots a confusion around about this. However, any landlord getting a reference check through OR or a professional company would be covered anyway.
So is it confirmed that Openrent referencing WILL carry out the PEP and Sanction screening and is there an additional cost ?
This is a Letting Agent responsibility, not the Landlords, so don’t stress. Its not for us Landlords to worry if they are fulfilling their own legal responsibilities. If they don’t, it does not affect the Landlord.
Thanks, but isnt Openrent “the biggest letting agent” ?, that aside if we are doing right to rent checks ourselves maybe at some point openrent will pass this on and “advise us” how to do the sanction check too. (?)