Open rent is a good advertising platform for private landlords BUT why oh why does OR keep trying to get tenants to place deposits before they have even seen the flat? It is madness and very bad policy. My advice to OpenRent is just stick to advertising!
They probably hope some LLs will accept the holding deposit and proceed with contract creation etc for the first who presses the button. They make £ from getting LLs onto their ecosystem just like agents make £ from commissions from tradesmen they use
Or just more prosaicly - how do OR know if tenant has done a viewing or not? I certainly wouldn’t organize these via OR platform I want to talk to them by 'phone first to avoid wasting time on viewings for unsuitable tenants.
Might be better if LL had to invite tenant to put down a holding deposit before they could do so, no doubt harder but not impossible to program that. OR line in the past has been LLs can just reject but they will consider. Tbh any tenant without the nouse to ask LL first before sending a deposit, even if they have done a viewing, is someone i really dont want due to their terrible comms skills, so it helps rule them out.
Best
I have previously posted a contribution on how we deal with this “annoying” feature of the OR system. But the good features of OR outweigh the annoying one so it is (in my opinion at least) worth sticking with them.
We deal with it as follows. Our adverts explicitly tell any applicant NOT to use Rent Now unless they have (1) been selected for a viewing and (2) been then chosen by us as the prospective tenant and been requested by us to place the holding deposit via Rent Now. We also state that if anyone uses Rent Now without complying with these two conditions then they will not be even considered for selection for viewing. It works well for us - but I agree that OR really need to sort this out ASAP.
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