Hello. We are using rentnow and our tenant has agreed to five months rent in advance. (Openrent says six months is a bad idea).
The tenant has expressed reservations sending that amount of money to openrent, which in fairness few people have heard of.
Is it possible for them to pay the first months rent and deposit to openrent and the rest to us directly? Or does this mess up the whole system.
Incidentally when they say all money is protected by “client money protection insurance” does anyone know what this amounts to? Is there something you can check. The property ombudsman scheme is pretty toothless and it does occur to us that we are paying £50 to openrent but entrusting them with £8000 for around a month. If they did collapse we would presumably be responsible to the tenant for the money. I really don’t expect it to go wrong but it is a though?
Thank you for the idea helen2. I’m not sure I can disable the rent collection for the first months rent if I’m using rent now? Unless I’m mistaken?
I have told the tenant we will have to go ahead using openrents system as it is all set up. He tried paying part of it but the system says it can’t process the deposit until he’s paid the whole five months. So I’m guessing you can’t pick and choose.
In hindsight I should have put one months rent into the system and then put a custom lease clause saying they agreed to pay me the other four months directly. Which is what I would have done before they integrated advanced rent into their system officially.
Openrent will be holding the money for about 20 days. If they do collapse in that time it will be vexing the say the least, though obviously I wouldn’t be doing it if I thought it was likely.
I notice openrent replied to the other threads this morning but not mine so perhaps they are formulating a clever response. I remain curious if there is a way to check their client money insurance.
Firstly, sorry for missing your post - we intend to reply to all Community threads that pose questions to us the same day, though sometimes some may slip through the cracks. My mistake!
As part of Rent Now, we need to collect the initial funds.
We protect the deposit and transfer this to your account (in a government backed deposit scheme), and rent is transferred to your chosen bank account 7-14 days after move-in (not 20 days!).
Here’s some more info on this:
Rest assured, we have Client Money Protection for the funds paid to us and if you aren’t already aware, you can find out more on this here:
Thank you George for the reply. I thought as much as I could see no way around it though it never hurts to ask.
Incidentally I meant 20 days from now, when they have paid the rent, not from their move in date. Unless people are in the habit of paying their rent the same day they move in I suspect in practice openrent holds the money for rather more than seven days on average. Which I can see the sense of, its just five months rent at once is rather a lot of money…
Thank you for the link about openrent being regulated. Our last letting agent was also regulated but it turned out they just lied about obeying the regulations… Now they are probably going to prison. Which is why we are now doing it ourselves with the help of openrent… I really don’t mean to cast aspersions or suggest openrent is the same though. For one thing as long as your company accounts show lots of money left in them I won’t worry too much
I do appreciate your taking the time to reply though.
Thanks
