Property still being advertised and tenant deposit vanished

Landlord Discussion
1

Hi

Today a tenant paid a holding deposit for my property which I agreed to let during a viewing. After which I paused my advertising within my account before proceeding to accept the tenant. I realized that my advert is still being shown and was still receiving inquiries, even though the status is shown as paused. Thinking I had done something wrong, I clicked on “Take My Property Offline”, to show the property as “Let Agreed”, as I agreed with the tenant to forgo tenant referencing and to proceed with Rent Now.

I realized I probably shouldn’t have clicked “Take My Property Offline” and re-enabled the listing straight away.
Since doing that, I can no longer see the current application from the tenant who paid the holding deposit within my account. When I view the inquiry from the tenant, I can see that I requested the holding deposit on the 25th. So it looks still pending.

I just spoke to the tenant who told me she received an email to telling her that her deposit had been refunded, followed by another requesting a new deposit.

While this all look ok, and is most likely my own fault, it is still very unclear to both parties what is happening.

All I need to know is, if my tenant makes another deposit, will the application continue?

Many thanks

Mr M

2

Hi,

For landlords looking to accept a holding deposit placed by a prospective tenant and begin the Rent Now process, there’s no need to indicate that your property is unavailable. You just need to explicitly accept the holding deposit placed on the property - this is all done on the website.

Upon accepting a holding deposit, your property is tentatively marked as let and we inform previous tenants that you’ve accepted one and that more importantly, it’s no longer available.

By marking your property as let you have, as you say, indicated that it’s no longer available and rejected the application. It would therefore be worth getting in contact with the same tenant assuring them that if they were to initiate Rent Now again, you would proceed with their application and accept the holding deposit to commence the below process:

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

Once your tenant presses the Rent Now button again, you just need to accept their holding deposit and the application can continue smoothly.

Any questions, let us know: https://www.openrent.co.uk/faq#i-have-more-questions

Kind Regards,
George