Rent Now Service

Landlord Discussion
1

I don’t want to use the Openrent rent know service. If I advertise the property without the ‘rent now service’ when tenants make an enquiry can they say still they will only proceed through ‘rent now’.

Note Openrent have 3 credits for me for ‘Rent Now’, but they say they will only trigger it if I use it.

2

Tenants cannot force you to use Rent Now if you have not opted into it. Rent Now is a landlord-initiated service, meaning it only starts when you activate it for a specific tenancy. A tenant expressing a preference for Rent Now does not trigger it.

If a tenant says they will only proceed through Rent Now and you do not want to use it, they are effectively declining to proceed. You are not obligated to use it.

The OR credits you have are just waiting there until you choose to use them on a future tenancy if you want to. They do not activate automatically.

3

Ok thank you for your response and I get everything you’ve just said.

I currently have advertised by mistake using the rent now service when I’m getting inquiries I’m also getting noticed from the tenant saying they will only proceed if the rent now service is used if I tell them I don’t want to use the rent now service I’m missing out on good quality tenants.

My question is this if I advertise with no rent now service would it then be the case that the tenant cannot simply initiate the rent now caveat when they approach me initially for an enquiry

4

When I advertise does the tenant know whether I have advertised as a 'rent now ’ service or not.

The landlord pays for the ‘rent now’ service not the tenant, so surely if the landlord has not advertised the property as a ‘rent now’ advert then the tenant cannot mention that they prefer the ‘rent now’ service when they 1st enquire about the property, as the landlord simply has not got the property advertised as having this service.

Would I be correct in the above explanation.

It’s easy for the tenant to say they want the service because they are not paying for the service.

5

@luxuriousflat

Theres a simple solution for you

A) set up a different openrent account (use a different email account) without rent now and use thr free listing service instead

OR

B) Contact OR support asking them to cancel the Rent now service and refund the costs. If you purchased using a credit card you will have additional consumer rights.

  1. No. If you have the RentNow package then for your listings the tenant can press a button ‘Rent now’ to send you a holding deposit- it cant be disabled - if you accept the holding deposit that initiates the start of the Rentnow tenancy creation process by taking off the market while you do referencing etc but you can simply decline the application (they shouldnt be trying placing a holding deposit without discussing and agreeing with you first anyway -in those instances its a red flag straight refusal from me as they obv have terrible comms skills). So they can see you have the service available because the “Rent Now” button appears on the listing
  1. Some tenants do want to use Rent Now-quite reasonably- it means their holding deposit 1st month rent and security deposit are dealt with properly by OpenRent not some private LL , and the LL doesnt get a penny till 10 days after move in date, so if a rogue LL witholds the keys the tenant gets their £ back. If you do everything privately and not through either a platform like OpenRent or a letting agent they are trusting you with a lot of £ before they have the keys. There are scams with fake LLs too (perhaps former tenants or others who have got copies of keys to be able to show folk a property) and tenants are rightly cautious. If you tell them you arent going to use rentnow tell them either you are using a letting agency or offer to provide proof of ownership (title deeds council tax gsr), membership of a landlord association and how the deposit will be protected, offer refs from former tenants- to show them you are genuine not a scam. Details of what they may ask for etc here Landlord Scams & Fraud | Avoiding House Renting Scam | NRLA

Good luck