I’m really hoping someone from OpenRent can help as I seem to be completely stuck in the system and I’ve now contacted support multiple times over several weeks without resolution.The tenancy itself is absolutely fine and is proceeding privately outside of Rent Now. The tenants have paid rent and deposit directly to me, the deposit has been correctly protected with DPS, and the tenancy agreement is legally valid and active.The only issue is that OpenRent are still holding the original holding deposit and there appears to be no clear option within my dashboard to close the Rent Now process without it looking like I’m ending the actual tenancy, which I am not.
I have sent repeated messages through the message centre and have not been able to get this resolved. I simply need someone from the OpenRent team to manually close the Rent Now case and release the holding deposit.
Has anyone else experienced this or managed to get it resolved?
What you want isn’t possible via the OR Rent Now model (as @mod_emma or @mod_harry or @Dan4 will confirm). This is what you signed up to
"As part of the Rent Now process, OpenRent will collect the deposit and first month’s rent from the tenants and securely register the deposit on the landlord’s behalf. This makes sure the tenancy is legally sound and fully compliant with legal requirements for deposits. With OpenRent helping to create thousands of tenancies a month, everyone can rest assured they are in safe hands.
Tenants benefit from the convenience of being able to pay securely by debit card or bank transfer 24/7, and the peace of mind of knowing their money will be protected instantly by the largest letting agent in the UK."
Try reading the draft tenancy agreement eg “The Tenant shall pay to OpenRent on the signing of this agreement the amount of the Deposit and the first payment of Rent” and “The first payment of Rent will be paid to OpenRent and held by OpenRent up to a maximum of 14 days from the
beginning of the Term, after which it will be paid to the Landlord” etc etc
3. So there is a contract with you and OR where you agreed to all this when paying for rent now and using their tenancy creation option which contract says they collect 1st month and do the deposit stuff, and it says so explicitly in the tenancy agreement too. If you and tenant now don’t want that, you don’t want the OR tenancy creation service or OR tenancy agreement.
4.So you have to cancel get the holding deposit back to tenant and start again with a brand new tenancy agreement between you and tenant that doesn’t mention OR. That is your best option. You can find a sample tenancy agreement from Openrent online (obviously delete any clauses about Openrent collecting £ etc) or from others like nrla.
You need to do this. You are ending the tenancy which is no longer being created via Openrent. You state you have signed up outside of Openrent, so you need to cancel the OR process.
Openrent have already received the Rentnow fee for creating the draft tenancy agreement and the document sign, they therefore don’t care or lose anything or suffer any.harm from not having to collect balance of 1st month or security deposit. They don’t charge to return the holding deposit, it’s exactly the same as any other OR tenancy that doesn’t go ahead.
The LL and tenant (and guarantor) have a little bit of extra admin creating and signing the new tenancy doc but otherwise suffer no consequences
It’ll need careful explaining by LL to tenant (and guarantor)3 to reassure them tenancy still going ahead and the new docs replace the old Openrent versions, so they dont worry.
Have you misread the original post, as non on your replies make sense on this post. There is no Openrent contract made. Holding deposit only paid, and then Landlord sorted contract & payments outside of OR.
Well OP seem to be saying cancelling on Openrent would mean ending the tenancy which.they.dont want to do. You are correct they could have taken a holding deposit and then signed an entirely different tenancy agreement not one created by Openrent through 'Rent Now ’ tenancy creation but that would make no sense and there would clearly be no issue returning the holding deposit first collected via OR. So it sounds as tho they think the holding deposit received by OpenRent is connected to a contract they have signed, and if they used OpenRent Rent Now which is a tenancy creation service, they ‘may’ be using a contract drafted by open rent but you are right we are not told this definitively. #pedantsrule
Either way there is no harm done to Openrent or anybody else from cancelling on OR to get holding deposit returned so my answer above stands