I should have read through everything more carefully when carrying out our new tenancy!
I did not foolishly did not see that when doing a custodial deposit via Openrent for a new contract, the tenant can now no longer contact mydeposits/Total Property for the interest on their deposit once returned.
Openrent now keeps the interest which although is barely justifiable now that they are more tightly integrated via an API with the mydeposits scheme (running cloud services does cost Openrent money). I personally think the tenants are entitled to the interest as it’s their money. If Openrent need to cover their overheads then they should be increasing the ‘Rent Now’ price to suit - not retaining the tenant’s deposit interest.
The question is, we’ve signed contracts and the tenant has paid the first month’s rent, deposit, and the move in date is all set up. If we want to change from a custodial to insured deposit scheme, is Openrent set up for mid contract changes such as this?
I’ve never had any tenant query interest on their deposit. Sounds to me like making a Mountain out of a Mole Hill.
If you wish to enquire, you might be better to ask OR directly via a help centre message.
You complain about OR making money (interest) from holding the deposit, but they will also be paying the ‘insured’ fee to Mydeposits, so its questionable how much they will actually make.
As you say there’s no point making a mountain out of a mole hill for the sake of it, so on second thought I’ll leave it for this tenancy. This tenant has not queried it but previous tenants have, and they were able to follow the process to get their interest.
In the future we’ll likely manage the deposit ourselves even if it means not using Rent Now with Openrent. - I understand lots of people probably found the old custodial system that Openrent used was confusing but at the end of the day it allowed the tenant to collect the interest they should be entitled to, and it was a free service i.e. not the insured system that Openrent now uses for England and Wales (they still use part-landlord managed custodial system for Scotland). It is on me for not doing my due diligence this time round.
You make a good point re. Openrent using the insured system hence having them having to absorb the fee now. Previosuly it was ‘free’ with the custodial system.