OpenRent

Online Letting Agents are becoming increasingly popular

Introduction

Online letting agents are a great way to save money when letting out your property. With Openrent the cost to list your property starts from free for the first three months, this includes advertising your property solely on their own website, and a viewing enquiry organiser which allows potential tenants to request viewings over the phone from 9 am-9 pm and 24/7 by email. They, in turn, inform you by text or email. However, we feel that the majority of people will want the Rent Now + Ultimate advertising. This is because it has a wider advertising platform, advertising on their website and Rightmove, Zoopla and 100 + partner sites. This package includes contract drafting, deposit registration and initial rent collection. You can upgrade your package to cater to your needs,  for example, if you can do your own viewings and photos, you save money if not you can get Openrent to organise these for you at an additional cost. There are many other options you may be interested in, so why not take a further look at Openrent for more details.

Services

In this article, we will look at the various landlord services that openrent has to offer.

Tenant Referencing

Open rent offers a referencing service, as a landlord, you will be responsible for covering the cost of this under Tenant Fees Act (2019) (it is now illegal to charge tenants for this). The majority of landlords will reference their tenants with the Rent Now package (which we believe will be the most suitable package option for the majority of landlords), once the holding deposit has been made. However, if you need referencing, they offer industry-leading service and price on a standalone basis. All you need to do is order the reference and openrent will keep you updated by email. The landlord needs to pay for each reference they require beforehand.

Rent Collection

The Rent Now package gives openrent landlords access to an ongoing rent collection service. OpenRent will collect rent from tenants by providing them with a unique bank account for your tenancy, which they'll pay the rent into. Once openrent receives the rental payment into this account, they'll instantly notify you and the payment will be made to the landlord's bank account the same working day. This means that as soon as the rent is paid to openrent, they'll, in turn, pay it automatically to the landlord. Openrent will send you a brief confirmation email with each payment they make to you, which means the landlord's records will be up-to-date without having to check their bank account. If the tenant hasn't paid their rent on time for any reason, openrent will notify the landlord automatically and chase up the tenant on their behalf. If the tenant happens to stop paying their rent, openrent has a team of legal partners who would intervene and help resolve the issue. Openrents rent collection service is a completely optional package. This means that if the landlord wishes, they can give the tenants their personal bank details to be paid directly.

Gas Safety Certificate(CP12) and Electrical Safety Certificate (PAT Testing)

Openrent has partnered with both industry-leading Gas and Electric experts, and due to the high volume of clients who use this service, they get this at a discounted rate. This means that they provide the highest quality products on the market and remain very competitively priced. The Gas Safety Certificate service starts at £45. Extras such as a full boiler service or PAT testing can be arranged at an additional cost.

Inventory Check-in/Check-out Service

Open rent provides a DIY Inventory Template for landlords looking to save money and willing to carry out the inventory themselves. They've developed a downloadable template for guidance. However, they recommend that you should always use a professional independent service if possible, which they can provide. Openrent has partnered with some of the best inventory clerks nationwide to provide you with a high-quality professional service which is also competitively priced due to the large volume of clients they deal with. Their inventory service (schedule of condition report), starts from £85 and they also offer a check-in service for your new tenants which costs £40.