It is rare for a tenant to pull out once they have placed a holding deposit. It can, unfortunately, happen however. If this is happening here's what you can do.
At the point of referencing
You have two options here, depending on how you would like to treat the holding deposit associated with the application.
1) Cancel the Rent Now application from your account by pressing 'Cancel Tenants' Application' and re-market your original advert straight away. This will return the holding deposit to the tenant and make the listing available for another tenant to apply.
2) Alternatively, we can confirm with the tenant that they are pulling out. You would then be entitled to keep the holding deposit 30 days after this is confirmed. We will re-advertise your property in the meantime to avoid any disruption.
At the contract signing stage
You also have the same options as above at this stage, but it will show as 'See Cancel Options' on the bottom of your application page (if you would like to return the holding deposit less referencing costs):
Alternatively please feel free to get in touch with us if you want us to confirm the tenants are pulling out.
Email us at info@openrent.co.uk.
What to do if the contract has been completed
Again, this depends on how you would like to treat the holding deposit. If you would like to action a forfeit, you will need to get in touch with us to do this.
Further to the above, there will be a signed tenancy agreement in place for this tenancy. If the tenancy is not proceeding, we recommend that all parties consider signing a surrender document to annul the original signed contract, to avoid potential future confusion from having this contract in force. We cannot draft this document for you, however we can provide a template via email.
What happens if the tenants have signed the contract, and also paid their security deposit and first month's rent?
At this stage the tenant's holding deposit has already been put towards their security deposit. You can see the difference between the two types of deposit here.
We would also need a signed tenancy surrender document at this stage.
Once we have written and signed confirmation, all client funds paid to date will be returned to the tenants. Please note we are required to return funds via the same means they were paid, so payments made by card will be refunded to the same card that was used to make payment.
If the deposit has already been transferred to your control in the government approved custodial deposit protection scheme you will need to reach out to the deposit protection scheme to arrange a refund of this.