UK Landlord Forum / Life

surelt we should be very nosy!

Open rent says not to bother with these pre-screening questions that I was about to put on my auto-repy becasue we have no way of getting accurate answers, only credit agencies etc can.

Do you have any CCJs?
What is your credit score?
Have you ever been evicted?
Have you ever been pursued for rent arrears?

But for the sake of having a higher chance of keeping the deposit then I argue there is still a good point to them!

That's very odd advice from Openrent.

The holding deposit can be retained by a landlord if the information given by a prospective tenant turns out to be false and there's an, admittedly discretionary ground for possession of a property under a section 8 notice if the tenant induced the landlord "to grant the tenancy by a false statement made knowingly or recklessly". So not asking for the information reduces the chances of either of those options being available. Which might be a pretty marginal benefit in real terms, but it's not zero.

Some CCJs are held on a public register (although it's usually out of date), you can ask for some evidence of someone's credit score (although that's quite easy to fake) and a previous landlord's reference would help with the last two.

I get a full credit check done and all these questions asked as part of the  tenant-finding service I pay an agent for.I don't think it would cost much to get this done.Also for around a fiver you can check for CCJs.It was very up-to-date when I used it.I think it is  sometimes a false economy to use the cheapest means of finding tenants.   

Thanks, was half asleep when I posted this.

Obviously part of the referencing/credit check process is for them to first ask for information upon my behalf.. right? And then proceeding to check the veracity of it.
Which would make my step of asking for the information that would be hard for me to prove without going to the agencies pointless. Or do the agencies not ask the initial questions and just do checks?
Do you see what I'm getting at here? Seems to directly affect whether we can recoup costs from potential time wasters.

Perhaps openrent likes to reduce the chances that we keep the deposit, better business for them.
is halfway through this page anyhow.
https://blog.openrent.co.uk/how-to-vet-tenants-with-pre-viewing-questions/#more-help