This tenancy agreement is subject to any existing tenant and/or, any other occupiers, vacating the Property and the Property still being available to let, for example, including but not limited to, being damaged by fire or flood. For the avoidance of doubt in any of these circumstances this tenancy agreement will not take effect.
Which means my earlier concern about not having the landlord ‘enter into’ the agreement before getting vacant possession is bypassed.
You can have everyone sign as soon as is convenient, receive the rent and then if previous tenants don’t move out… the new agreement does not take effect.
The new webified version of Outlook does not work with Rentman; don’t let your IT people update you before talking to our support line about alternative configurations.
Close reading of the regulations shows that both the Landlord AND the Agent must send the Information Sheet for managed properties. The agent can send on behalf of the landlord. The easiest way to do that (and cheapest if using RMail/RSign/Docusign) is to send one email with 2 identical attachments. I’m not making this up and the following wording has been approved by TfP.
Dear Fred Bloggs
Please find attached the Government’s Information Sheet informing you of changes to your tenancy at 13a Gasworks Row, Cheam, Surrey.
There are two identical attachments; one from your landlord and one from us, the landlord’s agent – as the law requires.
Please feel free to contact us if there is anything in it you don’t understand.
Yours
DotGomm Ltd
So this has become the default wording in the RRA cover letter. Rentman will also add the attachment twice – but you have the ability to modify the “package” and remove the second copy if your landlords are sending their own..
There are a couple of things in the recent regulations and guidance that, if taken literally, will cause problems; till we get a court ruling we have little choice but to take them literally.
Rent must not be received until the agreement has been “entered into”; that is defined as all parties having signed the agreement. But you mustn’t let the landlord sign the agreement until you are certain you have vacant possession (if previous tenants don’t move out and landlord has signed the landlord is obliged to find new tenants alternative accommodation). This will often mean you mustn’t accept rent until the day the tenants move in. Perhaps allow a few day’s gap between old tenants moving out and new tenancy beginning so as to be sure of vacant possession. (Edit : See post on 24th April)
The Information Sheet must be served to the tenant as either paper copy or a PDF attachment; you cannot send as a link. Docusign and RSign only send a link for signature so you have not “served” until the signed & finished document from Docusign/RSign is delivered as a PDF attachment. If the tenants don’t sign the document hasn’t been served. This is in contrast to other mechanisms where you are only concerned with “serving” and need not worry about “receipt” let alone them having actually “read” it. RMail becomes the simpler option (see previous post).
These agreements are nearing completion and will be release early next week. They SHOULD NOT BE USED until the 1 May but we are releasing them a little early as some of you will need time to embed them in the software.
If you set up a tenancy on the 30 April you should still use the current AST (as legally you cannot set up an APT till they exist, currently expected to be the 1 May). You then just give the information sheet between the 1 and 31 May.
The new revision will be revision 4 and will be completely different. We are only releasing the tenancy in the first phase while we complete other document changes. These will come out before the 1 May too.
We will email you again next week to confirm you can download the new tenancy agreements and we will email again when the other documents are uploaded.
(If you already have an RSign or Docusign account added to Rentman you can send the Information Sheet via those but you don’t need a signature and it may waste your existing quota. Update: See blog post on 15 April for caveat)
Next version of Rentman (5.003.363) has a new list showing tenants who have not yet been sent this document and the ‘send’ button has options to choose between sending via regular email, RSign, Docusign and RMail.
All current tenancies are shown but only managed tenancies are ticked to send. You are required to send to all managed tenancies even if the landlord has already sent the information sheet themseleves. You are not required in law to send to Let Only tenancies but you may offer this service to landlords so they are also on the list (right click the send checkbox to select all),
Edit : See post on 22 April for more on this.
There is a new ‘package’ with a cover letter being sent. You have the ability to customise the document ‘RRA Cover Letter’ and add other documents if you wish. The government’s Information Sheet is downloaded and included in the package.
Note : The guidance says you have to serve this information sheet on “each tenant”. People are interpreting this to mean each individual making up “the tenant”. But “jointly and severally” still applies. So the email/envelope must be addressed to all individuals BUT it only needs be received by one of them to be considered received by all. We still recommend sending to each individual but where you don’t have an email address for one of them or an email is undelivered it shouldn’t matter if at least one email was delivered.
Nigel's Rentman blog 