MOVRR Blog
You will find us sharing our thoughts, announcements and press releases here.
What is 'Right to Rent' ? Comprehensive guide to moving home within the UK Press release June 2020
A quick guide to the mandatory check for 'right to rent' in the UK
Following our post, here, covering all pre-move and post-move activities, in this post we'll elaborate on the right to rent component of step 4 (Completing your rental agreement). In broader terms, this check, in conjunction with others, relates to the UK government's desire to better control immigration. The legal requirement came into force early 2016 and mandates property owners and landlords to validate the status of a person over the age of 18 occupying their property. Critically, this must be verified before formal handover of the property. To avoid discriminatory practices this check is performed on all persons renting a property. Landlords can be penalised if it not conducted. From a prospective tenant's point of view this means understanding one's formal legal status in the UK. For simplicity if you hold a British passport you will have no restrictions to rent a property, as such, it would be just a matter of presenting your supporting evidence to the landlord during the signup process. For people that do not have a British passport, precise understanding on one's immigration status is required. Broad immigration categories are 'Limited Leave To Remain', 'Indefinite Leave To Remain' and 'Temporary Admission'. Given the context of these three broad categories you may need to consult a solicitor if you are unclear of your exact status. The government also offers a service here to view and evidence one's status. What this translates to on the ground as you progress through completing your rental agreement is to ensure you have a right to rent and the ability to evidence this. The UK government has published guidance on the forms of evidence to prove one's status. For British passport holders presenting one's passport is the simplest way to evidence one's right to rent. For people in any other category, a Home Office issued paper document or a digital version directly accessible from Home Office's internet facing system would be a high confidence way to prove one's status. Other means do exist and would essentially be a combination of identity documents. The government has published a lengthy guidance of over 50 pages to explain the different methods to prove one's status. This guidance is available from the government's website dedicated to right to rent here. In summary, right to rent is one of many checks conducted during one's application process to rent a property. The right to rent check is a legal requirement and the landlord is ultimately accountable for this check to be properly conducted. As a prospective tenant you must be able to evidence your right to rent in line with the government's guidance on proving one's status.
Covering all steps from when you decide to move to having moved into your new place
Moving home is an important moment in our lives. For those of us living in rented accommodation, the move process is something we go through numerous times and for some that might even be multiple times a year. For people moving to start a new job having graduated from college, university or taking the next big step in their career development it usually brings together more than one significant moment in their lives. The combination of such factors in a time compressed manner increases stress and anxiety. Having gone through this process ourselves dozens of times in our lives and the lack of a comprehensive guide, we're publishing this home move guide to help you be more organised and save time & money. Property moves can be broken down in nine steps. Broadly speaking these steps can be categorised in pre-move and post-move activities if we consider the actual act of moving your belongings into the new place you'll be living as the key indicator of a move taking place. Here is a summary of these steps before we detail some of the key services available to help you along your property move journey. Pre-move activities involve the following; 1. Searching for available properties 2. Arranging viewings 3. Viewing Properties 4. Completing sign-up 5. Collecting keys Followed by the actual act of you physically moving your belongings into your new place, so; 6. Moving stuff into the new place Having physically moved your stuff, the following post-move activities will still need to be completed to successfully complete your home move. 7. Handing-over previous place 8. Notifying everyone of your change of address 9. Signing-up for new services Steps 1 through 9 cover the end-to-end home move. At each step there are number of options to meet your needs. We'll now explore each step and outline key services that will help you quickly identify the most efficient way for you to complete your move successfully. 1. Search for available properties; There are numerous options to search for properties on the market. Some of the well-known websites that offer properties for rent are; - Rightmove - Zoopla - OnTheMarket There are also additional newer options such as Boomin but more niche technology enabled suppliers that work with specific developers such as Move Bubble are sometimes also worth considering. There remains, of course, the option to deal with estate agents directly for specific locations. You can find those through a simple search through your favourite search engine. 2. Arrange viewings for shortlisted properties Once you've gone through the search process and shortlisted properties you are actually interested in based on your selection criteria; it essentially comes down to 3 options to arrange a viewing for a property. - The well-known websites will either provide you with the ability to forward your interest to the estate agent that manages the property or they will display their contact details to allow you to get in touch with them to make arrangements for viewing. - Newer companies and certain estate agents using advanced technology-based solutions provide various forms of virtual viewings or pre-recorded video tours of properties. Some will be available on demand others will schedule the viewing date and time. - There are also certain properties that may be managed by specialist agencies that could manage the viewings on behalf of private landlords or in some cases where landlords themselves handle arrangements for viewings. 3. Actual viewing of the property One you've successfully arranged a viewing date and time for your chosen property, the viewing primarily will be conducted by either the estate agent representative or the landlord. As mentioned above, some estate agents are better at adopting technology and will provide in addition to in-person viewings, virtual viewings. For example, Move Bubble provides pre-recorded tours. There might also be additional flexibility to, for example, arrange a virtual live tour of the property if you are unable to view in person. It is important you perform additional appropriate due diligence if you have not viewed the property in person to ensure what you are being presented with is the property you will end with. 4. Completing your rental agreement Signing up for a property involves a number of checks and those will be conducted by the estate agent managing the property or the landlord where the property is managed by the landlord themselves. You can expect to be advised you of the specifics. The checks or the vetting process usually involves verifying your identity, right to rent, affordability and credit history. You may be also asked for a reference from your previous landlord or lettings agency. Both, the estate agent managed property and the properties managed by private landlord themselves will likely use suppliers of their choice to complete these steps. For example, credit checks are likely to be performed through one of big 3 providers of such services here in the UK. They are; Experian, Equifax or Trans Union. Whether it's an estate agent or the landlord you are dealing with ask for the cost of the sign-up process in advance. Recent legislation, the Tenant Fees Act , forbids tenancy setup fees. This specific cost will need to be met by the property owner. There are also additional restrictions, for example, the deposit is restricted to five weeks rent and the holding deposit capped at one weeks rent. You can find more details by Shelter here. 5. Collecting keys for your new property Once you have successfully signed your tenancy contract through the lettings agent or the private landlord and have made the required payment of one month's rent and the deposit, including any fees, you are ready to collect keys. This is usually handled by those managing the property, similar to mentioned above. The collection of keys might have some restrictions, for example, the letting agent’s office opening hours and availability of staff so be sure to confirm specifics around date and time. There may also be a check-in process that may involve taking inventory. 6. Moving belongings into your new place Moving all your belongings is the part when it actually really feels like you are all set to move into your new place to live. The key options here are to do it all yourself with some help from friends & family. For this self-service you might opt to hire a van, for example, in order to pack your personal items into it and move them across. Other options include hiring a local man-with-a-van service. However, you are still expected to pack your items as the man-with-a-van service will just deal with moving items into their van and transporting them to your destination, offloading the items on the other end. For additional help with packing and moving items to in a specific fashion such a kitchen stuff ends up in your kitchen and the furniture ends up in preferred rooms and locations, a full removals service such as Pickfords can help. 7. Handing-over of previous property It's all going great and you've actually moved into your new place. However now the post-move activities start. You've still got your old place to hand-over. The process for handing over will involve making arrangements with the lettings agency or the landlord themselves depending on your existing agreement when you moved into the accommodation. It will require handing back the property in the same condition as you were provided with when moving in. This means you may need to organise a professional deep clean and hand-over the keys as per a specific protocol. Make sure you clarify those details including settling bills and return of your deposit. 8. Notifying everyone of your address change You can now move onto letting everyone know your new address. This is one of the most tedious points as you will have lots of suppliers for services you consume. They will all need to be notified. For example, this will include common services such as existing utilities and communications services such as your mobile phone network, landline and broadband. Your local council, your GP, dentist, and of course financial services, such banks for current and savings accounts. Credit Unions or student loans company for loans. Insurance providers for any type of insurance you have, such as home, bicycle, motorbike or car insurance. The DVLA for driving licence and car/motorbike registration if you own a car or motorbike. The DVLA address change is mandatory and could attract fines. Notifying all these suppliers can be done via calling their respective call contact centres individually. The other option is to use a service such as MOVRR. The first of its kind service we've launched, available for free via a mobile app, saving hours in time and post redirection fees. With MOVRR you are no longer bound by the availability of the supplier contact centre. You can send notifications based on your schedule. 9. Signing up for new services Finally, you are now set to organise new services you might require in your new abode. This will involve consideration of new water and energy suppliers in addition to broadband. The options here are to contact suppliers of your choice. There are certain lettings agents that might have an inhouse team that will setup your utilities on your behalf. However, this not common as it still a manual process for estate agents. You could also use newer types of services to consolidate your bills into a single payment from the likes of OneUtilityBill or use comparison sites such as CompareTheMarket to find a good deal for your new place of residence. However, if you’ve used MOVRR to contact your existing suppliers you will hear back from those suppliers and will be provided with an opportunity to negotiate a new deal. It is now that you can relax and celebrate the actual completion of your move and enjoy your new neighbourhood. We hope this provides you with a good overall view of the property moving journey that millions of us go through.
London based start-up, MOVRR, brings enterprise grade automation to property movers
By releasing first-of-its-kind app based service to complete property move admin in minutes, MOVRR enables property movers to save hours of effort contacting suppliers to inform them of address changes. A simple task that can take hours given the number of services involved in 21st century life. Legacy method is to contact each supplier individually by calling into their contact centres with long queues or visiting their respective website finding a way through annoying chat bots to submit forms . This adds up to hours of work given the number of private and public services 21st century life involves. For property moves that include more than one person, the entire process needs to be repeated for each person. Millions moving every year have to go through this laborious process. 21st century method is to automate the whole process. This is what MOVRR does for property movers. In total, over 2000 suppliers have been integrated into MOVRR. This includes broadband, mobile network, gas, electricity, water, banks, councils, groceries, doctors, car & bike insurance suppliers. MOVRR provides the option to either instantly notify suppliers or schedule the notifications for a specific date. There is also an option to set a reminder to take action in relation to a specific supplier on a particular day. For example, for your gas supplier, you could add a reminder to note down the meter number and reading for the date you move out. You can then action this on your move out date and instantly send this to your supplier. MOVRR is a free service and can be used across the UK. More broadly, application of technology to the real estate sector is on a upward trend with tens of billions of investment to accelerate transformation. Housing is in need of this attention to move from 20th century models that raise stress and anxiety for property movers. Housing remains the most expensive single transaction in people's lives. Technology will play an important role in reducing cost and shortening transaction time. A change that would be welcomed by property movers. The MOVRR app can be downloaded from here.