May

Major portal launches national ‘rent passport’ initiative for tenants and agents

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One of the UK’s big property portals has launched an initiative to enable renters to become ‘rent ready’ as they hunt for homes.

OnTheMarket.com, which is a competitor with Rightmove and Zoopla, has now fully integrated Canopy’s RentPassport service into its platform.

The concept, which has been tried before, it to encourage tenants to become ‘pre-qualified’ before or during their house-hunting and help letting agents, and their landlord clients, determine who are the best-qualified tenants.

Rightmove tried it in 2019 but ended the service in 2020, and only a few months ago the Government decided a national ‘rental passport’ system would be too complicated to launch and that it would be better left to the private sector.

Pre-qualification

Now, when tenants enquire online about a property via OnTheMarket listed by agents signed up to Canopy, they are now prompted to create a RentPassport.

This enables them to share important information such as income, credit history and rent payments to qualify them as a serious applicant or set up their passport via the portal’s MyPlace platform.

Jason Tebb, OnTheMarket’s CEO (pictured), says: “Giving movers the opportunity to add this extra layer of pre-qualification to their enquiries will help our agents identify their strongest leads, while also helping our consumers get best prepared to secure their next rental property.

“We remain committed to differentiating our offering with fresh solutions for agents and we are proud to be enhancing the moving process for our renters.”

Chris Hutchinson, Canopy’s CEO, adds: “Our partnership is uniquely placed to launch a true pre-qualification offering that enables agents to focus their time on their strongest leads and allows renters to see how they look to the property industry, empowering them to put their best foot forward.”

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