An innovative new tenants’ passport service has launched in beta mode, a few months before it is due to go fully live.
It is free to tenants, and ahead of the fees ban, has been designed to replace traditional referencing by agents.
The tenants create their Movem Passport online, to include ID verification, passport validation, income validation, proof of previous rental payments, County Court judgments, and reviews from previous landlords and letting agents.
Once their Passport is active, they can grant access privately and securely.
Agents will be able see the Passport free at this stage, with all personal information including contact details masked.
A tenant can use their Passport when booking viewings on any platform, including Rightmove, Zoopla and Gumtree. Passport sharing can be initiated over the phone, and does not require the other party to sign up.
When the agent is satisfied that the prospective tenant is suitable to proceed, the tenant can confirm that they’re happy for their full Passport to be shared, which allows the agency to download their full reference, with the masking removed.
At this point, agents would pay between £2.99 and £7.99 – the fee depends on the extent of their usage.
The Passports are valid for three months once activated.
Some agents, including Countrywide, have already confirmed that tenants with Movem Passports will not have to pay referencing fees.
Movem started out as a website for, initially, student tenants to review their rental experiences, and was founded by Peter Ramsay, then a student himself, in 2013. It has since rolled out to the wider review market.
The company, which began life in a bedroom, raised £200,000 last year via crowdfunding in just ten days to create the Passports.
Ramsay, who is still only 23, was listed by Startups100 as one of the top young entrepreneurs to watch in 2017.
A limited number of Passports are available to tenants now at www.movem.co.uk/passport
The full service is expected to launch later this year, ahead of the fees ban.
Will the creators of the passport be insured if documents supplied to them are fraudulant and if so are they liable. To charge so little seems to suggest the passport will have no credibility and open to abuse.
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Hi KingTonyGreat question.We’re using established third parties to ensure the referencing is thorough and legitimate. We’re able to offer this so cheaply because we’ve built a lot of the infrastrcture and processes ourselves. We actually do more checks than a traditional reference, so I’d argue that a Passport reference is even less likely to be abused than a traditional one. If you have any more questions, don’t hesitate to follow up.Best regardsPeter Ramsey
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Hi, Peter from Movem here.
If anyone has any questions about Passport, or Movem as a whole, feel free to get in touch on peter@movem.co.uk
To clarify a few points here, the pricing is not either £2.99 or £7.99, it’s a sliding scale depending on usage.
We’re giving away the first references completely free to agencies who have pre-registered with Movem, and openly pledge to accept Movem Passport. If you’re interested, get in touch with me directly and we can put you on our beta.
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Morning Peter,
With the tenant passport are we able to obtain such information on their residential status such as how they’ve left in the current property condition they’ve left, Utilities all paid up, no issues with late payment of rent, emoyment ref, etc etc…. that’s usually obtained from a referencing company. I know the article pays mention to it above but I’m just slightly concerned with giving that tenant so much responsibility and control.
Regards
D
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Hi D
Thanks for the question, I’m happy to clear this up.
Yes, you’re able to see if the previous landlord & agent has recommended that tenant. It works similarly to how buyers and sellers review each other on eBay. Reviews are important for both parties.
As for rental payments, we use online income validation for this, and verify income/rental payments directly from the banks themselves, so there’s no real way to bastardise it (whereas tenants can photoshop fake bank statements – note, I know someone that shamelessly did that at uni). This is all automated, and uses the same system services like Paypal use to verify bank accounts.
This will tell you exactly when rental payments were made, and that they have a regular income.
The tenant actually has no real control over these checks. It’s all automated and uses the same services most of these traditional referencing companies use themselves.
What the tenants do have control over, however, is who this is shared with. Tenants can see exactly which checks have been done, if they’ve passed and control who can see it.We’re not just allowing tenants to ‘update their Passport’ and give us new information.
Everything has to be verified and authenticated from an outside source.
I hope that answers your questions, if there’s anything else, or you’d like to join our beta as an agency, get in touch on peter@movem.co.uk
Best regards
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Will the passport ever have an endorsement placed upon it if the tenant with it doesn’t pay their rent for example? How does that happen? And is a new passport required for each new tenancy transaction?
If it doesn’t get endorsed, and a new one is required each time, I am struggling to understand why it is called a passport, as that would indicate unrestricted movement to the bearer for a period of time. Otherwise isn’t it just a normal credit and reference check, which can happen now paid for by an agent prior to any viewings, with the applicants consent.
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Good morning
Thanks for the question. This is great feedback for us and we’ll be updating our FAQs based on the questions you all have.
A tenant’s Passport is a single entity, nobody has multiple Passports. All the recommendations this tenant receieves are stored there, from all of their tenancies. Although a new Passport isn’t required for each transaction, a reference only lasts 3 months. This means that once a tenant has created their Passport and been referenced, next time they wish to use it, we’ll automatically run the same reference and update it.
To confirm, the tenant will not need to reenter all their details, but we will do a fresh reference, so any changes will come up.
A tenant’s Passport can be used with multiple agencies, and shared at the point of viewing a property. In this sense, it’s far less restricted, as tenants do the reference once, and it can be shared with multple agencies.
Yes, an agency could pay for a reference check prior to a viewing, but they don’t want to, as it costs them money. An agency would never reference every lead they receive, but they will see a free reference for every tenant enquiring using Passport.
Is there anything else I can help you with?
Best regards
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But why would a prospective tenant pay for this. The Government want to ban this type of charge being made by a Landlord or Agent, so what you are suggesting is the tenant pays for it.
But, if all tenants vote with their feet and say “no”, or arent’t aware of what you are offering, then the Landlord and Agent are going to have to find another way.
I rather suspect somebody such as Experian will start doing something very similar, to be bolted onto their personal credit check report thingy for free.
Sorry to be so down on this, you clearly are trying to get something going and I applaude you for that, but it is tenants who have said “no more charges” and the Government have listened, why would they pay for your service – surely there has to be a need?
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Prospective tenants don’t ever pay for this, Passport is entirely free for tenants.
The only charges are to an agency, of less than £10, so download the full reference as a PDF.
You’ll never pay for a reference that fails, as you’ll be able to have seen they passed all the checks. Also, don’t worry about being negative. It’s actually really useful to get feedback and questions, as it gives me another chance to refine how we describe it, and ultimately make the product better.
I’m sure most founders would agree, if you pitch a StartUp for 4 years – you get used to all kind of comments. Please, keep them coming.
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I’m confused how this is different from the tenant supplying these documents directly to the agency ?
“A tenant can use their Passport when booking viewings on any platform, including Rightmove, Zoopla and Gumtree.”
But they can also book a viewing without a passport, surely ?
They expire after 3 months ? Does the agent still have access to those documents in case the tenant defaults and the case ends up going to court, where the referencing documents may be called upon ? Doe the tenant have to keep updating them ?
If there is going to be a charge made to the tenant for this, then this may be and idea …… oh but that may be banned …..
Just don’t see the benefit over any other referencing company other than they do it upfront so speed of move in could be an advantage ( maybe why Countrywide have endorsed it – they currently charge extra in my area if you wish to move in within x amount of days )
Correct my confusion if I’m not getting it ?
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Hi Property Peep
There are quite a few questions in there, so i’ll jump straight in.
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A Passport is different from supplying them straight to the agency, because it’s saved everyone time (it’s automated), and it’s all been verified by trusted third parties. In a way, it’d be similar to a tenant paying for their own reference, and then going to an agency – but a tenant would have to pay, and Passport is free.
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Yes, a tenant can book a viewing without a Passport, but then they will have to pay referencing fees and wait for the process to complete before being able to proceed.
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Yes absolutely. There are two stages of the Passport. Firstly, an agency can see a temporary and masked version of the reference, which tells them all the checks have been passed, and gives the agency everything they need to decide on that tenant.
Then, the second stage is the agency purchasing that reference. This is a small payment (around £5), and will instantly download the full reference. This is stored in your Movem account forever, and backed up on our end too.
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The reference checks only last 3 months, correct. If an agency has previously purchased a reference, then they keep that original reference. What this means though, is that a tenant will automaticaly be re-referrenced when they want to start sharing their Passport again, if there has been a period of inactivity (for example, if they’re in a property and not looking).
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The main benefits to every other referencing company:
– It’s free for agencies to see a reference, and make a decision if it’s worth spending the time to proceed with that tenant.
– It’s quicker and reduces void periods.
– The tenants save money.
– If you have a tenant in your office, who wishes to proceed, they can sit on their phone, create a Passport, automatically create a reference and you can have it ready to download within a few minutes.
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I hope I’ve cleared those up, if there are any more, please ask.
Best regards
Peter | peter@movem.co.uk
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“… automatically create a reference and you can have it ready to download within a few minutes. ” Really Peter – have you ever tried to get a reference out of a local authority for one of their employees, or from an airline?
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Sorry, this wasn’t clear. In fact, the frustration of trying to get a reference out of employees is one of our biggest issues with the current process. As a student, I knew people who would shamelessly take bank statements and photoshop their income so they could rent places they couldn’t afford. Now, I haven’t personally known someone to do this, but it wouldn’t be a stretch to stop people just asking their mates to pretend to be their employer. I’m sure there are examples where this doesn’t apply.
We’re not going to employers and asking for references, we’re verifying income/rental payments directly with banks. i.e, we’re not asking an employer to verify how much they earn, we’re actually verifying with the bank exactly how much / how regularly that tenant is paid. It’s the same with rental payments.
A landlord may forget exactly when rent was paid, and give you vague answers, our references will be exact and timestamped.
The recommendations from previous landlords/agencies are all instant, as they’ve been left on our site prior to the viewing – theoretically. Recommendations can come through anytime, so there’s no waiting around.
I hope this clears that up.
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Hi,
Could you explain how you are ” verifying income/rental payments directly with banks. ”
Does this mean that tenants will supply their bank account details to you and confirming that you can check certain transactions?
Thanks,
Mark
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Hi Mark
Sorry for the delayed response. Sure, let me shed some light on this.T
enants log into their online banking themselves, which grants us permission to see their last 90 days of transactions. Movem, as a company, will never store banking details, or have access to anyone’s bank account.
We’re getting transaction information as a snapshot, which we then use to verify rental payments and income. We can not see any activity that happens after this date, nor will anyone be able to access that user’s account.
It will be clearer when we can show the whole system working, but if you have any further questions – don’t hesitate to ask.
Best regards
Peter Ramsey
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Thanks Peter,
Still not sure what you mean?
Does the tenant login to their bank account through your site and do they then allow you to see all their bank transactions for the past 90 days?
Or do they somehow copy and paste their transactions?
Thanks
Mark
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They directly login, and we receive a snapshot of transactions back directly from the bank.
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Sounds great! Does it work with every bank?
When will this be live?
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Yes, works with the vast majority of UK banks. We’re launching a beta very soon, if you’d like me to pre-credit an account for you to join us in the beta just let me know. peter@movem.co.uk
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Hi Peter,
That would be great if you could pre-credit me to join the beta 🙂
Thanks
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I’d be happy to, but could you please email me, as I don’t have any way to contact you! 🙂
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You can email me at mark@houson.co.ukThanks
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