The rental sector is becoming busier with every step of lockdown release. Despite this, agents may be working with a reduced workforce, especially if employees are still at home shielding, are asked to isolate as part of the ‘track and trace’ initiative, fall ill or take annual leave.

One of the most common workload complaints among letting agents (even outside of a pandemic) is tenancy administration – piles of paperwork, never ending email trails and a to-do list wrapped up in red tape. 

These time-heavy tasks now have to be completed with no financial recompense, thanks to the abolition of tenant fees, and with tenancy set-up processes becoming increasingly long-winded - thanks to a growing number of regulations - letting a property can feel like a loss-leading exercise. But it doesn’t have to be.

Referencing is an essential part of lettings yet it can be one of the most frustrating. Right now, there is likely to be a rush of new home movers joining a backlog of potential tenants waiting to be vetted – creating damaging void periods for landlords and draining agents of capacity to do other, profit-making work. 

Manual referencing is one of those barriers that can add weeks of waiting to a simple process – one that is capable of being concluded in a matter of minutes when partnering with Canopy.

We believe that delays are unacceptable, both for the letting agent, the tenant and the landlord. Therefore we offer instant digital referencing as part of our Canopy RentPassport™ - a digital product designed to revolutionise the referencing process for everyone involved.

For letting agents, a tenant in possession of a RentPassport™ applies for a property with a ready-populated digital reference that agents can access in an instant – no waiting for checks to come back or files to be uploaded. Digital referencing is an agent’s time-saving savior - especially if tenants are waiting and landlords want their properties occupied.

The Canopy RentPassport™ checks and stores the most crucial aspects of a tenant’s rental history via Open Banking. As well as showing the tenant’s rental payment habits (so you can see if they pay on time, every time), verifying income and performing soft credit checks that are powered by Experian, the RentPassport™  conducts a number of the ID and fraud checks an agent usually manually undertakes. 

This all takes place via our app - no need for paper IDs, payslips or photocopies – all that’s needed is the digital data. If you’d like to save time, avoid administration delays and fill lets faster, get in touch with us today.