Deposit and a month's rent without a contract

LadyoftheLake_2

This is all extremely dodgy sounding. Found a property to rent which we went to see a week ago and decided to go for. It was on rightmove and advertised with OPENRENT. We started to get iMessages and emails from the woman on OPENRENT. However upon examination the emails were from Purplebrick..com. It has only been just under a week and they have twice threatened to put it back on rightmove if we didn't hurry up. We paid £200 for an initial deposit. She (the OPENRENT/Purplebricks woman) has now demanded £1400 for the rest of the deposit and a month in advance, although we are not moving in until December. I told her we didn't want to pay that sort of money without a contract. She told me they could not draw up a contract without this money up front as we needed to show "financial commitment" first. Absolutely refused to do so and now she is saying we should have read the small print before we signed. We've signed nothing. She is now emailing us from a personal hotmail address. So we can't work out whether she's from OPENRENT or Purplebricks. I had contact with the founder of OPENRENT on Reddit and he said they would never ask for deposit and rent without a contract. So looks like we've lost £200 but I'd like to get to the bottom of this. We have her phone number but I doubt she's actually the name she says she is, although the PurpleBricks email addy would suggest maybe she is.

theartfullodger

Check spending £3 on land registry who owns the place
https://www.gov.uk/search-property-information-land-registry
- this sounds like a fraud.. If different name contact police

However, bonkers, but in England a tenancy contract does not have to be written for tenancy less than 3 years so could, just, be legal.

LadyoftheLake_2

This just gets stranger. The property comes up as belonging to two deceased people. When I searched the house on Google Maps it is a ten minute walk from the one we viewed. I emailed the agent and she said I was just confusing myself and had searched for 61 instead of 16. Obviously I didn't and my Land Registry search confirms this.

I emailed a pdf copy of the Land Registry document to the "agent" to confirm I had not made a mistake.

Lokolo

Why are you giving her this information you have found out? You are just giving her more ammo to confuse you.

HampshireH

Have you contacted purple bricks to see if she legitimately works for them?

Sounds like a chance to be honest. Good for you for trying to get to the bottom of it. Hopefully (but probably not) it will stop others losing cash too.

Just out of interest how can the real address be 10 minutes away from the one you viewed if you used the same address/photos are the same.

HampshireH

*chancer - sorry cannot edit on my phone

Sanand

Please be very careful - my son and girlfriend lost all their hard-earned savings on a Croydon flat in a similar situation. All ready to move in and when they got there, someone else was in situ and it was a scam. We took the so-called letting company to court but they had no assets so could not get any recourse - horrid lesson to learn. This screams another scam to me to be honest....

NeilCr

Purplebrick.com is not Purplebricks

They are purplebricks.co.uk over here and purplebricks.com in the USA

LadyoftheLake_2

She.s not confusing me. She's admitted that there is something glaringly wrong with the addresses. She's the one who is confused now.

LadyoftheLake_2

That's my next step. Also contacting OPENRENT who the property was actually advertised with on Rightmove. It somehow became PurpleBricks when she started emailing us.

LadyoftheLake_2

Purplebrick.com is not Purplebricks
They are purplebricks.co.uk over here and purplebricks.com in the USA

Oh, just checked the first emails and they are definitely .com and not co.uk