My Experience Finding Tenants With OpenRent

Table of contents

• OpenRent Service Overview
• How Does OpenRent Work?
• OpenRent Tenant-Find Advertising Packages
• Is OpenRent a Scam? Is OpenRent Safe to Use? Is There a Catch?
• Step-by-Step Guide to Using OpenRent (From Registering to Finding Tenants)
• Is OpenRent Suitable for New Landlords?
• Is OpenRent the Best Online Letting Agent?
• How Is OpenRent Able to Offer Such Low Prices?

OpenRent Service Overview

To ensure we’re all on the same page, here’s a brief overview of OpenRent’s letting services…

• OpenRent is a super cost-effective online letting agent – their tenant-find services start from as little as £29.
• OpenRent was launched in 2012.
• Their core service is helping landlords get their rental properties listed on Rightmove & OnTheMarket to help generate enquires from prospective tenants.
• OpenRent offers a fully online marketing and lead generation service – it’s designed for self-managing landlords, not for those who require in-person support from an agent.
• They are currently the most popular online letting agent, with over 3000 Rightmove listings (at the time of writing this overview).
• They have accumulated over 2,500 reviews on their public Google profile, with the vast majority being extremely positive.

Visit OpenRent

How Does OpenRent Work?

I’ll keep it as simple as possible (and later on in this post I’ll provide a step by step guide to using OpenRent):

1. You’re a landlord and need to find a suitable tenant, either immediately or at some point in the near future (e.g. once your current tenant moves out).
2. You sign up to OpenRent, choose one of their advertising packages, and list the details of your vacant property through their online portal.
3. OpenRent then shares your listing across the UK’s largest property portals (e.g. Rightmove, OnTheMarket, and PrimeLocation) where prospective tenants actively search for rental properties. This broad marketing distribution is the key feature of OpenRent (and online letting agents in general).
4. When a prospective tenant makes an enquiry via one of the portals, OpenRent notifies you, and if they meet your criteria, you can arrange and host a viewing.
5. You choose the tenant you want and arrange to sign the tenancy agreement, either using OpenRent’s digital tenancy sign-up service or your own contract.

OpenRent Tenant-Find Advertising Packages

Visit OpenRent’s product page, and you’ll find three “tenant-find” packages to choose from.

If you’ve used OpenRent before and you’re looking at their packages thinking something looks off, here’s why: a Rightmove listing is no longer included by default. It’s now an optional extra that will set you back an additional £50.

Is it worth? I’ll get to that shortly, sit tight!

FREE PACKAGE: ‘OpenRent Only’ – IGNORE IT!

As enticing as “free” is, it’s a hard pass from me (hopefully you, too).

The free package only includes advertising on OpenRent’s own website, meaning your property won’t appear on major platforms like Rightmove or OnTheMarket, which significantly limits exposure. Quite frankly, it’s garbage. Sorry, OpenRent!

My guess is that it’s simply a honey trap designed to draw people into a sales funnel, where they’re then upsold the paid packages and add-on services.

£29 PACKAGE: ‘Portal Advertising’

The more basic – and cheaper – of the two paid packages, which includes:

• OpenRent Listing
• OnTheMarket Listing
• PrimeLocation listing
• Up to 100+ Partner Sites

£58 PACKAGE: ‘Advertising + Rent Now’

OpenRent’s Rent Now package comes with all the features provided in the Portal Advertising package, plus the following:

• Tenancy creation service – allows the landlord to create a custom tenancy agreement and get it digitally signed.
• Deposit registration – registers the deposit with MyDeposits, and serves the prescribed information to the tenants.
• First month’s rent collection – collects the first rent payment on the behalf of the landlord. There is an option to continue the rent collection service for £10 per month.

I know many landlords choose this package solely for the tenancy creation service. However, if you already have a tenancy agreement you’re comfortable using, and you’re happy to handle the deposit protection yourself (as I do), then the lower-cost package might be the better option for you.

However, I have to admit, I think the extra cost is worth it. It’s the real MVP in my eyes, which is why it’s my top pick for a tenant-find package on the market.

Should you pay the £50 extra for the Rightmove listing?

Hell yes!

As mentioned, Rightmove listings were once included in both of OpenRent’s paid packages, but recently – much to the despair of many loyal OpenRent fans – it became an optional extra that demands an additional £50! BOOOOOO!

Nope, it’s not a pretty pivot, but honestly, it’s still good value in the grand scheme of things. A Rightmove listing bumps the Portal Advertising package up to £79 and the Rent Now package to £99.

The reality is simple: if you want the best chance of filling your vacant BTL property and finding tenants quickly, you need your property on Rightmove. That’s it.

It’s an essential upgrade, despite OpenRent’s claim that their base packages, which includes OnTheMarket, PrimeLocation, and a handful of less popular portals, provides more than enough firepower to find tenants quickly.

Yeah, nah!

I want need that precious Rightmove listing. It’s by far the most popular property portal and pulls in the highest volume of eyeballs – it’s not even close. For £50 extra, I’m in.

Visit OpenRent

Is OpenRent a Scam? Is OpenRent Safe to Use? Is There a Catch?

I mean, I think I’ve already answered this question.

However, I will clarify by answering it directly, because it is one of the most common questions I get asked about OpenRent (and online letting agents in general, to be fair) from Landlords.

OpenRent claims to offer a tenant-finding service for only £29 – a price that looks like a total freak of nature when compared to the prices our local high-street agents are trying to shake us down for. So I totally get the concern.

Is OpenRent a scam? The only correct answer: NO!

I’ve used OpenRent successfully to find tenants multiple times during the last decade – their service is incredible and has saved me, along with hundreds (if not thousands) of other landlords I’ve interacted with, a small fortune in tenant-find fees.

• OpenRent is absolutely legit – they’re the real deal.
• They’ve been providing letting services to landlords since 2012.
• They are a member of the Property Ombudsman, which means they commit to TPO Codes of Practice, enabling their customers to escalate any complaints directly with the Property Ombudsman if they are dissatisfied with the service provided.

So if that’s all you needed to hear, go ahead and sign up to one of their nifty advertising packages.

There’s nothing to fear.

Visit OpenRent

My experience with using OpenRent

Since I’ve had several positive experiences with OpenRent over the years, it doesn’t really make sense to single out just one. In truth, it’s the consistent reliability and value that stand out, and that speaks louder than any one-off success story.

That said, my most recent experience was early 2025, so I’ll briefly share it to give you a feel for what you can expect (fair warning: it’s nothing particularly exciting!).

As usual, submitting my property details through OpenRent’s intuitive dashboard was a breeze. Within 24 hours of uploading the listing, my advert was live on both Zoopla and Rightmove. It all happens very quickly.

Within just a few days, I had received a dozen or so enquiries in the form of emails and voice-messages, which was amazing (but not surprising to be honest, I’ve had similar results every time). I especially like the voice message feature, which lets interested parties leave recordings without accessing my phone number, and I can play them directly through the OpenRent dashboard.

I personally like to give all suitable applicants the opportunity to view the property, so I have a larger pool of tenants to choose from. It can be a bit of a slog when interest is high, but I find it’s worth the effort, especially when the primary goal is to find good tenants, which it always is.

After a jam-packed run of viewings that lastly approximately 2 weeks, I had found an awesome tenant.

All for £29, which was pretty sweet.

2026 Update: My overall experience with OpenRent still holds true. However, since I last used OpenRent, they’ve made some significant changes to their packages, affecting both pricing and features, which has led me to seriously reconsider whether I’d choose them today over the alternatives (I’ll go into more detail further down!).

Step-by-Step Guide to Using OpenRent (From Registering to Finding Tenants)

1. Choose your tenant-find package – choose between OpenRent’s Portal Advertising and Rent Now packages (I compare both packages below to help you decide)
2. Create your listing – this includes adding the property description, photos, a floor plan, and a copy of the EPC.

   Side note: high-quality photos really make a gigantic difference here – there are plenty of independent studies showing just how much they can boost interest. If you don’t already have decent photos, resist the urge to whip out your smartphone (I know how tempting it is!). Instead, I recommend splashing out on OpenRent’s professional photography service (£79, plus an extra £25 if you want floorplans thrown in). It’s money well spent, especially since you can reuse the photos in the future.

   Genuine example from OpenRent:

   

3. Provide proof of ownership – you’ll need to upload a document confirming you own the property (e.g. Land Registry Title, landlord insurance policy etc.) to assist with fraud prevention.
4. Pre-screening/filtering applicants – not only during my most recent experience using OpenRent, but also previous times, I found myself inundated with enquiries, many of which were either of frustratingly poor quality (time-wasters, basically) or from unsuitable applicants. Consequently, I found myself wasting a lot of time separating the wheat from the chaff.

   OpenRent pushes *some* their stock onto Gumtree (to quote, “we will occasionally list some properties on there based on a few factors”), so I suspect many of the poor quality enquiries stem from there (Gumtree is notorious for generating less than desirable applications, although a great platform for lead generation, no doubt).

   Fortunately, OpenRent provides pre-screening tools which help with qualifying applicants and ultimately filtering out a lot of the unsuitable applicants. I definitely recommend taking advantage of the pre-screening tools by enabling them.

   • Pre-screening feature: if this is enabled, it forces applicants to answer a series of questions based on the exclusions you set when you created your advert. For example, tenants with pets or DSS tenants. OpenRent we will check they meet your criteria before allowing tenants to request a viewing of the property.
   • Auto-reply feature: if this is enabled, an auto reply email will be sent to anyone when they request a viewing.

     You can set what is in the email, such as the times available for viewings and you can also ask your own specific questions to applicants, to assist with the filtering process. For example:

     • What is your current living situation, are you renting?
     • Why are you looking to move?
     • Can you provide a guarantor?
     • Do you have any CCJs and if so, please provide details.
     • What is your occupation and the occupation of any adults who would be living there?
     • How long do you plan on living in the property?
5. Communication & viewing scheduling – all communication and scheduling can done through OpenRent’s dashboard, which is great and very intuitive to use.
6. Tenant referencing – once you have confidently decided on a tenant(s), you can use OpenRent’s referencing service to run background checks and verify your tenants. I can’t overstate how important it is to thoroughly reference tenants.
7. Sign contract / tenancy agreement – once the tenants have passed the referencing stage (with flying colours), OpenRent sends a draft copy of the tenancy agreement for approval. Once approved, both landlord and tenant can digitally sign contracts.
8. Upload landlord documents – to help with compliance, OpenRent will require you to upload documents to the OpenRent dashboard that need to be served on tenants:
   • Copy of landlord insurance policy
   • A valid Gas Safety Certificate
   • A valid Electrical Installation Condition Report (EICR)
   • A valid Energy Performance Certificate (EPC)

   If you don’t have any of these documents, I recommend acquiring them before listing your property. They’re available for purchase directly from OpenRent, or you can source your own. You can visit my Landlord Shop for a bunch of recommended suppliers (I often have exclusive discounts and rates available).

   Once the documents are uploaded, they’ll be served on the tenants and recorded (which can prove to be crucial to prove compliance).

Visit OpenRent

Is OpenRent Suitable for New Landlords?

This is probably a question that shouldn’t be limited to OpenRent, but rather, online letting agents in general (since they all more of less perform the same function).

Unfortunately, I can’t give you a definitive answer, because it hinges on how much of the legwork you’re willing to do and the level of responsibility you’re prepared to take on as a landlord. You’ll also need to weigh these factors against the potential cost savings of using an online service like OpenRent.

That said, as a general thought: if you prefer to be a hands-off landlord who minimises involvement and don’t mind paying extra for convenience, then OpenRent is probably not for you. In that case, you’d likely be better off using a reputable high-street letting agent to manage the entire process. Though, of course, that comes with its own challenges. However, if you’re open to conducting viewings and engaging directly with your tenants, platforms like OpenRent could be a great fit.

I’ve written a complete guide on Online Letting Agents, which specifically covers the topic of high-street letting agent Vs online letting agent, so I recommend reading that to help you decide where to stand if you’re undecided.

On another note, I do frequently receive correspondence from new landlords that rave about OpenRent, and often thank me for putting them on the path.

I have recently become a new landlord having inherited a flat. My husband already had a positive experience of using Openrent for his two rentals and couldn’t praise them enough. So I went with them for my letting and the process was entirely seamless. The app walked me through every step and reminded me about all my legal obligations – important when things are forever changing. They even issued the new tenants with the copies of all documents I am legally obliged to give them, without me even having to request it. A thoroughly pleasant experience after a pretty soul destroying long distance reno experience!!

I recommended to a friend looking to re-rent out a house – she had been quoted £750 just to advertise via a high street agent online with Rightmove and Zoopla – didn’t even include finding tenants… with Openrent it was £50 and automatically included in their all-in package!

Just goes to show that the estate agents are making ridiculous mark-ups for doing nothing!

Make of that what you will.

Visit OpenRent

Is OpenRent the Best Online Letting Agent?

Hmm, this is a tricky question to answer, and I have a feeling my response might be unexpected, because, so far, this could arguably be interpreted as one giant puff piece.

Let me start by saying that there are, undoubtedly, plenty of reputable OpenRent alternatives to choose from, all offering fantastic tenant-find services, and the truth is, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed by any of them as long as you understand how online agents fundamentality operate and what they bring to the table.

In terms of how OpenRent stack up against the competition, the short answer is this: I don’t think OpenRent are currently the best option. They’re a great choice, but they’re not the best, at least for the moment. There was a time, not too long ago, when that wasn’t the case, OpenRent was sitting comfortably at the top spot. I always knew it was possible they would get out-maneuvered, but I wasn’t expecting it. The irony is, their tumble in rank is of their own making (isn’t that always the way?), and it all happened rather quickly.

I still place them in my top three, and I certainly wouldn’t discourage anyone from using their services (because they’re still excellent), but, first and foremost, I’d be lying if I said I consider them the best – and, secondly, I’d be doing you a disservice.

The truth is, OpenRent have made some changes recently, that I’ve struggled to come to terms with:

• They’ve started charging an extra £50 for a Rightmove listing, which makes their packages a lot less competitive. That was a bitter pill to swallow, especially since a Rightmove listing used to be included at no additional cost;
• the pill became even harder to swallow when they stopped listing on Zoopla and replaced it with OnTheMarket.

Essentially, they’ve stripped away a couple of bread-and-butter features while simultaneously hiking their prices. I mean, that’s clearly never a good recipe.

The two biggest property portals in the UK by far are Rightmove and Zoopla, they attract the most eyeballs, which means they generate the most leads. Knowing that, I feel like I’d be limiting my marketing efforts by not being listed on them both.

Personally, I just wouldn’t use a tenant-find service, whether online or high street, that doesn’t list on both Rightmove and Zoopla, so OpenRent wouldn’t be my go-to service.

Even though a Rightmove listing is still available (which, by far, is the most important listing, so I’m glad they didn’t ditch it altogether as they did with Zoopla), OpenRent have priced themselves out of competitiveness by charging an optional £50 extra for it…ouch!

OpenRent: Not the Cheapest, Not the Best Value!

I never thought I’d say this, but here we are.

After almost two decades, OpenRent is no longer the cheapest online letting agent when comparing like-for-like features, following their recent changes. This is important because OpenRent built their reputation on offering a highly effective service at the lowest price on the market, hence why so many landlords flocked to them. But as things stand, they’ve leapfrogged from being the cheapest to somewhere in the middle of the pack.

(Bear in mind, when I say “cheap” or “expensive”, I’m speaking in the context of online letting agents, and in the grand scheme of things, we’re never talking about big money. Ultimately, all of them are peanuts compared to traditional high-street agents.)

I’d be remiss if I didn’t flaunt Hello-Neighbour’s tenant-find packages in particular, because, objectively, their current offer is mind-blowing and crushes OpenRent’s (especially with the use of the exclusive discount code), as well as those of every other online agent. No hating, it’s just a fact.

Judge for yourself:

Hello-Neighbour's Tenant-find Packages + Discount Code

Letting Agent	Rating	Term	Includes / Notes	Price from
Hello Neighbour Top Pick	Rating 4.6 TrustPilot	Duration 3 months	Includes / Notes Get Listed package Key features Rightmove listing (First 7 days includes featured listing) Zoopla listing OnTheMarket listing	Price Discount price FREE (Normal price: £29)	Visit WebsiteFREE Listing Code: PIPFREE
Hello Neighbour	Rating 4.6 TrustPilot	Duration 3 months	Includes / Notes Get Rented package Key features Rightmove listing (First 7 days includes featured listing) Zoopla listing OnTheMarket listing Deposit registration Rent collection (First month only) Tenancy sign-up service Holding deposit collected Property compliance checks	Price Discount price £30 Inc VAT (Normal price: £59)	Visit Website£29 Discount Code: PIPFREE

Nope, your eyes are not deceiving you. Hello-Neighbour’s basic “Get Listed” package is absolutely FREE with the use of the discount code, which includes free Rightmove and Zoopla listings for 3 months. No strings attached.

And yup, the code also knocks 50% off their “Get Rented“ package – you’ll have to part with some cash for that one, but it’s still peanuts for what you get.

Hello-Neighbour currently offers the best value tenant-find service, and it’s not even close (and they’d personally be my top choice right now).

That said, I’d still encourage you to browse my online letting agent comparison table, because you might find another agent whose features better suit your needs.

When it might make sense to look beyond OpenRent

If you’re looking for an ongoing, hands-on experience with telephone support and all the features you’d expect from a managed service, you’ll likely be disappointed with OpenRent. Fortunately, there are better options available. For example, online agents like LettingAProperty.com might be a better fit. While they do offer a basic tenant-find package similar to OpenRent’s, their core focus is on providing more feature-rich managed services. And they excel at it. Their packages include benefits like monthly rent collection, rent guarantee insurance, emergency maintenance cover, and more. Essentially, they cater to a completely different demographic of landlords than OpenRent.

That’s why, in my LettingAProperty.com review, I recommend landlords who only need a tenant-find service to choose OpenRent over LettingAProperty, simply because I think they handle that aspect of lettings better.

How Is OpenRent Able to Offer Such Low Prices?

By nature, online agents like OpenRent are dirt cheap compared to traditional high-street agents for one simple reason: they have much lower overheads. They don’t operate out of high-street branches offering an personal, face-to-face service, with boots on the ground. Instead, they run from a centralised office where operations and support is managed. I’ve gone into much deeper detail in my online letting agent guide if you’re interested. In other words, their running costs are relatively low, so they don’t need to charge the world.

That said, as mentioned, OpenRent is by far the biggest online letting agent in the UK, and that still comes with costs. Yet, they manage to keep their prices very affordable. How?

To put my own mind at ease, and hopefully yours too (remember, this blog post aims to provide clarity and alleviate landlords’ concerns), I spoke directly to one of the co-founders to get a better understanding of what’s really going on and how OpenRent makes their business model financially viable under these circumstances. Having heard their side, I’m now well-informed enough to explain it to you, so you can connect the dots yourself.

OpenRent can offer dirt-cheap tenant-find services without compromising customer service because of four main reasons…

• 1) In-house technical skills – one of the biggest costs of starting and running any online service/website is developing and maintaining the technical infrastructure. Fortunately, one of the founding-members of OpenRent is a technical genius, so the only real start-up cost of developing the website was his time (which I’m not devaluing, but there was no hard cash required). So straight away a large portion of that cost was eradicated. That said, they have massively evolved since their start-up days, so they do now have a team of technical-monkeys steering the ship, not just one socially inept geek.

  From what I know, most online letting agent founders aren’t website developers, they’re letting agents and/or landlords, so they have to take a HUGE hit on development costs.

• 2) Automation – I guess this is an extension of the above factor, and achieved because of the technical abilities they have at their disposal.

  While they do have full-time phone support available and real people replying to emails, their system is extremely automated, meaning less human interference is required, which means less employed manpower.

  Now, don’t misconstrue that as a negative, because it’s not. All I’m saying is that they have automated their system so well that there’s very little reason for anyone to pick up the phone and ask for support, because their automated system takes care of most of the operational procedures, and keeps landlords fully in the loop with live status updates.

• 3) Upselling other products – they make a large chunk of change from upselling other products beyond their bread and butter “Tenant find service“, such as drawing up contacts, EPC’s and Gas Safety Checks.

  To be honest, most other online agents businesses do the same. They probably wouldn’t survive without the upsells.

• 4) Great service – they’re so sure their service is spectacular that they’re confident you’ll return to use their service over and over.

Cool.

And we’re done!

Visit OpenRent

My Conclusion

OpenRent offer a great service, and I wouldn’t discourage any landlord from using their services.

If you’re a self-managing landlord (or interested in becoming one) and you just need a reliable, efficient, and cost-effective online agent to help market your property to generate leads from prospective tenants – OpenRent is a fantastic choice.

However, as things stand, while I still have confidence in their product, OpenRent wouldn’t be my first choice – other options tick more boxes for less doe. It’s a very fluid and competitive market, though, so the pendulum could easily swing back in OpenRent’s favour, at which point I’ll update this post.

If you weren’t entirely sure what OpenRent was before reading this, and you’re looking for a fully managed service, then OpenRent defo won’t be right for you. In that case, I’d recommend either using a local high-street agent (yes, I know, I know – not ideal), or consider using an online letting agent that specialises in fully managed solutions (they’re significantly cheaper and more flexible than using a high-street agent).

Your thoughts…

Have you used OpenRent? If so, please share your feedback below. Likewise, if you’re considering using them or have any questions about their service, feel free to ask.

Landlord out xo