Tenancy Agreements Explained
Tenancy 101
Whenever a room or a property as a whole is rented for a period of time by one or multiple people, this renting period is encapsulated into a tenancy. From the tenancy, will stem multiple files and processes related to it: a tenancy agreement, an inventory, a rent schedule, etc…
A tenancy is defined by its period, price, deposit scheme…and multiple other details.
A tenancy can be created from a room page, or by the creation of an onboarding.
Tenancy Agreements 101
Tenancy agreements belong within a tenancy and are the bundle of contracts and their relative dates. There is a dedicated panel for them in every tenancy page.
In order, the panel will show:
- The current tenancy agreement if there is one
- The prospective and/or future tenancy agreement
- The past tenancy agreements if there are some
Tenancy Agreement Signature
Use COHO to get the tenancy agreement signed and stored.
Signature Type
Already Signed
If the tenancy agreement is already signed and you want to store it in COHO, select this option when creating the tenancy agreement. The files, whatever their format will be stored without any modification into COHO.
eSignature
Our recommended option: Upload contracts to be signed directly into COHO by the tenants and guarantors. This is a service we usually price at £1 + VAT, but it can depend on your subscription type. You will see the price for your subscription type when picking the signature type.
We will gather the files, transform any word document into PDF while performing the possible merge fields translations and serve it to all signers.
Signers will be require to acknowledge the prescribed information (“How To Rent Guide”, “Gas Safety Certificate”, “EICR”, “EPC”…), verify their identity and then sign digitally.
Tenants will have to sign into their “My COHO” dashboard.
Guarantors will have access to a page requiring no account creation to sign the contracts.
Once all signatures are gathered, the manager will be asked to review and confirm the agreement by confirming their identity and signing it. The signature by the manager validates the tenancy agreement. This will:
- Generate the signed files
- Adding a new page with all the signatures at the very end of the contracts.
- Adding an eReceipt PDF, with all the information needed in court: IP address, file hash (SHA256, can verify it using https://emn178.github.io/online-tools/sha256.html)
- Trigger the addition of the invoice line items for your next COHO payment.
Wet Signature
Similar to eSignature, but not digitally integrated.
After the documents are treated and served, the signer will also be required to acknowledge the prescribed information and verify their identity. Though, instead of signing digitally, they will have to download the contracts, sign them and upload the signed copy onto the signature form.
Note that each signer can do that process in parallel, this is called “executed in counterparts”, meaning each party signs a separate but identical copy of the agreement. This is enforceable in court.
Similarly to eSignature, the manager will be asked to review and confirm the agreement by confirming their identity and uploading an ultimate bundle of signed files. Once the ultimate bundle is uploaded, the tenancy agreement process is considered done.
Guarantor Signature
If the tenancy has a guarantor, there will be options for the guarantor signature: Sign the same contract as the tenants (the tenancy agreement), sign another contract (the guarantor agreement) or disregard guarantor signature.
In case the guarantor needs to sign the tenancy agreement, it will be using the same signature type.
In case the guarantor has to sign another contract, you can pick if it will be eSignature, Wet Signature or if you’re uploading an already signed contract. If this is eSignature, it will be an additional £1 + VAT (or whatever price it is for your subscription type).
Using Templates
To be more efficient while creating tenancy agreements, you can save tenancy agreement templates onto COHO, in order to reuse the same bundle of files every time.
Read more about tenancy agreement templates in this article.
Using Merge Fields
In the case of eSignature and Wet Signature, any Word document (.docx) uploaded can use merge fields. The documents will be scanned, once reviewed, the translations will be applied onto the document before it’s made into a PDF.
Read more about merge field in this article.
Multiple Signers
In the case of eSignature and Wet Signature, there can be multiple signers. Be it multiple tenants from a joint tenancy (read more in this article) or grouped tenancies (read more in this article). Each of the signers will be served the documents, the prescribed information ask to sign, each on their own “My COHO” dashboard.
In case of grouped tenancies, this also applies to guarantors, which can be multiple.
Signature Process
Creating The Agreement
The tenancy agreement creation happens in a multi-step form. Here are the different steps:
- If the tenancy is grouped, revision of the tenancies in the group and their details.
- Pick dates (if we already have dates, this is skipped, but you can always go back to it and modify)
- Chose a signature type
- Review of tenancy details. In case of groups, this will be the aggregate data of all tenancies. You can edit the tenancy and/or add a guarantor at this step.
- Add the files. You can leverage the tenancy agreement templates there.
- Deal with the guarantor signature options. This will be skipped if there is no guarantor attached to the tenancy/tenancies.
- Review of the prescribed information that we will ask the tenants to acknowledge. If something is missing, we’ll show it.
- If it applies, review of the merge fields translations. By default, we only show the fields that would need attention: the invalid ones, the ones missing a value and the ones you have to set yourself. You also have an option to see all translations and a preview of the document
Signature by the Parties
Once the tenancy agreement is created, all signers will receive a notification that they need to sign.
Tenants
Each tenant who needs to sign will have to do it from their “My COHO” dashboard. They will receive an action for it, which will show at the top of their dashboard. Hence, it means they need to have created their account and have access to their tenancy/onboarding.
Concerning account creation: In the case of onboardings, the tenant receives a link to create an account/login automatically, but if this is a tenancy created outside of the onboarding, the manager has to send the invite for the tenant to register.
Tenants will see how many people are remaining to sign, be it guarantors or other tenants.
They will not see the guarantor agreement since they are not concerned.
Upon signing the contract, they will first have to acknowledge the prescribed information, then verify their identity, then sign digitally (in case of eSignature) or upload the signed files (in case of Wet Signature) and finally enter their password.
Guarantors
Each guarantor will be sent an email and an SMS with a link to follow to sign the tenancy agreement.
Before seeing the contract, they will have to verify their identity inputting the correct phone number you registered them with (usually filled within the application form, editable from the tenant summary section of the tenancy page).
Manager Confirmation
Once everyone has signed, the manager will see a button “View & Confirm” on the proposed tenancy agreement view.
In case of eSignature
On the confirmation form, the manager will see all the signatures and the prescribed information acknowledgement.
The manager will have to verify their identity like the other signers, sign digitally and enter their COHO password.
In case of Wet Signature
On the confirmation form, the manager will see all the contracts uploaded by each tenants and the prescribed information acknowledgement.
The manager will have to verify their identity like the other signers, upload the set of files they want as the definitive contracts (possibly, this is when they would sign it themselves and re-upload it) and enter their COHO password.
Signing on behalf of
Upon confirmation, the manager has the option to sign on behalf of someone else.
Once Signed…
Add to Bundle
If the agreement is already signed but you forgot to add a file, you can use the button “Add files to existing bundle” to add any other file to the signed contracts bundle. This will not go through any transformation, it will be added to the bundle as is.
New Agreement
At any moment, you can replace the tenancy agreement by a new one. That will render void the previous one. Read more about this in this article.
Related Articles
Grouped Tenancies Explained
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