ASA rejects complaint by Zero Deposit against flatfair

Buy-to-let investors can have full confidence in the protection offered to landlords and tenants by flatfair, a fintech scale-up that allows tenants to instantly rent a home with no deposit, according to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). 

flatfair’s deposit replacement initiative, which offers 12 weeks’ worth of protection, is designed for tenants who do not have all the funds up front for a traditional tenancy deposit.

But Zero Deposit, which also provides an alternative option to rental deposits, challenged flatfair’s promises of ‘Keep your property protected’ and ‘Get up to double the protection of a traditional tenancy deposit’, which related to a page on flatfair’s website from July 2019 called: “How it works - Landlords.”

But flatfair’s claims have now been substantiated by ASA which means that they were therefore “not misleading”, according to the watchdog’s judgement.

The ASA said in its judgement: “We noted that flatfair had agreed to purchase tenants’ debt from landlords, at 100% of the value of the debt (up to a maximum of 12 weeks’ rent), in 100% of cases where an Established Charge had gone unpaid by the tenant.”

flatfair founder and CEO, Franz Doerr, commented: “Our business was founded through a genuine desire to make renting fairer, more transparent and more accessible and we’re delighted that this complaint has rightly been refuted. 

“Deposits are a major bugbear for millions of renters, wasting significant time for thousands of agents. Our technology aims to make renting as easy as checking into a hotel and savvy agents are using our platform because they need a quicker process that enables tenants and landlords to communicate fairly, massively reducing conflict and distrust.”

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