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Broad changes to our tenancy bond service will be introduced over the coming months to make bond transactions more efficient. The changes will also give you greater visibility and control of your bond transactions.
We will provide regular updates on this page to keep you up to date on the latest changes as they are introduced and what it means for you.
Better customer experience for you
Bonds charged for a tenancy must be lodged with Tenancy Services, where required. It is therefore important for us to continue to provide an efficient service that makes bond transactions simple and easy for you.
Our modern tenancy bond service will make bond transactions quicker and easier for property managers, private landlords and tenants. There will also be new ways for property managers to manage bond transactions and information on your bond records.
Improved data accuracy on bond records
Our current system has been in use for 24 years, it is mostly paper based and can take us some time to manually process the information you provide. The new system will be a digital-first service so information on your bond records can be more accurate and complete.
This will make it quicker and easier to process bond transactions later in your tenancy, and to update information on your bond records.
Easier bond lodgements from 2 December
All bonds already lodged with us will not be affected and you do not need to do anything.
From 2 December, you will need to lodge new bonds digitally by using:
- our new online form for bond lodgements on our Tenancy Services website, or
- property management software that is ready for our new business-to-business connection.
Account2Account and credit card payments will be available when using the new online form.
Bond lodgements by email or post will no longer be available.
If you need help with lodging bonds on our website, please call our Service Centre on 0800 TENANCY (0800 836 262). We cannot lodge the bond for you over the phone, but we can talk you through how to use the online form.
Tenant(s) and the landlord will continue to receive a notification from us when a bond is lodged.
New business-to-business connection
A new business-to-business connection will be available for property management software to integrate with our new system. If you currently use software to manage your tenancies, ask your software vendor if this new connection is available to you or how to use this new function.
Your software vendor will need you to complete a one-off registration before you can use the new business-to-business connection. Speak with your software vendor for help with this registration process.
Bulk bond lodgement, or lodging more than one bond in a single transaction, will be available through this new business-to-business connection. This will help landlords and property managers to manage bond transactions more efficiently.
Direct debit and direct credit payment will be available through the new connection.
New online form for lodging top-up bonds
You will need to use our new online form for bond top-up on our Tenancy Services website.
Changes to bond refunds and other transactions coming soon
For now, the process for bond refunds, bond transfers or to change information on a bond record stays the same. However, there are new forms for these requests so please make sure you are using the latest version available on our Tenancy Services website.
Transferring bond to a new tenancy
Changing information on a bond record
These bond transactions will also move online soon to make it quicker and easier for you to get your bond money back, transfer your bond to a new tenancy or to update information on your bond record.
SOURCE: TENANCY SERVICES