Policies

Booking and holding deposit

1. To book a room you fill in the booking form, add a photo of your passport and pay a holding deposit of one week's rent. The weekly figure is the monthly rent × 12 ÷ 52.
2. When the holding deposit is paid, the room comes off the site at once and is held for you for up to 15 days (the deadline for agreement).
3. Within 72 hours of our request you send proof of income, bank statements for the last 3 months and, if it applies, your Right to Rent share code. You send them in your Mate Abode account.
4. If you do not go ahead, you lose the holding deposit. We keep it if you withdraw, give false or misleading information, fail the Right to Rent check, or do not take reasonable steps to sign the tenancy by the deadline.
5. If we or the landlord decide not to go ahead, or do not offer you the tenancy by the deadline, the holding deposit is refunded in full within 7 days.
6. If we keep the holding deposit, we tell you the reason in writing within 7 days.
7. If the tenancy goes ahead, the holding deposit is taken off your move in payment.

This follows Schedule 2 of the Tenant Fees Act 2019.

Payments

• Every payment is made by card, Apple Pay or Google Pay through Mate Abode's checkout, run by Stripe. Mate Abode never sees your full card number.
• Mate Abode never asks for a bank transfer. If someone asks you to pay a Mate Abode room by transfer, do not pay and tell us at hello@mateabode.com.
• Payment 1, to book: the holding deposit (one week's rent).
• Payment 2, after your documents are approved: the security deposit (5 weeks' rent) plus the first month's rent, minus the holding deposit you already paid.
• The security deposit is protected in a government approved deposit scheme within 30 days, and you receive the scheme details.
• There are no other fees for tenants.

Your tenancy

• Every tenancy is an assured periodic tenancy under the Renters' Rights Act 2026: rolling, with no fixed end date.
• To leave, you give at least two months' notice in writing. So the shortest stay is two months.
• The rent can go up at most once a year, with the statutory notice (Form 4A).
• You can ask to keep a pet. The landlord cannot refuse without a good reason.
• Nobody is turned away for having children or for receiving benefits.

Listings

• Rooms are listed by Mate Abode and by landlords and agencies who use Mate Abode.
• When a room is booked it is removed from the site at once. When a landlord lets a room another way, it is removed at their next update (at most 10 minutes).
• The rent shown is the rent you pay. Any bills included are shown on the room page.

AI assistant

• The assistant suggests rooms using your budget, move in date and the areas you choose, and only shows rooms that are free.
• It does not make decisions about your application. People at Mate Abode check every booking.
• Never share passport numbers, card details or bank details in the chat. The assistant will never ask for them.

Privacy

• Mate Abode uses your details only to handle your booking, check references and Right to Rent, and run your tenancy, as allowed by UK GDPR.
• Passport photos and documents are stored encrypted and are seen only by the people who check your booking and, for your room, the landlord.
• We keep booking records for as long as the law asks (Right to Rent records for one year after the tenancy ends). Bookings that do not go ahead are deleted after 6 months.
• You can ask for a copy of your data, or ask us to correct or delete it, by writing to hello@mateabode.com.
• We never sell your data.

Cookies

We use only the cookies the site needs to work: keeping you signed in and remembering your choices. No advertising cookies.

Complaints

Write to hello@mateabode.com and we reply within 5 working days. If you are not happy with the answer, you can go to the Property Redress Scheme or the Housing Ombudsman, depending on who manages your room.