LearnThe lifecycle
The lease and e-signature
Once an application is accepted, Haven turns it into a lease both sides can read, sign it digitally with legal weight, and keep the signed copy as a permanent record. No printing, no scanning, no wondering which version is the real one.
From accepted application to a drafted lease
When an owner accepts an application, the details you already confirmed carry straight into the lease. The parties, the property, the rent, the deposit, the start date, the term, these come from the verified application, not from a blank form you have to fill in twice.
Haven drafts the lease from a jurisdiction-appropriate template. On our launch market, Malta, that means terms written for Maltese residential tenancy law and the registration requirements that come with it. The owner reviews the draft, adjusts what needs adjusting, and confirms it before anything goes to the renter.
Nothing is sent until the owner is ready. The draft is a working document; the renter never sees a version the owner hasn't approved.
A lease both sides can actually read
A lease is a contract, not a formality. Haven presents it in plain, structured sections, who, what, how much, for how long, and what each side is responsible for, so the terms are legible before anyone signs, not buried in dense clauses.
The same document is shown to both the owner and the renter. There is no owner copy and a different renter copy; both parties read and sign the exact same text. Key figures like the monthly rent and the deposit are stated once, clearly, and match the application they came from.
If something is wrong, it gets fixed before signing, not after. The point is that both people understand what they are agreeing to.
Qualified e-signature and legal validity
Signing happens in the app. Each party signs their own copy from their own account, and the signature is bound to their verified identity, the same identity checked earlier in the flow, so it is clear who signed, not just that someone clicked a button.
At the moment of signing, Haven records a timestamp and the signing context and seals the document. This is an electronic signature with legal standing under EU law (eIDAS), which recognises electronic signatures as valid and admissible. A signed lease in Haven is a binding agreement, the same as ink on paper.
We do not overstate this. The signature is real and it holds; where a specific tenancy requires additional steps such as public registration, those steps sit alongside the signed lease rather than being replaced by it.
The signed lease as an immutable record
Once signed, the lease becomes a legal artifact, and Haven treats it as immutable. It is stored append-only with an audit trail: who signed, and when. The signed copy is never quietly edited.
If the terms need to change later, a renewal, an amendment, a correction, that produces a new signed record that references the original. The history stays intact. You can always see what was agreed, and when, without one version overwriting another.
Both the owner and the renter keep access to their signed lease for the life of the tenancy and beyond. It does not live in one person's inbox or a drawer; it lives in both accounts, retrievable whenever either side needs it.
What happens the moment it's signed
Signing is the hinge between agreement and moving in. As soon as both parties have signed, Haven moves the tenancy forward automatically rather than leaving you to chase the next step.
The deposit is collected into escrow, held separately, not spent, and released according to the agreed terms at move-out. Rent is set up for SEPA autopay, so the monthly payment runs on schedule without manual transfers or reminders, and every cent is tracked as a double-entry journal entry rather than a balance someone edits by hand.
From there the tenancy is live. The lease is signed and stored, the deposit is secured, rent is scheduled, and both sides can see exactly where things stand. Welcome home.