Rental Agreement & Digital Signatures

Haven lets you require a digital rental agreement that guests sign before arrival. Unlike House Rules — which are the friendly summary of what is allowed in the home — the Rental Agreement is the legal artifact: we snapshot the markdown to a PDF, capture the signer's name, IP address, browser, and timestamp, and store the signed PDF for your records.

When to require a rental agreement

Turn it on when you want a paper trail beyond the OTA's terms or your checkout-time checkbox. Common scenarios:

Higher-value or premium properties where damage policies need a real acceptance.
Direct bookings on your Haven site where you do not want to rely on a generic marketplace agreement.
Local regulations or insurance requirements that require a specific clause to be acknowledged before each stay.

Setting it up

Open your property in the dashboard and switch to the Guest Portal tab.
Open the Rental Agreement section sheet.
Toggle Require pre-arrival signature.
Optional: toggle Block WiFi / check-in until signed. When on, guests see the rental-agreement tile in their guide but the WiFi, contact, check-in, and directions tiles stay locked until they sign. When off, the tile is still visible but it is purely an audit-trail step (guests can access everything immediately).
Paste your agreement language into the Agreement text (markdown) editor. We support the usual markdown — headings, bold, bullet lists. You can update the text any time; substantive edits bump the version number.

What guests see

Inside /properties/[code]/guide, the guest sees a tile labeled Sign agreement with an amber "action needed" treatment. Tapping it opens a sheet with:

The full agreement markdown rendered for reading.
A typed-name input pre-filled with the booking's guest name.
An I agree and sign button.

After signing, the tile flips to Signed with a download link to the signed PDF. If access gating is on, WiFi and check-in tiles unlock immediately on the same screen.

Where signed PDFs live

The dedicated Rental Agreements page (under Extras → Rental Agreements in the host sidebar) is the central place to manage every aspect of digital rental agreements across your portfolio. From there you get:

A summary header with at-a-glance counts: properties using rental agreements, pending signatures (with re-sign callouts when applicable), and total signed PDFs on file.
A Pending tab listing every upcoming booking that still owes a signature, with one-click Send reminder and Open guide actions per row.
A Signed tab — a searchable cross-property catalog of every signed agreement on file, with per-row PDF download.

In addition, you can find signed PDFs in two more contextual places:

Per-booking, in the reservation drawer: every reservation that is on a property with Require pre-arrival signature enabled shows a Rental Agreement card. As the host you see signer name, signed-at timestamp, IP address, browser, agreement version, and a Download PDF button. Unsigned bookings show a Send reminder button.
Per-property, in the Guest Portal Rental Agreement section sheet: a Recent signatures panel lists the property's last few signed bookings with per-row download. A View all signed PDFs → link in the panel header jumps to the full Rental Agreements page.

Versioning and re-sign behavior

Each time you change the agreement markdown in a way that changes the legal text, Haven increments rentalAgreementVersion. Existing signatures keep referencing the version they signed (you can still see and download those historical PDFs), but upcoming bookings — anyone whose stay has not yet checked out — sees a Re-sign needed banner in their guide and must sign the new version before access gating clears again.

When you save a version bump we show a small banner letting you know how many upcoming bookings will be asked to re-sign. The historical signed PDF is retained on every booking for your audit trail, so you always know exactly what was agreed to and when.

Difference vs House Rules

Concept	What it is	Where guests see it
House Rules	Friendly markdown of the dos & don'ts in the home	Booking modal + guide tile + welcome book PDF
Rental Agreement	Legally signed acceptance with audit trail	Booking modal preview + guide signing sheet

Both can be on at the same time and they appear stacked in the booking checkout modal: the house-rules summary first, the rental-agreement preview second. The booking-time checkbox stores houseRulesAccepted = true; the real signed acceptance happens later inside the guide.

Limitations (v1)

Typed-name signatures only — no drawn canvas signature yet.
Lead booker signs on behalf of the party. Co-guest invitee signatures are on the roadmap.
Only markdown agreements are supported. We do not currently accept a host- uploaded PDF as the source agreement (we generate the PDF for you from the markdown so we can stamp the signature footer reliably).