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Practicalities of renting a room in a shared house

October 12, 2011 by Tessa J Shepperson

Big HMO housesFollowing on from this morning’s blog post on licenses, I have recieved the following blog clinc post from Robert:

Hi. I’ve read with interest (and thanks) Tessa’s blogs on “leave versus licence” and have a (perhaps obvious) follow on question:

If I own an HMO with, say, 5 rooms let to separate individuals, can I really give each one of them an AST that gives them use of (quiet enjoyment of) the house? I guess not. I suppose I must state in the AST that they are renting a specific room; and if this is the case then can I give them the right to use the communal ears by mentioning such in a Schedule … or could I give them use of the communal areas under a licence?

Many thanks, Robert

How you do it Robert, is to give an AST for the tenants room and shared use of the rest of the property.  It is quite a normal arrangement and you can get special tenancy agreements for this situation (the normal ASTs will not be suitable).

For example on Landlord Law I have several tenancy agreements that can be used in this situation, including one where the landlord pays the bills, and one with a guarantee included.

So when letting to several people you have a choice – do you let to them all together as ‘joint tenants’ where they all sign the same agreement.  Or do you let out individual rooms to them on separate ASTs.

Have a look at this page on tenancy agreements (you need to scroll down a bit) where I set out some of the pros and cons for each.

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Filed Under: Readers problems Tagged With: HMOs, sharing property

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IMPORTANT: Please check the date of the post above - remember, if it is an old post, the law may have changed since it was written.

You should always get independent legal advice before taking any action.

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About Tessa J Shepperson

Tessa is a specialist landlord & tenant lawyer and the creator of this site! She is a director of Landlord Law Services which runs Landlord Law and Easy Law Training.

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Comments

  1. Ian says

    November 22, 2011 at 2:33 PM

    How can you give “quiet enjoyment” to one tenant when the law gives you no effective way to control the noise that other tenants make?

  2. Tessa Shepperson says

    November 22, 2011 at 2:39 PM

    Hi Ian, quiet enjoyment is not necessarily giving a noise free environment. It is allowing the tenant to remain in the property without disturbance from you, the landlord.

    However a landlord cannot be held responsible for something done by another tenant or neighbour.

    I talk a bit about quiet enjoyment here https://landlordlawblog.co.uk/2011/06/14/the-six-most-important-elements-of-a-tenancy-or-lease/

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