Student Housing & Accommodation

A couple of people have asked: “what form for tenancy agreement would you use for an individual room let?” AST (Assured Shorthold Tenancy) would be fine (as long as the rent is below £25k per year).

You must identify the room the person is letting on the contract itself - so the address of the let would be: room number, 47 Any Street, Anytown, AN5 5TN. If you don’t identify the room they could in theory be renting the whole house.

You can number the bedrooms. This does not mean you have to have the room numbers on the outside of each bedroom door. When I rented a room in a shared house on an individual tenancy the rooms were numbered on the contract but not on the doors. The contract also specified the location of the room too.

You can mark all the furniture in the room as that room number too - so you know what belongs where.

Remember your tenant will have exclusive use of their bedroom - so you would need notice to enter this. As to the communal areas as I said in the blog the best thing to do is to still give notice.

One landlord who is about to let on an individual basis asked what to do if a tenant complains about him calling in. I think in practice most tenants would not complain (unless you were calling in a lot). Remember you do not need to call in unless there is a maintenance issue, or you are collecting rent, showing prospective tenants round or doing a planned inspection (which is always best to notify tenants of in advance so they can at least clean up.)

If you are worried about a tenant complaining - I would have a standard welcome letter and in it specify that they have exclusive use of their room and in effect a licence to use the communal areas (as these are shared with others). Personally I would not state that you call in when you want in this letter.

Then if they complain write to them say that they only have exclusive use of their room as per their moving/welcome letter. Show my blog. BUT I think it would be exceptionally rare.

Remember you want the best ‘working’ relationship with your tenants. The best way to do this is to be professional at all times AND to vet your prospective tenants very carefully (reject any that do not come up to standard or you feel won’t be good tenants).

Hope clarifies things more

Regards

Paul Allison

Filed under: Tenancy Agreements