Letting to lodger: what Agreement form/wording?

[infoseeker]

In your agreement, you should make it clear in advance what happens if rent is not paid. You could take a buffer of a week/months rent so that if they don't pay, you will always have a week in hand with the agreement being they are out at the end of that week. Then it will not be a shock to them when the time comes.

You never really want to get heavy with a lodger; just tell them you are terminating the agreement by x date, and if they don't clear out, simply change the locks when they are out.

You must always give "reasonable notice" to terminate. If the lodger become threatening and you do not feel safe, you have the right to terminate immediately.

You should be entitled to enter the lodgers room at anytime in the right circumstances, although you would not want to do this unless you have a good reason to do so, eg to clean it, to ventilate, inspect for maiantenance purposes, to ask them if they want a cup of tea etc, as a lodger does not have exclusive possession of anywhere in your home. If I were to take in a lodger, I would make sure they understand that they cannot shut you completely out, but at the same time you must respect their privacy. Common sense.

UPDATE: you say premesis. You can only have a lodger in your own home, otherwise it is a tenancy and the tenant is protected from eviction. So you would need a court order to evict.

Bel, thanks again for the reply - very useful!

[PaulF]

Bel's reply is not quite right. There is no need to have any written agreement as the lodger has no security of occupation. There is not normally a requirement to give "reasonable notice" either but if you do have written terms then you will be expected to adhere to them which might not be to your advantage sometimes

[Bel]

Bel's reply is not quite right. There is no need to have any written agreement as the lodger has no security of occupation. There is not normally a requirement to give "reasonable notice" either but if you do have written terms then you will be expected to adhere to them which might not be to your advantage sometimes

I agree with Paul that you dont need an agreement...obviously the original poster would prefer it. I always think its better when people know where they stand at the start, as it could save a lot of aggro later and trips to CAB by the aggrieved lodger.


I am sure that "reasonable notice" is required; not sure which Act its in; if I find it I'll post it. Just what reasonable notice is though, is hard to say!

[PaulF]

Reasonable Notice doesn't apply. Lodgers have no "Act" to cover it.

[kittkatt]

Advice on getting a lodger? splitting house in to flats?

Hi, i'm in the proccess of getting a lodger for the upstairs of my 2 bed house and just wanted to check a few things.

They will use the front door and will have a lockable door off the hallway upstairs leading to bedroom 1 (as a bedroom) and bedroom 2 (as a lounge with kitchen sink etc). Their bathroom is of the hallway which i will have access to but not use as i have a downstairs shower room.
Their is a door in the hallway which i will hold the key for leading to the down stairs accomadation ie my bedroom (the old dining room), kitchen, lounge and shower room. I will normally use the back door to the house as this is where my parking is.

If you can see from this description the house is already kind of split in to two flats but as i will have access to their bathroom can they still be classed as a lodger or are they a tennant?
All i am doing is changing my council tax/insurance too two people and will write up a contract, is their anything else i need to do?
Has anyone done anything similar?
I will be renting this out for £500 including all bills, how do i go about paying tax? if this is empty for 3 months of the year do i need to?
Thanks for any advice

[Bel]

If you want to keep them as 'excluded occupier' status, (with the benefit of not requiring a court order to evict) you have to share facilities. This means you must use their bathroom from time to time, and not just have 'the option' to do so.


From what you describe, it looks to be more like a common law tenancy situation, with you being a resident landlord. Of course, you can insist that they are lodgers when you take them on and this would only become a problem if they decided to fight an eviction at some future time . Its what actually happens in practice rather than what you want the situation to be that counts in law.

[kittkatt]

Thanks, will just have to use there bathroom every so often as would prefer them to just be a lodger.

[Bel]

In the strictest sense, a lodger does not have exclusive possession of any part of the property, even his bedroom. i.e. you could enter to do vacuuming without their previous consent. You could even change their bedroom if it suited you. They have a licence to occupy.

If you give them exclusive possession of a bedroom, technically it is a tenancy, although an "excluded tenancy" as you will be sharing some facilities.

Suggest you do your homework thoroughly on the subject in case any misunderstanding should arise between you.

Let them know in advance that they are excluded occupiers. Don't give them an AST agreement as its not appropriate. Let them know what will happen if they do not pay rent, what the notice period is for either side, and what you will do if they seriously annoy you.

[Spark]

Lodger wont leave. (Please help!)

Hi all,

Just looking for a bit of advice regarding a complicated situation me and my housemates have found ourselves in.

I live in a house share with 4 other people. None of these is the landlord. 1 of them has a tenancy agreement in his name although this has expired now so is a on-going tenancy??? (not sure of correct term, not as clued up as you lot seem to be! lol ) The rest of us pay him every month which he then passes on to the landlord for the rent.

1 of the housemates has become quite difficult to live with, from stealing from rooms, to violently threatening a housemate, minor sexual assault, late payments with rent etc. We have come to the conslusion we need him out but he is the kind of person that will just refuse to go and our landlord likes to keep out of things and is happy as long as the rent is paid.

We have given him a months notice which meets an end any day now however he still is here and is making no progress to move anything out. We called the police for advice how to move him as we think there will be a situation if we try to remove him. They said to find out his rights, they can only remove if he has no right to be in the property.

We have gave him 1 final week to move out and told him someone is moving into his room. After telling him this today we have had the locks changed and will not give him a key to prevent anything from being stolen while we are all out. (We think when he finds this out he will smash the window anyway)

It really is a mess

ANY advice at all is greatly appriciated... Or what you would do in this situation.

Thankyou

[jeffrey]

Sounds like the one with Tenancy Agreement (X) is the tenant, at least in L's eyes. If so, the other occupants might be X's sub-tenants. Only X could therefore get rid of the problematic occupant.

[Spark]

Tenant 'X' wants him out also but how do we actually go about doing this? The problem lodger seems to think he has spoken to a solicitor and only the landlord can give him the notice although we do doubt this.

[jeffrey]

But isn't X the landlord, for present purposes? So the lodger's advice could be right as, effectively, he's agreeing that X can evict him.

[Spark]

Thanks for your help and advice!

Just to sum up then, if its X's name present on the tenancy agreement then he is really the landlord for the problem lodger? Therefore the actual landlord of the property doesn't matter too much?
And also does it make a difference on the point I mentioned earlier regarding his tenancy running out so becoming this on-going tenancy? Can you make sence of this information at all?

Thanks again for the support with this

[attilathelandlord]

x is basically subletting the property, although if x is on the premises, then x is resident landlord and pain-in-the-butt is merely a lodger. Based on this then with sufficient notice, x can legally bag up nasty lodger's gear, change the locks and boot him out. You can't do this, only X can, as only x is control of the house.

It doesn't matter if x's contract with the actual owner has become periodic, the only thing that has ended is the fixed term, not the contract itself.

[Spark]

Best news I have had all week! Thanks for your help guys. Im sure X will be chuffed at that as well. If hes still here next wednesday his stuff will be outside.