Practicalities of renting a room in a shared house

Following 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.