Here is a question to the blog clinic from Charles who is a tenant
My tenancy agreement finished and my land lord asked me to sign a new contract. I signed the contract but she said the whole contract can not be completed if a guarantor hasn’t signed the agreement.
I changed my mind about living there. Now she is telling me that the guarantor form hasn’t got nothing to do with the contract. Isn’t it by law that a student has to have a guarantor before giving them right to live there? What can I do about this?
It is common to ask for a guarantor with a student letting but it is not essential. The reason that most landlords insist on it is because students usually don’t have much money, so landlords take a guarantor from someone else, preferably someone WITH money, just in case they don’t pay.
But if a landlord is happy to let to a tenant without a guarantor there is nothing wrong with this.
I’m not sure what your problem is. If you have decided not to stay and have not signed a new tenancy agreement then so long as you give the correct notice, there is no reason why you should not move out.
Guarantors should not sign the tenancy agreement. Apart from the fact they are only guaranteeing the tenancy and are not a party to it, there is a convoluted legal argument relating to consideration and sequence of signing as well.
Speaking from a landlord perspective I had a similar issue recently whereby I was offering a tenant a new contract but their guarantor (overseas) could not afford to cover them at the new rent agreed. They too decided to pull out of the new agreement for this reason, so I agreed not to worry about a guarantor… they had already been in the property for a year with no problems with rent so I decided to forgo the guarantor for the new tenancy agreement and they confirmed they wanted to stay. It suited them and it suited me, so all was well. I imagine this is what happened in this case too as the landlord probably decided to take a chance given that they had had no problems in the past with the tenant.