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Oddball lease offer

Covering Market, Trends, and Practical (but see LEMON-AID for Building & DIY)
genou
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Oddball lease offer

#206049

Postby genou » March 6th, 2019, 7:23 pm

CC#2 ( a student ) has been offered a lease on a 4 bedroom house. She and friend are being asked to sign a lease on the basis that

the Landlord hereby agrees to let and the Tenants agrees ( sic) to take the Property known as:- redacted
2……… (No. of bedrooms / No. of Tenants) …2


The body of the rest of the lease is clearly drafted on the basis of a normal joint tenancy for the whole house, subject to the reduction of the anticipated rent for 4 bedrooms to that for 2.

But the landlord seems to be under the impression that they can still create another lease* over the remaining two bedrooms ( involving people over whom there is no suggestion CC#2 would have a veto ) which would inevitably require access to the kitchen / living areas. Clearly they have come up with a bodge to get a tenancy, but trying to have cake and eat it, to coin a phrase.

The whole thing looks weird to me. I'm wondering whether if such a document were signed, the landlord would be committed to leasing the whole property to the tenants of that lease, without the option of bringing in additional occupants. If not, what is this arrangement? Any comments gratefully received.

* I assume this would be a mirror of what I have seen - purporting to rent the premises but with the addition of the number of bedrooms involved.

modellingman
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Re: Oddball lease offer

#206269

Postby modellingman » March 7th, 2019, 4:22 pm

genou wrote:CC#2 ( a student ) has been offered a lease on a 4 bedroom house. She and friend are being asked to sign a lease on the basis that

the Landlord hereby agrees to let and the Tenants agrees ( sic) to take the Property known as:- redacted
2……… (No. of bedrooms / No. of Tenants) …2


The body of the rest of the lease is clearly drafted on the basis of a normal joint tenancy for the whole house, subject to the reduction of the anticipated rent for 4 bedrooms to that for 2.

But the landlord seems to be under the impression that they can still create another lease* over the remaining two bedrooms ( involving people over whom there is no suggestion CC#2 would have a veto ) which would inevitably require access to the kitchen / living areas. Clearly they have come up with a bodge to get a tenancy, but trying to have cake and eat it, to coin a phrase.

The whole thing looks weird to me. I'm wondering whether if such a document were signed, the landlord would be committed to leasing the whole property to the tenants of that lease, without the option of bringing in additional occupants. If not, what is this arrangement? Any comments gratefully received.

* I assume this would be a mirror of what I have seen - purporting to rent the premises but with the addition of the number of bedrooms involved.


I am a landlord who mainly lets to students. I don't let out individual rooms and only ever let out a whole property to a group of students. However, if I were to let out only part of a house, the one thing I would want to make very clear in the tenancy agreement would be that the agreement gave exclusive rights of occupation to named tenant(s) to identified parts of the property (such as specified bedrooms) and shared use of the remaining parts of the property (such as the bathroom, kitchen, lounge, outside space) with that shared use being with other occupants of the property not named on the tenancy agreement. See, for example, clause 1 of this tenancy agreement (pdf) (plucked fairly randomly from the interweb).

My experience of the student market is that by this time year the househunting season for undergraduates for the next academic year is mainly over. It is possible that the landlord may have panicked in not having found a group of four to rent to, so instead has agreed to rent to two people with the hope of being able to find further tenants later in the year (incoming postgraduate students comprise the main market segment for this). It is also possible, though perhaps less likely, that the landlord may have also already rented out the the other two rooms for next year and has chosen not to make CC#2 and friend aware of this.

If the landlord has screwed up and, in legal terms, is unwittingly offering CC#2 and friend an agreement that gives them the whole house without the option for the landlord to bring in additional occupants, enforcing their rights under such an agreement in the event that other occupants did turn up would no doubt be messy, difficult and stressful. It would take a long time, some financial risk and might not result in the desired outcome.

Student house-sharing amongst strangers can work out well, but I suspect there is a strong element of luck involved. I have experience of several prospective student tenants who have said they are thoroughly miserable living where they are as a result of taking shares with people they didn't previously know.


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