Student Joint Tenancy Problems

tbs624

smartpicture wrote: »

It's a bit sad that everyone's advice is basically to let the bad guy walk away scot-free though, and let everyone else pay for his mistakes.

Nope - most people are saying cut the financial outlay first then pursue him to court. (That said, if he has no money then they may have trouble enforcing any judgement or end up with a repayment rate of stupid £ per week. )

tbs624

adg1 wrote: »

Locally (Kingston Upon Thames) students tend to pay between 70 and 120 per week each. For 8 people, they'd pay less, so assume 70pw/7 = £10 per week extra to cover the additional rent. Find a new tenant and be done with it.

Not sure why you assume the rate would be less per room for an 8 bed property. You also seem to be omitting that nasty 4 months worth of arrears.

CCJ the little darling - bailing out without doing the right thing on rent etc is a crappy way to treat your fellow housemates.

BitterAndTwisted

Surely, if all of the other students had parent-guarantors as well it wouldn't be that difficult to extract the missing monies from them rather than the student. Why wouldn't the agents be chasing the parents for the four month's rent? Would it be purely because it's too much aggro?

adg1

tbs624 wrote: »

Not sure why you assume the rate would be less per room for an 8 bed property. You also seem to be omitting that nasty 4 months worth of arrears.

Just spreading the costs further. Thats how it works around here - you pay 800+ for a 1 bed, 600+ for a 2 bed, 300+ for a 3 bed and so on. Just local market rates.

The arrears should be paid off and, if its worth it, chase the old tenant. My thoughts are that he has paid his deposit share, this cover most of the arrears, get another in to pay the share.

tbs624 wrote: »

CCJ the little darling - bailing out without doing the right thing on rent etc is a crappy way to treat your fellow housemates.

Indeed. Surely, though, the letting agent has access to his guarantor details?

mealeys

We've only found about it being 4 months worth of rent owing today, so thats why we haven't acted sooner. I've got an appointment with the CAB next week, We have tried to advertise for a new tenant to take over the room but with no luck and the letting agency don;t think we will have much chance.

Its not fair to let him walk away from his responsibilities and let the others pay up.It will amount to over £2000 if he doesn't pay any more rent from now on!

Also as a parent I was told this type of tenancy and being a parent guarantor was the only way my daughter could get a house to rent for university, so I had no opton it seems as all the LL are doing this in the B'ham area!

Thanks for all your answers, I'll update with what the CAB tell me to do, hope this will help someone else avoid this situation in future.

mealeys

silvercar wrote: »

Get a new tenant ASAP.

Although the letting agent and landlord may be annoyed, under housing law they cannot take steps to evict until the tenancy is owing two months rent. This does mean that the day the second months rent is due and the whole of the previous month's rent is unpaid the landlord could serbe notice and then go to court. But the rent is considered as a whole, so one tenant not paying an eighth of the total rent would take 8 months before there is a whole month's arrears and then another seven months before two month's rent would be owing on a rent day.

So the actions I would take would be to find another tenant ASAP. Agree with the departing tenant that his missing rent will come from his deposit. My son had exactly this last year and the landlord got the errant tenant to sign that all the rent arrears would come from this one person's deposit rather than equally from them all.

Trying to find a new tenant, no luck on that one at this stage.
The missing tenants deposit is only £250 and he currently owes £880 which will increase by then end of the tenancy. The deposit will no way cover what he owes!

mealeys

getmore4less wrote: »

.

You may have inadvertently made yourself liable for the lot.

What does your guarantor agreement say?


Not a good idea to do joint tenant in these situations.

There are supposed to be 8 parents as guarantor which means we all are responsible. There wasno option but to do the tenancy this way apparantly.

mealeys

adg1 wrote: »

Why has she left it this long!?

They need to assume their friend has gone, find a replacement and get them to pay the other share of the rent.

As a whole, they should be covering the difference in there rent.

1/8th rent shouldn't be a major cost when spread over 7 people. This would therefore reduce the arrears.

TBS - In a joint a several tenancy, is it not the case that, though there is a lead tenant, all tenants are joint and severally liable for everything, hence any can authorise the release of the deposit to cover the arrears as long as its the collective?

The missing student assured everyone he would pay the rent still and the Letting Agency only told us today that its 4 months behind!

bristol_pilot

OP - do you realise that you have agreed, if it all goes wrong, to pay the full rent for the entire tenancy period for all 8 tenants? Parental guarantees for student lets usually mean that the students are living beyond their means - in accommodation more suited to professional people than students. There is plenty of student accommodation that can be had without a guarantor, its just not at the luxury end of the market.

Plans_all_plans

I would disagree with you Bristol_pilot. My sister and I went to Manchester and Nottingham for our uni educations and neither of us lived in any sort of fancy accommodation, but both of us needed parental guarantors year in year out.

I lived in 2 different houses while a student; my sister in 3; and there was a requirement on each occasion for a parental guarantor, in both cities.

When we lived in Halls in 1st year though we did not need guarantors.