Renting to students - to Inc bills or not?

1940sGal

Furzil19 wrote: »

Hi,
Our plan is to rent out 2 spare rooms to students to live in a house with our twin sons.
There seems to be 2 ways of doing this, including water, gas, electric & Internet or just water & Internet.
We have no idea how much bills would be for 4 students, although our guess is that they will use more than an average same sized household.
Our dilemma is that students prefer bills Inc as this helps them to budget (we'll be having to pay half anyway for our boys). However, if we do it this way we could get stung with very large bills.:eek: We thought of capping what we pay, stating this on the agreement, but are not sure what is fair.
We have considered payment meters, but according to advice these can work out more pricey (& again we are paying half).
Our daughter & housemates did 'Glide' but this worked out more expensive for them too and the landlord company started to Inc bills with the rent.
If anyone out there has rented to students & found the best way we would really appreciate your advice please.

When I rented a room in a house in my 2nd year of uni water was all that was included in the price. We had gas/electric with EON and were billed each month (i think) and it caused problems when it was particularly high because 1 person said they hardly used anything and 1 person disagreed etc. 1 girl was found to have a plug in heater in her room, and they can guzzle electric but we were all expected to pay for it without getting the benefit.

Just thought i'd share to give you another PoV

00ec25

Notmyrealname wrote: »

Yes. You used to be able to install your own cash slot meters and set your own tarrifs on them. Very common in bedsits in my town.

the resale of gas/electricity for a profit is not allowed
see Ofgem guidance - page 2 section 2 "who does it apply to"
http://www.ofgem.gov.uk/domestic-consumers/Documents1/11782-resaleupdateoct05.pdf

00ec25

OP at the end of the day you are going into business as a LL, all business activity requires taking risks.

Either you give your customers what many will expect - ie bills included but you risk hefty bills but avoid possible disputes within the household

Or you do it excluding bills, remove the financial risk to yourselves but run the risk of struggling to attract a customer and /or the household breaking out into disputes

alternatively you could look at it this way - you are parents first and LL second

option 1 molly coddles your kids and stops them experiencing life but may cost you £
option 2 saves you £ and teaches them a valuable lesson in life, how to budget, how to manage disputes between "friends" and how not to stand on their own feet and expect mum and dad to bail them out all the time (given that you are already cosseting them through paying the mortgage!)

mustang121

Don't forget about the TV Licence. I believe that if the bedrooms have locks on the doors and they contain TV's then each tennent requires an individual licence.

For bedrooms with no door locks. Then you need one household licence. As the tv is considered communal.

Or some crap like that.

paddyrg

There will doubtless be arguments around whether broadband is needed as a 'utility' or not. If so, then there will also need to be a landline, but most people now also have mobiles, so do they want a landline etc... And fights over phone bills are tiresome - maybe make the landline incoming calls and broadband only?!

There's another problem with broadband which is how much monthly data to buy as a package, and how to stop file-sharing from driving that sky-high. It isn't hard to reach 50GB in a month watching video, and if each person is watching iPlayer in their rooms, you're talking about maybe 100+GB...Ouch!

I suppose what I'm coming around to is to keep well clear - these are all arguments for your kids to have as a part of learning to grow up and handle money - if you get involved it'll drain your life-force in a heartbeat

1940sGal

mustang121 wrote: »

Don't forget about the TV Licence. I believe that if the bedrooms have locks on the doors and they contain TV's then each tennent requires an individual licence.

For bedrooms with no door locks. Then you need one household licence. As the tv is considered communal.

Or some crap like that.

We had locks on our doors but just had one licence. The way to get round it if anyone comes is to say that no one locks their doors.

jazabelle

I believe the locks issue isn't correct. When I was a student I looked into it - and it's actually down to the contract. In the first year each person in the house had their own contract - therefore we all needed our own TV licences. In year 2 & 3 off campus we all shared a contract - so we only needed one. We all had locks, but I made sure at the time that wasn't an issue.

And the TV licencing site agrees - it's down to contracts.