"Rent" friends house without agreement

[Deleted User]

If its on a country estate, I wonder if it would quickly be known about and at risk of reporting anyway.

How old is the clause? If its ancient and no one is alive to chase your friend down, it might be immaterial.

Is it worth your friend going back to his solicitor and finding out if the clause can be challenged without throwing money down a black hole?

Does he spend no time there at all? If he spent some time there, you could be a lodger rather than a tenant with shared access to the facilities in the rest of the house that just aren't shared 365 days of the year. Normally that is allowed but would need to be clarified with the solicitor again (like how long he'd have to live there to make you a lodger rather than a tenant).

Otherwise, if he can't live there, it makes sense to smarten it up a bit and sell.

kingstreet

About thirty years ago I applied to rent a property on an estate in Cheshire. There was a stately home in the middle and I wanted one of the various dwellings within the estate.

The managing agent wanted employment reference, a credit check, bank reference etc and after about a month they came back and told me I'd been accepted.

Unfortunately, I'd had to find an alternative as I couldn't wait for the time it took them and had to gracefully decline.

Coming back to this thread, I'm pretty sure there would have been some serious grief if I'd taken a tenancy and then sublet to someone who hadn't been subject to the vigorous screening we had...