SubLet Agreement - Help!

PasturesNew

cmunro wrote: »

Pastures new....Surely in my situation thats sub-letting which is what i plan to do???!! If not what's the difference?

If somebody is a lodger, then you get £4250 of that rent tax free per tax year.

If somebody is a lodger then it's YOUR home and you can ask them to leave at shorter notice (they have no rights like under any AST-style of agreement to long periods of notice and no tie in dates etc).

As a lodger, you can simply draw up a list of House Rules to keep to.

You can explain "While the landlord knows you are living here, it isn't my property, so you need to understand that if things need fixing it's not my responsibility but my landlord's. While I will, of course, do everything to get them notified and fixed quickest (I live here too remember!) it is not my responsibility to pay for the things he is responsible for" and perhaps then to outline those briefly "e.g. if the heating breaks or the roof flies off in a storm..."

You can share the bills still.

You make up the rules as it's your home and they can't dig their heels in and wave an agreement under your nose and say "But this says I can stay until 2010 and you have to give me all this notice ...."

If you simply don't get on with a lodger, you could (technically) just wait by the door and ask them to leave immediately. Of course you'd only do that under VERY extreme circumstances. e.g. where you feared for your safety or caught them nicking stuff or they hadn't paid rent for a couple of weeks and they'd left a tea bag in the sink.


You can declare:
- no pets
- no smoking
- no nicking the best sun lounger

Whatever rules you want as YOUR house rules. Primarily it is your home.

Tozer

Good point Pasturesnew. However, if I was the tenant/lodger, I would want some security of tenure.

poppysarah

Tozer wrote: »

Good point Pasturesnew. However, if I was the tenant/lodger, I would want some security of tenure.

You get tunure being a tenant
You get lodgings being a lodger.

PasturesNew

There are different people to meet every need.
Some people are happy to be a lodger.
Some are happy to be a tenant.
Some are happy to get what they can find.

Tozer

poppysarah wrote: »

You get tunure being a tenant
You get lodgings being a lodger.

Exactly. That's why I would want to be a tenant!!! :rotfl:

Tozer

PasturesNew wrote: »

There are different people to meet every need.
Some people are happy to be a lodger.
Some are happy to be a tenant.
Some are happy to get what they can find.

Sounds like some sort of song???

tbs624

Tozer wrote: »

Not really. There will be tenant covenants which should be reflected. E.g. no pets, treatment of utilities, use of property, etc.

Doubt CAB will help at all as it is hardly a consumer problem. More a business opportunity.

Thanks for sharing your view Tozer.

However, the fact remains that too many problems are created by DIY legal agreements being thrown together by people who don't know what they are doing because they have no legal qualification and/or insuffiicient experience of LL & T law. There is also the possibility that the original AST that is in place is not as it should be. You mention covenants regarding pets, for example, now a LL can stipulate "no pets" but s/he needs to add that consent shall not be unreasonably withheld, so as not to fall foul of the Unfair Contract Terms regs.

Getting it wrong will end up costing the OP more in the long run, than doing it properly in the first place, and it's fairer to any sub-tenant to whom the property will be a home.

You doubt that CAB will help? Granted that for something like this you'd come lower down the priority appts list than someone about to be evicted but if you'd like to double check http://www.citizensadvice.org.uk, you'll find:

"If you want to sub-let or take in lodgers, it would be advisable for you to consult an experienced adviser, for example, at a Citizens Advice Bureau."

The OP may have financial worries and the CAB worker would see this as part of helping to address those: it also means that they are less likely to see the tenant on another occasion because he has unintentionally tied himself in knots with the DIY agreement or indeed having the sub-tenant request an urgent appt because of the dodgy contract that s/he's signed in a hurry.

clutton_2

use a lodger agreement =- at least you can get them out quickly if you dont like them - you are making this faaaaaar too complex

Debt_Free_Chick

Agree - use a lodger agreement.

The danger with using your AST is that you - as the tenant - cannot grant an AST to the lodger. Only the LL can do that. So if you use your AST, you might end up putting in terms that are simply unenforceable - and too many of those might mean that the whole (sublet) contract is void.

Just treat him as a lodger - now I think about it, I think that's the only contractual relationship you can create.

Tozer

tbs624 wrote: »

Thanks for sharing your view Tozer.

However, the fact remains that too many problems are created by DIY legal agreements being thrown together by people who don't know what they are doing because they have no legal qualification and/or insuffiicient experience of LL & T law. There is also the possibility that the original AST that is in place is not as it should be. You mention covenants regarding pets, for example, now a LL can stipulate "no pets" but s/he needs to add that consent shall not be unreasonably withheld, so as not to fall foul of the Unfair Contract Terms regs.

Getting it wrong will end up costing the OP more in the long run, than doing it properly in the first place, and it's fairer to any sub-tenant to whom the property will be a home.


You doubt that CAB will help? Granted that for something like this you'd come lower down the priority appts list than someone about to be evicted but if you'd like to double check http://www.citizensadvice.org.uk, you'll find:

"If you want to sub-let or take in lodgers, it would be advisable for you to consult an experienced adviser, for example, at a Citizens Advice Bureau."

The OP may have financial worries and the CAB worker would see this as part of helping to address those: it also means that they are less likely to see the tenant on another occasion because he has unintentionally tied himself in knots with the DIY agreement or indeed having the sub-tenant request an urgent appt because of the dodgy contract that s/he's signed in a hurry.

Good post and you are right to be cautious. That said, I qualified as a solicitor over 10 years ago. In my experience CAB aren't very good at a lot of stuff. I hasten to add that I am a corporate lawyer and so have very few dealings with them.

But in terms of this sort of agreement, it really is extremely simple. OP is more than welcome to PM me and I will review. I am travelling on business next week in the US but if I can help, just shout.