Avoiding a tenancy in a self contained letting

I did an advice recently for a client who wanted to let out some self contained accommodation in his house (effectively a ‘granny annex’) but was anxious to avoid creating a tenancy. Although this is covered in part here,  I thought that it might be worth repeating some of the advice I gave him:

To prevent a tenancy being created you need to ensure that the occupier does not have ‘exclusive occupation’ of the property/rooms.  This means that you have to have built into your contract, reasons for you to go in and out of them (respecting your occupiers privacy) as of right (ie without having to ask permission first).  Here are some suggestions:

• Tip 1 – Provide clean sheets (and perhaps towels)  You do not need to make the bed. but it gives you a excuse to go in and out of the room/s without question.  Make a practice of actually going into the rooms rather than just leaving the sheets in the passage outside
• Tip 2 – Provide room cleaning.  If you do not want to do the cleaning yourself, employ a cleaner (and set the rent so the cleaner’s costs are covered).  Make it clear to the occupier that the cleaner is part of the deal as you want to be sure that the property is being properly looked after
• Tip 3 – deal with putting out the occupiers rubbish for them.  For example provide black bin bags and say that you will be going into their kitchen area to collect them once or twice a week (depending on when the bin men come).
• Tip 4 – require access to test the smoke alarms regularly.  Needless to say, you will have to have smoke alarms fitted for this, but you should have this anyway
• Tip 5 – provide breakfast and /or other meals from time to time, which can be served in their rooms if you prefer.

Where you are renting out self contained rooms in your home, where you do not share living accommodation with the occupier, you do need to be careful to prevent a tenancy arising (particularly if it is important that there is not tenancy, for example if this is a requirement of your mortgage company).

However so long as provide at least two services such as those listed above (ideally at least clean sheets and cleaning, and preferably more than two) you should be all right – so long as you continue to provide them.  If you stop, the occupation may convert to a tenancy.

Note also that as you do not share living accommodation, the eviction procedure set out in Day 20 of my 21 days of tips, cannot be used.