Lodgers don’t aways stay all week. Some lodger like to go back home at the weekends.

This is good for them, as they pay a bit less, and good for the landlord, who gets the use of the room back at the weekends.  Sometimes for their guests, sometimes to use for things like drying clothes, or sometimes they just like to have their house back to themselves for a few days.

As with all lodger situations, it is a good idea to have a lodger agreement signed up.  However there are not many lodger agreements drafted specifically with the Monday to Friday situation in mind.  I know when I went looking I could not find one.

So when one of our customers suggested that we provide one it seemed a really good idea.

Although the agreement is referred to as a Monday to Friday one, it can actually be used for any periods.  So if you lodger is going to stay Wednesday to Monday, or even Friday to Sunday, this is not a problem.  You just put the relevant days in the space on the form.  Making it very flexible.

Like all our lodger forms it comes with extensive guidance notes telling you how to complete the form and explaining the clauses.  Plus there is a generous area at the end where you can put in your own clauses or ‘house rules’.

The agreement is priced the same as our other lodger agreement at £12.  However if you buy it before 9 November you can get a £3 discount (and buy for £9) if you input the voucher code LLBlogMonFri.  You can get it >> here (you will need to scroll down the page a bit)

By the way, if you want to find a Monday to Friday lodger, a good place is the Monday to Friday website.

Here is a message from Emily Rogers, who is a journalist:

Are you a lodger landlord who accommodates lodgers on housing benefit? Would you be prepared to share your experiences with me? (anonymously, if that’s more comfortable)

I’m a journalist who’s written a piece about the impact of one of the Government’s housing benefit cuts – extending the shared accommodation allowance to people under 35, which will force tens of thousands of people to move from one-bedroom flats into rooms in shared houses.

There is widespread concern that there isn’t enough shared housing to accommodate all these people and in response, a government minister has said he hopes lots of people will help by letting out spare rooms in their homes.

Given that the Government is keen to encourage thousands more people to help prevent a further increase in homelessness by opening up their homes to those on housing benefit, I’m keen to speak to those who already let rooms in their homes to people in this situation, as well as to the lodgers themselves, if possible. It would be interesting to see how such arrangements can benefit both parties, what kind of problems they can create and how they can be made to work. And is there anything the government could do to incentivise people opening up their homes to those in need?

Anyone interested can email me on gremily2001uk@yahoo.co.uk and I’ll get straight back to them.

Most of the questions from readers on this blog seem to be regarding problem lodgers and how to get rid of them.

I am therefore planning to do a problem lodger kit, to give people detailed guidance and sample letters and forms.  If this would be of interest to you, can you please  sign up for the special problem lodger pack mailing list.

I will then know whether there is any demand for this (if no-one signs up for it I won’t do it!) and will allow me to tell you when it is available.

(Note – we may also send news of other products and services we think may interest you, but if you get fed up you can cancel at any time).

Are you about to look for a new lodger?

If so, you may be interested in our New Lodger pack.

The forms pack includes :

• a telephone enquiry form
• a lodger information / application form
• a set of letters you can use when requesting references (including employer, bank etc)
• our housing benefit letter of authority (normally on sale for £5)
• a checklist to use at your interview with prospective lodgers
• detailed guidance notes

That is the standard pack.  If you buy the full pack for an extra £6 you also get our lodger agreement thrown in, which normally sells for £12.

You can read more and buy the pack online >> here.

Your Law Store

If you click the shop link in the navigation bar below you will find a difference.  It will take you to a completely new site!  This is the new Your Law Store ecommerce site I have set up with my long term web designer Gill Bishop.

This is an exciting new venture.  Gill and I have been working together for years, mostly on my Landlord Law website, but this is a completely new business. It is run through a new company we have set up together called Zollch Ltd.

As we have a nice new sophisticated ecommerce store, it made sense to use it to sell the Lodger Landlord products.  But don’t worry – if you find you have gone there by mistake you can always get back here by clicking the suitcase logo on the top right of the page.

As we have this new service, I am now looking to do some more lodger landlord products.  If there is anything you would particularly like me to do – in the way of forms that is, please leave a comment and I will see what I can do.

After your lodger has gone

Your lodger has left, but she seems to have left half of her belongings behind.  Or you may have evicted your lodger and be wondering what to do with all their things.

The first thing to remember is that they do not belong to you.  They belong to the lodger.  So if your lodger asks for them, you should give them to him.

This may create difficulties if your lodger has been forcibly evicted and you are worried about letting him back into the house.  In these circumstances, it is best to arrange for the police to be there, so he cannot do anything malicious or perhaps refuse to leave.

If, as perhaps may be more common, you lodger has just gone leaving these things behind, what should you do? Legally you are a position quaintly known by lawyers as an ‘involuntary bailee’.

Well, you do not have to leave the items in the room.  It is quite in order to pack them up and put them somewhere else.  After all you will want to re-let the room, and your new lodger will not want them there.  So pack them up nicely, either in bin bags or perhaps some cardboard boxes, and move them to wherever you have some space.  Perhaps in the garage or under the stairs.

However you probably don’t want them cluttering up your house for long.  You will probably either want to throw them away, or (if they have any value) sell them.  You can do this, but only if you first carry out the procedure set out in an act called The Torts (Interference with Goods) Act 1977.

This act says that if you want to dispose of goods belonging to another person, you must first write to them asking them to remove the goods.  The letter should say:

• What the items you hold are
• Where they are being held, and
• How long they will be available for collection before you dispose of or sell them

You need to give a reasonable period of time for their collection.  I would suggest at least 14 days.  The act says it must be “such as will afford the bailor a reasonable opportunity of taking delivery of the goods“.  You also need to give them details of how to contact you.

So far as delivery of the letter is concerned, this act was passed in 1977, which was before  text messaging and emails were available.  It says that the letter should be sent by recorded delivery and therefore, if there is any chance that the lodger is going to come back and complain, this is what you should do. However there is no harm in following this up with an email and text message if you wish.

If the lodger fails to respond to your letter, you can then sell or dispose of the items.

What if you don’t know where the lodger has gone to?  Well, the act says that

• provided you are certain that the ‘bailor’ (lodger in your case) owns the goods and
• provided you have  failed to trace or communicate with the bailor with a view to giving him the notice, after having taken reasonable steps for the purpose,
• you are entitled to sell or dispose of them.

My normal advice is to instruct a tracing company on a no trace no fee basis, and to keep the letter where they say they can’t trace him  (if they do trace him, you can send the letter).

It is important however that you do not just chuck the things away. If the lodger comes back and is able to prove that the good they left behind were valuable, they will be able to sue you for compensation. Best to get someone independent to take a look at them to confirm that, for example, they are just rubbish.

Anything valuable should be sold for the best price (often selling at auction is a good idea). If the items are small, for example jewelry, it is perhaps best not to sell them at all but just to keep them. If they are not collected within six years, then you can dispose of them safely as the lodger will no longer be able to bring any claim against you.

Make sure that you keep a careful record of everything you have done and keep it safe.  Just in case.

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The Doctor is a lodger

It will not have escaped the Whovians among you that the Doctor recently served a spell as a lodger.  But could your lodger be the timelord?  Consider the following:

• Did he turn up out of the blue, before your card had gone into the Post Office window?
• Did he appear not to really know the value of all that money in the paper bag he gave you?
• Does he keep forgetting which century he is in?
• Did he seem rather vague about what football was, but then play brilliantly in the match (irritatingly much better than you)?
• Did he save your life, and then take your place at work for the morning? (And eat all your biscuits?)
• Does he talk to cats?

Also:

• Is there a strange dark patch on your kitchen ceiling?
• Have people been mysteriously disappearing?
• Do you really know who lives in the upstairs flat?
• Are you really, really sure there IS an upstairs flat?

You never know …

If you like the sound of this, but all your lodgers are depressingly terrestrial, this might cheer you up
(affiliate link).

We want an injunction please!

Many years ago when I was a trainee, my principal and I saw some new clients, a middle aged man and his wife. His new wife as it turned out.

“We want to get an injunction against my daughter” he began, his wife nodding in the background, all blonde curls and pursed lips. “We have asked her to leave but she won’t go”.

When we enquired deeper into this unusual request, it turned out that the daughter was bringing unsavoury friends home and leaving the kitchen in a mess. “We’ve told her we are not going to put up with it any longer, and now we want an injunction to get her out”.

We explained to them gently, that an injunction was a serious legal remedy generally used, in a family context, against violent partners to protect their family from physical attack. It was most unlikely, we continued, that a Judge would award an injunction in these circumstances.

This did not go down well. “Oh well” he said, standing up and reaching for his coat, “if we can’t get an injunction, then there’s no point in staying”. We were left feeling very sorry for the daughter.

People often talk glibly about injunctions, but to a lawyer they are a serious business. They will only generally be used if someone is in physical danger, such as the violent partner situation, or if the claimant’s property rights are threatened in some way (or example you may be able to get an injunction to prevent someone building something on your land).

In a lodger situation they are almost unheard of. The only circumstances where I think an injunction would be suitable would be if a lodger had turned violent and the landlord and his family were in danger of physical attack (and the Judge would normally want to hear about an attack that had already taken place and be persuaded that a future attack was probable). An injunction may also be appropriate perhaps if a lodger became vindictive after being evicted, and resorted to stalking his former landlords and invading their privacy in an intrusive manner.

But bear also in mind the limitation of legal remedies. If someone is absolutely determined to break your knees, particularly if they are slightly unbalanced, a piece of paper with a court seal on it, may not in reality be much protection. They may of course go to prison after they have broken your knees, but what good is that? The damage is done.

It is far, far better to avoid conflict situations (so far as you are able), in the first place.

Have you every used a legal remedy against a lodger? Was it successful?

Lodgers meals – my experience

When I started taking in lodgers, they were mostly foreign students on short English courses at my local university. Part of the deal was that I would provide them with meals and talk to them over dinner. Talking in English with a ‘family’ was an important part of their experience.

As someone who has always been rather keen on cooking I rather enjoyed this. I was living on my own at that time so it was nice to cook for more than one person (me). It was also a great topic of conversation as the (mainly) female students would talk about the food they had at home. Very occasionally one of them would cook a meal for me which was nice (although Gina did destroy my electric whisk while making an apple cake).

Most students loved the meals. I would try to fly the flag for British food, particularly as some told me that other students on their courses had complained about the appalling meals provided by their landladies.

I suppose the only problem was the (Muslim)  Turkish student, who told me that he ate ‘everything’ and then when I served a pork casserole, said that he didn’t eat pork. When I reminded him he had said he ate everything, he said it never occurred to him that anyone would eat pork! He was very nice about it, but I didn’t tell him about the pork dinner he had eaten the previous week …

Although I enjoyed the cooking, my students were only with me for a few weeks (the longest stay was for two months) and I was quiet pleased not to have to do it any more when they left. So think very carefully about providing meals for long stay lodgers.

Pros and cons of providing lodgers cooked meals

The good points about providing meals is that

• you can charge extra for them, which will increase you profits from lodgering
• it you have a family or partner who you cook for anyway, it will not be much extra work
• if you enjoy cooking it is nice to have someone else appreciate your food
• you can get to know your lodger better chatting over the dinner table,
• if you don’t like people messing about in your kitchen you can justifiably ask them not to use it

The bad points are that

• it can be a lot of bother particularly if you don’t like cooking much or are not very good at it
• you may prefer not to become too friendly with your lodger

I have to say that when I had long term lodgers, they used to do their own meals.  However it can be a good source of extra income.  Make sure you have some decent cook books for inspiration for the inevitable days when you can’t think of what to do (Delia’s Smiths Complete How to Cook is highly recommended, as is The 30-Minute Cook by Nigel Slater)

Lodgers breakfast

Whether or not you provide a cooked dinner, it is always a good idea to provide breakfast as it is so easy. None of my girls wanted a cooked breakfast (far too fattening!). I would lay the table in the kitchen the night before and leave things out for them so they could serve themselves when they got up. It worked very well.

You should provide as a minimum:

• fruit juice
• tea, coffee and sugar laid out near the electric kettle (include some herb teas)
• sliced bread, and a toaster so they can make toast if they want
• butter, marmalade and a selections of jams and honey
• a selection of cereal (those variety packs are good until you learn what they like) and
  a jug of milk
• fresh fruit

other things you could include are

• yogurts
• tinned grapefruit
• dried fruit such as apricots and prunes
• muesli
• cheese and/or cold sliced cold meat such as ham
• croissants

Lay the table nicely (perhaps with a cheerful tablecloth – a PVC one will cut down on washing, and some flowers in a vase), so it is welcoming when they come down in the morning, and they will be as happy as Larry.

Do you cook for your lodgers? What sort of things do you do? Do you have any tips for readers?

Lodgers are generally nice ..

I have written quite a bit here about problem lodgers, eviction and the like, as these are things which worry people, and which have therefore been popular topics on the blog. However it is important to remember that most lodgers are lovely.

I had six years of taking in lodgers, before I got married. Most of them were charming. They were mainly students from our local university (UEA), although later I put up a few new staff members from my firm (this was before I went solo) at the request of the HR people.

I had a great time with them. With the foreign students (mostly Spanish, Austrian and German) who were here on English language courses, I had to provide meals and talk to them, which was great. Many of them also borrowed my books – Winnie-the-Pooh was very popular I remember, and most of them bought a copy to take home with them. Some of them took me out for a meal before they left to say thank you.

So I am really glad I got them all to write in my visitors book before they went. They enjoyed it too, and always read what my other visitors had written before.

The guest, or visitors book

You may be able to get a visitors, or guest book at your local stationers or department store. However if you can’t find one don’t worry. Any hardback notebook will do. You will need to have four columns, one for the date, one for their name, one for their address and one (the biggest) for comments. For a small book you will need to take it across both pages or you will not have enough room.

I used to bring out the book the day before they left, and leave it with them for a while.

Have you had good experiences with your lodgers? Do you keep a visitors book to remember them by? What sorts of things did they write?

PS I had a quick look on Amazon and found this >> Visitor Book which you might want to consider – there is a recommendation from a landlord!