Have you a spareroom? At the time of writing (20 April) a cloud of Icelandic volcanic dust has grounded virtually all planes. Our people cannot get back here and visitors to England cannot return home. At least not until either the skies clear or they can arrange alternative transport. This begs the question ‘where will [...]
Lodger eviction In Day 20 of my 21 days of tips for lodger landlords, I described a procedure for evicting lodgers without getting a court order. When exactly can this be used? The answer to this lies in the Protection from Eviction Act 1977. This is the act which says that all evictions of residential [...]
Tenancy deposits and lodgers Although I wrote about this on Day 16 of my 21 days of tips for lodger landlords, I think it is worth repeating. The tenancy deposit regulations only apply to assured shorthold tenancies It is legally impossible for someone renting a room in your home to have an assured shorthold tenancy [...]
The nice people at Spareroom have kindly allowed me to post an update here from their excellent ‘raise the roof’ campaign to increase the rent a room tax exemption. Tessa. ********** Back in November 2009 we launched a campaign called Raise the Roof with the intention of asking the government to increase the tax free [...]
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 [...]
This book is written by the owners of the popular SpareRoom.co.uk flatsharing web-site. It is addressed to ‘sharers,lodgers, and everyone renting out a room’, and is very much a companion book to their web site service. As the authors have been working in the field for such a long time (their London flatsharing site, intolondon.com [...]
I did a talk recently at the Landlord & Buy to Let Show in London (5/3/10), and it was clear from some of the questions asked, that, even though I covered this topic on Day 1 of my 21 days of tips, people are confused about the difference between a lodger and a tenant. I [...]
When I mean disappearing lodger, I don’t mean one who fades away like the Cheshire Cat! I mean the tenant who just goes off and never comes back. Generally owing you rent. I had an email from a reader about this just the other day, who said, quite rightly that this is not covered in [...]
The site with guidance and services for people renting a room in their home to a lodger! If you are new to renting rooms to lodgers, you may want to read our 21 days of tips for Lodger Landlords. The other sections of the site (our documents shop and legal advice service) can be found [...]
If you are a landlord or a tenant, you will help and guidance on Tessa's other sites, Landlord Law and the Landlord Law Blog.
Planning permission, HMOs and lodger landlords
In my 21 days of tips, I discussed whether taking in lodgers could create an HMO on day 7. However since then the planning law has changed. If you take in more than two lodgers your property may need planning permission. The background to this change in the law, is the numerous complaints to MPs [...]
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