A new rent arrears protection service has launched to cater specifically for settings with tenants renting rooms rather than entire apartments or houses.
Only My Share offers rent arrears protection to individual tenants, meaning that they and their guarantors are protected from being financially liable if a housemate doesn’t pay their rent under a ‘joint and several’ clause.
A business to business bloc management option will enable accommodation providers to work directly with Only My Share, instead of relying on tenants to apply individually to the company.
Available to landlords of HMOs and those letting out entire blocks of flats, the bloc service means that it’s simple and efficient to provide building-wide coverage.
The bloc management service has already generated strong interest, says parent company Housing Hand.
“Demand for rent arrears protection for tenants renting out individual rooms is rocketing. Users of our service shot up by 24 per cent between March and September. That increase has been a driving factor behind the timely launch of our new bloc management service” says Only My Share operations director Terry Mason.
And Edmund Fulford, relationship manager at the company, adds: “From students to working professionals, renters of individual rooms need to have the opportunity not to be reliant on their housemates’ financial situations for their own economic health.
“Rent debt is never nice to deal with, so we’re making it easier to avoid it happening by working with landlords through the new bloc management service.”
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I cannot see how this is going to work, where is the money coming from. In the past I've come unstuck here, house shares don't understand the meaning of the '' joint and several '' clause, the times I've gone after the rent for one house mate to say '' here's my share mate, you'll have to see Fred about his share''.
Andrew
That is when you go to the guarantors. I've always found the problem gets nipped in the bud and have only had to go to eviction once in about 300 tenancies over the years.
Separate individual contracts for each tenant in HMO's has always worked best for me. The housemates are happy that they're not responsible for others rent arrears. Usually any bad payer is also a bad tenant stealing food and making a nuisance and upsetting other members of the household. Therefore, with an individual AST that person can be evicted and harmony restored.
I have found joint and several liability to be much safer and peer pressure either sorts it out or the problem tenant is persuaded to move on without any encouragement from me!
The problem with joint and several is the remaining are lumbered with the full rent cost.
Guarantors by the way are impossible to find for most LL.
I have never found one in doing this for over 12 years.
Licensed HMO are problematic.
Reduce to 4 occupiers and go the lodger route.
Just means the LL has to occupy once per month to maintain lodger status of the 4 lodger occupants.
Even after the two years or however long it takes to get a court order for bailiffs, if the tenants says someone is shielding because possible cv19 symptoms then it’s back to square one
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