Student Lets and the guarantor's role

As we start to reach the second busiest spell for students lets for the next academic year, I thought it might be helpful to go through a few things that might help parents and students alike regarding the process.

Perhaps the most important aspect to understand is that the group are "joint and severally liable" if they rent the house on one tenancy agreement. This is not relevant if you have one tenancy per room but most student lets will be under one agreement for the whole house.
This means that if Tom, Dick and Harry move in together each individual is responsible for the whole rent.
Example - 3 bed house at £1200pcm. Tom doesn't pay the rent due to financial problems or dropping out of the course. Dick and Harry are liable for Tom's share as well as their own. If you are acting as Dick or Harry's guarantor this means that you too are liable for Tom's share.
A quality agent or landlord will always chase Tom for the rent in the first instance and then go to his guarantor - 95% of rent arrears are solved at this stage and the other tenant and guarantors have nothing to fear.
If the issue still isn't solved then usually the group find a new 3rd person to fill the room and arrears don't build up.
It may seem a scary commitment as a guarantor but I am yet to know a case of one guarantor paying for the rent of a tenant they weren't originally guaranteeing.

The alternative way to find accommodation for students is as briefly mentioned above, rent a room on a tenancy solely for yourself. This will give you complete control but generally will require a bigger outlay as house sharing is the most economical, roughly speaking house sharing results in c£400pcm per tenant plus £10pppw for bills.
If you do wish to rent a room or studio on a sole tenant basis, generally speaking they will be starting at £500. We will have a number of rooms available from August in an excellent town centre location that start from £550 incl bills.

So what happens once you find somewhere to live?

Firstly you will be asked to pay a holding fee, usually around £500 which will go towards the first month's rent (so - not an extra cost). This payment secures the property for you.

You will then need to fill in application forms for each tenant AND guarantor. The guarantor will need to be credit checked and supply an employer's reference / proof of income.The student will be credit checked and where relevant need to produce a previous landlord's reference.

Both the tenants and guarantors will also need to show proof of ID and address.

Once the referencing is complete all parties will sign the tenancy agreeement and the total move in costs will need to be paid in cleared funds prior to move in.

Move in costs will include a referencing / admin fee for the agent, the first month's rent plus any deposit (usually 1.5 month's rent).



ACM student that doesn't know anyone in Guildford?

This is always a hard situation if you want to house share. Can you trust your new propsective house mates, will you even get on with them?

We can often put groups together, but it is much easier if you use ACM message board to communicate your need to form a group and then come to us as a group. We might have a 5 bed house and 2 groups of 2+3 which we can put together.
Please note that prices in the town centre, close to ACM, will be higher and you may need to stretch your budget.