Editor's note: This brief was summarised by The Property AI Team from a report by Property118. Read the original article for full details.
Student lettings after the Renters' Rights Act: five decisions
B-Informed held The Future of Student Lettings conference in London on 21st October, bringing together landlords, agents, lawyers and industry specialists to ask what replaces the traditional student letting model. The report says the answer was not as simple as expected.
The old certainty of a fixed-term student tenancy ending at an agreed date has gone. Student tenancies are now periodic, which changes how landlords plan for one academic year's household to leave and the next to move in.
Ground 4A as a commercial decision
Robin Stewart, Partner at Anthony Gold Solicitors, opened the main legal discussion by looking at what happens when a student leaves early. That led into joint tenancies, replacement students, guarantors, new agreements, and whether decisions made during the tenancy could affect the landlord's ability to recover possession later.
Ground 4A is the new mandatory possession ground for qualifying student HMOs, allowing landlords who meet its conditions to recover possession so the property can be let to another group of students for the next academic year. According to the report, the question in the room shifted from "Can I use Ground 4A?" to "Do I want to organise my student lettings so that I preserve Ground 4A, and what are the commercial consequences if I do, or don't?"
The report stresses there is no single answer for every landlord or every student market, but it needs to be a conscious decision. One landlord may decide preserving the possibility of using Ground 4A is important; another may decide securing the next group earlier matters more commercially, even if Ground 4A won't be available.
What happens when the household changes?
The report says this was the issue the conference kept returning to. Student households do not remain static: one student may leave, others may want to stay, a replacement may be found, or the whole group may want another year — while the landlord may already be planning for the next academic intake. With a joint periodic tenancy, one tenant's notice can have consequences for the tenancy of the whole household.
The conference considered whether landlords should continue letting to the whole household on one joint tenancy, move towards letting individual rooms separately, or consider other models. None produced a magic solution. Individual room agreements may make it easier to deal with one student's departure without disturbing everybody else's arrangements, but they bring other questions: Council Tax, deposits, guarantors, mortgage conditions, insurance, licensing and planning.
The report advises: before changing the household, think about both the tenancy you have today and the tenancy you want tomorrow, and have a Plan B before you need one. It also notes that Nick Lyons, CEO of No Letting Go, made the point that evidence should receive more attention than it sometimes gets.
Source: Property118