Joint tenant not paying rent

The key concept: joint and several liability

When several students sign a single tenancy agreement together, they usually have what is called a joint tenancy with joint and several liability. This is the single most important thing to understand about your situation.

Joint and several liability means that each tenant is responsible not only for their own share of the rent, but for the whole rent. The landlord does not have to chase each tenant only for their own portion. If one housemate stops paying, the landlord is legally entitled to demand the shortfall, or even the entire outstanding amount, from any one of the remaining tenants, from some of them, or from all of them together. You cannot successfully argue to the landlord that you should only be liable for your own individual share.

In practice this means that if one person on the tenancy stops paying, the rest of you are legally exposed to covering their unpaid rent, and arrears will build up in all your names if the shortfall is not made up.

What this means for the non-paying tenant and for you

The tenant who has stopped paying remains fully liable. Their failure to pay does not remove their legal responsibility, and the landlord can pursue them for the debt. However, from the landlord’s point of view, it is often easier to pursue whichever tenants are present, contactable and able to pay. That may well be you rather than the person who has actually defaulted.

If you do pay more than your own share in order to cover a defaulting housemate, you are not simply giving that money away in law. You generally have a right to recover the excess from the housemate who failed to pay, because you have paid a debt that was properly theirs. Recovering it in practice can be difficult, particularly if they have left or have no money, but the legal right to seek reimbursement exists.

Guarantors

Many student tenancies require each tenant to provide a guarantor, often a parent. It is very important to read the wording of the guarantee carefully. Guarantee agreements in joint tenancies are frequently drafted so that each guarantor guarantees the whole of the rent under the tenancy, not just the rent share of the particular student they are connected to. If the guarantee is worded that way, the landlord could pursue your guarantor for a housemate’s unpaid rent. Whether that is the case depends entirely on the precise wording of the guarantee document, so this is one of the first things to check.

Risks if the shortfall is not covered

If the rent is not paid in full and arrears accumulate, the consequences fall on the whole household, not just the defaulter. The main risks are:

The landlord may make deductions from the tenancy deposit at the end of the term to cover the arrears. Because the deposit is usually held jointly, this can reduce or wipe out the deposit that all of you contributed to, even the paying tenants.

The landlord may take steps to recover the debt through the county court against any or all of the joint tenants. A county court judgment can affect your credit record and lead to enforcement action.

The landlord may begin possession proceedings to evict the whole household on the basis of rent arrears. In a joint tenancy, eviction affects everyone on the agreement, so the innocent tenants can lose their home because of one person’s non-payment.

Can the non-paying tenant simply leave the tenancy?

A joint tenant generally cannot unilaterally walk away and end their own liability part-way through a fixed term. Removing someone from a joint tenancy, or replacing them with a new tenant, normally requires the agreement of the landlord and usually the other tenants, often documented by a deed of surrender and a new tenancy or a formal assignment. Until that happens, the departing tenant remains jointly and severally liable even if they have physically moved out. So a housemate who leaves and stops paying does not thereby release the rest of you, but nor do they escape their own liability.

Practical steps to take

1. Read the tenancy agreement and any guarantee documents carefully. Confirm whether it is genuinely a single joint tenancy or individual room tenancies. In a purpose-built or HMO-style arrangement you may each have a separate agreement for your own room, in which case you would only be liable for your own rent and this whole problem largely disappears. The nature of the agreement changes the answer completely, so establish this first.

2. Talk to the housemate. Find out whether this is a temporary cash-flow problem, a dispute, or a decision to leave. A student who is waiting on a delayed maintenance loan instalment is in a very different position from one who has abandoned the property. Many situations are ordinary financial difficulty rather than deliberate refusal, and can be resolved by agreeing a short repayment plan.

3. Keep the landlord informed and keep paying your own share. Falling into arrears as a household is worse for everyone than a temporary shortfall that is being actively managed. Landlords are often willing to allow a short period to sort things out if they can see the situation is being dealt with responsibly.

4. Keep clear records of who has paid what and when. If you or the others end up covering the defaulter’s share, this evidence supports a later claim for reimbursement against them.

5. Explore replacing the tenant. If the housemate wants to leave, ask the landlord whether they will agree to a replacement tenant taking over that person’s obligations, or a surrender of that person’s interest. Getting this documented properly protects the rest of you.

6. Consider the student union or the university accommodation or advice service. University advice services and students’ unions frequently deal with exactly this problem, can review your specific agreement, and can sometimes help mediate with the landlord or the housemate.

How the answer can change on the facts

The outcome turns heavily on details you have not yet confirmed. If each of you signed a separate individual tenancy for your own room, you are not liable for anyone else’s rent and the landlord must pursue only the defaulter. If you signed one joint agreement, joint and several liability applies as described above. Whether your guarantor is exposed depends on the guarantee wording. Whether the non-payer is simply late or has truly abandoned the tenancy affects both the urgency and the best response. And in Wales the framework differs in terminology and procedure, because tenancies are now occupation contracts under the Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016, with the landlord using specific prescribed notices, although the underlying principle of shared responsibility on a joint contract is broadly similar.

If you can confirm whether it is a single joint agreement or separate room agreements, and what your guarantee document actually says, the position for your particular situation can be pinned down much more precisely.