Hi everyone,
I have 4 student tenants waiting to sign and 4 parent guarantors. The Guarantors are asked to sign for someone they do not know. I assume the tenants are not matched up to their respective guarantor. There was a link on OpneRent where you could state who the guarantor was guaranteeing and match the name up to the student.
Has anyone else had this same issue?
I know the tenancy is joint and several liability, however the guarantor should confirm they are a guarantor for their son or daughter.
S. W
It is in your best interest to have joint and several liability
Most guarantors won’t sign an open guarantee for a joint tenancy. NRLA have a limited liability guarantor agreement. You may be able to get one from Openrent too.
Thanks David, I have taken a look on the NLRA site and located the form. OpenRent are an online platform which is marvellous, however are not able to create Limited Liability.
I note the separate Limited guarantor form from NLRA would have to be emailed to the guarantor, printed, signed and returned. The old fashion way.
Thanks for your input.
Yes, guarantor agreements have to be signed and executed as a deed, with a witness. Therefore you need a wet signature.
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The OP says ‘however the guarantor should confirm they are a guarantor for their son or daughter’. The answer is ‘Not if they are guaranteeing the entire rental obligation (in other words, the joint and several liability of all the tenants)’. If a landlord can get all the guarantors to guarantee the whole liability, not just their own son or daughter, the landlord is in a stronger position. If the guarantee is correctly worded the landlord just goes after the guarantor with the deepest pockets and leaves that person to try and obtain recompense from all the other guarantors (with whom they probably won’t have a contractual relationship, so good luck with that). I was asked recently to sign a joint and several guarantee for a relative’s student rental because their parents live abroad and the landlord wouldn’t accept them as guarantors. I made myself quite unpopular by refusing. In fact it wasn’t a deed so I would probably have been safe. But I still wouldn’t sign because I’m pretty sure that on paper I am worth more than the rest of the guarantors put together, so if the rental had gone wrong I would have been the landlord’s prime target. No thanks. I don’t like pinning target rings to my chest.
Its absolutely the norm for parents to sign as joint and several guarantors for their student children (taking on responsibility for unknown teens!) when the property is let as a joint and several tenancy. If your child is jointly and severally responsible then so are you are a guarantor. If you only want the parents to be responsible for one room (and not the communual areas) then you need to let each room on a separate AST.
As a parent of a student in Birmingham where the landlords in Selly Oak have this stitched up like a kipper the best I could do was to get an assurance in writing from the agents that they would chase any debts/damage in the order of Student responsible or responsible student’s guarantor, other students then other guarantors.
As a landlord if the guarantors are only guaranteeing their own student I think you are exposing yourself to risk where it is not clear which student is responsible.
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to be clear - if the tenancy is joint and several then the liability for the guarantor even if they are only responsible for their students liability is covering anything owed or damaged by the others as their child has taken on that liability.
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In my experience most parents won’t sign up to an unlimited guarantee, but others may be more persuasive than me.
If parents refused in Selly Oak the student has no option, very very few private lets without those conditions. Can be avoided by using the student accomodation providers like Unite - but those are not what 2nd and 3rd yrs want.