Joint Tenancy, one tenant leaving

Landlord Discussion Legal
1

Hello

I (landlord) have a joint tenancy with three tenants. One of the tenants will be terminating her tenancy. She will be replaced by another tenant. How should this be handled:

  1. Draft a new tenancy with the remaining term of the tenancy? Is it possible to do it through OpenRent? The current tenancy is through OpenRent.

  2. I also have Legal Expenses & rent Guarantee insurance. How will this work?

  3. Returning the deposit of the leaving tenant. How does this work?

Thanks

2

Hi Aziz,

The first options would be the easiest. You can create a new free advert on OpenRent, ask the new tenants to press the Rent Now button. Then the tenancy creation process will proceed the same as the last time you used Rent Now to create a tenancy.

Our Rent Guarantee Insurance is provided by Rentguard. If you get in touch with them, they will be able to advise you on how to make sure your new tenancy remains covered by your policy.

You can initiate a depost repayment via the deposit scheme’s website. We will have received an email with information on how to access your deposit account when we registered the deposit in your name.

Hope this helps!
Sam

3

Could this be clarified please? The tenancy that’s then created is new. Ie for a new fixed term, not a remainder of the existing fixed term?

4

Yes, that is correct.

5

I’d say if you are terminating the existing tenancy, then you will be terminating for all, as I am assuming you have listed three people on one tenancy agreement. Refund all deposit & start again with a fresh / new tenancy agreements if you wish with the remaining tenants.

3 tenants unrelated from more than one household = HMO. You may wish to read up on this to make sure whatever you do in future does not fall foul of HMO rules, which could seriously complicate your Landlord journney.

I do not know how this will affect your legal / rent protection policies.