Hi,
We signed contract with 2 guys, now one of the guys is moving out at the end of term but the other tenant wants to stay. He can’t afford the rent alone.
We can find a replacement, however it would be extremely difficult to deal with Deposits and Inventory. What shall we do in such cases?"
You be frank with him that if he or you cant find a suitable sharer, he will also have to go.
Incidently, the legal pisition if this is a fixed term joint tenancy, (not becoming contractual periodic) is as follows:
There is only one Tenant, comprising both people. The Tenant, (ie both of them) may leave by midnight on the last day of the fixed term without notice or penalty. If one remains, the tenancy continues as a Statutory Periodic Tenancy for both people whether theyve left or not. In this case, the only fully legal way either can end their liability is to serve a valid Notice to Quit on the second day of the SPT to expire at the end of the second month of the SPT. If both decide to leave after the SPT begins, you may choose to accept a shorter notice period at your discretion.
Thanks a lot, David.
We can easily find a sharer, however the problem is that once the new person moves in, we have to do move out inventory (old tenant moving out) and check in for the new and existing tenants. We need to ensure the deposit, do all the checks for the new one, new deposit protection etc…
Then in 3-4 months the existing tenant decides to move out (he is not sure when, but he has lived over a year, so his contract is periodic), then the whole search and find of new sharer starts again with inventory, deposit etc etc…
We never had this problem as we usually have 2 people moving in (a couple) and both of them moving out at the same time… which is much easier to handle…
Do you have situations like our one?
Are you signing an individual rental contract with each tenant, or one tenancy agreement with two people both signing as joint tenants?
We signed 1 tenancy agreement with two guys 2 years ago. Now one of them is moving out to live with his girlfriend…
I prefer to keep it simple and I avoid such complicated situations! Also you do not want to deal with problems between them - it could be non-HMO with HMO problems 
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The one who wants to stay will have to sign a new fixed term tenancy as his old contract will need to end. Its not possible to have 2 contracts running for the same space.
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Hence why I was confused. When the new tenant moves in, he won’t be periodic, so can’t move out in 3-4 months. As David says, sign a new contract with both.
If existing tenant doesn’t want to sign a new fixed term, he needs to leave or your other tenant who has left remains liable. They started the tenancy ‘joint’ and need to end it ‘joint’
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