Housemate’s boyfriend moving in-split rent?

[Lampyshady]

I live in a flatshare with 3 others. One of the girls has a much bigger room and an en-suite and pays a bit more rent and the other 3 of us share a bathroom and pay a bit less. Girl with big room has asked if her boyfriend can move in and share her room for about 6 months, and said we’d split the bills by 5. We all said we’d think about it. He’s here a lot anyway and has been going through a very hard time and we get on well so it wouldn’t be so bad-and we’d still be sharing a bathroom between 3 so it wouldn’t add to bathroom waiting times.
We suggested that he should pay rent and the girlfriend said oh he’s going to pay half of my rent so it’s fair. I think this is unreasonable, since there will be 5 of us in the house/using the kitchen etc so I think the rent should be split by 5 and the rent should be lowered for the rest of us too as a result of having one more flatmate.
I think it’s unfair that they will get to live in a nice house, in a big room in an expensive city for half the market rate, with the convenience of having their partner with them, while the rest of us pay nearly double and have the inconvenience of living with more people.
Their argument is that the rent is per room and it is only 1 room they are renting so as long as that room is paid for it’s none of our business/their finances are up to them.
Who is being unreasonable? And is this even legal-we weren’t planning on telling the landlord he’s moved in because it’ll (probably) only be for a few months.

How will it work if there’s a fire or burglary, will insurance policies still be valid?

Because it is 6 months, she already pays for the big room, he is there a lot anyway and most importantly you all get on I would be ok with just a share of the bills.

If it was forever or I didn't know/like him I would definitely not be ok with it these would be bigger issues for me than the rent split.

Do you have a downstairs loo that visitors can use. You don't mention it so presumably not. If you women are all living together then I imagine you may be her closest friends. You already have a bathroom you use. If other female friends come round ,presumably they use the shared bathroom rather than going into her bedroom to use the en suite. If he has male friends round they aren't going to go into the ensuite in the bedroom, they are going to use your bathroom .Without a downstairs loo that is inevitable. I would get fed up with that very quickly, particularly if skids were left.
If you need to do uni work and him and his mates are screaming at the rugby on the telly how will you feel about having to leave your own home and go to the library.
Will he think its okay to help himself and his guests to your coffee, bread, butter, toilet paper If she is away and she and he have run out "oh chillax X will get some more on monday, god its only x y z". Absolute ball ache .

I don’t think they should pay the same give they are sharing a room and you aren’t. Maybe some contribution towards communal costs but not an equal split of rent between all of you.

OP, I am a LL and you absolutely can't do this. More than 4 people living in a shared house makes it an HMO, which would need to have a licence. Obtaining the licence is expensive; where I live, you also have to do an HMO training course (again, expensive) before you are granted the licence. I have deliberately not gone down this route because of the expense (and the 'training course' is almost certainly telling LLs how to do stuff they should already be doing, but charging them a fortune to tell them this). Your tenancy will be very specific - is each room let individually to each tenant, or is the whole house let to four of you? If the former, your friend-with-the-boyfriend needs to ask the LL if s/he is willing to change her tenancy to a joint tenancy (LL will say no, unless they want to go down the HMO route). If the latter, the Lead Tenant needs to make the request of the LL (who will again say no for reasons previously mentioned).

If you just let him move in, you could all be evicted. What about Council Tax? He would need to be paying CT, which would automatically alert the local Council to his existence; this would in turn work its way to the LL. Moreover, I'm quite sure the LL wouldn't be able to go down the HMO route even if s/he wanted to if there are four bedrooms but five people. Each tenant has to have a bedroom, even if in practice two of them are a couple and spend all their time in one room.

In the extraordinarily unlikely event of the LL having an HMO licence or being willing/able to obtain one, the boyfriend should be paying 1/5 of all bills, including rent.

I also wouldnt tell the landlord because it would mean the landlord would have to get an HMO which would be a hassle and mean the landlord may say no even if they don’t mind. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

@FHmama

Yabu. They're sharing a room and he's putting money towards the bills, if I was in your position I wouldn't expect him to pay rent too.

Except the cost of utilities will increase, and they will then become an HMO which requires a license plus new fire doors, wired in alarms, extra cooking facility and all that work needs to be paid for so there will either be an overall rent increase, a s21 due to breaching the tenancy agreement or enforcement action by the local authority.

He is another tennant and needs to pay a share of the rent.

@HuntingCuns I don't know much about HMO rules but wouldn't they need different fire safety rules? aka fireproof doors & wired in fire & smoke alarms (at the moment single occupancies don't but I am not sure about shared/non HMOs)

I guarantee that he will be there a lot longer than six months.
Sharing with a couple also brings a different dynamic completely, according to problems I have read/ heard about.

That aside from the legality of it which I know others have posted about above.

And is this even legal-we weren’t planning on telling the landlord he’s moved in because it’ll (probably) only be for a few months. It is not legal and puts you all in breach of your tenancy agreement, and therefore invalidates insurances.

This would be a really bad move and you should say no.

Rent - the two of them, the couple, should split the rent for her bedroom. She is already paying more rent than you to have the bigger room with en suite.
Bills - all bills should be split equally between five of you.
He should make an additional payment to the flatshare for general wear and tear, using the communal areas, use of appliances, etc, things wear out, an additional person adds to that. You should agree between yourselves what you think that should be (perhaps, 10% of the holding deposit you paid?).
Then I suggest you have him added to the tenancy for the 6-month period so he is jointly financially liable, and in case you want to get rid of him at the end of the period.

I doubt if this is legal for the reasons laid out above but if the landlord was happy, the fairest way is to use one of the rent splitting apps to work out how much you each should pay. You put the total rent and number of rooms and some other details in - like size of rooms and whether any are shared or have a private bathroom - and it works out the totals per room eg www.splitwise.com/calculators/rent

Watch turn 6 months turn into years because this is way cheaper than getting a double occupancy room elsewhere
Check the hmo licence how many tenants does it cover?

I don’t think it’s a question of how much he should pay - he just shouldn’t be moving in. I’d be pretty hacked off if I’d agreed to move to a house share with a few girlfriends and then some bloke is moved on by girl with large bedroom

I've just seen having more than 5 people sharing a house makes it a HMO - you should definitely tell the landlord not only because it's legal and the correct thing to do, but if you don't, someone like the neighbours might complain.

I do think OP is being a bit naive about this all going well and no issues as she really can't tell (neither can any of us) how this will play out. It could be great and he's gone after 6 months or he could be hard to get rid of after 6 months.

@MyrtlethePurpleTurtle

I don’t think it’s a question of how much he should pay - he just shouldn’t be moving in. I’d be pretty hacked off if I’d agreed to move to a house share with a few girlfriends and then some bloke is moved on by girl with large bedroom

Yes me too!

Just say no. The better option is for her to move out with him and you all to get someone else to move in.

It'll be either loved up annoying or arguing annoying.

@Makeitsoso

I also wouldnt tell the landlord because it would mean the landlord would have to get an HMO which would be a hassle and mean the landlord may say no even if they don’t mind. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

This is absolutely atrocious and very, very ignorant advice.

& what happens when they have arguments & they will! or break up or if you all decide to move out & he doesn't & you will all be liable for the extra rent - not him - because he is not on the agreement

It may already be an hmo eg in lambeth hmo is more than three
beta.lambeth.gov.uk/housing/landlords-and-licensing/houses-multiple-occupation-hmos

@mumwon

& what happens when they have arguments & they will! or break up or if you all decide to move out & he doesn't & you will all be liable for the extra rent - not him - because he is not on the agreement

It is just a mess waiting to happen and I can not believe the people on here saying it'll be fine.

Utilities will be split by 5 though and he'll only be using the shower extra really, I assume they'll eat together and if he wasn't there she wouldn't be sat in the dark. I don't think you can expect your rent to be reduced, he isn't going to be sharing your bathroom, he'll be bunking in with the gf. If he's there most the time anyway you may as well have him contribute to utilities. When we were at uni (maybe slightly different as we were all friends) anyone who had a bf had them pretty much just live in the house, we didn't mind or charge them more for bills, but we were a group of friends, not just people thrown together renting.

@Babiesandboardgames

I think you should meet in the middle somewhere . Let's say you all pay 400 each and she pays 500. Under your proposals , it would be 2100/5 which would be 420 for each of them , or 840 for their room which is too high . Equally, 500 for 2 people (not 1 and that's an extra person sharing the living space ) isn't fair either I would suggest together they pay 600 so that the 3 others pay 33.33 less each and bills are lower because you have an extra person paying them I think that's fair :)

I agree with this suggestion.

[quote mumwon]@HuntingCuns I don't know much about HMO rules but wouldn't they need different fire safety rules? aka fireproof doors & wired in fire & smoke alarms (at the moment single occupancies don't but I am not sure about shared/non HMOs)[/quote]
Yes, that's right. All shared houses have to abide by various fire safety standards, but HMOs go much further. They have to have different types of lock on the main exit doors, constructed in such a way that fire can't spread, etc, etc. They have to be inspected to ensure that they meet every single one of these criteria. It makes sense, obviously - but that's why so many LLs don't choose to go down the HMO route.

Whenever I've been in this situation, and I've been both the couple and the other tenant, it's been something like suggested above - couple pay, say, £450 everyone else pays £300.