Can an 18 year old rent a flat?

[Freshstarts23]

DD wants to move out, for a variety of reasons I think it’s probably for the best. I know I’m probably being unreasonable but we are where we are.

But is it possible, Will landlords accept her? I’ve no experience of renting. She has a full time job.

We did about 16 years ago, but even then needed guarantors.

Now the rental market is so competitive it’s likely she will struggle and there will be more financially viable tenants out there.

Yes I rented at 18 just had to pay a month advance and one months rent

Has she just started work - maybe after leaving school in July? If so she will have little tax to pay until her unused allowances for April to August have all been used. Once they have been she will have tax to pay in addition to NI which should already be being deducted.

Yes, if the landlord agreed. She‘s an adult. My nephew was 18 when he started renting.

She’d probably need a guarantor, but that would also be the case for plenty of older renters too.

Financially she’d obviously manage better in a house share though.

How is that remotely relevant?

Def think she'd be better in a house share. My sister rented a room in a house after uni. Lived with the owner of the house and one other guy. Yeah you have to share the living area, kitchen etc but it's a lot cheaper!

They usually only accept home owner guarantors because then they can get a charging order against the house for unpaid arrears. It's really hard to recover when there's nothing to secure it against.

Yes, rented at 17 years. No issues

Of course she can rent at 18 with a full-time job! She just needs to find an affordable property. That will probably be a house share, unless she has an extremely well paid job. Same as for literally millions of young working people. Strange question.

Exactly. The idea of having a whole flat to oneself at 18 is so far away from most people's lived experience! I am one of the hated Boomers (age 60) and no one I know of my age lived alone at 18. Such luxury is only for the super-rich.

I assumed they usually got house shares.
It just seems unlikely that a landlord would accept an 18 year old to be solely reliable for all the rent. It’ll be a big chunk of her wage. I was wondering if they do affordability checks.

Thank you. This is the sort of thing I was wondering about. Although that seems steep!

How does she earn that much at 17?

No, she’s been working for over a year.

Here we go - another one! It’s not relevant, stop being so bloody nosy.

A band 3 health care assistant in Scotland earns that kind of money. Especially after unsociable hours/ night shift allowance. My DD started her HCA job at 17 and bought her own 1 bed flat in Scotland at 18. It's unusual, but can be done.

Am I reading this right? 15 years ago I rented a room for £400 a month. Even at x30, I'd need to take home 12 grand a month. Surely but no one passes that affordability check?

She works hard, long hours.

@Freshstarts23

That's ok. She'll be fine but probably best in house share

It sounds like bullshit.

I know. My half of the rent was half my salary in my first flat. We could never have managed that between two of us!

Does it? With overtime - of which there’s always loads in the NHS.

Band 3
<2 years' experience £22,816
2+ years £24,336
Examples of roles at band 3- emergency care assistant, trainee clinical coder, estates officer and occupational therapy support worker.

To answer some questions…

I don’t think I could be a guarantor, I’m not a home owner.

She is adamant she does not want to house share. For many reasons, I also don’t think this would work for her. But as others have pointed out, she may have to deal with it like many people do.

I don’t know what she plans long term as she really could be saving money, but she doesn’t and private renting for ever is not going to be feasible due to costs. We live in London so it’s extremely expensive and she’s also looking at places a bit further out.

Others have pointed out some of the things I was getting at… such as properties being in huge demand and landlords being likely to pick other tenants over an 18 year old with no history.

I think she’s also on a zero hours contract but I think she may be in the process of trying to sort this out as her employer won’t want to lose her so will hopefully put her on a proper contract.

Because??

I think its means annually. So if £400 x 30 would mean you’d need to be earning 12k a year?