Horrified at how many parents guarantee rental agreements without reading

[PinkDino33]

This might sound brutal but I am regularly horrified on Mumsnet when I read posts from parents desperately seeking advice because things have gone terribly wrong with the property their child has rented, and they are shocked to discover the full extent of what they and their child are liable for.

Their DS has just found out their flatmate hasn't paid a single month of rent in the 12 months they've lived there.. Does he really have to pay what the other boy owes?

The DD's flatmate is making life hell and her and all the other flatmates want to move out and stop paying... surely this is allowed?

The DS signed up to a house with his friends but now he wants to move back home.. Does he really have to honour this contract and pay the rent for a whole year?!

It's like parents don't really think of a tenancy agreement / guaranteeing a tenancy as being a real contract, and don't know anything about what they've signed.

Is it a joint tenancy agreement? "No idea"
Can you give notice or is it for a fixed period like 12 months? "Don't know"
"I'm going to have a proper read of the contract tonight.."

It's no good properly reading it 6 months after you've signed it!

People seem to think the contract / how it works with the Landlord must be based on fairness.. It's not fair that their child is financially liable because another tenant hasn't paid, so the landlord can't possibly have the right to try and get the money from him. It can't possibly be the case that they've guaranteed the full rent amount and not just their child's - because that would be madness!

Say it's a 6 person property on a 12 month joint agreement with each person paying £750pm.. that's a total rent of £54,000 that you are guaranteeing!!

I say this, not to shame parents but because if there was more awareness of what parents are actually signing this would cease to be the norm amongst estate agents and landlords. You've got tens of thousands of parents every year signing up to these things which no one in their right mind would sign if they actually read and understood the thing!

It's horrible when these things go wrong and you're living with someone who's a nightmare or doesn't pay, so I do sympathise. But if your child is signing up to a tenancy agreement (especially if its a joint agreement and you need to guarantee it!) ask questions, READ the contract, look up terms like 'joint tenancy' online, ask for proper legal advice if you don't understand anything.

To be fair, if your kid is at uni it's sign or they don't get anywhere to live for second and third years.

This is why when I guaranteed our son they actually rented a 2 bed place for 2 of them and with separate agreements -

So your DC has to leave uni after Y1 because they have nowhere to live? There's not much if a choice in this.

Well, quite. We signed, through gritted teeth, in the knowledge that our son would do whatever he could to avoid it becoming an issue (he knew his housemates very well and was in a relationship with one of them -- though that felt like the biggest risk, to be honest!). But I was never happy about it.

When he needed a place for his fourth year he/we/they paid six months up front to avoid the 'joint and several' contract. That's a luxury that I realise most can't manage.

True. There's probably a small minority of parents who KNOW the risks of what they're signing up for and have made a decision that the benefit outweighs any potential risk, and then hope for the best. That's understandable. But everything I see on here the parents are absolutely flabbergasted that this is what they've signed up to!

I am just praying it will no longer be the norm by the time my DC go to Uni tbh!

If it is, I'll argue with the Estate Agent to make amends to the contract to limit mine and their liability (I know other parents who have done this), save the money to pay 6 months upfront to get the landlord to limit liability, and/or explain to my DC why I can't take the financial risk of guaranteeing some massive 6 person house and that sadly they'll need to live with fewer people.

I'd be interested if these contracts actually stand up in court if they were challenged. There's a principle I think around contracts needing to be proportionate and reasonable and these certainly don't sound it

YANBU. I read through the contract in horror, but had to sign with gritted teeth too. It's one thing having a rough idea what your own 18 year old might do in the course of a year, but to anticipate the fallings out, crises, change of hearts, exam fails, relationship breakdowns, and other typical dramas that I remember all too well from my own student years of five total strangers is a very different thing.

But what else can you do? I was hugely relieved when it was all over!

I used to work for an estate agency, it was terrifying how many people thought it was only a formality and didn't realise that routinely we would pursue the guarantor for money and were genuinely shocked we would do this.

Exactly. This is the position we were in with our DD1.

We are landlords ourselves. We do know what the contracts mean and what it means to be a guarantor as we have had them ourselves in the past. There was still no choice. All of the student properties for the second and then final years of study (third year was abroad) required guarantors or there would be no accommodation and living at home was not an option (much too far away).

So we had to sign, though we did make clear to DD's estate agent and landlord in writing that we wished only to guarantee her portion of the rent. I don't know that that would be legally enforceable in court etc. but it was all we could do. Thankfully the issue never came up. It was years ago now.

IME many people don't even read their own Tenancy Agreements properly let alone their childs.
I did and found that The Agency have actually F'd up and probably couldn't hold us to our Guarantor agreement if it came to that. I won't be telling them.
To be fair it can all be a bit of a rush and DC can sign them in a panic and so parents are left with the option of signing or their child missing out on a house, there is extra pressure if "everyone elses parents have signed"

Totally agree. Also, if it’s not a fixed term tenancy - your kid might want to move out and you’re actually still guaranteeing the three other teenagers who live there… forever? The contracts are so open ended with basically unlimited liability, they don’t even mention requirement for landlord to have insurance.

We knew guarantor responsibilities when dd was at uni. It was sign or have nowhere decent to live. All went well until the final year when dd had a wobble and we had actually resigned ourselves to having to pay up. Fortunately matters sorted themselves but it was close run. Op, I have refused to be a guarantor ever since!

The government is removing the ability to pay upfront.

I was asked to be a guarantor and asked the landlord for there to be a limit to my guarantee - eg to only guarantee the family member and not other flatmates or in failing that to add a clause with a fixed term to the guarantee that read as completely unlimited in length - but they refused. Given that by signing I would have been essentially guaranteeing a stranger’s rent (in the event that my family member moved out of the flat) for an unlimited amount of time, I couldn’t sign it. It wasn’t my child at uni though but a family member moving to the UK so I wasn’t in as much pressure to sign.

I made sure DS sent me the full contract and that I was clear what it all meant - 1) for the obvious reasons and 2) to demonstrate to my young adult son how to go about these things - not just blindly sign because "everyone does" or "it's just the standard contract".

From the replies it seems that maybe there are more people than I thought who fall into the camp of knowing the risks but sadly feeling there's no choice other than to sign.

However, on MN I have never seen anyone come on with a problem related to this issue where they say: "We reluctantly signed as guarantors knowing the risks and unfortunately we were right to be worried as X, Y and Z has now happened."

It's always just people absolutely gobsmacked that they're financially liable or can't get out of the contract that easily. So there must be a fair number of these parents!

This!!

There are alternatives

My father DID read the contract and refused to be jointly liable so agreed with my landlord that he'd pay my whole years rent upfront instead and I then paid him back each month when my SL came in

(I'm aware not everybody could afford this but it would literally be safer to get a 0% card and put it on that than guarantee the finances of essentially strangers, let alone 19 year old strangers who have been given a large amount of money for the first time!)

Most cities have block accomodati9n run by private companies that rent out single rooms, basically the same as first year uni accommodation.

Or go via spare room or whatever and rent from a landlord who doesn't just rent to students- people in houseshares have single contracts not joint ones.

At the very least parents should make sure that they're dc are renting with someone they know as well as possible- not just "we've found this amazing house but it's for 7 people so there's me, milly, ella and Jamie like we planned and then Jamies friend from rugby and milly is going to ask some girls from her course...."

I went back to the letting agent with several queries after seeing this on DD's contract. But they refused to change a thing, so we had to go with it.

Luckily all went ok and nobody buggered off without paying, but they could easily have done. It's not a great system for guarantors!

Nothing surprises me with regards to what people believe they are signing. i dont do it anymore but when I managed some rentals people were cluless as to what it actually meant.

One example was a couple who moved in with a brother. Needless to say they fell out with each and tried to give me the issue to resolve. Another was someone who just didnt like living on their own and wanted to know if they could leave after a few months. In the end we let them but not before I inspected the apartment and told them it needed to be very clean before we agreed anything. I actually had to list out what that meant i.e dont leave food in the oven, clean the fridge. Hoover, clean bathroom etc. I put the fear of God into him and he did leave it as I requested (I think he got his Mum in in the end to clean it properly!)

Good luck with that one.

You really won't be able to dictate how many people they house share with. The more there are in the house then the less expensive and more manageable the individual rent per room will work out to be.

You can set out in writing to the agent and landlord what your expectations and hopes are as we did, but there is no guarantee that it is enforceable. We did also make clear to our DD that we expected her friends' to have approached their own parents about guaranteeing their respective portions of rent. They had.

The whole system is far from ideal but it is what we have. Your first post seemed to suggest that it was a case of just refusing to sign but as has now been pointed out, it often just isn't that simple unless you want to see your student DD or DS on the street. That is the choice some of us have faced. Thankfully in our case it is now in the past and nothing went wrong.

OP's point isn't that you should refuse to sign (so little Maisie or Jimmy don't get to be at university) but that you should READ and understand the legal implications of the contract you are signing.

My parents had a long conversation with me 25yrs ago about the guarantor contract they were signing for me and the position it would put them in should I default on the rent or should my housemates stiff the rest of us.

It was so important to them and me that I as a 20yo understood the costs to them of my actions or inactions and it was drummed into me that if you're skint you pay the rent / mortgage as the priority and worry about everything else second.

It's about teaching personal responsibility and learning the consequences of your actions and this is a huge learning point for kids and parents.

The absolute worse case of this I've ever come across was a friend's DD got into Leeds Met through clearing which meant she missed out on a Uni Halls place for first year.

The Uni ran this day where they brought all of the new students who had missed out on halls together in a room to meet, quickly get themselves into groups, and then be paired with an estate agent who took them to a couple of properties and they all signed joint tenancy agreements for the year later that day... with students they had only known for about half an hour!!!

Most didn't have parents with them but apparently one boy did and his mother was absolutely horrified at what the Uni were pushing them into, but was told she was being difficult.

Yes, that's perfectly normal and has been for the last 30 odd years.