Worried about being a guarantor for whole house

[topcat2014]

Dd in first year and looking at houses with friends for year 2.

I only wish to guarantee her rent (and even that feels cheeky to me).

Is that the norm?

Panicking in case I get put on the spot and have to do things online in a hurry so they don't lose the house etc

Have things changed significantly since I was a student? These are house shares for one room. You get a contract for your one room and your parent is the guarantor for your room should you fail to pay. Everyone has a contract for their one room. Why would anyone do anything else?

Yes, they have.

I’m shocked and tbh would like to see some evidence. I can’t believe any parent would be comfortable being guarantor for some kids their kid will have only known for a max of three years (likely 1/2) at an inflated price.

If you search the topic on MN, you will find parents time and again asking about this point. Hopefully that will be evidence enough for you that the practice is widespread.

ETA and of course very few parents are comfortable with it. That doesn’t mean it’s not expected or they don’t end up doing it.

Done this several times over.

The chances of the guarantor of anyone other than than the defaulting tenant being pursued are pretty small. The course of events will be

1. pursue the tenant through debt collection then legal action
2. invoke guarantee agreement and pursue guarantor of the defaulter through debt collector and legal action
3. Only then go to a different TENANT(s) (who are jointly liable for the rent)
4. Lastly guarantors of other tenabts

So not impossible but unlikely. It’s worth having a conversation about how each tenant is going to pay there share if the rent eg are parents paying directly (low risk) or is a student having to budget their loans / income to make sure they have the funds every month/term (higher risk).

This set up is not common in student lets. More common in house shares when they start work

The evidence would be found by searching the rental market/asking agencies. In many student cities there is not enough housing. In some areas eg London, Bristol, Brighton to name a few students are also competing with young professionals for rentals.

Landlords don’t want the risk. They know if a group of students refuse a joint & several tenancy they have 5 other groups bidding for it.

Individual tenancies are usually in purpose built student accommodation or there are some areas (such as Leeds) where an organisation called Unipol rents out rooms in shared housing on an individual tenancy basis.

Have just googled as I live in a university town. https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/find.html?searchLocation=Northampton%2C+Northamptonshire&useLocationIdentifier=true&locationIdentifier=REGION%5E1014&radius=0.0&propertyTypes=detached%2Csemi-detached%2Cterraced&_includeLetAgreed=on&includeLetAgreed=true&sortType=1&channel=RENT&transactionType=LETTING&displayLocationIdentifier=Northampton&index=24

There is no mention of the deposit being together as one in any that I have looked at.

“GUARANTOR - All students must provide a UK Guarantor There are some alternatives if you are an overseas student, so please contact us to discuss.

Before reserving a property ensure that you know the length of the TENANCY and the PAYMENT TERMS (ie monthly or quarterly)”
you could argue that doesn’t explicitly confirm either way

Saying all students must provide a guarantor doesn’t mean that each guarantor is only responsible for their student.

I am not sure why you don’t believe that many, many lets work like this?

Read the contract carefully, and check you’re only being guarantor first your child, and not the whole house. We were only guarantor for our son in a shared house situation, and not the whole flat.

This.
I’ be been in this situation as guarantor and also on the other side as a landlord.
Joint and several.
Just be grateful there are still flats to rent as the Labour government are massively reducing supply by driving landlords out.

I paid the year in advance as dd sharing with 7 others. This meant I’m not liable. One other parent did the same.

That's no longer possible. Renters Rights bill prohibits landlords from accepting more than one months rent in advance.

This.

Don't, they chase you for other students debts if they have your address

It was for both my dc in shared houses.

Unfortunately it’s norm student houses are let joint and several. So eg my dc’s yr2 private house contract is £3500 a month and the 5 of them have agreed to pay £700 each. Each has a parent guarantor. If one student doesn’t pay, the other students should cover it and if they don’t then yes landlord can pursue one or all of the parent guarantors.
Alternative is private halls and just a contract for 1 room but they are really expensive.

We're just doing this now. As a parent you're guarantor for your child but the rent is for the whole house divided by the number of people. If people drop out, then potentially the rent get shared with fewer contributors. It's a legal fall back but each person is signing the contract for their share. The landlords are not going to lose out. I've already considered that DD's share would go up by £20 a week for the person that dropped out! Just in case.

You can get gaurantor insurance. It's around £800.

Because I’ve never seen it (not saying that means it’s not true but just factually, it’s not something I have ever seen and I now have friends with kids going to uni who also haven’t seen this) and mostly because it seems thoroughly unfair. I moved out of my student accommodation part way through my final year. It was a terraced house and we all shared a room. I either had to find a replacement tenant (which I did) or pay the remaining rent. That should be enough of a fall back for the landlord rather than roping in parents I hadn’t even met.

Is this just for student properties? I’ve a friends daughter who has moved into housing association and they accepted a year upfront. It just seems another way for renters to be at the mercy of god knows what.

It was £99 a couple of years ago

The actual tenancy agreement almost always says joint & several

The law is only effective from May 2026

We were told the same.

One of my DDs housemates did leave the house 2 months in, but their parents continued to pay the rent because they could not find anyone to take over the tenancy.

It's still an awful system for students though. Especially as landlords have expected students to secure their 2nd year houses only a month or two into their first year. There's so much jeopardy having to make a legal agreement alongside people you barely know, who could easily go on to drop out of university, or fail their first year, or prove themselves to be unreliable or poor with budgeting.