Tenancy in one persons name only?

The important thing is that the tenant who is on the AST has sufficient income to pass a credit check on his/ her own. In my experience, any other adult living there but not party to the tenancy agreement should be listed as a permitted occupier in the AST.

You could name as a permitted occupier, for example if the partner was a student or young parent without income of their own

Why take the risk? Better to take two credit worthy tenants, after all there is no shortage of prospective renters presently. Our agent did not tell us that the couple she put in our property had an horrific financial history and although they did pay their rent they set the place alight causing £150k of damage for our insurers to cover. (Case being pursued by the PRS presently.) People who are not credit worthy are often feckless.

Hi all

Some good comments, there. Just for context the prospective tenant who doesn’t want to be named on the tenancy has already declared her adverse credit history. So credit checking her specifically won’t tell me anything I don’t already know.

The other tenant has a salary which is more than sufficient to cover the rent in isolation. However in my opinion to look at the tenants as being in two separate bubbles is rather naïve. His partner could quite easily hold the purse strings to his bank account thereby making them a big risk.

He has also offered to act as guarantor in case they split up..

I do accept that taking this cautious approach does have the downside of potentially longer void periods but as one of the messages says this business is hard enough at the best of times, no point in making it.
tougher!!

At this point I’m still leaning towards a rejection

There is a corollary to this though, whenever I let to a Middle Eatsern and state funded student it is almost always the case that any partner will have no evidenced means of support, such tenancies are ALWAYS written with one as the tenant and the partner as a permitted occupier.

Reply to the comment left by Leah Pemberton at 28/03/2022 – 15:13
“He has also offered to act as guarantor in case they split up”

He can’t be a Guarantor to his own Tenancy, they would be both jointly & severably liable.

Reply to the comment left by Rosanne Turvey at 28/03/2022 – 12:06
This is exactly what is happening the one with the tenancy stops paying so you evict the other one gets a new tenancy with no landlord reference and the ball keeps rolling from one to the next

Whilst i understand that you want to get a tenant and get the rent rolling in, your better to wait for the right tenants rather than risk being stuck with tenants that cant pay and you then have to go through the courts to get them out. There’s plenty of possible tenants out there, Avoid these!

If the named tenant leaves the remaining tenant has no legal right to stay so the court woukd easily grant a possession order, and only 1 person has to be named legaly, your saying if a family move in mom dad, 3 kids all over 18 all five have to sign the tsnancy agreement, no they don’t, if a single person is living there and gets in a relationship or marries you are trying to say his spouse has to then put her name on the tenancy. No they don’t a single adult signing a tenancy is for them and their immediate family their is no law that says every member of a family has to be on the tenancy, my girlfiend stats at mine sometimes for weeks and I stay at hers for weeks we are both single tenancies

Reply to the comment left by John Payne at 28/03/2022 – 21:04
The remaining Tenant would be a permitted occupier & would have to be evicted like anyone else.
I don’t think anyone said that all over 18 had to be on the Tenancy, however its good practice to do so, then there are more to chase for the arrrears.

Staying over at a partners is completely different.