Letting rooms in your home

Letting rooms in your home can be a useful way to get extra income. However, if you are letting (or thinking of letting) part of your home it is important to understand your obligations.

Rights of landlord and tenant

In law, a resident landlord letting is one where the landlord and the tenant live in the same building. This includes conversions where they live in different parts of the same property (however long ago the property was converted) but excludes purpose built flats, with landlord and tenant living in different flats.

There are two main issues where the rights of landlord and tenant differ for resident landlord lets compared with other types of tenancy - rent and security of tenure.

Broadly, someone who lets from a resident landlord:

does not have a right to challenge the level of rent that he or she has agreed to pay
can be given less notice to leave if the landlord wants to end the letting