Flat sharing
Flatsharing can be a great way to bring your housing costs down and make
friends at the same time. When you flat share you usually have a bedroom
of your own, but share other facilities (for instance, kitchen, bathroom
and living room) with others.
It is usually a lot cheaper than living on your own because you will
be sharing bills with others as well as the rent. So the costs of council
tax, heating and hot water, water, TV licence and telephone line rental
can all be shared with your flatmates rather than met out of your pocket
alone.
Different types of flatsharing
There are lots of different ways in which you can flatshare:
- You can set up a flatshare with your friends from scratch.
In this case you would look for a two or three bedroom flat with one
or more friends, and then split the cost of the rent and deposit between
you. The landlord will usually want to have one tenancy agreement with
everyone's name on it. If one of you decides to leave before the others,
that person usually gets their share of the deposit back and the remaining
flatmates find someone else to move in to take their place.
- You can move into an existing flatshare. In this case you are
likely to have to pay a share of the deposit when you move in, in the
same way as described above. In an existing flatshare there is likely
to be a tenancy agreement in place with someone else's name on it.
- You can rent a room from a resident landlord. In this case
the person you are sharing with is usually the owner of the flat or
someone renting from a council or Housing Association. Your tenancy
agreement will be with them. This can be a cheap way to get good quality
accommodation. The flat is usually their long term home though, and
they will want you to fit in with their style of living to some extent.
- You can rent a room or bedsit in a HMO (house in multiple occupation).
HMOs are large houses that the owner rents out as shared accommodation.
In this case the landlord will have a separate tenancy agreement with
each tenant and you will have no responsibility for finding people to
take up the place of someone who leaves. The amount of sharing you have
to do in HMO's can vary. There may not be a communal lounge and you
may just have one room and share kitchen and bathroom with others. Or
you may have your own kitchen or bathroom.
- You might be able to rent shared accommodation from a Co-op.
Co-ops are non-profit making organisations that are run by their tenants
(and are in fact housing associations rather than private landlords).
Sometimes the properties they let can be in a poor condition, but you
usually get a rent that is much lower than those charged by private
landlords. They sometimes lease the properties they use from councils
and don't always have them for the long term, so this might only be
a temporary housing option. In this case you will have a tenancy with
the Co-op and are unlikely to be asked to leave quickly, but you are
usually expected to take a part in running the Co-op (for instance by
attending meetings every so often).
For help in finding a flatshare click on Finding
a place.
Click to go to the top of the page
Making it work
When you are sharing with others you need to take into account how your
flatmates want to live and how your actions (or lack of action!) will
affect them. Flatsharers can sometimes fall out over whose turn it is
to do the washing up or buy the milk. Different people have different
standards of cleanliness and often want to go to bed at different times.
You need to either find a way of accommodating these differences or avoid
sharing with people who want to live a different way to you.
It can help in a flatshare situation to agree some ground rules between
you so as to avoid fall outs. The types of things you might want to discuss
at the beginning include:
- responsibility and standards for cleaning (for instance, always clean
the bath out after using it)
- shopping and food costs
- bills and how they will be split (particularly the phone bill)
- visitors (particularly girlfriends or boyfriends staying overnight)
- pets
- smoking
- drugs
- what happens when someone leaves
Click to go to the top of the page
Tenancy agreements
The type of tenancy you will get in shared housing will vary. Your name
will need to be on the tenancy agreement if you want to claim housing
benefit. For more information click on www.shelternet.org.uk
or www.nacab.org.uk.
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