UK Landlord Forum / Life

Hi, First time post (although long time reader!) so please be gentle. We have a property amongst our portfolio which we bought outright and now wish to put a mortgage on. We have long term tenants in there on what I thought was a standard AST. However, the mortgage company has sent us the below-

"Please note the AST does not comply with TMW buy to let criteria in that there is no clause preventing subletting or creating a multi-occupancy without the landlords consent. We can deal with this by providing an Addendum for signing by yourself and tenant which will incorporate the required clause into the AST"


We have a clause which says no paying guests but nothing else. Can someone point me in the direction of where I might find this? I can get the company to do it but they want £65+vat for the pleasure which seems a bit steep to me?

Any advice gladly received

Fe

You could start here, search for sublet :

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/model-agreement-for-a-shorthold-assured-tenancy

Thank you, that has been really useful 

Your Tenant - if one already exists (I am assuming that) is under no obligation whatsoever to sign anything you put in front of them. I doubt if they aren't subletting already they'll want to immediately start doing so... I'm just pointing out that you can't force them to sign something (as the Mortgage Company kinda implies - at least I read it that way).

If the tenancy is assured periodic, i.e. not within a fixed term, and the tenant was not required to pay a premium on the granting or renewal of the tenancy (e.g. >2 months deposit), then it is an implied term of the tenancy that the tenant may not sub-let without the permission of the landlord, and refusal of consent does not have to be reasonable. That's actually a stronger prohibition than if the tenancy has an explicit term prohibiting subletting without the landlord's consent, in which case it is an implied term that such consent must not be withheld unreasonably.