Are you a Landlord of an HMO? What you may rightly ask is what is an HMO?
An HMO is a dwelling house for multiple occupancy or a dwelling house used by 3 or more unrelated people who share some common facilities for example quite often a bathroom and/or kitchen. Any landlord who is separately renting out rooms in a property to three or more separate tenants must have a licence. The licence is not transferrable with the property and is personal to the landlord. Each local authority is responsible for awarding licences and have their own licensing procedures, criteria and fees and landlords should make themselves aware of those and make sure they are complying with the same.
Landlords should be aware that if they do not have a licence they are committing criminal offence and could leave themselves liable for a fine of up to £20,000. They could also leave themselves open to civil sanctions from the tenants which would include returning all rent paid by the tenant during the period which the tenant was paying rent to an unlicensed landlord.
Further, an unlicensed landlord will not be able to obtain possession against any tenant.
Accordingly it is absolutely crucial that any landlord who does rent a property room by room ensures that he is licensed by his local authority to do so.
Should you wish to discuss this or any other issue in respect of residential landlord and tenant law please do not hesitate to contact Robert Anderson on 0113 245 0733.
