Shortly after the first lockdown, a young man moved into Flora and Phoebe’s* London home. He turned out to be the flatmate from hell. Their original flatmate Dan* had moved back in with his mum, so decided to sublet his bedroom without telling them. The new tenant was a friend of his, and it wasn’t long before things turned hairy.
“He was really aggressive and misogynistic, and he just had the worst attitude,” Flora tells me. “He would sit in the lounge smoking weed all day. Then I found out he was selling weed from the house. He was also dogging in forests during the height of the pandemic, and bringing weird people to our house that he’d met at the skatepark.”
The new tenant also stole food and certainly didn’t bother replacing it. “He was eating all of Phoebe’s food, but she was celiac, so her food was really expensive,” Flora says. “He’d use her butter and then get crumbs from normal bread in it, which would make her ill. She asked if he could stop, then he lost it and pulled one of the kitchen cupboard doors off.” After further angry incidents, all the housemates agreed he had to leave.
The current housing market crisis has pushed more and more renters into the practice of subletting, which is essentially when a tenant will rent out their room for a short period of time to offset the cost while they’re away. According to a 2023 Direct Line survey, one in 10 (13 per cent) tenants admitted to renting out part or all of the property they lived in – rising to a quarter (25 per cent) among younger people.
While sublets should be arranged officially with the landlord, many are carried out illegally: nearly half (48 per cent) of renters who sublet their properties did not disclose this to their landlords, and 77 per cent of respondents did not review their existing lease agreements to determine if subletting was permitted before doing so. This was the case for Flora. “[Our new housemate] also didn’t pay Dan any rent, and he didn’t pay anything towards the bills, either,” she recalls.
If you’re a young person living in a city, you’ll have probably noticed people advertising their rooms for subletting via Instagram or Facebook – it’s since become something of a meme due to the length of many of these short-term lets, some of which are as little as two weeks.
She later found out a camera had been installed in their shared bathroom and had been recording her while she was showering
In the case of Ella*, her housemate Nathan* would put his room on Airbnb every time he went away, which was “pretty frequently”, the 29-year-old tells me. “We’d just have randomers coming and going all the time. I tried to stay out of it as much as possible. My boyfriend probably took the worst of it because he sometimes had to let people in at midnight as their flights were delayed. To be fair they were actually all very nice – one guy stayed over at Christmas which was a bit awkward because he wouldn’t really speak but would hang out in the living room.”
Nathan hadn’t asked Ella nor her boyfriend – who was a close friend of his – whether this arrangement would suit them. “I think the idea was me and my boyfriend shared 10 per cent of the money he made,” she continues. “But it wasn’t worth it at all. I mean, I don’t think he was profiting from it as such.”
Unsurprisingly, Ella’s landlord wasn’t in the loop and often the short-term tenants didn’t know this. “They didn’t realise they were going into a dodgy situation,” Ella says. “I think somebody noticed all the comings and goings because someone from the council came round at one point under the guise of checking the smoke alarms. But I think they were trying to work out how many people lived in the flat. One time a guy from the council came around and one of the Airbnb people answered the door and she had to sort of pretend she lived there [permanently].”
Ella dealt with this for a year before moving out. “It never felt like home, which was really sad, as you just never knew who was going to be there. It really makes you appreciate a lovely flat when you have it.”
Despite the risks, moving into a sublet can be appealing for those looking to secure quick accommodation and often at an affordable price. And if you have a room in a house and are feeling the pinch, why wouldn’t you offer it up for a few weeks to supplement your income?
Jack* decided to sublet his room in London after falling out with his housemate. “While this happened, my housemate stopped paying me for any of the bills, so I was paying all my bills on this place I wasn’t using,” the 28-year-old tells me. He then decided to rent out his room to a mutual friend. “Our friend then took the side of my housemate in our argument and gave my key to him when she left, so I couldn’t get to any of my stuff and I was locked out of my flat which I was still paying rent for.”
Charlotte* bore the brunt of subletting in Berlin, a city in which accommodation is notoriously hard to find, especially for non-natives who are legally required to register at their residence. “Many main tenants will refuse to give you registration, as they don’t want the property managers to know who or how many people are living at an address,” she tells me. “I finally found a place to sublet for three months (without the possibility of registration), with the main tenant requesting a deposit of €1000 – bearing in mind this was on a €500-a-month flat. The main tenant was living abroad, so any issues we had in the flat had to go through her, as she had to then go to the property managers. My other flatmate had mould in her room, to the point it was making her ill, yet any time she mentioned it to the main tenant it would take weeks for her to reply and she would be extremely dismissive.”
“When I eventually moved out, I didn’t get the deposit back for a whole year, and not all of it, as the main tenant claimed money for ‘extra costs’,” she adds. “As there was no official contract, and I’d been chasing them for months, I simply gave up. There’s obviously an uneven power dynamic between the main tenant and the people subletting, and it was noticeable throughout my stay there.”
So if you’re thinking of subletting your room, it’s important to check your tenancy agreement first. “If it doesn’t allow you to sublet and you go ahead anyway, you could invalidate your tenancy and end up getting evicted,” advises Matt Hutchinson, director of flatmate finding service SpareRoom. “If you’re OK to sublet, it’s still really important to have some kind of agreement between you and the person you’re subletting to, so both of you know exactly what’s involved and where you both stand.”
Charlie Lamdin, home moving expert and presenter ofMoving Home with Charlie, tells me that while he wouldn’t encourage anyone to break the rules, “providing a lessee is paying their rent on time and keeping the property in good order, landlords tend not to look too closely”. He adds: “It may be a case of needing to ask forgiveness rather than permission, but you will need to give this some thought prior to going ahead if you find yourself faced with this challenge.”
“The biggest considerations and challenges in my opinion, are really more to do with the personal side of things – namely living with another person who is essentially a stranger. I would advise anyone considering it to choose your lodgers with extreme care – always go through your own personal network in the first instance, be it through friends, colleagues or family. Ensure your subtenant or housemate is someone who can be vouched for. I would be ultra cautious about going down the stranger route. And if I did find myself with no other option, I would certainly be sitting down with them at least two or three times before inviting them to move in.”
While not doing this can create stress and annoyance, it can also spiral into dangerous territory. Charlotte tells me that one of her friends entered into a sublet arrangement with strangers, and found herself becoming incredibly uncomfortable around one of them, a much older man. “She later found out a camera had been installed in their shared bathroom and had been recording her while she was showering,” Charlotte tells me. “She felt too scared to report him and so ended up moving back home but mentioned how lucky she was to be able to do that, as many wouldn’t be able to do that and be back in the cycle of trying to find a place to live.”
As long as our current housing crisis continues, though, subletting will remain a tempting offer for many. But if you find yourself welcoming in a stranger, Charlie suggests knuckling down on the details. “I would strongly advise a formal sublease is drawn up outlining details about rent, bills, length of stay and what might constitute a breach along with penalties,” he says. “You should also carry out background checks and take a security deposit.”
Ultimately, if you do find yourself welcoming in a stranger, the best thing you should do is carry out background checks. And possibly child-proof your kitchen cupboards.
*Names have been changed
