You need a new place to live. Your friend has a room going spare. In theory, it should be a win-win. You know you get on with them, and maybe they’ll charge you less than the (exorbitant) market rate. They could, they say, do with the extra cash. And your new “friendlord” will surely be easier to deal with than some faceless landlord – right?
Against the tumultuous backdrop of the UK’s property market, it is easy to see the appeal of a setup like this. Finding somewhere to rent that is just about affordable – and wasn’t last refurbished in the previous millennium – can feel like an impossible feat, especially in a big city filled with would-be tenants just like you (but with better salaries).
And, on the other side of the property divide, homeowners are seeking ways to mitigate the rising cost of living, too. According to flatmate-finding platform SpareRoom, the number of homeowners taking in lodgers increased by 89 per cent from January 2021 to January 2024.
But what happens if the heating cuts out in the middle of winter, and your supposedly reliable pal ignores the problem? Or if they start tutting every time you put a new load of washing on? When a pal becomes a friendlord, there is always a risk that a relationship of equals might sour into an uneven (or potentially toxic) power dynamic. And if it all goes wrong? You might lose a friendship and end up scrolling SpareRoom again.
Jessica* had recently become self-employed when she noticed that Lily* had posted on Instagram about wanting to rent out a room to a friend. Newly freelance, she wasn’t in a position to buy a place of her own, but wanted a change of scenery. And the house, she adds, was “gorgeous” – so she “gleefully accepted” the deal.
Once she moved in, though, she soon realised that while her new abode looked great on social media, it was actually “falling apart”. Her new friendlord, meanwhile, went off travelling, and wouldn’t do anything about repairs “unless I hound[ed] her about it”. To make matters worse, Lily still sometimes asks for rent early – then shows off her new purchases (including, deep breath, Labubus) on social media. Oh, and bailiffs have turned up to chase her unpaid bills.
Jessica is still looking to buy her first home, and she is “dreading” the moment she will have to break the news to her friendlord, who “has no source of income” apart from the rent – “but I can’t make that my problem,” she says.
Lily’s parents helped her to buy her house, something that seems to emerge as a common theme when you start unpicking friendlord-renter relationships. It’s a situation that can cause resentment to bubble up, even between close mates; living with a constant reminder of the financial disparity between you and your pal is not always easy.
James* lived with his current friendlord for years in a more straightforward flatshare, before she ended up buying a property with her parents’ assistance. Moving into her new place felt like a logical next step. But although they are still great friends, “it’s obviously slightly disheartening that we’re at different places financially in life due to our parents, which does sometimes make me jealous,” he says.
It’s hard not to be aware that she “is profiting from me, which is slightly annoying when she’s booking holidays and buying clothes with the money I’ve paid her”, James adds. “A lot of my other friends think it’s unfair that I’m helping her with her mortgage – especially when the deposit wasn’t paid by her but by her parents.”
This dynamic, though, isn’t necessarily an easy one for the friendlord to navigate either. Matt* had “a conveyor belt of really close friends” living in his house for about a decade, and was “always conscious” of the potential for resentment to build over money (one former housemate, he says, seemed very aware that “her money would be going into an account that I was then using for my own leisure”).
To counteract this, he would charge low rents – “I’d feel guilty to charge them market rate” – as well as “making sure there’s always communication” and trying to solve any problems quickly… even when one of the housemates came with some very unwanted baggage: bedbugs. “I had to fork out a couple of grand,” he says – it was “a real test of the friendship”.
Another complicating factor? It can be hard to predict the ebbs and flows of friendship. And if you do suddenly fall out of favour, you can end up in a tricky position, as Jodie discovered after moving to Manchester to live in her friend’s spare room.
The setup “worked well for the first six months”, Jodie says, but things “very quickly went bad” when her friendlord “started letting a family friend of hers also stay at the house all the time” in another bedroom, which also doubled up as an office. “I was no longer invited to social events as the other friend went with her,” she explains. “I felt more and more squeezed out and also felt I was paying for the friend to live there too, as she was not contributing to bills.”
When she brought this up with her friend, “as I felt that needed saying”, the response was dismissive. “She said she didn’t need me for the mortgage payments now anyway, so I could leave.” Jodie ended up leaving Manchester and moving back to her home city, as “I couldn’t just stay as long as I needed to find somewhere [new]”.
The friendship, she adds, “never recovered, as I felt I had been very much used when it suited her and then cast aside the second she didn’t need me”. You probably won’t be surprised to learn that they “lost touch the second I moved out”.
A lot of my other friends think it’s unfair that I’m helping her with her mortgage
Of course, for every horror story, there is a more heartening anecdote about lifelong friendships. Roisin ended up moving in with a former housemate and his partner when they bought a flat in north London with a spare room.
“They were the absolute best flatmates, caring and supportive during a particularly manic and intense time in my career,” she says. “They never minded my coming home in the early hours of the morning after a gig then getting up at the crack of dawn to go back to the office.” The fact that they were both amazing cooks sweetened the deal too. “I actually still miss living with them sometimes, but fortunately we’re still close.”
Before jumping headfirst into a new living situation, it is crucial to remember that lodgers have different rights to tenants. If your friend who owns the property lives there alongside you, and you share living spaces like the kitchen or bathroom, then you are considered a lodger, or an “excluded occupier”, rather than a tenant, explains Manjinder Kaur Atwal, housing director and solicitor at Duncan Lewis Solicitors. “That means you have far fewer legal protections,” she says.
In most cases, Atwal adds, “a resident landlord can ask a lodger to leave with ‘reasonable notice’”, which is often equivalent to the rental period (so if you pay monthly, you might expect a month’s notice), “and they do not usually need a court order”. Tenants renting from a landlord who doesn’t live in the property, she explains, “usually have an assured shorthold tenancy, which gives them stronger protection. Eviction requires the correct legal notice and, typically, a court process”.
In Atwal’s experience, the most frequent causes of disputes are to do with rent and notice periods. “Without a written agreement, disagreements about payment dates, rent increases or how much notice must be given can quickly become personal,” she says. So although it might feel embarrassing to push your friend for a document like this, doing so is surely less awkward than having an argument later on.
This document doesn’t need to be complicated, Atwal says, “but it should clearly set out the rent, when it is paid, how much notice is required, and what areas are shared”. Having clarity from day one, she adds, “can protect both your housing position and the friendship”. What it can’t do, though, is stop them spending your rent money on Labubus.
*Name has been changed