Rooms and flatmates
A room in a shared flat, a lodger in your own home, a student house, a flatmate wanted for a place you already have. Listed free, with the law on lodgers, tenants, deposits and houses in multiple occupation read on Homebinding.
List a room
In your own home as a lodger, or in a shared flat or house as a tenant. Free. Photographs, the rent, the bills, the household, and who you are looking for.
Room wanted
Say where, when, your budget and who you are. Landlords and flatmates search these too.
Lodger or tenant, and why it matters
A lodger in your home is an excluded occupier; a tenant in a flat you do not live in has full tenancy rights. The difference decides everything from notice to tax.
Rooms available
Demonstration listings, marked as such on each page. Rents shown are monthly. Ireland shown as a sterling equivalent for comparison; the listing states the euro rent.
Lodgers, tenants, tax and licences
A lodger in your own home
Someone who rents a room in the home you live in and shares living space with you is a lodger: an excluded occupier under section 3A of the Protection from Eviction Act 1977. You need no court order to end the arrangement, only reasonable notice, usually the rent period, and the deposit need not go into a scheme. The first £7,500 a year of rent is tax free under the Rent a Room scheme in the Income Tax (Trading and Other Income) Act 2005. Tell your mortgage lender and your insurer; most consent to one lodger. Check the lodger's right to rent under the Immigration Act 2014. If you claim the single person council tax discount you lose it when an adult lodger moves in, unless they are disregarded.
A tenant in a flat you do not live in
A room let in a property where the landlord does not live is a tenancy of that room with shared use of the rest, and the tenant has every right on the renting page: a deposit protected in a scheme, the gas and electrical certificates, the notice periods and grounds of the Housing Act 1988 as amended by the Renters' Rights Act 2025, and a court order before they can be made to leave.
Houses in multiple occupation
Three or more people forming two or more households who share a kitchen, bathroom or toilet make a house in multiple occupation under the Housing Act 2004. Five or more people from two or more households need a mandatory licence from the council anywhere in England; many councils license smaller HMOs under additional schemes, and some license every let under selective schemes. A licence brings fire precautions, room sizes, amenity standards and management regulations with it, and letting an unlicensed HMO is an offence with a rent repayment order behind it. In Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland HMO licensing runs on similar thresholds under their own Acts.
Flat shares and joint tenancies
Where a group rents a whole flat together on one agreement they are joint tenants, each liable for all the rent. Where each has their own agreement for a room they are separate tenants. A flatmate who replaces another on a joint tenancy needs the landlord's agreement and a new document; the deposit scheme must be told. Council tax on a shared house falls on the landlord where it is an HMO and on the tenants where it is a joint tenancy of the whole.
Students
Purpose built student accommodation and halls let by universities are outside the assured tenancy regime; a student house let by a private landlord is inside it. Wales requires student landlords to register with Rent Smart Wales; Scotland gives students the same private residential tenancy as everyone else.
