If you have no parent with a UK house and a UK payslip, the guarantor question is the thing most likely to stop a booking. Here is what a guarantor actually signs, what the law changed on 1 May 2026, and what your realistic options are.
What a guarantor is actually agreeing to
A guarantor is someone who promises the landlord that if you do not pay, they will. That is the whole idea, and most students understand that much. What far fewer people realise is how wide the promise usually is.
Two things catch people out.
The first is that the guarantee normally covers more than rent. Shelter's guidance on guarantors for private renters notes that a guarantor can also be liable for damage to the property, depending on how the agreement is written.
The second is joint and several liability, and it is the big one. In a shared house on a joint tenancy, every tenant is legally responsible for the whole rent, not just their share. So a guarantor in that arrangement can be asked to pay for a housemate who moves out, drops out, or simply stops paying. Your mother in Lagos or Chengdu could end up covering five people's rent for a house she has never seen.
That is negotiable more often than students think. Shelter points out that some landlords and agents will issue a separate guarantor agreement per tenant, and that a guarantor can ask for their liability to be limited to one person's share. Ask too how long the guarantee runs — some end with the fixed term, others roll on once the tenancy goes periodic.
One genuinely new protection: for guarantor agreements signed on or after 1 May 2026, a guarantor's liability ends if the tenant dies, with narrow exceptions in joint tenancies between relatives. It is a grim provision, but it closed a real and cruel gap.
Why international students get stuck
Almost every private landlord and letting agent in Birmingham asks for a guarantor who is UK-based, owns UK property, and has UK income they can evidence. If your family is not in the UK, none of that is available to you, and no amount of savings in your own account substitutes for it.
The University of Birmingham says this plainly on its own guarantor page: most UK landlords require a UK-based guarantor, which is difficult for international students. Birmingham City University's international college is blunter still, noting that because most international students cannot obtain a guarantor, agencies have routinely asked them to pay three to six months' rent in advance instead.
That workaround is the thing that stopped working this year.
What changed on 1 May 2026
The Renters' Rights Act came into force on 1 May 2026. Alongside abolishing Section 21 no-fault evictions and banning rental bidding, it capped rent in advance.
The detail matters, so here it is precisely. The Act restricts a landlord or agent to one month's rent in advance, and it separates two moments. Before the tenancy agreement is signed, a landlord cannot accept any rent at all — that is a prohibited pre-tenancy payment. After signing, and before the tenancy starts, they may take the initial rent, up to that one-month ceiling. Landlords also cannot invite or encourage a larger payment, or route it through a third party to get around the rule. The Independent Landlord's breakdown of the rent in advance ban sets out both limbs. The cap applies to new assured tenancies entered into from 1 May 2026; tenancies already running before that date are not caught.
For international students the practical effect is stark. Unipol's FAQs for students put it in one line: if you cannot provide a guarantor, your landlord is not allowed to require you to pay a year, or even several months, up front instead. The escape hatch international students have leaned on for two decades is closed in the private rented sector. Guarantor arrangements are now the main route, which is why this page exists.
Whether student halls are exempt
Partly, and the distinction is worth understanding before someone tells you something wrong.
The rent-in-advance cap bites on assured tenancies. Purpose-built student accommodation can sit outside the assured tenancy regime altogether — universities keep their long-standing Housing Act 1988 exemption, and other purpose-built providers can be exempt as a specified body where they are a member of a management code of practice approved under section 233 of the Housing Act 2004, which in practice means the ANUK/Unipol National Code. Osborne Clarke's analysis of what the Act means for purpose-built student accommodation explains that qualifying providers can keep granting fixed-term common law tenancies, which are not restricted by the new rules on advance rent.
So: a private landlord letting you a room in Selly Oak is bound by the one-month cap. A code-member halls provider is generally not. That does not mean halls will ask for a year up front — most large operators bill by instalment — but the two sectors are now on different rules, and a claim on an aggregator site may be true of one and false of the other. Ask the specific provider what their payment terms are.
Guarantor options at Globe Works
If you have just read all of that and concluded that a UK guarantor is the thing standing between you and a room, this is the part worth knowing: guarantor options are available for international students booking at Globe Works for 2026/27.
We are deliberately not going to print terms here. What applies depends on your circumstances — your course, your funding, your tenancy length, whether anyone abroad can co-sign — and a general answer on a web page is exactly the kind of thing that turns out not to apply to you. The honest route is to ask. Contact the site team at 20 Cliveland Street, tell them your situation, and they will explain what is available to you before you pay a guarantor service a percentage of your year's rent.
Two things about the building that change the guarantor question itself, whoever you end up booking with:
- Your agreement is for your room only. It is not a joint tenancy on a five-bedroom house, so nobody is guaranteeing a housemate who drops out in February. That is a far smaller thing to ask of a relative, and it is the single biggest difference between halls and a private house on this page.
- The rent is one number. All utility bills and high-speed Wi-Fi are included, so there is no variable winter energy bill for a guarantor to worry about on top of the rent.
There is also a £600 Cashback offer on 2026/27 bookings, code BGW600CB — worth raising in the same conversation rather than finding out about afterwards. Current offers are always on the offers page.
And a small thing that matters more than it sounds when you are arriving from abroad: it is a 12-minute walk to Aston, 19 to BCU City Centre and 18 to UCB. You can get to your first lecture without having worked out a bus network in a city you landed in four days ago.
Guarantor services and guarantor insurance
These are companies that act as your guarantor for a fee. You pay them; they stand behind your rent to the landlord. Universities across the UK partner with them, so they are mainstream rather than fringe. Costs vary far more than people expect. Unipol puts the market range at 4 to 20 per cent of the total rent. Where a university has a partnership, the rate is usually at the low end — the University of London's guarantor page lists 5 per cent of the rent if paid in one go, 5.5 per cent over twelve monthly instalments, with a minimum fee of £295. Onboarding or ID-verification fees of around £20 are common on top.
What to check before you commit, in roughly this order:
| Check | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Does your landlord accept this provider? | Not all do. Confirm in writing first — the fee is rarely refundable. |
| Is it a percentage of the year's rent or the monthly rent? | The difference is enormous. Get the total pound figure, not the percentage. |
| Is there a minimum fee? | On a short tenancy a 5 per cent quote can become a much higher effective rate. |
| Are you covered for your share, or the whole joint tenancy? | In a shared house this decides your real exposure. |
| Do you still need a co-signer? | Several services require someone over 18, anywhere in the world, to co-sign. |
| Does the service recover from you? | If they pay the landlord, they will normally pursue you for it. It is not insurance for you. |
That last point is the one worth reading twice. A guarantor service unblocks the tenancy. It does not mean somebody else pays your rent.
What the Birmingham universities offer
None of the three runs a general in-house rent guarantor scheme for international students. What they do is signpost, and the differences between them matter.
| University | Position on guarantors |
|---|---|
| Aston | Requires a guarantor to book its halls and says you cannot proceed without one — but the guarantor does not have to be UK-based. Halls are run with Unite Students, with a £250 advance fee credited against the first instalment. |
| BCU | Requires a guarantor for the majority of its sites unless you pay in full. Its international college points students to commercial guarantor services. |
| University of Birmingham | Partners with a guarantor provider and links to it directly. Its Accommodation Guarantee Scheme is a guarantee of a room, not of your rent — different thing, similar name, frequently confused. |
Aston's line that the guarantor need not be UK-based is genuinely useful and not widely known. If you are Aston-bound and have a parent abroad who can evidence income, ask before you pay anyone a percentage.
What halls do differently from private landlords
| Private shared house | Purpose-built halls | |
|---|---|---|
| Tenancy | Usually one joint tenancy for the whole house | Individual agreement for your room only |
| If a housemate stops paying | You and your guarantor can be pursued for it | Not your problem |
| Guarantor requirement | Near-universal, UK-based | Common, but terms vary by operator |
| Bills | Usually separate, often variable | Typically included |
| Rent in advance cap | Bound by the one-month cap | Generally outside it if code-exempt |
The individual-agreement point is the one that changes the guarantor maths. In halls, whoever guarantees you is guaranteeing your room and nothing else. That is a much smaller thing to ask of a relative than a five-bedroom joint tenancy in Selly Oak.
At Globe Works that is exactly how it works — an individual agreement for your room, and the guarantor options set out above. Ask the site team what applies to you.
Have this ready before you ask
- Your unconditional or conditional offer letter, or student ID if you are already enrolled.
- Passport, and visa or CAS if you have it.
- The exact room, tenancy length and weekly rent you are asking about.
- Whether you want an individual agreement or are joining a joint tenancy with friends.
- Details of anyone abroad who could act as guarantor or co-signer, including what income evidence they can produce.
- Your own funding evidence — scholarship letter, sponsor letter, or bank statements.
- If you are using a guarantor service, its name, and written confirmation the landlord accepts it.
Sort this before results day rather than after. In the fortnight either side of arrival, the guarantor question is what turns a room you have found into a room you can actually move into.