Guests and Occupancy

A room is let to the people named on the lease, at the number of occupants the lease allows. A guest is someone who visits. A second occupant is someone who lives there and is not on the paper. ManjeProp houses fail when those two sentences get swapped for a long weekend that never ends.

This is an operations note. It is not a ruling on your private life and it is not an eviction manual.

What the lease usually already said

Most student leases in Durban say who may occupy, whether a partner may stay, how many nights a guest may sleep, and whether subletting is forbidden. Read that clause before you offer a friend “the floor for a month.” If the document is silent, do not invent a right. Ask in writing.

A booking on the desk is not permission to add a person. An enquiry is not a lease. A parent paying the rent does not make the parent a second tenant unless the agreement says so.

Why occupancy is not a paperwork hobby

Water, electricity, the geyser, the bathroom queue and the fire load all change when a room designed for one adult holds three. So does the neighbour’s patience. So does the deposit conversation at the end, because wear accelerates.

If someone is staying, they need to be on the agreement or they need to leave when a guest stay ends. Informal extra beds are also how we lose track of who has a key.

Guests who are actually welcome

A visitor for a meal, a weekend, a parent in town for a viewing of their own — ordinary human traffic. Tell housemates if the person will use the shared bathroom at 06:00. Do not give a guest the gate remote to “hold for the term.” Do not cut a key. Do not leave them in the house when everyone named on the lease is in Johannesburg.

If a guest breaks a window, the people on the lease still face the inspection. Report the break as a fault so it is dated. Honesty on the ticket is cheaper than a surprise.

When a guest becomes a problem we must know about

They have a key or remote
Their clothes have a drawer
They receive deliveries at the address as if they live there
They refuse to leave
The room is being advertised by the tenant as a sublet

Write to the house contact. If you are a housemate and you are unsafe, SAPS first. Then tell us on the phone, +27 60 313 6961, and use Security on Report a fault only for the lock, the breach or the immediate risk — not as a novel about the relationship.

Do not put anyone’s identity number on that form.

Staff and listings

Before you advertise a vacancy, walk the room. A “friend on the couch” is occupancy. Confirming a new booking over an overlap warning while a guest is living there is how two households arrive.

Do not publish “single occupancy” if you already looked away from a couple. Do not take a cash bed from a third person and hide it from the tenant record. The tenant screen holds minimum contact data for people who are actually in the house. It is not a place for unofficial lodgers “until we see.”

Letters that demand someone leave must match the lease and, where the law requires it, a proper process. The desk does not generate a lawful eviction by changing a status.

Viewers and parents

Ask, on the walk-through, how many people the room is for and how guests work in exam weeks. If you need a couple’s room, say so on the enquiry form. Do not sign for one occupant and move two.

If the lock is already failing because too many copies exist, that is an access fault. Send it. We would rather change a cylinder than pretend the house is a hotel.

If a parent stays for a weekend of viewings, that is a guest. If the parent takes a drawer for the term, that is occupancy. The difference is not how much you like them.

Occupancy is a number the building can carry and the lease already named. Guests are temporary. Keep them that way, or put them on the agreement.

Faults and lock problems: report-a-fault. New rooms: the enquiry form. Phone: +27 60 313 6961.