What is the difference between a tenant and a resident?
3 min readUpdated 25 Aug 2026For managers, renters, owners and estate staff
Short answer
A tenant is the person on the agreement, the one the rent is owed by. A resident is anybody else who lives there: a spouse, an adult child, a live-in relative, who needs the gate and the repairs but is not the person you bill.
Who are you?
This one reads the same whoever you are
The longer version
| Tenant | On the agreement. Bills are theirs. One per unit in most cases. |
|---|---|
| Resident | Lives there, not on the agreement. Sends visitor codes, logs repairs, sees the estate notices. Not billed. |
| Owner living in their own unit | Added like a tenant, but nothing calls it rent. What they owe is the service charge or the estate dues. |
| Staff | Neither. They come in on a seat you hold, and they see the part of the property their job needs. |
Why it matters in practice
- A bill has one person answerable for it. Two people answerable for the rent is how a month goes unpaid while each waits for the other.
- Everybody who lives there needs the gate. A wife who cannot send the plumber a code will phone you instead, so add her as a resident.
- When somebody moves out, you remove the right person and nobody else in that flat loses access.
A flat with a tenant and two residents is the normal case, not the complicated one. Add all three.
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