Landlord has given us 2 months notice to leave

mlz1413

The OP's LL is also their next door neighbour, so its going to be a fine balance between having an upset LL and a nightmare neighbour.

I'm with IronWolf, by informing the LL you have taken legal advise (say shown the letter to the council who inform you they can't help because its not the correct notice) and so find that the correct notice needs serving the OP can be seen to be 'helping' but can still be buying time.

begbeer

why hasen't anyone thought about the landlord, they have rented this property out at a cheaper rate until they can sell it (not easy in this market)/ now when they have finally had an offer you are all advising the tenant to sit tight. Makes nme glad i am not a landlord

BitterAndTwisted

Being a landlord is a business and all business ventures entail risks of varying kinds. Not being able to turf a tenant out on the day that suits you is one of them.

In the big scheme of things I have more sympathy with tenants who have babies and young children being threatened with homelessness than for a businessperson. Especially when it appears that this particular businessperson has not acquainted themselves with the legislation. So shoot me.

POPPYOSCAR

begbeer wrote: »

why hasen't anyone thought about the landlord, they have rented this property out at a cheaper rate until they can sell it (not easy in this market)/ now when they have finally had an offer you are all advising the tenant to sit tight. Makes nme glad i am not a landlord

Nice to see someone thinking about the other person involved here.

When we moved out we let our house to someone we knew at a really cheap rate just to cover the mortgage, this enabled them to save for a deposit for a house of their own. Thankfully they vacated when asked with no problems, had they not we would have been in real trouble.

Gandalfthegrey

Thanks for all your help.
They have put our deposit into a protected scheme and they gave us our notice 2 days before rent is due (tomorrow) so they have done that right, the only thing they haven't done is mention the words 'under section 21' so I guess that makes it illegal then?
I dont want to p!ss them off as they are our neighbours but they didnt really care when they sold the house knowing our baby is due soon and we had christmas to worry if it was about to be sold.

The reason rent is low is because they dont have a mortgage to pay on this house and there is no central heating.

(they said in the past they were in no rush to sell it, besides they were actually just given this house by the old man who used to live here who unfortunately died and had no family) but anyway im waffaling on now! so I suppose I shouldnt feel guilty towards them if they couldnt give a crp about our situation.

paul1964_2

neas wrote: »

the moral thing to do is to just leave as they sold it and have given you the proper notice.

Immoral and probably what some people would suggest is to stick it out in the house and get formally evicted and thereby given a council house.

If we are going to consider morality, I would say that S21 notices are themselves immoral. They give LLs the right to begin to evict a "faultless" tenant from their own home with virtually no notice.

I am sure there are many people who would disagree with me, so morality aside, I would suggest the OP uses the law to do what is best for her and her children. If this means staying in her home for as long as the law allows and this upsets the LL and his plans, then tough.

After all, the LL doesn't seem to have a moral problem with evicting a mother with a 3 week old baby.

POPPYOSCAR

IronWolf wrote: »

You've got 2 choices
1) Be sympathetic to the landlord
2) Become a nightmare for the landlord.

If I were you I would probably wait 1 month, until just past your rent payment date, then inform the landlord that the eviction notice is not legal and that he needs to issue a section 21. When he does this you should have just under 3 months to live in the property before eviction.

So you will have in total 4 months from now to find a new place, and you wont totally p*ss off the landlord by being a nightmare.

Remember you may need his reference to get a new place.

This is a very good point.

When the people renting our old house applied for a mortgage, the lender wrote to us asking for a reference.

Gandalfthegrey

Thank you for your suggestions. I will definately speak to tax credits and housing dept again because now that I am on maternity pay (which started on friday) we may be entitled to a little help. The LHA for our area is only £126pw (for what we are entitled to anyway) which is very low in comparison to rents in area.

silverchair

POPPYOSCAR wrote: »

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This is a very good point.

When the people renting our old house applied for a mortgage, the lender wrote to us asking for a reference.

When renting I've never had to get a reference from my old landlord. I was only asked for a reference from my place of work

BitterAndTwisted

Gandalfthegrey wrote: »

Thanks for all your help.
They have put our deposit into a protected scheme and they gave us our notice 2 days before rent is due (tomorrow) so they have done that right, the only thing they haven't done is mention the words 'under section 21' so I guess that makes it illegal then?

I've never seen a Section 21 Notice so I cannot be certain. I would advise you to take it down to the CAB or perhaps the private lettings peeps at your local authority to have a look at.

I'm sure that some of our more expert posters on here will be able to advise you ere long.

In the meantime you should have a read of the Shelter website as there is bound to be good information about Section 21 Notices on there.