come to end of rent agreement and want to move out??

usermay2011

Hi

Im renting a flat and have come to the end of the rent agreement.

I am looking to purchase a flat but don't know how long that will take so have continued to rent the property whilst I look. The landlord believes I will be renewing the lease for another year. I have gone past the contracted year and have not signed the new lease yet but will have to at some point very soon.

My question is, how much notice do I need to give if I have spent a year there already if I renew a contract?

Someone said that if the year contract runs out and you enter a rolling one but don't sign a new lease then its one month but if I expect the landlord will make me sign a new lease starting from the start of september. So where will this leave me in terms of leaving the property if I find a good flat to buy?

will i have to pay for the whole year ?:(

Cheers in advance for your reply!!

DVardysShadow

You will have to give the notice required by the contract - and if the contract is for a year and there is no break clause, you will only be able to give notice for the end of your contract. This is where you really require a Statutory Periodic Tenancy - or less ideally a Contractual Periodic Tenancy. Have you been issued a Section 21 notice?

Unfortunately, Letting Agents like to carve out an opportunity for a fee and so they put Landlords in unjustified fear of letting a contract go beyond its fixed term.

Look at these threads where the OP has naively given notice because his naive Landlord issued him with a S21 notice at the start of the tenancy and even more naively insisted on OP signing a new contract, even though he was in the process of buying a property. Now OP has given notice, he needs to stay a couple of weeks longer because completion of his house purchase is delayed [tenants not able to move out?] - but the naive Landlord has compounded the problems by letting to new tenants.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4158937
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4078051

ShALLaX

Just don't sign a new lease, enter a rolling contract. As you correctly state, you only commit to pay a month's rent at a time.

The landlord will have to issue an S21. You do not have to move out upon said issuance. After this, the landlord may start eviction proceedings (N5B) to get you to leave. I hear this takes around six weeks and costs the landlord money (around £150). This may be enough of a disincentive to stop your landlord from bothering.

If you think you're on the cusp of finding a new place to live, you'll have probably moved out of your own volition before your landlord manages to get the eviction proceedings completed.

You should be open and honest with your landlord stating that you expect to move out in the very near future (I'd expect the landlord would like this time scale to be <= 3 months) and, as such, do not wish to sign a new lease. If you don't communicate this, it'll only break any kind of relationship you have with your land lord and will probably lead to the loss of a reference.