When to leave after section 21 (periodic tenancy)

franklee

sniperpenguin wrote: »

Because rather than "You need to leave", its more a case of "You can sit there whilst I pay a ton of money to go through a court process and get an eviction notice, which you can appeal... all the while likely not getting my rent since I've evicted you" :rotfl:

If you read the thread noting who said what you will see it's mainly landlords writing the tenant isn't entitled to leave at the end of the section notice period without the tenant serving their own notice. In the OP's case she cannot do that as she's signed up to giving two periods notice and thus there isn't time to serve her own notice. OTOH it's a tenant (myself) who is arguing the tenant is entitled to leave at the end of the section 21 notice (backed up be blog comments from three prominent solicitors in the field) and if she does that her liability to pay rent ends there. So please don't blame the tenants here.

The problem has been caused by landlords who serve precautionary section 21 notices and thus do not wish the tenant to act on the notice. They have looked for loopholes in the legislation which probably didn't expect a landlord to serve notice and then say a tenant cannot go.

Rollinghills

sniperpenguin wrote: »

Because rather than "You need to leave", its more a case of "You can sit there whilst I pay a ton of money to go through a court process and get an eviction notice, which you can appeal... all the while likely not getting my rent since I've evicted you" :rotfl:

Section 21 is not eviction. If you do not agree with the law you can write to your MP. And ultimately you can choose not to participate in this market. If you do want to be a landlord you should familiarise yourself with the rudiments of landlord / tenant law.

On the plus side you will find out that if you have done everything 100% right (you may need some understanding of the law to do that) then the court is likely to assign your court costs to the tenant when applying for a possession order based on a valid section 21.

sniperpenguin

Rollinghills wrote: »

Section 21 is not eviction. If you do not agree with the law you can write to your MP. And ultimately you can choose not to participate in this market. If you do want to be a landlord you should familiarise yourself with the rudiments of landlord / tenant law.

On the plus side you will find out that if you have done everything 100% right (you may need some understanding of the law to do that) then the court is likely to assign your court costs to the tenant when applying for a possession order based on a valid section 21.

Apologies, I'm familiar with the law (although I admite that when I entered the market, I didnt realise how heavily wieghted it was on the side of the tenant) but on re-reading the above my choice of wording was poor.

Assigning court costs to a tenant is little use if they are in arrears, or if (in the majority of cases) the tenants are in dispute with the Landlord for any reason.

Do not get me wrong, I prefer to be amicable with my tenant whenever possible as it is the easiest way to resolve most situation (minor repairs, financial hardship etc). However, if ever a resolution could not be found and we needed to part ways, there is not much protection for the landlord, and my inevitable result is a big bill.

Also, for every "Rogue Landlord" who use the S21 as a precautionary tool (often as a scare tactic, which I disagree with) and give the market a bad name there are plenty of "Rogue Tenants" who treat rent as a debt they can run from, and will simply listen to every piece of advice from Shelter / the local HA / council who offer similar advice in the vein of "Look for technical errors in the S21 or process.... that way you can ignore it" or other titbits to effectively avoid them concentrating on moving on.

However, I appreciate that we will have differing views - and I respect that. :beer: