Advice please - renewing tenancy, buying a new home

Pixie5740

There's nothing stopping him for serving a Section 21 notice. As I'm sure you've already read in the link I provided in an earlier post a ground (reason) is not required for a Section 21 to be issued. You will also have read in the link that a Section 21 does not end the tenancy it is merely notice (2 months) that the landlord might go to court to get a possession order.

It's up to you, sign a new fixed term contract paying for the privilege and face a long period of having to pay both rent and a mortgage, or let your tenancy become periodic.

SuboJvR

Hi Pixie,

Thank you - yes you have confirmed my thoughts.

We do not want to sign a new agreement. I just want to help the landlord to understand that it also doesn't really benefit him, so that we may be on good terms. If I simply said "we're going periodic, thanks" then I feel the agency may pressure him then to issue Section 21, start advertising, etc. In reality, I don't think he wants that as since we are in his property we do hold quite a few cards as to whether we make his re-letting easy or not!

Plus of course, that old chestnut where we may not actually move out if we don't get a mortgage offer!!

Can I ask - do you know if he does need to go to the courts to get an eviction, would that affect our chances of a mortgage do you know?

Guest101

Then send him a link to this thread


No, as long as you pay any court order with-in 28 days it will have no effect whatsoever

DumbMuscle

You have direct contact with the landlord - ask him why he wants the 2 month fix, and point out that it gives him no real security over the rolling tenancy, and it seems that the agents are just trying to get their renewal fees.

SuboJvR

Further update.

Landlord phoned me just to offer some reassurance whilst he reads over all that I have emailed and gives it some thought.

I explained that with the two month extension the agency are the only ones to gain and he would actually be in a more vulnerable position than if we went periodic! Definitely gave him something to think about! As at the end of that fixed term, we could simply vacate without notice...

He said that if the house sale falls through, potentially we could just come to an agreement between the two of us anyway?

This to me says he is trusting of us and hopefully we can come to a sort of arrangement where he doesn't need any "protection" if our home buy all goes through.

I again re-iterated that the periodic tenancy would mean neither of us needs to do anything, it's legally recognised, and that whilst the mandatory notice period is one month we would like to give him much more warning than that.

Thanks for all the help and guidance. Really hope we can just agree on the periodic tenancy and informally we will be open to viewings much earlier than 1 month's notice.

mouthscradle

Glad that your landlord is being friendly and reasonable.

Ours wasn't. We didn't want to sign another fixed term and so we were served a Section 21 after 2 years of being the perfect tenants. The end of the 2 months notice period coincided with me being 9 months pregnant! That was pretty stressful... We cobbled our money together, started a house search at lightning speed, and completed on this house 3 days after moving out of the rental. 10 days before baby arrived.

SuboJvR

Thanks so much again everyone for arming me with all the necessary information. Had a very productive chat with my landlord, we have agreed to not do anything at the moment, he's happy for us to just keep him in the loop as we know more about the house purchase.

I advised that on a SPT we would need to give a full "rental period" notice and that the reality would be that it would be very unlikely for us to be in a position to only drop four weeks' notice on him; the developer would need to give us the go-ahead the day before our tenancy period ends. Additionally, this would probably be too soon for us as will need to get flooring people in etc and sort removals only once they have given us a definite completion date. I explained that realistically, whatever we do, it will be 6-8 weeks. Discussed possible contractual periodic tenancy whereby we would suggest "two calendar months" notice specifically but he didn't seem overly fussed.

And, next door which went up for let a couple of weeks ago has now been let, so as predicted - no shortage of tenants round our parts.