Staying beyond end of tenancy in rental property? how do we manage this...?

Pixie5740

aneary wrote: »

What address is on your AST for the landlord?

This should be a uk address

To be specific it must be an address in England or Wales.

ReadingTim

Petite_Anglaise wrote: »

ReadingTim- yes it's all very well us organising an Airbnb/hotel/letting for a couple of weeks or whatever but it's not very practical as we will need to put our furniture somewhere etc

The point is that we would like to move directly from our rental home into our new home, rather than move out for an unknown number of weeks in between.

What you "would like" is irrelevant. You're not really in a position to argue or barter, given that appeals to reason seem to have failed. The point is that the landlord (or the letting agent) wants you gone, so you need to deal with this any way you can. Or "go to war" by not moving out and wait to be evicted. Your choice, but the compromise you hope for ain't gonna happen.

AdrianC

Petite_Anglaise wrote: »

ReadingTim- yes it's all very well us organising an Airbnb/hotel/letting for a couple of weeks or whatever but it's not very practical as we will need to put our furniture somewhere etc

Removals people will store them for a fee.

The point is that we would like to move directly from our rental home into our new home, rather than move out for an unknown number of weeks in between.

"would like" is very nice, but...

aneary

Petite_Anglaise wrote: »

The address for our landlord is the letting agents address

Ask for the LL's address and communicate directly with him/her by letter they will probably be fine with a rolling contract.

The LA is legally oblige to provide you with the address.

martindow

ReadingTim wrote: »

What you "would like" is irrelevant. You're not really in a position to argue or barter, given that appeals to reason seem to have failed. The point is that the landlord (or the letting agent) wants you gone, so you need to deal with this any way you can. Or "go to war" by not moving out and wait to be evicted. Your choice, but the compromise you hope for ain't gonna happen.

It's probably the agents who are not wanting to compromise. I don't see how it helps to OP to leave before their house completion date. Even if they end up paying the court fee this will be cheaper than moving twice.

I agree with the sentiment of most posters to stay put.

rtho782

The LA is doing this as they want to charge renewal fees.

Your best bet would have been to string it out regarding signing until the AST expired, and a periodic would have been automatically formed.

If they want to be awkward I would forget being reasonable and just stay put.

We had similar when we bought our first house, we'd enquired about going onto rolling and they said no, so we strung the renewal out as late as possible, until we completed 2 weeks before our AST expired anyway.

We then moved out, and I handed the keys back on the day the tenancy expired giving them no notice at all (you don't need to give notice to terminate at the end of the AST) which really upset them as they had a void.

Paulaviki

When we bought a house and were renting we asked to go into a rolling tenancy too but the letting agent insisted we signed a new contract. Fortunately we had our landlords address and sent them a letter explaining our situation. They asked us to sign the contract but put a clause in it that we could give 1 months notice at any time. So basically we had to pay to renew the contract but then gave notice once we’d exchanged and moved out when we completed but had the house for another 3 weeks. So we had plenty of time to move and clean etc.

So yeah try and speak to the landlord, most people are understanding as long as they are getting the rent.

MonkeyDr

Ok.
Ideally you would speak directly to the Landlord, but I realise the difficulty with that. Try to exhaust all avenues before giving up (address on Land Registry??).

Otherwise
Legally - you don't have to move out on Sec 21 date. Plenty of info on this above. Ultimately you will have to move out though and court proceedings would cost you more.
Morally - tough one. Certainly you can't always have what would suit you best in life. I don't think the Landlord is being unreasonable to want another fixed tenancy. Why should they have to do what you want? You do have other options, even if they don't suit you. But, it would do the LL good to negotiate and communicate, and to some extent more fool them if they are leaving 100% of things in the hands of the agents (who probably just want renewal fees etc). FWIW I would agree if you were my tenant, depending on the timings. It sounds like you are still hopeful of getting out on the official day, and if so then refusing (respectfully arranged) viewings is churlish imo.

btw, are you aware that you would have to give proper notice after the Sec 21 date to move out, ie. a rental period etc. Apologies if so.

tbh, as a LL the thing that would annoy me most in this situation would be if you said you were going to stay and then actually moved out on the Sec 21 date, after refusing viewings and meaning that I would have a void. Nothing to stop you doing this legally, although you'd be a sh***y person. Maybe the LL fears this?

MonkeyDr

MonkeyDr wrote: »

Ok.
tbh, as a LL the thing that would annoy me most in this situation would be if you said you were going to stay and then actually moved out on the Sec 21 date, after refusing viewings and meaning that I would have a void. Nothing to stop you doing this legally, although you'd be a sh***y person. Maybe the LL fears this?

...and it seems that rtho782 above is that person.

maybe they were justified. Or maybe they penalised the LL because of the letting agent being rubbish. I don't really understand why people aren't just, you know, civilised to each other.

G_M

It is likely that the landlord knows (and possibly cares?) little about this. He may well have simply authorised the agent to manage the property.

An agent, as others have pointed out, has different motives to a landlord: renewal fees etc,

If you have time, you can request the LL's contact details from the agent and they have 21 days to provide the address. You could then write to the LL who
* might/might not reply
* might over-rule the agent or might simply refer you back to the agent

Whether this course of action is worthwhile is up to you, though a further complication is that although the law gives you the right to obtain the LL's address, and there is a criminal sanction against an agent who refuses, in practice enforcing this law is very hard. Individual tenants cannot take the agent to (criminal) court, it must be the police/CPR (not interested) or Trading Standards (no resources so not interested unless there are other compelling issues).

Landlord & Tenant Act 1985 section 1