Sold house to tenants, are they due a rent refund?

silvercar

Logically you would think that the tenants shouldn't be required to pay rent from the date of completion ie the date that they owned the property.

I suppose there is a weak argument to say that they should have given sufficient notice that they would no longer be tenants, so that the notice ends on the date of completion.

gettingtheresometime

And how much hassle did they save you by buying the property rather than you giving them notice etc had you sold to someone else?

ScorpiondeRooftrouser

I don't believe you should hand the rent back to the tenants. Their tenancy ran until the end of the month, so rent was due.

However you were no longer the landlord, so I do believe you should pay that rent over to the new landlord.

As this is also them, it comes to much the same thing, of course.

steampowered

Yes, you should refund the pro-rata rent.

Although you had to pay the mortgage for that month, your mortgage repayment would have been added to the amount you received on completion (since it would have been taken into account by the bank's redemption statement).

diggingdude

how is this even a question? you mutually ended the tenancy so cant charge for what you cant provide unless written into the agreement. what happened to the deposit?

Tom99

You need to hand over the rent you have collected in advance to the new freehold owner ie your ex tenant, just like you would if you sold to a 3rd party.


On completion of a sale, rent is apportioned in the same way service charges, insurance and ground rent are on the sale of a leasehold.

franklee

Well Brb hasn't come back in spite of the username but Brb123, did you tell your solicitor the tenants were buying? I guess you must have. Therefore I would expect who owes who what would have been taken care of as part of completing the sale as in pmlindyloo's example. Otherwise there could be more to and fro e.g. the deposit. Do you have a completion statement to check all the amounts and what they were for? Surely at completion the deal should be complete? It's not as if settling up the tenancy is an unexpected event.

rtho782

So, while the tenancy might say they had to pay rent in whole periods, on the day of the transfer of the house, you no longer had a house to provide them with.

To me, this means you either give them back the rent for that period, or you breached the tenancy agreement as you are charging rent for someone elses house.

csgohan4

were the light bulbs taken as well?