Section 21 notice after 8 years tenancy

gary83

JuneBug78 wrote: »

Yes, of course, I realise he is the owner and has the right to sell, but it is very inconsiderate to give so little notice after we have lived there so long, always paying the rent on time. He must have known he wanted to sell. I thought it was better to be on a rolling contract as initially we thought we would only be here temporarily. Also didn't want to pay fees for a new contract each year/six months! I always thought that we would be the ones giving notice. Besides, a fixed term wouldn't have stopped him giving notice eventually.

Can't help think it sounds like you want to have your cake and eat it, " you thought you'd only be there temporarily" you "always thought you'd be the one giving notice" but now you sound quite agreived that the LL has done exactly what you always thought you'd do? Paying the rent on time is also fairly irrelevant, that's your responsibility as a tenant. Out of curiosity & purely hypothetical if your plans had turned out the way you'd wanted them and you'd handed in the notice you always thought you would, how long would you have given the LL?

letitbe90

1. Paying all your rent is irrelevant, do you want a trophy? That is your obligation anyway. He’s been providing you a house last 8 years of course you should pay rent. I think people forget that just because some people don’t pay, it doesn’t suddenly mean a landlord should be thankful you did.

2. You don’t know the full circumstances of why they are selling, you are assuming they knew for a long time and they could have warned you before or that they don’t have any urgency to sell. You might be completely far off from the truth. Then there is the fact that a landlord shouldn’t feel like they should have to indulge their tenants in their own private business.

Remember, you wasn’t doing them a favour staying 8 years any more than they provided you with an accommodation you felt comfortable to live in for 8 years.

At the end, when renting, you shouldn’t assume you’ll be given 6 months notice or otherwise - renting itself is risky as there is no long term guarantee. That is just a fact of life and I really dislike this entitlement to more notice and gratitude because you stayed their so long and paid your rent.

(No I’m not a landlord - Prior tenant who now is a home) owner

need_an_answer

So the property is up for sale...I'm now assuming that actually its never been an option for you to consider purchasing it,either now or perhaps a year ago when your husband was in stable employment.


8 years with the same LL is a long time and again if you didn't like the way that the property was maintained/managed I'm surprised you haven't moved on earlier.


Of course the other side of this could be that the rent hasn't kept up with markets and actually yes it is going to cost you more to rent something of a similar size now simply because you are caught in the bubble of being charged a rent that wasn't regularly reviewed to keep pace with similar properties.

Cakeguts

The possibility of the end of the no fault section 21 is causing a lot of landlords to sell up. It also appears that even if this happens landlords will still be able to evict tenants if they way to sell the property so it wouldn't have helped you in this situation anyway.


As has been pointed out before you don't have to leave at the end of the 2 months notice you can stay on until the landlord gets possession through the courts which might be 6 months after the 2 months notice.



Paying rent for 8 years is not special. When you agreed to the contract you agreed to pay rent. Rent is how you buy the space to live in. It is just like buying food at your local supermarket. If that closes they won't give you an extra length of time to find somewhere else to buy your food. They will just close when they need to and even if you have shopped there for years and years you won't get treated as a special customer if they close.



The important thing to do now is to try to find somewhere else to live as soon as possible. If you are looking for a good property in a nice area you will often find that they are advertised before the old tenant has moved out so you would have to wait to take possession anyway.

GDB2222

One issue the OP has, and it's a biggy, is that her husband has lost his job. That's a serious impediment to finding a new rental. All I can suggest is that maybe he shouldn't be too choosy about getting re-employed. He should also investigate what benefits are available to help tide him over.

It's not yet panic stations, as others have said, as it takes lots of months to evict a tenant with the S21 route. What is more, there is loads of paperwork that a landlord needs to do, and even a minor glitch in that can make it impossible for the LL to get a possession order.

I'd try to avoid giving the LL an excuse to go down the S8 route.

cloo

It was very poor of LL to say nothing. I also had to sell my house (I lived in it for 4 years then rented it out) with tenants I'd had for 7 years, but I told them as soon as I was in a position to sell it that I was planning to, and that I'd serve notice once I'd accepted an offer, because I felt that was only fair to give them time to plan. I also gave them first dibs on buying, which they would have been prepared to but it was out of their reach unfortunately (they did, however, go on to buy somewhere else themselves afterwards)

kazwookie

Has the S21 been correctly served time wise?

letitbe90

cloo wrote: »

It was very poor of LL to say nothing. I also had to sell my house (I lived in it for 4 years then rented it out) with tenants I'd had for 7 years, but I told them as soon as I was in a position to sell it that I was planning to, and that I'd serve notice once I'd accepted an offer, because I felt that was only fair to give them time to plan. I also gave them first dibs on buying, which they would have been prepared to but it was out of their reach unfortunately (they did, however, go on to buy somewhere else themselves afterwards)

That is all cute and nice - but:

i. It doesn't mean you did the "right" thing, even though there is nothing wrong in what you did.
ii. You may have had much more favorable circumstances than this landlord, allowing you to cater, dare I say prioritise, your tenants.