Quick advice required please - buying a property where tenants have been given notice

banker75

Hi - looking for some advice please.

Situation is husband and I are first time buyers, currently renting and our tenancy is up in August this year.  We have put in an offer on a property which is currently rented, and the tenants have been given notice.  The estate agent has just rung me and advised that, due to the current coronavirus rules, the tenants have been given six months notice so, whilst they may move out much sooner than that, there is a chance that the property may not be available to move into until December.

Having discussed it with my husband, we are happy to wait if necessary, but I just wanted to get some advice before going back to the Estate Agent.  Presumably we would want to make it a condition of the offer that we don't want to exchange contracts until the property is vacant (inheriting sitting tenants is definitely something we don't want to do).  Is there anything else we need to take into consideration to ensure, for example, that we are able to give our own landlords adequate notice?

Many thanks in advance.

user1977

It would be a bad idea to give your own landlord notice until you've exchanged contracts for your purchase.

Otherwise all you can do is wait to see if/when the current tenants move - which won't necessarily be when the notice to them expires, that just triggers the entitlement of the landlord to then go to court to seek an eviction, which may take months longer...

lr1277

Do you definitely have to move out in August, or can you extend for another year, with a break clause?

GrumpyDil

Op. To be clear the fixed term of your existing tenancy might be up in August but that doesn't bring the tenancy to an end.
If you stay in the property one minute after the expiry of the fixed term then you will roll over onto either a statutory or contractual periodic tenancy, depending upon what, if anything, your tenancy agreement says anything extension of the tenancy.
In your position i would aim to end up on a periodic tenancy to keep your options open in terms of ending the tenancy at a time to suit yourselves.

banker75

Thanks all.  I've spoken to the Estate Agent to try to get a feel for how co operative the tenants might be.  They were present when we were viewing, and seemed fine with it all.  Apparently they are looking to move anyway for work, and the landlord has offered them some incentives to leave sooner rather than later, so all sounds ok.  With regard to our tenancy, we have a good relationship with our landlord so will just move onto a rolling tenancy and hopefully we'll be able to work out a decent period of notice with them when that comes to an end - new house is a doer upper so we'll be wanting some overlap anyway.  Just need to keep fingers crossed now to see if our offer is accepted!

Gavin83

As of today the minimum notice period is 4 months so 6 months is longer than they need to provide. Also the tenants don't actually have to move out on that date, they can force the landlord to take them to court to evict, which could take a long time. Best case scenario you could be in for the start of December. Worst case you could be looking at years. It's difficult to tell which end of the scale your property will be on, although the landlord offering incentives will help.

lookstraightahead

1. Wait for them to leave
2. exchange
3. Complete 
4. Give one months notice on a rolling tenancy 

arrange your rolling contract when applicable.
budget for a months cross over and claw some money back from being able to clean / move etc things yourself. Do not sign anything until they've left. They could be there for a year (as you probably know because you are tenants yourselves).

Slithery

lookstraightahead said:

4. Give one months notice on a rolling tenancy

If it's a SPT then it's one month aligning with the tenancy period. If it's a CPT then notice is whatever is written into the contract.