AIBU to be absolutely shocked at my friend attitude towards her landlord and her not want to move out ???

[SpikeHairandFab]

Hi, I just need to get some perception ,sorry ,I am afraid it is going to be long
My friend is buying house, she has wasted almost 5 months waiting for her dream house but she didn't get it at the end ( due to some massive muck up from vendor side, not her fault) . Now she is in process to buy a new house. Everything is o.k with this one ,she will move in at the end of June.
The problem is her landlord has served her a notice to vacate the house . It was served in Jan ,and her last day should be 24th of May. But she saying she will not move out, she will stay 5-6 weeks longer, even though her landlord sold the house he is living in now, and he want to move to the house she is renting from him.
I tried to explain to her that she really need to move out,as it is not fair on her LL , that he has given her enough time to sort something out ,and that the Law is on his side , but she saying she has nowhere to go, and she can't rent anything short term ,as it is going to be expensive. She also saying that he will have to get her to court , and that will buy her around month or so, she thinks there will be no consequence at all , she will go when she is ready , and she doesn't give a sh@t about her LL. Also she said she will stop paying him rent from 25th May , as he getting her to court !!!! I this point my jaw just dropped to the floor
I know she has 3 kids and therefore a lots of stuff , but it seems like she is trying to get advantage (not paying rent) out of this whole nasty situation.
I am really trying hard not to be judgy ,but I can't help, she is in very tough situation but I think she should at least try to do something.

Is she right that there will not be any consequence at all? She said she was reading some forum and that she got that info out from it.

She is my very good friend and even though I don't like what she's doing ,I really need to help her(not that she asked for any help). I have offered her to borrow some money , but now I am more concerned about what she is getting herself and her family in to by not moving out.
Will she get any record ?
Any advice would be highly appreciate .
Thank you for reading

Boffin not many LLs will agree to longer term leases, you were very lucky.

You should not be able to lose your home on someone else's whim

Take away the pearl clutching hysteria and you get to the crux of the matter.

That both the LL and the tenant agree for the tenant to make use of the property for a FIXED period. Either party is perfectly at liberty to leave/terminate the tenancy if done in a correct way, that is the whole point.

OK, here's another analogy.

For various reasons, we're renting a car next week for a week.
So it's OK if we decide to keep it for another three weeks if we fancy? Without paying the rental? Heck, even with paying the rental, but without the paperwork and against the hire company's express wishes?

Because I think the police would consider that theft.

Maybe they would Wilson. But they wouldn't consider what the OP's friend is proposing to be theft.

oh yes, I daresay she'll be perfectly legal - she'll also be perfectly twattish too, and I now really hope that this comes back to bite her on the arse. And anyone who agrees with her, for that matter.

Jesus, can people really not understand what the right thing to do is, unless it's enshrined in law?

Or how about - the landlord and the OP's Friend both signed a 6 month tenancy agreement, the OP's friend was able to get her house sale through the last day of the end of the agreed 6 months, arranged to move out that day.

But her landlord couldn't line up another tenant for anothe 5 weeks, would it be ok for him to say she had to carry on renting it until he was ready to replace her? Or at that point, would you say the OP's friend was only renting it for the fixed 6 months she signed for and should expect the tenancy agreement to end at the end of the term, her return the property and have no further financial responsibility to the landlord?

Oh ballina - you are perpetuating the myth you claim to despise: that tenants are a subclass. How? Because you keep going on about the tenant being made homeless on the whim of the landlord as though the LL is fundamentally in the wrong here to want his property back. Therefore owning a property is somehow lording it over someone who doesn't.

Let's face facts: an AST is a legal contract and both parties have the freedom to enter into that contract and to negotiate for it to be varied to suit them better if they so choose. A tenant can choose which rental property best suits their needs, although granted some renters' circumstances are such that their choices are limited. Both parties should stick to the agreement made and carry out their respective obligations as landlord and tenant. Lots of people choose to rent rather than buy because it suits them and they live in nice homes which someone else maintains for them.

The LL gave this bloody woman plenty of notice and she should have factored into her house purchase that it was possible not everything would be plain-sailing and had a back-up plan. That plan should have been honest and not involved behaving like an idiot and inconveniencing someone else in such an unpleasant way on her whim.

I don't understand why the LL gave 4 months notice. Why not just issue a S21 with 2 months notice? Presumably he has done it so that he can time it with his moving in/out date so he's not losing any rent. Unfortunately, he can't have his cake and eat it.

I don't know how long the 24 May date has been set as it sounds like an informal arrangement rather than any date stipulated on the S21.

For the record, I am an accidental LL (the sort that shouldn't exist according to some) and I fully accept that tenants behave unpredictably. If you go into this 'business' knowing that, you can only do your best and try and cover off all eventualities. But there are no guarantees.

It's also easier for some people to be on the attack because they are focussing on the fact that the LL is moving back into the house himself. If he had lined up another tenant with a non-negotiable move in date (like, duh, the way it normally is) this would be a non story and the OP's friend would be being told to get a grip and get on with it.

ballina What do you suggest the landlord should do? Because as of moving in date, he and his 3 kids are in for a rude shock and homelessness.

When DH and I bought very recently, our funds were completely wiped out by moving costs etc, we simply wouldn't have had the money to pay 50/night b&b fees for 5/6 weeks beforehand, plus storage of furniture.

I hope the LL isn't in that position.

Wouldn't it have sucked if on the planned exchange date, the house you purchased was occupied by tenants who PLANNED to not honour the notice to leave?

OP your "friend" sounds vile.

I hope she ends up being taken to court, being credit black listed and losing her own property. What a scummy way to treat her LL - how dare he only give her four months to move out?

Presumably the LL has keys to the property. Maybe he and his family should move in alongside OP's friend? Might be a bit of a squeeze but if the friend doesn't like it...

I could not be friends with someone like this. What a twerp. She was given legal notice to vacate and has had plenty of time to make arrangements.

Sometimes shit happens and moving dates don't line up. You put everything in storage and go stay in a serviced apartments, or couch surf, or go on holidays for a couple of weeks. Before moving in to this place I had a two week gap, and the move before that I had a two month gap. It's just how life works.

I wouldn't be friends with a person like this. Seems she was given 5 months notice to vacate a rental in accordance with the agreement she signed. She is fucking someone else over for no reason other than she refuses to organise herself.

Moving/houses is difficult and stressful for everyone and it is made worse by people who think they are more important than all the other people involved. It is difficult to tie the dates up of course, but it's the same for everyone. My mum, step father and brother came to live with me for a few weeks, with my aunt for another few weeks and my dad for another few weeks when their dates did not tie up - they did not just say oh, the houses were moving to isn't ready so we'll just stay in the one we're vacating . My mum stored a load of our stuff in her garage when we had a similar problem.

I see that this rental your friend is in is through an agency. I expect they have encountered chancers like her before and will know how to deal with her.

I hope the people she's buying from refuse to vacate her new house. See how it works for her.

For the record, I am an accidental LL (the sort that shouldn't exist according to some) and I fully accept that tenants behave unpredictably. If you go into this 'business' knowing that, you can only do your best and try and cover off all eventualities. But there are no guarantees.

there's no question that the right course of action for the LL is to protect his own ass and plan to be screwed, as he is evidently about to be on the advice of various people. Obviously, out of pure selfishness, he should be on guard. He should clearly expect people not to respect the law, contracts, and basic decency. Apparently, people here are far nastier than he expected. Maybe he will get royally screwed, become jaded, and turn into a real asshole. Great.

now that that's sorted we can deal with the question here. What should the tenant do? Should the tenant respect the legal order to leave, or PLAN to screw the LL?

We don't know enough about the tenant's situation. Is it possible that the date of 24 May was given to her without enough notice for her to secure another property. It's all very well saying she had 4 months notice but you need a fixed date to rent a property.

Although he issued the S21 in plenty of time, Im still not clear if he communicated that the expected date of possession would be 24 May.

He may have told her that he was issuing the S21 but for personal reasons she had more time than the allotted 2 months as he hadn't sorted himself out yet. Who knows?

The tenant has not received "a legal order to leave". The Section 21 is a NOTICE. And that notice informs the tenant that the landlord intends to have the tenancy ended by the court. Only the tenant or a court can bring a tenancy to an end despite what the landlord might want or need. By staying 4 to 6 weeks after the notice expires means the tenant is not doing anything illegal.

This does not excuse the tenant's stated intention to not pay the rent in full which would be wrong, immoral and foolish but the landlord has a remedy for that.

Your friend is of course being unreasonable.She has had sufficient notice.

However, and I am a LL myself,I think the LL was rather naive to assume the sale of his/her home would exactly coincide with the date of the tenant leaving. I would have given her 2 months notice in Jan so she left by march. It would not have been enough time to evict her if a legal process had began but would have given the LL time to rent elsewhere or delay the sale. At the very least delays happen in house sales and the LL should have seen the tenants ability to leave as a separate chain. I don't really know what she could be expected to do with 3 children and only a month before she needs to move. .

As for not paying her rent, presumably she has paid a deposit so that will be paid eventually.

Bitter yes that's true, a S21 might not be enforceable but let's hope that tenants as a rule don't start to treat them as such otherwise courts may be forced to introduce more draconian rules governing eviction.

Loveisagirlnameddaisy - my last but one rental I hd a lot longer than the formal 2 months, because the landlord knew she didn't want to rent out the property once our 6 months tenancy was up, but wanted to give us as much time as she could. You might say that hte landlord in this case could well have been trying to be nice, trying to give the maximum amount of time possible, you know, so this situation didn't happen...

But yes, wooodpecker, it's better for LLs to assume people will be shitty so not give lots of notice, just try to get people out quickly even if that does cause the tenant problems. Sad really if you think about it, people like the OP's friend means that if you were in this situation as a LL, you'd not want to be nice and give lots of time.

Courts don't need to have more draconian powers to remove tenants from their homes. As long as the landlord issues the appropriate documentation in the appropriate and formally correct way there is nothing a tenant can do in order to not be removed, forcibly if necessary. I can't see how a landlord could have more power than that.

The laws around tenancies are fully and completely in the landlord's favour and have been since the 80s.

The landlord being discussed in this particular instance has been reckless and utterly foolish to agree completion on a property without being certain, as in trusting the evidence of his own eyes, that the house he wants to move into is vacant. As in actually vacant, not just hoping it will be when the time comes. No laws can protect someone from themselves and the potentially dangerous decisions they choose to make of their own volition.

For the record, I am an accidental LL (the sort that shouldn't exist according to some) and I fully accept that tenants behave unpredictably. If you go into this 'business' knowing that, you can only do your best and try and cover off all eventualities. But there are no guarantees.

I don't what you mean by "illegal". do you mean criminal? I am not a so

From the gov's website

"Section 21 gives a landlord an automatic right of possession without having to give any grounds (reasons) once the fixed term has expired"

Exactly Bitter. The LL has done what is always advised against and made himself intentionally homeless.