To NOT leave rented house when I said I would?

[WaitingForLifeToGetEasier]

Been in current rented house for 9 years. Landlord is a company with 30+ properties.

Tenancy is generally renewed every year as LL puts rent up.

Last year, less than 6 months into our latest year long tenancy agreement, an estate agent contacted me out of the blue saying he'd been instructed to sell the property so I needed to agree to a time for them to value and take photos as well for viewings.

I was shocked as LL has not said anything and it transpired that the letting agent has added a 6 month break clause into the tenancy agreement. There had never been one In previous agreements and I wasn't made aware.

I made it clear i was not going to allow anyone in the property until the end of the agreement and if the landlord wanted to sell, I'd leave at that time.

Tenancy is up in early March. I had expected to get a Section 21 in early January but nothing.

We have been looking but properties are either not available anymore or agent doesn't get back to us so have not found a property yet. Rents seem to have gone up £3-400 a month which is going to be impossible.

Not sure if LL is just expecting us to leave or what but I am not intending to leave in early March and will stay as long as possible - await section 21 etc.

AIBU?

Except she isn’t because no notice has been served

No one is denying that but she should stay put until formally served notice

@TheObstinateHeadstrongGirl What would you advise the OP to do? Sorry if you’ve already stated this upthread.

Personally, the uncertainty of not knowing what was happening would prompt me to contact the letting agent, I’d be eaten up with worry not knowing the full picture-but perhaps that’s not a good idea? Would you advise her to just wait for the S21?

Surely though on a year to year contract your tenancy would be up in March anyway- the normal thing is around 8 weeks before the end of a letting year the agent contacts to ask if you will be renewing , if they don't offer this and you don't contact the agent either then it is presumed you will be not renewing and leaving at the end of that rental contract.

We've rented big houses for last 20 years and I've only once had a similar experience where agent contacted us to ask if we were renewing and we said yes but no contract actually arrived. We used it to our advantage as a better house came up and at the 15 month point told agent it would now seem to be a rolling contract and we were giving 6 weeks notice and leaving. Agent agreed they had cocked up, hadn't issued a contract and we allowed viewings and moved with no issue.

Actually….upon expiry of a fixed term tenancy, tenant could say a day before I’m leaving and that’s sufficient. It’s a term called effluxion of time and refers to the expiration of your contract term due to the passage of time rather than a specific action taken. IF the tenancy agreement does NOT say anything like "during the last two months of the fixed term you must tell us whether you intend to stay in the Property or leave at the end of the fixed term" then you are fine. They can't even have a clause that says you have to pay rent in lieu of notice.

We are exercising our right to leave the property under the effluxion of time. The Landlord and Tenant Act provides that a tenant is entitled to the right to leave a property upon expiry of the contractual term, meaning a periodic tenancy is not established. In this instance our liability ceases as long as we have properly vacated the premises before the end date of XX.

In reference to a notice period, there is no legal requirement to provide you with notice to vacate, and it would be unlawful to charge us rent in lieu as this would be covered under the unfair contract term rules which are part of the Consumer Rights Act 2015.

but that’s by the by as she doesn’t want to leave

Landlords only have to give you 6 weeks notice to leave the property. Tenancy agreement or not. But a lot of landlords are now scrambling to sell properties because of increasing interest rates. Won't be long before there's a crash and the price of properties will come tumbling down like like happened in the late 90's-early 2000.

Yes. Wait for the s21. Chances are it hasn’t been served because LL doesn’t want her outS

Or he could let her know what he wants to do since it’s him who apparently wants to change things…

@WaitingForLifeToGetEasier is there a reason you’ve not contacted the agent to find out what’s going on?
As you’ve explained it so far, you’re basically in the dark which must be very stressful but I can’t understand why you wouldn’t have asked for clarity on whether your LL still intends to sell given you’ve heard nothing since August!

YOU are leaving the property.

The LL still needs to serve a s21 if he wants the tenant to leave

If no one does anything about ending the tenancy or renewing the contract it simply becomes a rolling tenancy, as yours did.

I think it matters quite a lot if the saying she was leaving was formal not. If that has been accepted as notice of her ending the tenancy, she will have to leave on the date agreed, otherwise the landlord can claim mense rent of double her normal rent until she does leave.

If not, she is quite entitled to wait for a S21 to arrive.

I actually looked at cost of living recently, and trends back to 1940s
Itisvery true that the cost of housing has massively outstripped wages. And rental have gone up at same rate- the big difference is prior to 1980 the largish proportion of renters were in council houses with low rentals- the selling of council houses is what drove up private r natal costs and numbers and buying costs.

but, the cost of food as a proportion of income is massively lower than t was in 1980 and pre then. It is only in last 18 months post brexit that it has been increasing, and as a % of income it is still lower than in 1960s .

similarly the cost of fuel is lower % of income than it was right up to point North Sea natural gas conversion in 1970s. Even since then costs of heating and cooking and hot water have been massively lower than since 1980s. It is only in last 12 months that costs have gone up to that same proportion as in 70s and now, more recently higher.

interest rates have, and still are, at a 100 year low since around 2010. So the cost of borrowing is much more affordable even now. Interest rates have average just over 7% for last 100 years even taking this last 15 years of very low rates into account

The poster isn’t just arguing about a few lattes. The point is that human progress means we do have more stuff, and replace stuff more frequently than we used to. In many cases because companies themselves deliberately aim to make us replace stuff , and it can’t be fixed by a chap n a shop around the corner. But we do have more stuff. The average gen x will have tv, subscription, laptop, mobile at minimum and expect to replace those very 3 years. Only 30 years ago you probably only had a Tv and radio and both were going strong after 10 years. The technology revolution costs people a lot

Whilst I agree I is extremely difficult for good wages youngsters to afford to buy, particularly in south, it is NOT true that baby boomers had it easy or were better off so could more easily afford to buy. Perhaps expectations were lower back then on what to give up to save for deposit - foreign holidays weren’t the norm, nor going to / coffee shops/ takeaways each week so stopping them altogether was easier.

we need to stop with the inter generational put downs . Every generation has its challenges. And it plays right into the hands of the politicians that create many of the real underlying issues generations are faced with - Tories selling off council,houses and then later giving tax brakes to private landlords, and now not building enough new affordable/ social homes. Labour whose idea to get 40% of school leavers into uni and leave them with debt and false expectations of high paying jobs . Brexit that’s caused inflation, supply chain issues etc. focus on that- not generation bashing

Hi OP.
I'm confused, you had a chat on the phone, you haven't been formally asked to leave from what I can tell? You don't in fact know he is selling?
I get the coin toss, but surely ringing the estate agency and get clarity on the uncertainty is going to help? Unfortunately its the landlords property and he can choose to sell, and once you get an idea of next steps you can then make a plan, all of this is just drama!
The real people to be pissed at is the government. They have let the housing situation get totally out of hand.

Ok, so you haven't had a section 21 and you haven't given notice? Of course you don't move out. You've not legally broken the contract, so they could turn around and say contract never ended so you're stuck paying double rent for your notice period. Housing market isn't like it was, they may have changed their mind about selling.

OP you're doing the correct thing. They haven't served you formal section 21 notice so you haven't received notice to leave by law. As long as you continue paying your rent past March it automatically turns into a rolling contract which is perfectly valid. If they want to serve you notice they can but they haven't yet. I would just keep quiet for now and see if anything comes through the door. If they're actually expecting you to leave in March I'm sure they'll get back in contact. If you don't hear anything then carry on living there and paying rent.

Not sure where all the outrage is coming from in the replies. Probably because you've posted this on a forum full of middle class people who have probably never had to rent in their life and have no understanding of what it's like to be a tenant.

So you’ve to allow viewings from
now then really?

Or he could let her know what he wants to do since it’s him who apparently wants to change things…

It affects her more, why live in limbo? Absolutely ridiculous.

Do you have a link to any upcoming tenants’ rights please?

From shelter which is what people are telling the OP to contact.

You do not have to allow viewings if they are not mentioned in your contract. You could say that they must only take place at certain times. If you refuse viewings and your agreement says you must allow access, you might find it difficult to get a reference or have problems with getting your deposit back.

In your opinion…

She knows the timelines currently that will follow if she gets a S21 and how she’d have to proceed after that.

Not sure where all the outrage is coming from in the replies. Probably because you've posted this on a forum full of middle class people who have probably never had to rent in their life and have no understanding of what it's like to be a tenant.

I think it’s more that OP’s are always in the wrong for some.

if I, or any LL, posted to say I expected my tenant to leave even though I hadn’t bothered my arse to serve notice I’d be pilloried.

Literally that simple! It doesn't need to become the huge issue it's being made into

Middle class people who never had to rent?
Wtf!

middle class people have always had to rent, while they were saving to buy hopefully. I was in rental until I was 28 in the late 1980s, and could only afford to buy because I was getting married and my husband was helped by an inheritance. Despite us being both graduates

I lived in private rental from 19 to 28, and in all the people I’ve met over the years this was how it was and always has been. All the properties I lived in were house shares or what are now more formally homo. Until the last 20 years, most graduates or youngsters moved straight into private rental house shares, once they were in 2nd year of uni, and never went home to live at home post graduation. And there they stayed in house shares until they’d saved up and bought in their late twenties- and I don’t know anyone who bought a place on their own.

throw away comments like these are ill informed, divisive and just make you look extremely silly.

@GarlicCrackers that's my understanding too. If I didn't renew and decided a day before the end of the fixed term we were off the next day-I could do that- I don't believe the tenant has to actually give notice in that situation- although the reality is as a tenant you usually do --as you've got somewhere else to go to it are looking for somewhere else and need references etc.