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?

We don’t know the OP has done this.

But legally - yes it’s absolutely fine because that’s not the correct way to serve notice.

Any fool landlord who does this in lieu of serving notice is a fuckwit who doesn’t deserve their property back

And no, neither letting agent nor LL has contacted me since our communications in August.

Why the assumption that the OP is the one that’s in the wrong rather than the LL (who could easily have recorded, hand or courier delivered a S21 and that would have given proof)?

Landlord needs to serve notice first

She hasn’t had notice.

that’s the point.

she had a phone call saying they were planning to give notice. Nothing else.

Really mature response

OP why the hell do you think that somehow your convenience trumps the house owners rights ??

Are you deluded in some way ?

It doesn't matter one single iota whether your landlord is rich or poor, the house belongs to them !

They have decided to stop leasing the property, and can do what they like with it ffs because it's theirs !

It's hardly your landlords fault that you can't afford to pay higher rents or to buy yourself a home of your own, that's 100% a YOU problem !

Instead of bleating about how unfair life is, put your energies into finding somewhere else to live !

It doesn’t matter how much money he's made or has in the bank though.

The point is it’s his house, he has a right to sell it if he wishes. He’s given more than enough notice.

OP hasn’t been asked to leave. HTH.

You can get up to date and one to one advice from Shelter
england.shelter.org.uk/get_help

He hasn’t given notice.

thats the entire point

They have decided to stop leasing the property, and can do what they like with it ffs because it's theirs !

Which they’ll be able to do once they give legal notice for the OP to leave…

yanbu to stay until you are formally asked to leave. that's not the same thing as waiting to be evicted. only force you ll to evict you if you are sure you will qualify for council housing and are willing to accept whatever dire temporary accommodation they can give you while you wait to reach the top of the rehousing list.

better plan would be to innocently enquire a couple of weeks before the anniversary of the last agreement that you remember them saying something about maybe not renewing at the end of the current agreement but you haven't received any notice yet so will assume the existing agreement stands until such time as you receive notice.

but you will need to leave when that notice expires if you don't want to be blackballed by all future private landlords, and it could take more than 2 months to establish a new tenancy so you will need to get organised.

I'm a landlord @WaitingForLifeToGetEasier is absolutely correct they haven't served a section 21. If they had then a second copy needed to be hand delivered in case royal mail lost it. If they're in Wales it's now six months notice.

Are you totally ignorant of the fact that huge increase of buy to let landlords has been largely responsible ( amongst other factors ) for the huge increase in property prices stopping many average earners from getting on the housing market ?

Oh, and check your emails OP, because chances are that they've emailed the necessary documents to you ? And it doesn't matter at all if you 'didn't see' the email as it went to your 'junk' folder, the onus is on you to read all incoming email correspondence I'm afraid...

People are so thick. She hasn’t been given notice so why are so many berating her for not leaving?! She doesn’t need to! Any landlord worn half a brain knows to issue a s.21.

Section 21 are given in your hand ..

I just had to do this for my mums rental flat I'm selling ..

I thought it was brutal but it's how it's done apparently

Surely the sensible thing to do would be to contact the LL and get some clarity? If they don't want you to move - great. If they do, you know to keep looking and start organising yourself before the S21 is issued and the leaving date arrives. The alternative is to not know, be unprepared and then spend several weeks flapping about like a chicken in a bucket of piss when they do issue notice.

Ignoring it won't magically make the problem disappear. And so what if you squeeze some extra weeks out of them because they were slow to issue notice? They're going to be bloody stressful weeks and, really, you won't have gained much.

With the next place, read your contract.

Notice is not just a phone call or email. Notice to vacate has to be carried out by serving a Section 21 as it is a legal process. If the form is not completed correctly or served in a timely manner, if the relevant checks / inspections are not in place then the notice becomes invalid.

Any judge would not look kindly upon an AST being altered without the tenant's consent.

Please don't assume I'm as dim as some of the posters on this thread. There had been no email.

In fairness, I don't think the landlords/agents or the OP have been terribly difficult so far, or done anything very wrong! So far all we've had is an intimation that they might be thinking about putting the house on the market, or at least getting it valued. As I said earlier, if I were I'd be in contact with them seeking clarity about what their intentions were, and exploring whether any flexibility could be negotiated. I'd do this before getting any formal paperwork. Once you get the paperwork, decisions have already been made! As a last resort, one could always say, alright I'll go quietly if you give me a glowing reference. I don't think they'll want protracted litigation or an acrimonious eviction because it'll reflect badly on the business and cost them a lot of money. So there's got to be scope for a bit of negotiation.

@boboshmobo this is not correct. An S21 can be served in a variety of ways.

blog.openrent.co.uk/how-to-serve-a-section-21-and-section-8-notice-of-eviction-to-tenants/

@Babyroobs

It's a good thing that lots are now selling their properties then, isn't it.

You still can't blame successful people for your own lack of success though, that's just how life is, you need to work/study/plan and it will pay dividends in the end. ( And I'm not meaning the uber rich who get everything handed or bequeathed to them, I'm meaning people who have succeeded through their own hard graft)