To refuse to leave rented property

[Boymamabee]

I’m having an ethical dilemma thanks to my husband…

I’m heavily pregnant (due a c-section next month) and we’ve been served a two month no-fault notice by our landlord (it’s all valid).

We’re struggling to find rented properties within our price range and although we’re at risk of homelessness, the council can’t guarantee temp accommodation before our notice expires. This makes my husband anxious as he says we have no right to stay in a house we don’t own and it’s unfair on the LL whose sale might fall through.

Places for the same amount of rent, or less, than we currently pay are more rural and would cost more fuel. Many of the local schools don’t have specialised facilities for kids with ASD (think rural schools with 20 students and 2 LSAs) and DS LOVES his school!

This is where it gets tricky…

We’ve been advised that if we stay with family or friends before the LL enacts a court possession order, we could be seen as making ourselves “intentionally homeless”. Likewise if we get ourselves into debt/arrears living somewhere we can’t afford.

I’ve proposed we listen to
their advice and stay put for now, but DH thinks it’s selfish and we’ll naturally find another way to make ends meet. He wants to be out before our contract ends and he feels sorry for the LL who’s going through a divorce.

AIBU?

This is mind boggling. What has made you think the landlord doesn’t know about the eviction process for goodness sake, and it’s more than a bad reference, once the landlord applies for the possession order it’s game over. Selling a property either with sitting tenants or giving notice when sale agreed is very common. There is no rule saying you should sell empty and no odd thought that it’s “greedy”

it’s a tiny percentage that need to be court evicted. There is over 4 million private rental properties in the uk and about 14k are court evicted. It’s less than a quarter of one percentage point for gods sake. . 99.99 percent of tenants comply with the section 21 and leave.

The fact that the OP needs a special school for her child is not the problem of the landlord. I seriously don’t understand how people can think that they can just refuse to move when they are given legal notice and come up with excuses to not leave. OP does not own the property they are living in. Plain and simple. They need to leave. What about the problems that the landlord may have?

What about the problems that the landlord may have?

Irrelevant to OP. People need to stop being greedy and becoming landlords. Luckily with the rules as they are now most of them are selling up and getting out which is a good thing.

Do you own a property or do one of these “ilks” allow you to rent one of their properties?

Except if renters want somewhere to live…

Umm, it wouldn't be a good thing for me! If my landlord sold tomorrow I certainly wouldn't be able to buy anywhere, and if I couldn't rent anywhere I'd need to quit my job to move back in with my mother who lives a couple of hours away.

As one reason is trying to keep her autistic son in a school setting that is both appropriate for him and that he enjoys going to, I completely understand why she doesn't want to move somewhere that means he would have to change schools.

And if councils don't take needs like that into account when allocating housing to homeless families then they absolutely should.

Most ridiculous comment of the thread. WHERE are people who rent meant to live?

Hi OP,
Why are you worrying about the landlord when they clearly couldn’t give a shit about you (evicting you while heavily pregnant) - and I say that as someone that rents out my house.

@Thefriendlyone You accuse the OP of using emotive language then say they will struggle to rent “ever again”. Pot and kettle.

QUOTE: ”Firstly he doesn’t take on responsibilities to home them when he rents a property to them. The contractual terms apply. He doesn’t assume parental guardian responsibilities for tenants and he isn’t providing a charitable service, to put it bluntly. The ops issues are really not his problem, it’s not how it works. They can stay and make it his problem, but a court will ultimately sort it.”

Beyond the contractual terms the law of the land applies and that law is that a tenancy can only be ended by the tenant or the court. Equally the landlords problems are not the OPs problem and it’s not her problem if the landlords sale falls through. They should have made sure they had vacant possession before trying to sell the house.

So, if everyone stopped being greedy and becoming landlords, where exactly would people live?

I am a landlord - your landlord will have to factor this in. What I did as a landlord is to keep housing in the loop, I rang up the housing officer at each stage as i knew that my tenant (not like yourselves or your landlord they came under the heading of tenant from hell, getting behind in rent and ruining the property, nonetheless I wouldn't want someone on the street) would stay until the they were evicted by bailiff. Eventually I applied for the bailiff about 2 weeks after the court application and informed the housing officer I was doing this and the date and my tenant was given housing 2 days before the eviction.

I think people think that the renters can have the properties instead - where these renters are getting their deposit from god only knows. And the other thing they're not getting is the obvious one; less rental properties mean rents shoot up. But having less landlords is supposed to be a good thing. Madness.

Exactly.
The father should sort this all out by finding somewhere else to live. It’s difficult and that’s were the council can help.

There seem to have been more and more threads recently whereby people seem to think that leaving a rented property under a S21 is optional, which is worrying.

I can only assume that the change is down to:

1. Increase in rent on account of rates meaning people can’t afford what’s on offer
2. Drop in supply, on account of more LLs selling up meaning that much of the stock is no longer there or is now more expensive

Those who seem to hate LLs so much really need to be careful what they wish for, encouraging LLs to sell us only exacerbating this problem. If (1) and / or (2) were not the case, the OP would not be in this position.

i was a LL until last year when we chose to sell because I felt that a wave of uncertainty was sweeping over the market which made me feel uncomfortable because I knew that implicitly, I no longer had sufficient agency over my own property to be assured of long term outcomes.

I am staggered at the amount of people worrying about the landlord and saying for example “morally I couldn’t stay and make someones life more difficult” etc etc.

The landlord has chosen to try to evict a family including a pregnant lady with the legal minimum of notice during a well publicised housing crisis. They could easily have chosen to say to the OP previously “I’m afraid we are going to have to sell in the next 12 months so could you start looking” giving the OP more time and less pressure. Then followed the legal eviction route later if no progress.

When I wanted to move back to my house that was rented out I told the family sometime after Christmas that I hoped to move back in the summer for my child to start the local school in September. They had found somewhere and moved by Easter.

My heart is not bleeding for this landlord at all. The “how you treat people” argument works both ways.

Solicitors advise clients who have had offers accepted on properties with tenants still in situ (who aren’t LLs wanting to take on the property with the tenants) that the sale is problematic. They tell them that mortgage lenders won’t confirm an offer or release funds for exchange until the property is vacant. They point out that there is no knowing when the property will be vacant….you can hope they will vacate by the time their notice expires, but you can’t guarantee it. It is the uncertainty of it that buyers don’t like and rightly so. There are numerous threads on MN where LLs are having trouble selling a tenanted property, and rightly, the advice is always to get vacant possession and then market.

It is greedy to try and market a tenanted property. And I speak as a LL. That tenant has paid for quiet enjoyment and will continue to pay until they vacate in most cases. But marketing invovled them either having to go out when viewings happen (not convenient or what they want) or to be there with strangers traipsing through their home (not what they want). Neither can be described as allowing the quiet enjoyment they have paid for and are contractually entitled to. But many people, both LLs and often non-LLs can’t see why asking them to do this, is not reasonable, nor why if they refuse, it is unreasonable.

What LLs hope for is a tenant who pays rent up to or very close to exchange PLUS the benefits of being able to market, which is unreasonable when tenanted.

Its not acceptable for LLs to say ‘I have a mortgage to pay and can’t afford it without rent, so I have to keep the tenant until I sell’ or ‘The notice period means my tenant won’t be gone for X weeks, but Indint want to wait until then to market it. It is mine after all’. Those tenants have paid and signed legal contracts which enable them to enjoy their home until the end of the contract when they choose to leave OR when the court removes them.

If you have a forced eviction on your record, I’m pretty sure you’ll struggle to privately rent again.

@Winter2020 the landlord already warned them and tried to sell with them in situ last November.

The questions are:

how nice do you think temporary accommodation is going to be? There are (close to) entire roads of B&Bs in my town which are no go zones as they have a lot of drink/drug dependent and recently released prisoners in them.

Do you want to be moved around on someone else's schedule with a newborn?

Do you plan to ever rent privately again?

This. One of my colleagues handles moving council tenants into or out of their properties. One building we regularly move people out of into council houses/flats is a block of bedsits. In the past we used to have to send someone once a week just to pick up the used drug needles from outside (we no longer do because I presume the council sort this themselves rather than subcontract). I get your desperate, but desperate enough to potentially be put somewhere like that?

This is true. Although the letting agents told us we didn’t have to worry and asked us to renew our contract for a further 3 months, then told us we’d be protected for a further 6 months after the LL found a buyer. This was before the 1st December - when new legislation giving tenants 6 months notice came into force.

I understand life happen and the LL probably intended to sell with us in situ, but I’m annoyed I didn’t follow my gut and apply for that cheap 2 bed flat we saw on Zoopla.

I’ve put in a housing application with the council and I’m going to find out what their policies are regarding homelessness. I don’t want to make us “intentionally homeless” nor do I
want to wreck our chances of ever privately renting again.

The landlord has chosen to try to evict a family including a pregnant lady with the legal minimum of notice during a well publicised housing crisis. They could easily have chosen to say to the OP previously “I’m afraid we are going to have to sell in the next 12 months so could you start looking” giving the OP more time and less pressure. Then followed the legal eviction route later if no progress.

Did you miss the bit where he’s getting divorced? Waiting around until it’s more convenient for the OP may simply not be an option.

You think the OP should put herself first and not worry about the landlord - and I do get why. But hasn’t it occurred to you that the landlord is simply doing the same?

This is confusing. So the property has actually been on the market since November? But it hasn’t sold yet so now he wants to sell it as an empty property?

It’s a good thing if you relish folks being in the same horrible situation as the op, if you want her to be able to have a home where she wishes and in her budget it’s not now is it.

where do you propose she lives?

Completely agree. It’s absolutely true that it became too easy and too attractive to be a LL. But we can’t change that now and we have to deal with the situation at hand. Shrinking rental market does nothing to help renters, no matter how much you hate landlords.

Quite honestly I think people also need to remember that landlords are not charities. If you want them to act like charities then give them the same tax treatment and obligations. Otherwise they are equally within their rights to make decisions that suit their own priorities within the boundaries of the law.