First visit from Landlord in over 4 years- should I worry?

[PurpleDaisy2114]

We are a family and have been renting all this time. Never met LL as they live elsewhere. Agents rang today and said that she is in the area and wants to view house, would we be in etc? I'm worried as we've had words with neighbour over noise levels. Children have Autism and I know disturb them frequently. I'm just thinking this can't be good- she wanted to sell previously but lower valuation than she expected. It's her house and I know she can see it when she likes but am feeling unnerved. 4 years is a good run, are we going to be out on our ears?! 🤨

Its probably just that its been a long time and she wants to make sure everythings OK and there's no issues with the property.
Usually inspections are every 6-12 months.

Thanks Zigzags. Agents do check it annually too and send her pics.

Well. It's your house. Only grant access if you want and they still have to give minimum 24 hours notice. Even then you can say no. If you don't have any issues though no harm in letting the landlord visit

Thanks all. We had a letter. She does want to sell

tax changes, new laws etc are driving many landlords out. mn will be pleased.

if you have a fixed term it is unaffected. If you are on a rolling then she can give you notice of action - not notice to quit,landlords cannot end tenancies. She may sell to another landlord. you do not have to allow viewings.

You should check your own tenancy agreement- I am sure you will find that most of the advice you have received here is wrong.
You almost certainly have something in the agreement that gives your landlord pre arranged access for inspection and maintenance so you mustn't deny access.
Your lease likely has an end date so it is not true to say that the landlord can not get you out - there will be an outline in the lease about when it will finish, what notice you will have and what access you have to allow for viewings in your last two months of tenancy.
So you need to read your lease or ask your rental agent to explain it. But don't worry- even if they found a buyer tomorrow, house sales take months to go through so you won't have to move immediately.

@Jonathan what you have said is not quite telling the full story is it? Most tenancy agreements do have a stipulations regarding access (inspections,viewings,maintenance etc) that does not mean you have to abide by them. Right to quiet enjoyment supersedes anything written in the tenancy agreement. It's important tenants are aware of this as landlords and agents so often bully tenants into opening up their homes at inconvenient times and often ignore the rules completely and let themselves in when the feel like it. I'm not encouraging people to be unreasonably obstructive but the truth is the tenant gets to decide who comes in and when.

I think previous posters where simply stating in relation to the end of tenancy, that of course a landlord can ask you to leave by serving a section 21 notice but if you don't go there is not a lot they can do about it until they go to the courts and follow eviction proceedings there. This can take many many months.

@kamma in reply

Of course tenant have rights but rental agreements are written to protect the landlord and their property. And you do have to abide by your lease for risk of eviction proceedings. A covenant of right to enjoyment will not be a defence for denying reasonable requests for access. This is not saying that the tenant can't specify a time of convenience to allow access but this thread was never about that- it was about should the tenant be worried the landlord wanted to sell and in fact that is confirmed as the case so the tenant will have to leave and the Question now becomes how and when will that happen- back to my advice about reading the tenancy agreement and talking to the rental agent.

You say you are not not encouraging tenants to be obstructive but it would be very easy to read that into this thread.

Any refusal to leave until court proceedings is a very poor choice for tenants as they need to consider referencing for the next home.

...unless the council is providing that next.home in which case it is usually unwise to leave before the bailiff.

tenants.have every right to refuse viewings and to ignore a section 21.

the property cannot be sold with a tenant there unless to another landlord. no sane solicitor will allow exchange as vacant possession cannot.be guaranteed.

@Special.

Of course tenants can fail to pay rent- which will result in the bailiffs removing property to recover the debt. They can ignore a section 21 (which gives a reasonable 2 months to leave) but then get a court eviction. They could refuse to leave but run the risk of a hostile landlord.

Thinking you have your landlord over a barrel is a mistake - and thinking you have a great work around is ridiculous as each of the options has risk for the tenant that is frankly much worse than the alternative of moving elsewhere.

Treat your landlord with respect and they will do the same back.

I am a landlord. I have had the full triple treat ( trash, drugs, no pay) and the tenant did indeed.have me over a barrel. The rent and legals were insured but the deposit did not cover the damage and filth and there was nothing left for 'bailiffs to recover'. It does not work like that.

and it was a relatively quick eviction.

OP I'm so sorry, how stressful for you all.

Having to find another home is stressful OP. Talk to letting agents and find out what their expectations about notice periods are. While it is true you could stay until you were evicted you would not get a reference for your last four years of housing which would impact on your ability to rent a new house, in addition to being a very high stress way to end a tenancy. Talk to agents about when house is going up for sale, they may wait until you have left if house needs work. Even smooth house sales take forever so don't stress too much.

PurpleDaisy2114 You might end up finding something even better! It can be exciting moving into a new place, although I understand it might be upsetting for your children. You should get enough notice to find another place. Hope all goes well!

OP, I know several people (including me) who came to an arrangement with the landlord to halve the rent, but allow viewings and keep the place lovely, with notice given once a sale is agreed but well before exchange. In my case I found somewhere sooner and left as it's shit living in a home for sale, in another case the tenant was v houseproud, and I think probably made a good profit for the landlord by her beautiful presentation of the flat.

Yup, we've had the same experience. In our last two rental places we were completely ignored by the landlord for years, then they 'just happened to be in the area' and around 3-4 months later in each case, they told us they were putting the house on the market.

That's despite us asking them straight up whether they were going to sell (because we'd have put money aside for the next move), and the first landlord saying definitely not, the house was a family heirloom and he'd keep it rented out for ever. The next set also denied they'd be selling, then apparently when they turned around and gave us our two months notice it was 'a very hard decision'.

Why can't they just be honest? We're a family, we treated both houses well and always paid on time, what possible reason would they have to lie? It caused us no end of trouble because we trusted what they said so had to quickly find somewhere new and try to explain to our two DSs (who have ASD and don't take to change so easily) that we'd have to move again, in two months.

We are now at the point that we wouldn't trust any landlord as far as we could throw them (so it's a good thing we bought our next place!).

There needs to be better legislation to protect tenants, particularly families with young children. It's appalling in this country, very unstable and insecure.

there is, it is called a fixed term tenancy. although the plan now seems to be to abolish sec 21 and make min tenancy 3 years.

mn will be pleased that many landlords will evict and sell if this goes through, as setting up such tenancies with no proper eviction process for the deal and steal brigade means the business risk.becomes untenable. Only the housing associations and crooks will remain landlords.

Those 3 year tenancies aren't here yet, I've just been given two months notice twice in two years to move the four of us, 3 cats, a hamster and a houseful of stuff, including changing all our addresses with work, school, bills, etc etc and trying to find a landlord yet again that accepts animals. Oh, and paying about £2K in moving costs each time.

In both cases, the only reason we were asked to leave was that the LL wanted to sell (because house prices have gone up so much and they wanted to cash in before prices go down). We were good tenants, and in both cases we got lumbered with troops of people being brought around our 'home' by the estate agents.

Evict and sell? It's already happening! At least this way the tenant would get three years in a house first!

Sorry, not much sympathy with the poor landlords.

no sympathy needed for landlords. It is tenants that will get screwed by this measure as only really bad landlords will continue.

landlords may lose money but tenants will lose homes.