Vendor’s tenants refusing to leave

[Plancina]

Just posting for a rant/wild hope of any advice. We have been in process of buying a really lovely house that we totally fell in love with and have laid over £1000 for survey fees, solicitor fees and a survey. It was marketed as no chain but has a private tenant in it who was supposed to move out on the 5th July. The tenant is now refusing to leave - they own their own home but it is having work done on it and they aren’t willing to move into alternative rental accommodation until their home is finished. They are ignoring all requests from their landlord to leave and insisting they will stay there until their house is ready, they won’t give a timeline for this.
Our lease is up in two months and we’d have to commit to a 6 month lease at least to stay here. We are so upset and annoyed - can’t believe how selfish these people are being. The vendor is also annoyed as they don’t want to lose the sale and they had promised their son a portion of the proceeds to buy his first home and now he is going to lose that house also.
Our solicitor says it could take a year to evict them.

God that's hard! What arsehole does that!?
I don't know, it's despicable though! Is there no legal backing for you? There bloody should be.
Have you no grant Mitchell sized mates to go and "encourage" them to move faster?

It shouldn't take a year to evict them demand a timeline

Unfortunately that’s the risk of buying a house with tenants in. You can’t do anything.

You either have to wait or pull out, sadly. It's always a risk when you put an offer in on a house that has a tenant.

@catbellz

God that's hard! What arsehole does that!? I don't know, it's despicable though! Is there no legal backing for you? There bloody should be. Have you no grant Mitchell sized mates to go and "encourage" them to move faster?

Jesus Christ don’t do that unless you want to go to prison.

speak to your landlord about keeping you in on a month to month?

@catbellz

God that's hard! What arsehole does that!? I don't know, it's despicable though! Is there no legal backing for you? There bloody should be. Have you no grant Mitchell sized mates to go and "encourage" them to move faster?

Very stupid advice. That's a criminal offence.

When did the current vendor issue the S21 to their tenants?

I think we have no choice but to pull out and look at houses with no chain/vacant possession. So annoyed! I hope the selfish f*ckers see this and are ashamed of themselves.

They are being so selfish, sadly there are fools on Mumsnet who encourage this I don't think there is much you can do unfortunately.

Our landlord says minimum 6 month lease - will cost us £7000+
The landlord hasn’t even issued them with the S21 yet because of the COVID ban on evictions. Our solicitor says the courts are backlogged because of the ban and we’d be looking at a minimum of 8-9 months with no certainty, and probably more like a year.

Lol at "you could go to prison" but the bloody squatter gets free accommodation, causes no end of financial hardship to a whole chain of people and won't even be liable for anything. Shit end of the stick indeed!
And of course I was joking! Would be bloody tempting though

I understand its awful for you but maybe because of the current situation they haven't been able to find anywhere?

@catbellz I assumed you were joking it is unbelievable that they can waste everyone else’s money and time like this and get away Scott free

@Plancina

I think we have no choice but to pull out and look at houses with no chain/vacant possession. So annoyed! I hope the selfish f*ckers see this and are ashamed of themselves.

They won't be ashamed. Just make a choice to either ask your LL to go month to month or move on.

This can happen when there is a sitting tenant but things can also go wrong when there's a chain.

@Pollypocket89 they’ve been offered 5 rentals by the estate agent handling the deal. They’ve refused them all because the issue is that they aren’t willing to move twice - they want to move directly into their own home.

Then the blame lies with vendor, why on earth did they market their property with no legal way of getting rid of the tenants?

@Shmithecat2 well I think they assumed the tenant would leave at the end of their tenancy like a normal person. But I certainly won’t be offering on any further houses with tenants in them!!!!

A landlord can issue an eviction notice and they will need to before it can go to court, they will need min 2 months notice but currently it is 3 and the courts will reopen at the end of August. If the notice hasn’t even been issued then that will also cause a delay.

@SpartacusAutisticus I disagree - the tenant had a one year lease due to end on 5 July, they have no right to be in the house whatsoever, and the landlord told them in January that the house was for sale and that they would not be renewing the lease.

You could reduce your offer by the amount the extra rent will cost you, they might not accept it but you've got nothing to lose if you're going to pull out anyway.

Speak to the people you are buying from, suggest if they want you to hang on as buyers they need to make it financially attractive for you to wait for the house