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.

I agree landlord did the wrong thing too by just expecting the tenants to leave. But the landlord is not the one that broke the agreement.

Anyway I've got my own international move in 2 days so will bow out of this thread now.

@Plancina I hope you find a new house you like even more than this one!

If the landlord is in dire straits and desperate to sell he can sell to another landlord. In the meantime he's getting full rent from the tenants, which should help if he has any financial difficulties.

It's ridiculous people aren't taking an unexpected pandemic into account. The tenants might have an underlying condition and want to avoid the unnecessary risk of moving home twice. They clearly intended to be out by the end of lease but coronavirus has delayed their renovations. That's not their fault. Even if they are simply being selfish there's nothing the vendor landlord can legally do - except offer them money to compensate for the inconvenience. That might get them out sooner. Unlike most tenants they have no need for a landlord reference so don't need to be nice.

@locked2020

Tenants are giving no timeframe, not even a ballpark. The tenants are legally right, but what a fucked up law that makes it so.

Presumably they can't, as it's dependent on how long the renovations will take to finish and unknowns such as when government guidance might relax and whether there is a second wave leading to a further lockdown.

We now know that they were able to arrange a move in June (and even prior to then) despite what has been claimed on this thread.

But we don't know that. We do know they couldn't move back into their own house, but we have no idea whether the alternatives suggested were practicable, taking into account things like their work, travel restrictions, whether they had to work at home, their health, any family obligations, etc.

The Section 21 notice is only valid for 6 months by the way.

Any updates Op? X

I'm a landlord in a different jurisdiction and I've been following this with an open mouth

Here we rent to a tenant for a specific amount of time. Everyone understands a contract is exactly that and for that specific time.
At the end of this time a tenant cannot just assume it’s ok to carry on, the contract has to be renewed otherwise what is the point in a contract?
Yes, they pay rent, but hell, that’s for the use or hire of a property. If I hire a car I cannot just decide to keep it afterwards even if I carry on paying the hire amount, it has to be agreed in some way with the company.
I am absolutely gobsmacked that tenants are just able to continue to live in someone else’s property and that person actually has to go to court to evict them. Here, if someone stays beyond their contract you can phone an authority, I suppose your version of a bailiff, who will remove them. You just need to show the signed lease with the end date.
It is my property, I choose to rent it out, someone chooses to rent it for a specific time then they must go unless agreed again by contract signed by both parties - what is the honest problem with that?

Yes the tenants are selfish twats, but more blame lies with the vendor who clearly didn't want to wait until the tenancy ended and the property was vacant. I suppose you could assume that tenants will leave at the end of a contract but they have a lot of rights now, as clearly seen here, and exacerbated by CV.

@ionais I agree with you, it's bonkers here. I realise that tenants need protection from rogue landlords but it's now way too one-sided in favour of tenants. I've been a (good) tenant many times and would not wish to ever be a landlord.