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.

TBF I can see why the tenants want to hang on if they’ve come up against a delay in the house they’ve bought being ready.

Who would want to go through all the stress of moving for the sake of a few weeks (probably having to commit to a 6 month tenancy and pay for it), then doing it all again for the benefit of their landlord who evidently doesn’t give a fuck about them.

Legally they don’t have to leave at the landlords whim unless he gets an eviction order. The best the LL can do to keep you as buyers is get more info on what’s going on with the tenants and agree a realistic date for them to move out in a calm and measured way without aggrieving the tenants as they hold all the cards at the moment. By the time the LL got a court date, they’ll probably be long gone.

You can do the same with your own LL and just be patient.

Op - if you consider that you lose any money as a result of your solicitor's incompetence you can first make a formal complaint using their complaints procedure and ask them to refund it to you. You can also contact the Law Society for advice about this.
If your landlord will agree to allowing your tenancy to become a Periodic Tenancy (that's the legal term for a rolling tenancy) and the owner of the house can start eviction proceedings maybe there is a chance of carrying on with this purchase. But if you need to start looking again a Periodic Tenancy would be handy. If I was your landlord I would agree to that, saves the hassle of finding new tenants for a while and not a particularly big deal if they needed to give you notice.

@CoronaIsShit well the managing agent has offered them 5 other rentals on their books on a monthly basis for as long as their renovations take but they’ve refused.

Plancina Will they provide even a rough timeframe? It's hard to give an end date to renovations, but they must have an idea how long the builder thinks it will take.

[quote Plancina]@CoronaIsShit well the managing agent has offered them 5 other rentals on their books on a monthly basis for as long as their renovations take but they’ve refused.[/quote]
Yes, because they don’t want to move twice in two months. You don’t want to either so surely you can see it’s not their fault?

@Longwhiskers14 no they won’t give any timeframe - we don’t know anything about their property but the renovations are apparently extensive and stopped for most of lockdown.
I worry it could be a while as they asked for a year extension on the lease and were told no, then landlord issued a S21 in March and they said they’d leave in July but now haven’t.

the ignorance on this thread makes it clear why Shelter gets so much funding. Rachmann has been dead, what, 60 years?

looks like the OP is wisely going to walk away. Her lack of knowledge about rolling tenancies is quite concerning - either no how to rent issued or it wasn't read. do read it.

English law for info (similar but not identical in Wales and Scotland)

• landlords cannot end tenancies. They can issue section 21 or section 8 which are notices of legal action if the tenant does not leave at the end of the relevant period. If the tenant does not go, it then goes to court IF all the relevant paperwork is 100%. If it is, a further notice is issued. If the tenant still doesn't leave, bailiffs are arranged. Only bailiffs can force eviction and the tenant would only break the law if they didn't go then.
• your solicitor is right about timescales. There was a huge backlog before covid-19, not because landlords 'evict at a whim' but because section 21 is the only way to get rid of dealers/wreckers/non payers. Section 8 is easily evaded (and shelter happily help with that)
• your solicitor should have made it much clearer that nothing was certain until the tenant had left.

yes, not very helpful of the tenants but what would all the hand-wringers on here do in their place?

Being a bit charitable, I don't think the tenants are being that selfish. I imagine covid delayed the work on their own house, and they don't want the expense and upheaval of moving twice.

But OP can't you just do the same thing and tell your landlord you are staying another few months? I would imagine the delay would only be a few weeks if it was covid-related as a lot of builders were back at work quite soon. Your landlord wouldn't be able to evict you either.

@catbellz

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

There's nothing suggesting they're squatting?

[quote Plancina]@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.[/quote]
As no notice has been issued, they have every right to be in the house. It's not their fault the landlord decided to put the house on the market without waiting for them to leave. I can't see how they are being selfish at all.

I see a notice has been issued in fact. But it remains the fact that they are entitled to be there unless and until there is a court order against them.

@Pobblebonk S21 was issued on 29 March and their 3 month period has ended

Notice has been issued in March! The s21 was issued then. They have no legal right to still be there.

Op - if you consider that you lose any money as a result of your solicitor's incompetence you can first make a formal complaint using their complaints procedure and ask them to refund it to you.

If - as the OP stated - their solicitor said: they didn’t really say anything, except saying we wouldn’t exchange until the property was vacant. then I am suspecting that in any suggestion of incompetence the solicitor will say "We advised our client against the transaction as intended, but they decided to continue". Which will pretty much stop things dead. There may be a challenge of "Well they should have warned us more", but that's really a whinge and unlikely to go far with the SRA or in court.

Why are people saying it isn't the tenants' fault?

They are staying on beyond their tenancy just because they can. It's immoral and selfish, even though it's legal.

Scumbags.

@Pobblebonk I’m aware they aren’t breaking the law but I think they’re being very selfish. I’ve rented for 15 years and never once outstayed a tenancy.

The landlord can take them to courst. I know someone who thought they were so smart and nothing would happen to them, ended up having to pay £3500 in fees etc. It did take 6 months before they moved out though.

I personally would not go for it, it's very very risky.

FFS. The tenants are doing nothing illegal. Awkward, yes, but not illegal.

MN is so clueless when it comes to basic tenant rights and responsibilities. There's even a nice easy big print booklet called 'how to rent' and everyone is still clueless.

tenants can never be squatters.

The posters saying the tenant has done nothing wrong. Do you genuinely think every tenant is evicted at the end of a tenancy? Of course not. Most leave at the end of a tenancy because that's what they agreed. hmm The tenant knew when the tenancy ended. They had seven months notice that it wouldn't be renewed. They are being selfish arses*

By the same token, once the OP's fixed term ends - then she should leave... or the LL should change the locks after dumping her belongings on the kerb.
Oh hang on - the law says that she can stay and her tenancy continues until it brought to a lawful end by either the tenant (by giving notice) or the LL by following the correct procedure, which is quite important if she has nowhere else to live.

LuckyLinky

Notice has been issued in March! The s21 was issued then. They have no legal right to still be there.

Yes they do. Stop talking crap.

@LuckyLinky

If the s21 has been issued in March the landlord could change the locks and put their stuff on the curb. They could try and take the landlord to court but good luck to them! What complete and utter arseholes.

On the contrary, it would be very easy for the tenants to take action against any landlord stupid enough to do this. Not only would the landlord be forced to let the tenants back in (and pay the costs for any legal action required for that purpose), he can be prosecuted, fined and in some cases even imprisoned. In one reported case the fine was over £80K.

Some of the advice on this thread is frighteningly misleading.

I’ve rented for 15 years and never once outstayed a tenancy
have you ever been in the same situation as the tenants who wont move?
If you were them what would you do?

@crosseyedMary I’d have moved into one of the five rental properties I had been offered to await the clearly potentially very lengthy renovations being done on my own home. It wouldn’t enter my head to risk being taken to court by my landlord, which now they are doing, since he’s issued them with an eviction order which they are ignoring. I couldn’t live with the worry and stress of it - much rather the short term stress of a move.

Find out where the tenants actual own home is and move yourselves into that