Section 21 - unable to find a rental

[teentoddlermum]

Our landlord has advised he is selling, been renting for 4 years almost and S21 is due imminently. Hes been a good fair landlord and the rent is reasonable for the area - he said it’s under what it should be.

anyway, we cannot find anywhere in our village unless we move town which means move schools ( 2 children ) and we love where we are.

we aren’t in a position to buy yet but maybe next year so there is light at the end of the tunnel.

my husband and I have a good joint income so I know we are lucky in that respect but my god is has hit us like a tonne of bricks, me especially and I’m so sad to be leaving our village.

of course if anything comes up soon then that would be the ideal situation but the thought of moving when 1/ at the moment the rental is so sparse and 2/ the price and conditions of some properties are not nice.

anyone else been in or in this position
I feel it’s consumed me this week

I’ve spoken to all the estate agents, registered and set up right move alerts

thank you for reading

Landlord insolvencies are ticking up as well, I think there are also a lot of myths about the need for references, a landlord struggling to pay their BTL debt is going to take someone presentable who is working without much fuss?

https://www.zoopla.co.uk/press/releases/rental-demand-drops-to-six-year-low-as-supply-improves-and-rental-growth/

You can believe me or not but I spend every day sourcing Rentals and there are not enough

How are sales, are they up or down?

I don't deal with Sales so I have no idea

Another example could be a landlord who is having difficulty finding or keeping tenants, they might be dipping into their own funds to pay their BTL mortgages, not how BTL is supposed to go! Many of these landlords might be offering cheaper rent to find and retain tenants, the alternative for them would be having to default on mortgage loans and ruining their credit score?

You must hear office chatter?

In that case the landlord would sell the property. No-one is going to keep a property which isn’t viable, especially given the impending legislation due to hit in May.

I’m glad I sold my rental property when I did - far too onerous to rent it out now.

If they had negative equity they would need lender"s permission to sell, they might not get back what they paid, there might be a lack of buyers, demand is down in many areas, selling an ex-BTL isn"t as simple as pressing a button and selling shares?

You have a lot of if's and might's in your post.

If you were getting to the point of negative equity and had no tenants you'd get rid of the property.

I don't work in an office.

I am also being kicked out of my rented house because of Section 21, the estate agent gave me the news last week and said that there were a lot of landlords in her portfolio that were issuing them before Section 21 comes into force.

I think that the drop in value over the last few years has also freaked out my landlord, he only has this property and was seeing the value fall.

I have been here 13 years, child at Uni who needs housing during holidays.

Sorry to hear this, awful feeling isn’t it. Is there much around rental wise for you? I still can’t find anything half decent, how long do you have notice wise?

I've been given 10 weeks to leave, I just wish he had given me more time, like a four month lead time, I have work commitments and it's going to be tough.

I'm in quite a large town and there are properties but I will have to move 'down' for the same rent which is a bit depressing! I haven't contacted any properties yet, just looking on rightmove.

I hope you get sorted and something turns up for you soon x

Very stressful for you all. Sadly, a lot of LLs have been and are selling as the law is changing and yields have declined in some areas.
I think your DH is right. You do have a fair bit of time so no need to panic at present. If you really can't find anything in the next 4 months, speak to the LL. When is he planning to market the property? Even if it is next week and he agrees a sale in a week or two, it will likely take 3-4 months to go through if no complications.
I would be very wary of buying in a rush before you have saved up a good deposit. It would put you at risk of almost immediate negative equity if the market does fall. That would be more stressful than your current situation.

no solicitor would allow a sale to go through with a tenant in situ as the mortgage would not be released to pay for the sale unless "vacant possession" is guaranteed.

I agree however that there will be a time delay between offer accepted and the legal side of things actually moving

Given your daughter is in Yr. 10 and next year she will be sitting GCSEs, I would prioritise a location which works for her to get to school. Is her school in the village or nearby town?

Yes that’s the main priority- her school is on a bus route just a pain with some of the locations.
its up for sale now, we have a date of may 31st to be out by so a few months to see what comes up and just have to pick the best one we can out of the bad bunch, all are more expensive for less than what we have unfortunately

Rent the best place you can afford even if it is too small and not in your preferred location. Remember renting is temporary. You said you will be in a position to buy in a year. Short term pain for long term gain.

Whatever you do, do not wait to be evicted. No private landlord will rent to you again and you won't get a mortgage.

Thank you to all - we 100% wont wait to be evicted, we won’t let it get that far, we will wait to see what rentals come up but even if we moved now we don’t have deposit/first months rent ( looking at around 3k) and there aren’t any anyway not suitable anyway
so we are thinking of doing a 2 bed and sharing a room with our toddler so taking the bigger bedroom as at the moment our teen has bedroom 1 we have the middle and toddler has the box room but if we put our bed and the toddler bed in the bigger room of the two with some sort of room divider then we will just manage short term
that means we will pay approx what we are paying for this and not go into our savings too much
we are able to save approx 1k a month so even in 2 months we are closer to the first months rent and deposit than we are now

We’ve sought advice about tyat
CCjs come after court and refusing to leave which we just won’t do that to ourselves or the landlord/new buyer
we’ve spoken to our broker who thinks we are around 6 months off! So may not even be a year which is also some good news, which we will take at the moment 😀

Op we were in this situation 5 years ago during lockdown.. it’s horrendous 3 years ago we bought our home and now we are through the other side it all actually worked in our favour because now we are living in our own home ..
We took the cheapest rental we could cope with and increased our income with second jobs .. Shit at the time but so so worth it .

Oh and also the house will not sell with sitting tenants so don’t stress to much .. We also gave them viewing days and times that worked for us so we didn’t always feel on high alert .. This is perfectly acceptable as it’s your home for the time being .

That's true, of course but @teentoddlermum has said she plans to be out before exchange. I'm just pointing out that she has time and doesn't need to panic.

Definitely do this.

So we have a section 21 and must leave by 31st may so although it can’t sell with sitting tenants then we do have to leave by then as we really don’t want him to go down the court route