Has anyone offerred their tennants an incentive to stay in a property, that you're putting on the market, until it is nearly sold

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Our house sale fell through in early 2008 when we were due to move to a new town, for a new job. We have let the house out (and been renting ourselves) for the past 18 months. In April we plan to market our property again and this time we have to sell it at whatever price, so that we can buy a house here and move on with our lives.

We have good tennants in at the moment but they're likely to look for somewhere new to live as soon as we put the house on the market. It would be beneficial to us to have them stay there until we found a buyer and maybe until near to closing. But it's obviusly a pain for them to have to live with that uncertainty, so we wondered if a financial incentive would help and if so how would we work out the details of such a thing.

Any ideas?

I did it with tenants a while ago, they paid a reduced rent for the inconvenience of people viewing flat and the uncertainty re having to move out. Also on the basis of one month's notice for them to leave rather than the 2 they were normally entitled to. It worked well, especially as I didn't end up finding a buyer as quickly as I wanted so took the flat off the market after a couple of months.

BTW we didn't put anything in writing, I knew and trusted them so was happy to work on a verbal agreement, you may want to make your arrangement more formal, depending on your relationship with the tenants - just a letter (signed by you and them) setting out the basis of the temporary change in rental etc should cover it, rather than a new tenancy agreement.

You could run into serious difficulties, because it would be almost impossible for their occupation not to be a tenancy - and they would consequently be entitled to 2 months written notice, and you could not make them leave without a court order. Even if they were the most reasonable people in the world, suppose their own plans fell through? You could be absolutely stuck if they didn't or couldn't move when you wanted them to.

sleepwhenidie - glad it worked for you - but your arrangement could not stand up in court if it went wrong. Even if the tenant agrees to it you CANNOT end an assured tenancy on less than 2 months' notice.

IHD I hadn't realised that, if the tenants had agreed to it - what about if the tenancy has gone beyond the original 12 months, does that make a difference?

I still think it may be worth arranging reduced rent if you think they will stay on while you are marketing the house. Two months is not an unusual time for sale process (offer-completion) to take and that way, if you gave them notice from the point you accept an offer you won't have lost rent during marketing period. There is of course still a risk that the sale could fall through though, but one you will have to take - unless the tenants still haven't found somewhere and want to remain while you remarket, on same rent and 2m notice...

Yes we did it, our tenants were going to move out, so we dropped their rent by £100 a month and they more than happily stayed until we had a buyer.

sleepwhenidie, it doesn't make any difference if the fixed 12 months has finished, they just become tenants from month to month and 2 months notice still applies.

hello - sorry I did not come back to this thread.

To clarify I would want to put something in writing and would be looking for our tennants to go onto a month by month lease once their next 12 month lease ends. I would ensure that they had 2 months notice of needing to move out.

I see 2 problems with reducing the rent.

1. The company who manage the property would want to write up a new tennancy agreement and would charge us a ridiculous admin. fee (then again we may have to do this at the end of the 12 months anyway)

1. Our tennants, living on a reduced rent, would have less incentive for the property to sell. I mean, how would we word it so that they couldn't live indefinitely in our home on that reduced rent?

I wonder if a lump sum, on the date of moving out, is the way to go. But what is a good amount to offer? Is £1000 too little for anyone to live with the uncertainty and hassle of people looking around?