Rental agreement; they won't take our notice and want us to complete the tenancy term...can they do this?

[JandLandG]

Hi there...very infrequent poster but hope someone can help us out with this one.

We've been renting a nice place for over a year now. Started off with a 12 month contract, all fine.

Towards the end of the term, they asked if we wanted to renew, which we did (even though we were looking to buy).

We presumed that we could just give in a month's notice to leave as per every rental agreement we'd ever experienced before, so we renewed the deal.

Just after we agreed and signed up again, we saw a house we liked and have bought it...got the keys on friday.

Great, obviously. Except that when we spoke to the letting agents to give our notice in, they said we're not allowed to do this and must pay up until the end of the term.

Does this sound right?

Are they trying it on?

We assumed that rental agreements were of a set type giving rights and responsibilities to both sides, but that a constant was that notice could be given by either side.

Can you have rental agreements that we have to stick to throughout the full term? Have we signed one without checking the small print closely enough? We simply didn't think that this could be the case...

So does anyone know where we stand on this? Or is it as per the specially prepared paperwork we signed with the letting agent.

Any explanation/thoughts would be gratefully received

Thanks again for the interest...am actually feeling slightly better for knowing we're being stuffed legally, rather than at the whim of some twatty letting agent who fancies making some extra cash.

The only letdown is that if they weren't returning this summer, i'm sure we'd have no problem letting this place out again as it's great, but with it only being for a 3 month period...

Bollocks, why didn't I know about rolling contracts? Why did we blithely sign this new deal just assuming we could give notice? I thought the one month for us, two months for them thing applied generally.

Oh well, it's only money....and we'll have 2 houses for a while...posh or what, eh?!

As somebody else said, the rules are there to prefect both sides. If your landlord turned around one month into a 6 month fixed lease and demanded you left then you'd not be happy - equally he has some protection from having no rental income for that period.

I believe that if you DO leave early, he has to try to re-let the property to minimise your costs, but if there's only 3 months available then he may well struggle to find someone to take it.

So you automatically go onto a rolling contract after the first term is up if you don't re-sign?

We just thought we'd be kicked out if we didn't re-sign, so we did.

But we didn't know about the new house then. I'd say we went to see this house about a week after signing up for another six months.

Should have just left it to automatically go onto a rolling contract.

Right then, anyone fancy living in a lovely 16th century cottage in Wiltshire for 3 months? 3 grand and it's yours til August!

I'm sorry, I missed the part where you clarified what you signed after your initial 12 months were up.

You either went in to a rolling contract or you re-signed for another fixed period.

Do you know or not?

What makes you think a landlord would be happy to let their property on the basis of only receiving one months notice to quit from the tenant, unless they were just about to take possession of the property (either for themselves, or to sell on?). Perhaps I am wrong but you seem to feel you are entitled to only give a months notice just because you have already fulfilled a 12 month contract and I'm afraid I cannot see your logic there.

Sorry bibbity, I just thought that it was in the nature of rental agreements that you could give notice in or be given notice.

As I understand it...

At the end of a 12 month lease, the tenant may leave with no notice (not very polite but legal!). If you stay even one day over, you automatically go onto a rolling one month lease.

If the landlord wants you to leave at the end of the 12 months, he has to give one months notice.

Once you are on a rolling lease, the tenant gives one month notice and the landlord gives two months.

If you re-sign another fixed lease, you're back at square one, but there may be a break clause written into the contract that means you can give notice after a certain amount of time.

Oh well, there you go then....thanks for everyone's input...

the comedy irony of it all was that when we were sorting out the cash last week for the mortgage, we found three and a half thousand that we'd forgotten about in another account.

how we jumped with joy and delight.

the gods of finance giveth with one hand and take with another. the bastards.