With Covid having a huge detrimental effect on both landlords and tenants in the private rented sector, many landlords are finding themselves directly effected either by lost of employment or change in circumstances which are not of a direct effect of any tenant action.
In these situations many landlords are in desperate need to move back into their rental properties and need to evict their tenants through no fault of their own.
Surprisingly to me, there is a common assumption among inexperienced landlords on Social media platforms that they do not need to serve their tenants with formal notice in order to move back into their properties.
It is unclear where this misconception has come from, but it is a worryingly increasing trend, so to clarify the situation to those who are unsure please see below.
When you rent your property to a tenant on an assured shorthold tenancy agreement you are in the eyes of the law transferring possession of your property to the tenant.
This provides the tenant with 'Exclusive possession' this means the tenants has every legal right to exclude anyone from their home including the landlord and their agents.
There are only two legal ways in which a landlord can regain possession of their property.
- By the tenant serving Notice to Quit or signing a Deed of surrender and vacating the property voluntarily
- By the landlord serving notice seeking possession, proceeding through the court system and having a bailiff exercise an eviction warrant
If the rental property was previously the landlord home before the tenant move din then the landlord can serve a Section 8 notice using ground 1 which states Landlord wants property to be own home or the property was previously their own home, this is a 2 months notice pre-covid and currently 6 months, reducing to 4 months on 1st June 2021
However, The landlord can't use this ground to get the property back in order to sell it, and most importantly, before the tenant moved into the property, the landlord would need to serve on the tenant a notice ( a letter is fine) stating that this situation may arise, without this pre-ground 1 notice ground 1 cannot be used
If the tenant has not breached their tenancy in anyway and the landlord simply wants their property back to move into, then the formal Notice seeking possession will ned to be served, this will be a Section 21 notice on form 6a, currently that notice period is 6 months notice, this will reduce to 4 month son 1st June 2021 and reduce further to its pre-covid notice period of 2 months on 1st October 2021.
The other important thing to remember is that any notice seeking possession that a landlord issues to a tenant, either Section 21 or Section 8 is NOT an eviction notice and the tenant does not have to leave when it expires, the notice is simply that, a note to the tenant advising the tenant of the date after which the landlord can go to court.
So if you wish to move back into your home for an reason the tenant is still legally entitled to full notice and the full court process.
