Recently, a landlord in Warwick was fined £8750 for changing the locks her resident’s home in order to evict him. Not only this she sent a text to her resident late in the afternoon advising him that she had removed his goods and they were now on the street…nice lady.

At this point I could start telling you about the 179 pieces of legislation you need to be aware of when you become a landlord. Also, how you need a professional agent to guide you through the maze.

But this lady had an agent and, during the court proceedings, it transpired that her agent had told her that she would be breaking the law, but she just decided to ignore them. Which turned out to be a rather expensive mistake.

Over the years I have had to calm the situation down with several landlords when I have heard the phrase:

“It’s my house and I want it back now.”

The way the conversation usually goes is to remind them is that they have been receiving an income on a regular basis for the service they have been providing ie.providing a home. We then would talk about how to end the contract correctly and that it might not run to their timetable. Thankfully I have been listened to and we have found ways to move things forward for both the owner and the resident.

Acting as the agent between owners and residents I do understand the frustration sometimes., but that does not mean anyone has the right to break the law.

There are various ways of ending a tenancy:

Section 21, Section 8, or sometimes we have found that the resident is happy to move.

That’s all very well but what if your resident stops paying rental or loses their job and can’t pay?

From our perspective 98% of our landlords get paid on the date they expect. Therefore, we are not talking about a huge number of tenancies where this problem occurs.

We are looking for enough income to cover the rental, contract of employment to prove income, bank statements to prove how finances are run and most importantly outstanding CCJ’s (county court judgments). If those basics are all in place that should mean payment of the rent is safe.

But life happens – people fall ill, want a divorce, or lose their job. You would be right to believe that we do not go for the nuclear option (ie. giving notice ). We have been able to broker repayment plans which suit both the owner and resident.

However, there are always going to be residents that just want to test the envelope and that is where we take more of a robust view and at this point, we may talk about notice.

Serving notice to end a tenancy

The aim of serving notice to residents is to regain vacant possession of the property. Our stats show that last year 0.5% of the notices we issued were due to non-payment of rental.

This can only be done with the correctly worded contract and all relevant information has been communicated at the right time to your residents. If the timings allow, we would serve  a Section 21 ‘no fault’ notice to gain possession of your property without providing a reason.

We may also end a tenancy by serving a Section 8 notice for breach of tenancy. This is a tad more complex. So for more details please see our handling problem tenants page.

Whatever notice is served the fact is some residents understandably do not want to leave the property they consider to be their home. This means they can react badly once they are served notice; previously perfect residents can change totally and they may start to be un-cooperative, (e.g. not allowing access for viewings or inspections) or they may withhold rent or fail to leave the property at the end of the tenancy.

Whilst the law and our tenancy agreements provide protection against all these issues, court action may be required to enforce compliance.

In our experience, things work best when all parties work together, particularly where owners understand the disruption and cost faced by their resident as a result of notice being served. Clearly this is easier to do when there have been no concerns about the resident or their treatment of the property.

However where residents are difficult this can lead to uncertainty and stress whilst you wait to see what they may do. Often you will need to wait until they day the tenancy ends before you know whether you have possession, and there is little you can do before then other than wait.

In the meantime, it is essential to diligently follow your obligations under the tenancy to prevent providing tenants with justification for any action. Despite this, the good news is that you usually can get the property back when expected.

What are the chances of having a problem?

Over the last four years of the properties managed by us where landlords served notice to end the tenancy, only 0.8% of tenants needed legal action to remove them from the property, and only 1.4% failed to pay the bulk of their rent.

We have a page covering what happens when tenants fail to leave a property.

Summary

There are some risks to serving notice to end the tenancy. Whilst these are usually relatively minor it is important to consider these and allow some contingency when deciding to serve notice to end a tenancy.