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Is this a squatter & who is responsible to get him to leave?

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8 minutes ago, poppet2 said:

Landlord then checked everything and locked up. 

But didn't change the locks?

 

That may be the problem the vendor has. If the landlord has had trouble ensuring vacant possession and has had to resort to legal notices and action to evict a tenant, a court may deem it negligent not to have changed the locks to the property to ensure that vacant possession is preserved.

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Seems like quite a stretch, negligence to not have taken additional action to mitigate the illegal and unexpected behaviour of a 3rd party.

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3 hours ago, Top Cats Hat said:

But didn't change the locks?

 

That may be the problem the vendor has. If the landlord has had trouble ensuring vacant possession and has had to resort to legal notices and action to evict a tenant, a court may deem it negligent not to have changed the locks to the property to ensure that vacant possession is preserved.

There's no info to suggest the landlord was having trouble ensuring vacant possession. A landlord selling a tenanted property wouldn't 'resort' to legal notices. They would routinely serve legal notices to conform to the correct legal process for securing vacant possession- if  vacant possession was what they  had contracted to provide. It would be foolish not to. 

Whether to change the locks would be the choice of the new owner. As I see it,  assuming VP was in the contract the question is whether the tenancy was ended correctly. If it was then the ex-tenant has entered illegally into the new owners property. 

I suppose theres a grey area if it cant be established exactly when the tenant re-entered the property- before or after completion? But if its clear it was after I suspect its the buyers problem....

But like somebody said..proper legal advice required 😄

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2 hours ago, Cyclone said:

Seems like quite a stretch, negligence to not have taken additional action to mitigate the illegal and unexpected behaviour of a 3rd party.

I suspect that any court action would turn on that word unexpected.

 

The OP said that the tenant was 'still' in the property after completion of the sale but later said that they had moved out and then moved back in so we still don't know whether this was a routine or contentious ending of the tenancy.

 

 

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22 hours ago, Cyclone said:

Seems like quite a stretch, negligence to not have taken additional action to mitigate the illegal and unexpected behaviour of a 3rd party.

Yes, if the landlord served notice and the tenant left I'm not sure how the landlord could be responsible that the tenant secretly copied the key and then used it to illegally enter the property on the day of the sale?

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When   a tenant leaves  i   change the burglar alarm  code  immediately  you cant trust keys  bit  lack on landlord to me 

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On 31/03/2019 at 17:14, poppet2 said:

 

"2. Merely serving Notice on T (e.g. under s.8 or s.21 of the Housing Act 1988) does not end it".

 

Please explain your point 2

otherwise, what is the point of giving a tenant notice to leave?

This is why (extracted from the 1988 Act but with my underlining added :

 

Security of tenure.

5(1). An assured tenancy cannot be brought to an end by the landlord except by:
(a) obtaining:
(i) an order of the court for possession of the dwelling-house under section 7 or 21, and
(ii) the execution of the order,
(b) obtaining an order of the court under section 6A (demotion order), or
(c) in the case of a fixed term tenancy which contains power for the landlord to determine the tenancy in certain circumstances, by the exercise of that power,
and, accordingly, the service by the landlord of a notice to quit is of no effect in relation to a periodic assured tenancy.

 

(1A) Where an order of the court for possession of the dwelling-house is obtained, the tenancy ends when the order is executed.

 

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There's no reason to assume it was an assured tenancy though, most tenancy are not, so c) would apply.  And the power was exercised and the tenant left.  The tenancy was ended.

They then illegally entered the property, trespassing and subsequently refuse to leave, squatting.

 

Right?

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"Is it an assured tenancy?" means "Is it within the 1988 Act?" To decide, see s.1 of the Act (for basic requirements) and Schedule 1 (for situations which, by their nature, aren't within the Act). If it is, then decide what type of assured tenancy it is: AST (see s.19A) or not- in the latter case, the s.21 procedure is unavailable, you see, although the s.8 procedure applies to both species. Yes, s.5 relates only to L ending it. The onus would be on L to prove that T ended it.

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On 07/04/2019 at 21:53, Jeffrey Shaw said:

This is why (extracted from the 1988 Act but with my underlining added :

 

Security of tenure.

5(1). An assured tenancy cannot be brought to an end by the landlord except by:
(a) obtaining:
(i) an order of the court for possession of the dwelling-house under section 7 or 21, and
(ii) the execution of the order,
(b) obtaining an order of the court under section 6A (demotion order), or
(c) in the case of a fixed term tenancy which contains power for the landlord to determine the tenancy in certain circumstances, by the exercise of that power,
and, accordingly, the service by the landlord of a notice to quit is of no effect in relation to a periodic assured tenancy.

 

(1A) Where an order of the court for possession of the dwelling-house is obtained, the tenancy ends when the order is executed.

 

Thank you Jeffrey, this is most enlightening. Scenario, so a very unlucky landlord could find, that every time he lets his property, and serves a section 21, he may have to wait months before obtaining a court order to get the tenant to leave. In addition, landlord finds himself out of pocket for months with no rental income, while this all goes through and landlord also has  to pay all the court costs. What a nightmare, no wonder landlords are put off, although the example I've given is the worst possible scenario. Something like this only needs to happen once, (sigh) who'd be a landlord? 

Edited by poppet2

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Is the tenant not still liable for rental payments until they are evicted though??

 

If they chose to ignore an S21 that doesn't mean from that day onwards there is no requirement to pay rent does it?

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Surely if he handed the keys back to the original owner of the house and moved out, he completed and ended his part of his agreement. By moving back in there is no agreement anymore, therefore squatting.

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