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How to Evict a Tenant if you Need to Sell Your Property

At some point during your time as a landlord you will be in a situation whereby you need or want to sell a property which is occupied by a tenant. In some situations the landlord can sell the property with the tenant in situ to another landlord or investor – however more often than not, the property will need to be sold as a “vacant possession”, and so at some point prior to the sale, the tenancy will need to be formally terminated.

At which point the tenancy is ended, is usually dependent on the practical elements of the situation (whether access is restricted, etc) and whether the tenant is happy to cooperate with the sale (keep the property reasonable tidy for viewings, etc). If a landlord finds their tenant to be uncooperative, then the likelihood is the you will need to evict the tenant in order to facilitate these sales practicalities, including arranging access for estate agents visits, and viewings from potential buyers. It is certainly easier to sell an empty property than one with an unhappy tenants!

Here at Evictions SouthEast we are well experienced with evicting tenants in order to proceed with a property sale. As you are reading our website, it is likely you have already tried to come to an amicable arrangement with the tenants without success, so please contact us today for a free eviction case review – and we can outline our recommended eviction action for you, the eviction services would be

Should you evict the tenant before selling a property?

It is fairly common for landlords (at some point) to want to sell a particular rental property. Perhaps it is not generating a good yield, or the value has increased to a point where selling the property is more beneficial than renting it. Or it could just be that the landlord needs to raise capital and selling the particular rental property is the best way of doing this. Selling a rental property with a tenant in situ, is not without drawbacks.

Firstly, most people will be unable to buy a residential property with a current tenancy. This is because most people require a mortgage to buy a property and unless they buy using a buy to let mortgage, they will not be able to buy your property with a normal residential mortgage. This will drastically reduce your chances of achieving the open market value of your property. Secondly, there is no special clause which allows you to evict the tenant just because you want to sell the property. However, if you do decide to sell there are specialist buy to let conveyancing firms which can help you.

Selling a tenanted property (tenants cooperating)

There is no reason to prevent you marketing and advertising the property for sale. However, it makes sense to inform the tenants of your intentions to sell the property before the for sale sign goes up!

You should check the tenancy agreement to ensure it includes a clause which enables you access to the property in order to show round prospective buyers. If no such clauses exists, it will be up to your tenants good will as to whether they will allow the viewings. If it does, you need to give the current tenants at least 24 hours notice of each viewing, and it is recommended to conduct the viewings yourself!

You must also bear in mind that the tenants have a covenant of quiet enjoyment – which means too many viewings, or inconvenient viewing times, would put you in breach of this. For this reason it is advisable to find out directly from the tenants which are the most convenient times for viewings to take place.

Selling a rental property when the tenants are not cooperating

All too often, even when the landlord has the right to conduct viewings, the tenants are obstructive of any viewings whether by deliberating saying any time is inconvenient, changing times at the last minute, or by leaving the house dirty or with bad odours.

In this case the only really certain way to avoid these issues is to commence eviction proceedings against the tenants. If your fixed term tenancy is still in term, you should find out when the tenancy is due to expire and issue legal documents to ensure that the tenant knows that you wish to terminate the tenancy at this point. Even though you may have a fixed term tenancy, you still need to formally serve an eviction notice on your tenants to leave at the end of the tenancy - as crazy as that may sound!.

(If the landlord has once lived in the property you have slightly more rights if you are willing to live in the property again prior to its sale. If you use this clause without then living in the property and the ex-tenants find out they could sue you for misrepresentation.)

Evicting tenants to sell a vacant property

In most cases at some point prior to the sale, the tenants will need to be evicted in order to provide a “vacant possession” to the new buyers.

If there are no rental arrears or other grounds for eviction then the first step in the eviction process is to serve formal notice on the tenants that is they do not leave the property by a certain date then legal proceedings will be started and the cost of such possession order will be charged to the tenant – which is not something most people ignore.

It is very important that even though ensuring a vacant possession is important to enable you to sell the property, the correct eviction procedure must be followed. Failure to do so is illegal. In additional the correct tenant eviction notice must be given by the landlord to the tenant, if the notice is found to be invalid the court will not make a possession order and you will have to start by serving the correct notice and reapplying to the court. This is why a large number of claims are rejected and why a specialist company such as Evictions SouthEast are best placed to ensuring the case is precisely put together and that a mandatory eviction is the only viable result!


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Evictions SouthEast has a dedicated team of legal personnel ready to help you with your tenancy problems. We offer a free initial case review to give you some helpful information on how best to proceed with the case and what the likely outcome will be. Should you wish to proceed we will take on your case immediately with our transparent 3 step eviction process all based on a fixed fee pricing structure.

Evictions South East have a 100% success rate to date.

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Evictions SouthEast offer all landlords and letting agents a free initial eviction case review to help and advise you on which eviction process would be the quickest and most suitable for your situation.
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Success stories

"Throughout the process they [Evictions South East] were very knowledgeable and provided us with regular updates of the case status. Having a legal representative at the court gave us additional piece of mind and we went into the hearing expecting a positive outcome - they delivered on this as well!"
Simon Robinson, Belvoir!

"Many thanks to Evictions SouthEast without whose help I would have struggled to cope. Trying to evict a problem tenant is fraught with difficulty and distress. Yet, Evictions SouthEast were very supportive every step of the way. "
Keith, Private Landlord

"Firstly, thank you for all your help, the service Evictions SouthEast supplied was very efficient... no problem at the court, and a positive outcome. I have to add that all this was done while I was living 1,000s of miles away in Australia!"
Tony Gostelow, Private Landlord

"It has been actually brilliant working with Evictions SouthEast, from the very beginning to conclusion. I had spoken with many companies before I found you, and everybody just wanted me to sign up without actually paying much attention to what I needed or what the issue was despite having never gone through this before. But I am very glad I decided to go with you, because the eviction service I received from you has been first class and very much appreciate."
Imdad - Private Landlord

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