13 Sep 2021
Landlords Looking to Regain Possession
Serving notice on your tenant requesting them to leave is the standard way to obtain vacant possession of your investment property.
During the pandemic and as a result of the Coronavirus Act 2020, the Government initially increased the amount of notice a tenant should receive before needing to leave a property.
As we were in the middle of a pandemic this is understandable as sourcing a new home would have been difficult. This time period was increased to six months with relaxation to four months more recently. For those landlords with tenants not paying their rent, this can be a worrying and stressful time so they will be pleased to hear that as of the 1st October landlords can serve notice to regain possession of their property in the same way they did pre-pandemic, by serving a minimum of two months notice.
More advice for landlords looking to regain possession of their property can be found here on the Government site https://www.gov.uk/evicting-tenants/section-21-and-section-8-notices.
Despite reverting to pre-pandemic terms, Propertymark put out a statement saying “Moving forward, the UK Government intend to retain the power to implement any similar measures again in the future should the public health situation worsen. To this end, legislation has been tabled that retains the ability for the UK Government to reapply longer notice periods until 25 March 2022 as a backstop” so it is advisable that if you do have a troublesome tenant that you act soon in case rules do change once more.
