UK Landlord Forum / Life

Dear all

I am currently letting my first property which was let on a 6 month AST. As the six month period is nearly up I am aware that it will subsequently trip over to a static periodic. There are currently no problems, my tenants appear to be fantastic and at the moment I am very happy for things to continue to be tickety boo ad-infinitum.

As a result of a bit of mental over drive, I have a couple of questions which are just hypothetical, and possibly obvious, but I would appreciate your help:

(1) If my tenants wished to leave the property at the end of the AST period, would they have to give me the one month's notice, or as the AST finishes on a specific date (in this case 29th April), could they terminate it on that date without giving any notice?

(2) Similarly if I wanted my tenants out at the end of the AST, I would have to serve a section 21 but would/could that be done at the beginning of the tenancy (assuming the period was greater than 2 months?). What is the convention in this case?

Thanks very much 😀

Nothing is a silly question when you are asking for the first time. You only learn by asking for further information.

I am also a new landlord so my information will be limited. However, You cannot issue section 21 at the beginning of the tenancy, assuming you mean the beginning of the original tenancy. You must wait for the first 4 months to pass. As for leaving the property they can (usually) leave at anytime by giving your one months notice. this is typically the case with a standard AST, but it may differ if you have some unusual clauses in your own AST.

As for your other question...

(1) If my tenants wished to leave the property at the end of the AST period, would they have to give me the one month's notice, or as the AST finishes on a specific date (in this case 29th April), could they terminate it on that date without giving any notice?



I don't have enough knowledge or experience to give you any advice on that subject. I will have to leave that up to the more experienced landlords here.

I learned from this forum that a tenant can just leave on the last day of the first AST without warning.I had one who just took his keys to the agent on the final day.I suspect he had not wanted to go through a check-out inspection,the place was filthy.It is not courteous,but they are within their rights. 

1. Yes.  Tenants have the right to leave on the 29th or before and not give even a days notice.  They would have fulfilled their end of the agreement of a 6 month tenancy.

Don't issue a section 21 at the start of the tenancy as it has no impact.  If the tenant is OK but not quite behaving it can be a tool to get then to behave.  A section 21 doesn't end a tenancy either, the tenant doesn't have to leave on its expiry, it's simply a notice you need to give prior to going to court to seek posession.

https://england.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/private_renting/ending_a_periodic_tenancy

Have a read of link above.
Should help you out

Also (as always) read your tenancy Agreement.  If you didn’t draft it then you might not be aware of any notices clause in there specifying both the temporal scope of notices and also valid methods of serving.