Tenancy agreement signed but not dated?

This could be a problem if your tenant choses not to leave and you need to take them court. With that said they have been paying you rent from the start date which you can prove. Paying rent does mean that a tenancy is created (might just not be the one they signed). Since the tenancy has long expired they are on a rolling contract.

I'm not sure if you can issue a valid section 21.
I'm not sure if a potential buyer will question it as usually they would want to issue a new tenancy themselves anyway before completion.

All of this might become irrelevant if the RRB goes through before you make a decision.

Before serving any notice have a chat with your tenants about you intentions to sell. Make sure you offer them first refusal even if you 100% know they can't / won't buy. Tell them you are looking to sell with them in suti but there might be a possibility the new buyer will want vacant possession.

Speak to your letting agent before issuing any notice. Most tenants are reasonable anyway however for your sake I have hope you have kept the rent at market rate otherwise this will cause you an issue when the tenant suddenly realises they can't afford to move.

Worst case speak to an evection specialist, good luck!

Just date the agreement 2/5/16. Your agent hasn’t been managing the property so nobody will be referring back to them when you go down the Section 21 route. And your tenant will have absolutely no idea your agent forgot to date it over 8 years ago.
(I’ve just sold a rental flat and the sales contract was intentionally unsigned at the request of my solicitor so he could insert the date in the future).

Even if you now date your copy of the TA, and could be deemed fraudulent, the one held by your tenant remains undated.

Re the comment by Dylan Morris, contracts for sale are undated, but are usually signed by the seller and buyer once the contract has been approved by the purchasers conveyancer, until there is an agreed completion date and once exchange of contracts is effected. A completely different situation with Tenancy Agreements.

First thing I would do is actually talk to the tenant.
As has been said before offer them the opportunity to buy it from you. If nothing else it's good will.
In a lot of cases you might be able to come to an amicable arrangement without even issuing a section 21. At that point I would then say just to cross the T's and dot the I's I'm going to issue a section 21.
Offer flexibility on the end of tenancy, you could go licence to occupy on a week by week basis at the end of the section which will give them far less rights if they sign that.
There is a very real possibility they don't have their original TA so then the dated thing becomes a mute point. I would also question whether signatures even need to be dated if you have both signed a TA with a date and rent has been accepted from that date.
This is a hope for the best but prepare for the worst scenario.
I would never sell a property tenant in situ if I could avoid it. You get anything up to 10% less on the sale price. So you might find the correct business decision is to offer to help the tenant financially with their move. Lose £30,000 in value or offer the tenant £5000 to go. Distasteful I know but it makes business sense.

It may not be an issue. Tenancies can be oral. They don't have to be in writing. You no doubt have other evidence of when the tenancy began, in the form of emails, dates covered by rent payments etc. The agent will also likely have other evidence of the date the contract was signed, such as calendar entries or file notes. Check with a quick phone call to a housing solicitor to make sure there's not some case-law that causes a problem.

It's not a problem. You don't even need the tenancy agreement to be written down. As you are in a statutory periodic you can just follow the s21 route whilst it's still available

Thank you very much for all your replies. It is very likely court proceedings will be necessary following any S21 notice as tenant is on benefits and council advise staying until bailiffs evict.

I would be happy to pay the tenant a considerable sum to leave as I just want to sell the house! However, I don’t think any offer to help tenant financially would do much as it’s virtually impossible in this area now for tenants on benefits to find a new property to rent.

I’ve looked at the Section 21 accelerated procedure possession form (N5B) and it states The tenancy agreement is dated dd/mm/yy.
My tenancy agreement states it “is made on 2/5/16.” (same date as the tenancy started). So maybe section 21 accelerated possession might actually be possible (??!). I will try to get some legal advice.

TA states notices are to be sent by post or hand-delivered.
I am thinking about emailing tenant, asking him if he’s happy for documents connected with the tenancy to be sent by email. I know he is but I don’t have it in writing!
If he confirms email is fine, would I be ok (in terms of section 21 validity) to serve EPC, EICR, how to rent guide and all the yearly gas certificates by email prior to serving S21 notice?

I previously sent EPC & EICRs by email without asking tenant to confirm receipt (and didn’t give him the gas certificates as gas engineer gave him them). But I now know I need evidence that I served them for S21 to be valid.

In other words, if I email all the documents and tenant replies by email to confirm receipt, THEN serve S21 notice, will that be ok in terms of S21 validity?
Or could judge rule that serving tenancy documents by email was unacceptable due to TA stating notices should be served by post or have-delivered?

Thanks for any advice you can give.

Just a thought, rather than go it alone you might want to consider using a specialist eviction firm here ? They will have huge experience in dealing with these issues as they are handling this stuff every day of the week. Landlord Action (Paul Shamplina) and The Landlord Group (Chris Sharpe) have both been featured on Channel 5’s nightmare tenants slum landlords show and both have an excellent record in handling such situations. (I used Landlord Group three years ago and was very pleased with their service). You can get their fixed fee service rates from their websites. Yes it’s going to cost you some money but it will take most of the stress away. When I had to evict a non paying heroine addict tenant I was stressed up to the eyeballs before I instructed Chris Sharpe’s firm, I couldn’t think straight and was having many sleepless nights. For me it was well worth it.

Reply to the comment left by chloe at 17/10/2024 - 22:22
WRT Gas Safe.
If hand written and given to T there is a reciprocal box that T signs.
Docs are fine by e mail - if you have an agreement from T in writing.
Jysymt make sure you beware PDFs especially of RRR, nor e mail links.
EPC is one you skso need to download and PDF.