Question

Tenancy Agreements (England)

Short tenancy length

6 Feb 2017 | 1 comment

What is the advantage of a 7 month tenancy rather than 6 months?

Answer

1 Comment

  1. guildy

    There isn’t really much of an advantage at all.

    The reason why a few do this is because of the new section 21 rules. These say that a section 21 can’t be served within the first 4 months of the tenancy therefore a landlord needs to wait until at least 4 months plus 1 day. When that day is added to allowing for service of the section 21 plus the 2 months notice itself it has the effect that it is now impossible to expire a section 21 on the last day of a six month tenancy.

    Because people are used to expiring a notice on the last day of a fixed term, it is easily foreseeable that human error could incorrectly give a new section 21 to expire on the last day of the term. If however, a seven month fixed term has been granted, it considerably reduces the risk of human error and less likely that the landlord (or agent) gets the notice wrong.

    However, as long as our subscribers use our wizard when completing the notice, even with a six month term, they shouldn’t ever get the date wrong which in reality will be at least 5 or 6 days beyond the term.

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