How to Evict Tenants without a Tenancy Agreement or Contract

It is a surprisingly common issue for landlords to find themselves without a tenancy agreement for a short-hold tenancy. This could be for a number of reasons, most typically one was never signed, or the agreement over time was lost.

Fortunately there are legal eviction processes in place to allow landlords to follow an official path to evict under such circumstances without taking matters in to ‘ones own hands’ or harassing the tenant.

We are highly experienced in dealing with tenancy disputes and tenant evictions whereby the Landlord does not have a tenancy agreement with the tenant or property in question. This does not cause any issues with our ability to offer our fixed fee service.

What happens when a tenancy agreement does not exist

If a tenancy agreement does not exist, a tenancy at the property still exists. This is an important point to remember. Additionally, a verbal agreement can be misunderstood as lacking the legally binding constraints of a written one. So, legal measures do exist when needing to evict tenants in these cases. And we can take you through the eviction process and handling court proceedings.

Statutory law in the absence of a written tenancy agreement

Statutory law still exists here even in the absence of a written agreement; landlords can commence eviction proceedings against the tenant.

The Notice of Seeking Possession is a legal process covered by Section 8 of The Housing Act 1988 (often referred to as Section 8 Eviction Notice). Many landlords issue this to tenants as part of the final reminder letter when more than 2 months of rent remains in arrears. If you are taking this direction, do seek legal advice and chat with us about the legal processes.

It should be reiterated that not having a tenancy agreement does not allow the tenant to steer above these policies. That said, there must be a legitimate standpoint here explaining the grounds for eviction such as one of the reasons mentioned above.

More serious examples are unauthorised sub lettings, allowing squatters to stay on the premises, and criminal behaviour.

If your tenant disagrees with the evictionn grounds

Tenants can create a storm in a teacup here by simply stirring up reasons why they are unhappy with the eviction notice or the property itself. Worse still, some situations have occurred where the tenant has changed the door locks.

Cases occur often where the tenant does have rights and cannot be forcibly evicted. So, tenants ask the local housing authority to inspect the property if they have complained about any bad interior conditions such as damp, badly fitted gas boilers and other potential eviction process blocks.

Further problems can crop up when tenants refuse to leave the property even after a court order. At that point, the process may involve sending bailiffs to the property.

Legally evicting tenants without a tenancy agreement

If you follow the eviction legal process carefully with us, we will establish early where rights exist for eviction and/or tenancy. Tenancy disputes be a costly and time consuming process, which is why Evictions South East are here to deal with the matter entirely from beginning to end on your behalf, with minimal fuss and distraction to you.

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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.