Tenant advised he wants to leave early but now no longer reachable

Hi,

At the beginning of this year my tenant verbally advised over the phone that he has got a new job in North England and he needs to leave from my place as he will be relocating to a new place in Leeds. He was looking at an early release end of Feb 2024 as his wife will be leaving this month and he will join his wife next month but I advised I will need to look into everything first and get back. We have a 12m AST fixed term contract in place but we do have a break clause in the contract that after 4 months tenant can give at least 2 months notice. We are in month 7 of the contract. No issues there and I advised the tenant that he needs to give written notice and not verbally. So its been two and a half weeks and I haven’t heard anything from the tenant so I tried calling him and sent a SMS but no reply since Sunday last week. I went to the place and his car was not there. The tenant always uses the trains to work as far as I know so it seemed a bit odd that his car isn’t parked there anymore and he is the only driver in the family. So I knocked on the door no answer.

Any advice on what steps to take hereon? I do have his employers details (Sainsbury’s) but I just wanted to check what normally happens in a situation like this if he has left already. I do have his deposit which Open Rent are holding on via deposit scheme and I used the Rent Now service. I spoke to Open Rent they just said they can’t do anything about it - seek advice professionally.

If you have replied to his verbal notification by telling him that he needs to give written notice (did you email or write to him), personally, I wouldn’t do anything further until such time as any rent payment is not paid. Until then, you do not know you have a problem.

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I replied to his verbal notification via text message and letter via whatsapp. So in other words correct me if I am wrong the 2 months notice only applies from the date of a notification in writing letter otherwise the rent should continue to be paid until such time even if he may have moved out?

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Your reply to him ought to have been via a proper means too. Read your tenancy agreement. How should notices be served?

It doesn’t mention anything about how it should be served other than in writing.