Tenants (couple) break up

Landlord Discussion
1

Hello,

We have a couple in our flat who have decided to break up and one of them is leaving the flat.

We are thinking of selling the property, we ideally want to give notice. However in the current times, we understand we need to give 6 months notice. HOWEVER…

If one of the tenants is leaving, the remaining tenant can’t pick up the rent alone, therefore do they -

a) need to find someone to move in?
b) also need to leave and hand their joint notice in?

Where do we stand as landlords in these unusual times? We ideally don’t want the remaining tenant to find a random flatmate, but it looks like it might be out of our control for the next 6 months.

thanks

2

If they have a joint tenancy then they can’t end their liability individually. The person leaving will still be a tenant and liable for the rent. If the tenancy is fixed term then they can only end it by jointly offering a surrender which you would have to accept. If its a periodic tenancy then any one of them can serve notice which ends the tenancy for both tenants.

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