tenant rights during sale of house

Fitz*

I have rented from the same landlord for 4.5 years now. I have seen her twice ever - the day we viewed the house, the day we moved in and last week.

She has never increased the rent (thankfully) and we have only requested a handful of things from her -

• fix the boiler (2 times)
• a fresh coat of paint in the main living room / hallway. The painter showed up unannounced one day with his one key and stayed a few days. We cleaned up after him.
• to get new couches (the ones in the house were in bad shape when we moved in) - we got 'new' second hand ones just before Christmas. We randomly got a second kitchen table at the same time, even though it was not needed.
• to fix the flush in the toilet at the same time

There was an issue a few months ago where she claimed a good sum of money missing from rent, but as we explained to her through text and screenshots that we all had paid the money. The tenants ended up owing 6e each instead of the 600e roughly. All the money was in her 'other' bank account apparently. There has never been an issue with noise complaints, house in bad condition etc.


So last week, one midweek evening, she randomly shows up at the house with no notification, no text or anything. She just tells us that she is selling the house and that we have to leave within 112 days. That's OK - a bit of a shock but its 3 months time to get somewhere new sorted. but then tells us, that if we vacate the house by the end of the month, we can get our months rent back also. This was a bit weird I thought.

Then today, one of my roommates went to make breakfast and the kitchen was taken over by paint tins, brushes, and rags etc rendering the kitchen unusable. She went off about her day but another housemate was home earlier and asked the painter (must have got his own key) what the story was and was told that he would be doing all the rooms, had no time-frame for when the kitchen would be usable again and that our bedrooms could be done at the end of the month.

No notice, nothing. Like what are we supposed to expect with no notice. Is the painter going to go into our private bedrooms and just paint it while we are not there and then where do we sleep if it takes longer than a few days. And are expected to sleep there with all the fumes too?

Any advice please, and is all of this allowed?
Was the landlord within her rights to 1) show up unannounced, 2) send in a painter unannounced and he is going to paint bedrooms when we don't know.

Samuel T. Cogley

Well no notice has been served as she's done it verbally and the painter can't just let himself in. She sounds reasonable enough - she's trying to incentivise you to leave so negotiate. If she continues to act the maggot (with painters and alike) open a case with the RTB.