How to get tenant to leave

The tenant has no desire to leave and is playing the system.

They will find something unsuitable with all properties so unfortunately the Rtb is the only option.

That’s absolute disgraceful and wrong. They will drag that out and pay no rent to her. All the protection of the law will be in their favour. She may just go down the legal route.

Agree that you should start proceedings with rtb ASAP. Don’t cut off the power/water. That’s illegal and you could get hit with a fine. I also wouldn’t stop accepting rent. It won’t get them out any faster and will leave your relative out of pocket. Good luck

Lateral thinking.

OP - just in case the comments in this thread are muddying the water: it is not against the law to pay the tenant to leave and there is no reason that the payment and the conditions for same cannot be documented fully.

You could include a clause indicating the payment will be made immediately upon the tenant handing over the keys, providing a signed notice of termination and vacating the property. The contract could also record that the landlord & tenant waive the notice period for that (tenant) notice of termination.

All this AFTER the notice period has expired from the original notice of termination from the landlord.

And yes - it does suck that this is likely to be the best, quickest, most efficient and cheapest way to resolve a tenant illegally overholding.

Your relative should get a solicitor who will ensure that there is no defect in any of the notices provided or remedy them if there are and will help them navigate this - because the costs (and delays!) of getting tripped up on a technicality will be far more than the cost of obtaining legal advice.

This tenant isn't going to take cash to go they simply don't want to go. As soon as legal proceeding are started they will stop paying rent and end up with more that was offered them. All they have to do is not pay rent, not show up till summoned to court then leave. All of that will take 1 to two years. When they were served with the termination notice I hope your friend used the correct template from the RTB, that would have given them 28 days to dispute the notice, which has long passed but they will try to dispute it anyway. Get a solicitor who has done this before and knows the system well.

If I was your friend I would see if I could back out of the move till they have left.

And they probably won't because of the rental shortages.

OP get legal advice. I can't imagine any solicitor advising to pay a tenant off, in the hope they'd move their arses out the door. Even after court judgements ruled in favour of tenant eviction, they can still bear it out til the bitter end, resulting in getting a sheriff and locksmith and guards.

Basically, its "notice of termination"(has to be 100% correct), with a date set.

A RTB adjudication(do not do mediation), where you hopefully get a recommendation of eviction

A District court appointment with the RTB order where you hopefully a eviction order granted(usually with lead time for the tenants)

If they don't leave on the date set by the court, it's back to the court for permission to send the eviction order to the sheriff to be forcefully removed from the property.

If she hasn't bothered with any of this, then she has just been adding to the clock. The most hardcore tenants wait till the last step, very few actually get forcefully removed. If she is lucky, starting formal proceedings might kickstart the existing tenancy into moving. Otherwise, it can take years.