The text arrives, or a letter lands on the mat. Your landlord is selling the house and you need to be out by the end of the month. It reads like a done deal.
It isn't. Since 1 May 2026, a private landlord in England who wants you out in order to sell must use Ground 1A, added to the Housing Act 1988 by the Renters' Rights Act 2025. It needs 4 months' notice on the official form, cannot take effect in your first year, and re-letting during the ban that follows can cost the landlord up to 2 years of your rent. A sentence in a text meets none of those requirements.
Ground 1A cannot be used at all against an older assured ("lifetime") tenancy that began before 1 May 2026 and was not a shorthold, and most social landlords cannot use it. Wales has its own law, the Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016.
What a valid Ground 1A notice must include
To rely on Ground 1A, your landlord must serve a Section 8 notice on the prescribed form, state Ground 1A, and give you at least 4 months' notice before any court proceedings can start. The ground applies where the landlord intends to sell the property or to grant a lease of more than 21 years.
A WhatsApp message or a bare letter is not a notice. One that gives you less than 4 months is defective. A judge can still let the claim go ahead without a valid notice if they decide that is fair, so raise any defect instead of ignoring it. Check the maths on any Section 8 notice before acting on it.
Can a landlord use Ground 1A in the first year of a tenancy?
No. The notice must name the earliest day the landlord could go to court, and that date must be at least a year after your tenancy began.
Add the 4-month notice period and the fastest timetable is a notice served 8 months in, naming a date around your first anniversary. If the date named falls clearly inside your first year, the landlord cannot use Ground 1A with that notice, whenever it was served.
Do I have to move out when a Ground 1A notice expires?
A Section 8 notice does not end your tenancy, and you are entitled to stay while the legal process runs.
If you stay past the date in the notice, the landlord's only lawful route is a possession claim in the county court. At the hearing they must prove the ground with evidence of a real intention to sell, like an estate agent's instruction or a valuation. Ground 1A is mandatory, so if the landlord proves it the judge must order possession, and can allow no more than 6 weeks from the order where leaving sooner would cause exceptional hardship. An unprotected deposit blocks a possession order until the landlord protects it and gives you the prescribed information, or returns it.
Even with a possession order, only enforcement agents acting on it, such as county court bailiffs, can remove you. Changing the locks or moving your belongings out is a criminal offence, as our guide to whether a landlord can evict without a court order explains.
Your tenancy carries on until it properly ends, and your rent stays due, so keep paying. If you decide to go, end it with your own notice to quit or a written agreement on a leaving date, instead of moving out on the date in the notice.
If you might have nowhere to go, contact your council's housing options team early, and get its advice in writing before you leave ahead of a possession order. Once the date on a valid notice is within 56 days, you count as threatened with homelessness, which triggers the council's duty to help prevent it.
How can I tell if my landlord is genuinely selling?
Some Ground 1A notices follow a refused rent increase or a repair complaint, not a real decision to sell. Using Ground 1A without a real plan to sell can lead to a fine or prosecution, so build a small evidence file this week.
- Search Rightmove and Zoopla for the address, looking for a sale listing, not a new rental ad. Screenshot everything with dates visible.
- Check the HM Land Registry title register online for a few pounds. It shows who owns the property, and later whether a sale ever completed.
- Watch for an estate agent board and note the agency. No agent, no buyer viewings, and no survey all point one way.
- Keep every message in which the landlord mentions selling, especially anything sent in anger during a dispute.
If the notice followed a dispute, this file is your evidence. There is no separate defence for a retaliatory notice, but the timing can help show there is no genuine plan to sell.
The 12-month ban on re-letting after a Ground 1A notice
Serving a Ground 1A notice starts a restricted period, running from the day of service until 12 months after the earliest court date the notice gave. During that window the landlord must not re-let or market the property for letting, as an ordinary tenancy, a licence, or a holiday let on a site like Airbnb.
Breaching the ban is an offence. A landlord cannot evict you "to sell" and then quietly put the house back on the rental market at a higher price.
Can I claim compensation if the sale turns out to be fake?
If your landlord re-let or marketed the property during the restricted period, or misused Ground 1A and you gave up the tenancy by agreement within 4 months of the notice without a court order, two things can happen.
Your council can prosecute, or impose a financial penalty of up to £40,000 instead. Report what you find, whether or not you still live there.
And you can apply to the First-tier Tribunal for a rent repayment order of up to 2 years' rent. You do not need to still live in the property, and you have 2 years from the offence to apply. If you paid £1,300 a month yourself for the last 2 years of your tenancy, that is up to £31,200, less any Universal Credit or Housing Benefit paid towards your rent. If your tenancy was shorter, the cap is the rent you paid. Our guide on how to apply for a rent repayment order walks through the tribunal process.
If the landlord won a court order by misleading the court about the sale, you can also ask the court for compensation under section 12 of the Housing Act 1988.
What to do this week if you've had a Ground 1A notice
- Check the form and the dates. Prescribed Section 8 form, Ground 1A stated, at least 4 months' notice, and an earliest court-action date on the notice about a year or more after your tenancy began.
- Check your deposit protection. A deposit that was not protected, or protected without the prescribed information, can block the possession claim and gives you a separate compensation claim.
- Save the landlord's messages about the sale and anything that shows what prompted the notice.
- Set a weekly reminder to search the address on Rightmove and Zoopla, and screenshot what you find.
Landlord moving back in instead of selling? That is Ground 1, covered in our sister guide.
If your landlord's "sale" looks thin, Remedy can check the notice against the Ground 1A requirements and tell you whether you have a rent repayment claim worth pursuing.
