What actually changed on 1 May 2026
The single most useful fact about a "we're selling, sorry" eviction is this: once your landlord serves a Ground 1A notice, they are barred from letting the flat to anyone else for roughly sixteen months. Tanfield Chambers' analysis of the new section 16M sets it out plainly. The restricted period starts on the day the notice is served and ends twelve months after the earliest possession date stated in that notice. Add the four-month notice period and you get sixteen months of enforced emptiness, or a genuine sale.
Very few landlords who are bluffing have thought that far ahead.
Section 21 went on 1 May 2026. Generation Rent confirms landlords can no longer serve those notices, all fixed terms have ended, and every eviction now needs a stated ground under Section 8. Ground 1A, the sale ground, is the one most London tenants will meet, and it is the one most often accepted without a single question asked.
What Ground 1A requires
Schedule 1 of the Renters' Rights Act 2025 defines the ground narrowly: the landlord must intend to sell a freehold or leasehold interest in the property, or grant a lease of more than 21 years that cannot be ended early by notice. Wanting to "get the flat back", wanting to remortgage, or being fed up with the boiler are not Ground 1A.
Three constraints sit on top of the definition, and each one is a place where a defective notice falls over.
| Requirement | What it means in practice | Where a tenant can check it |
|---|---|---|
| Twelve-month protected period | Neither Ground 1 nor Ground 1A can be used in the first year of a tenancy. As lettings platform August puts it, the earliest possession date in the notice must fall more than a year after the tenancy began | Your tenancy agreement start date against the date in the notice |
| Four months' notice | Under the new section 8(4AA) of the Housing Act 1988, Ground 1A carries a four-month notice period, served on the prescribed form | Count the days from service, not from the date typed on the letter |
| Deposit protection | Martin & Co's guidance on the new regime notes the court cannot make a possession order if the deposit was never protected in an approved scheme | The scheme's own online checker, using your address and deposit amount |
| Restricted period afterwards | No letting on a tenancy of 21 years or less, no licence for money (which catches short lets), and no marketing for letting, by the landlord or anyone acting for them | Rightmove, Zoopla, SpareRoom and Airbnb, checked monthly after you leave |
The restriction on re-letting is the part landlords and agents underestimate. The Independent Landlord's summary of the penalties regime is blunt about its reach: it binds the letting agent and any intermediary as well as the owner, and it covers short-let platforms, not just conventional tenancies.
What to ask the letting agent, in writing, this week
Ask by email, never by phone. You want a dated document trail, and you want the agent to have to write down something that is either true or evidence.
A version that works:
Thank you for the notice dated [date]. So that I can plan, please confirm in writing: (1) which ground the notice relies on and the exact possession date specified; (2) whether the property is being marketed for sale, and by which agent; (3) the date the marketing began or is expected to begin; (4) your understanding of the restricted period that applies after a Ground 1A notice. I am aware that letting or marketing the property for letting during that period is an offence under section 16J of the Housing Act 1988.
That last sentence does a lot of quiet work. An agent who did not know about section 16J will now go and read it, and an agent who did know will be careful about what they promise.
Then ask, separately, for the sale evidence: the estate agency instruction letter, the draft sales particulars, or the name of the conveyancing solicitor. None of this is legally compulsory for the landlord to hand over before a hearing. Refusal is not proof of anything. But a landlord genuinely selling usually has all three within a fortnight, because they want the sale.
Checking the story yourself
The title register. HM Land Registry sells the register entry for almost any registered title online for a few pounds, downloaded as a PDF. It gives you the registered proprietor, the price paid on the last transfer, and any charges. Two things matter for a Ground 1A case: whether the person named on your tenancy agreement actually owns the interest they claim to be selling, and whether a sale later completes (the register updates with the new proprietor and the price paid). If your former landlord is still the registered proprietor eighteen months later and the flat is occupied, you have the beginnings of a case.
Listing history. Portal listing histories are public and archived by third-party trackers. Save screenshots with visible dates, or use a print-to-PDF so the URL and date are captured. Set a monthly reminder for the year after you leave, and check the address on both sales and lettings portals. Also check room-share sites: a landlord who lets the flat room by room is still letting it.
Your neighbours. The most reliable evidence in these cases is usually a neighbour who tells you new people moved in six weeks after you left. Get a phone number before you go.
Your rent record. If a rent repayment order becomes worth pursuing, you will need to prove every payment you made. Bank statements do this, and if you pay through one of the platforms covered in our piece on rent payment apps and open banking, export the full ledger before you close the account.
When the sale turns out to be fiction
Two separate offences sit in section 16J of the Housing Act 1988, and both were created on 1 May 2026.
The first is misusing a possession ground. Starck Uberoi's note on the new possession rules describes it as knowingly or recklessly relying on a ground the landlord does not properly believe applies, carrying a civil penalty of up to £40,000 or prosecution with an unlimited fine. The statutory guidance on civil penalties, per the same analysis, sets a starting figure of £30,000 where a landlord used a ground they knew or should have known could not be met. In a written parliamentary answer reported by Property118, the housing minister Matthew Pennycook gave the government's own example of the conduct in scope: a landlord who used a ground knowing a court would not grant possession on it, with the tenant leaving inside the four months and no order ever being made.
Read that again if you left quietly. You do not need to have been through a court hearing for the offence to have been committed.
The second offence is breaching the restricted period by re-letting or marketing for letting. Tanfield's analysis confirms the same maximum: a local housing authority can impose a financial penalty of up to £40,000 where it is satisfied beyond reasonable doubt, or the landlord can be prosecuted.
Then there is the money that comes to you rather than the council. The NRLA's guide to rent repayment orders records that for offences committed on or after 1 May 2026, the First-tier Tribunal can order up to two years' rent to be repaid, up from twelve months, and that the section 16J offences are on the qualifying list. Justice for Tenants adds that for post-May offences an application can be made against superior landlords in the chain, not only the person named on your agreement. The Act also extended the window for giving notice of intended proceedings from twelve months to two years.
On a £2,300 London rent, two years is £55,200. That is the number to keep in mind when someone tells you enforcement is pointless.
What the rent tells you
A re-let at a higher rent is not itself an offence, but it is the signal that turns suspicion into a case worth filing, and you need a benchmark for "higher".
The ONS Price Index of Private Rents, in its August 2026 release, put London's annual rent inflation at 3.0% in the twelve months to July 2026, up from 2.2% in the twelve months to June, with average London rent at £2,317. That is the lowest-inflation region in England for most of this year, against 6.3% in the North East.
So the arithmetic is unforgiving for a landlord improvising a story. If your rent was £1,900 and the flat reappears at £2,150, that is a 13% jump in a market moving at 3%. No tribunal is obliged to draw a conclusion from it, but it is the sort of gap that makes a council's environmental health team open a file.
Sale prices point the other way. The same ONS series has recorded consecutive annual falls in London house prices through 2026, which is worth remembering if a landlord claims a sale collapsed. Chains do break. The restricted period does not care: it runs from the notice, not from the sale.
Enforcement is a postcode question
Councils enforce this, and councils differ wildly.
A Freedom of Information investigation in March 2026, summarised in the public record of the Act, surveyed 20 major councils. Only five (Liverpool, Sheffield, Newcastle, Bristol and Brighton and Hove) confirmed they were operationally ready for 1 May. Four said their enforcement plans were still incomplete and seven missed the statutory deadline for responding at all. Liverpool had allocated 34 full-time equivalent enforcement staff. Bristol had budgeted for two.
Not one of the five ready councils was a London borough.
The London Assembly's Housing Committee heard something similar in its March 2026 call for evidence, where ACORN's submission argued that the main challenge for London councils is actually using the enforcement powers they have, and that tenant reports will be the intelligence councils depend on. The same submission made the case for rent repayment orders as the mechanism that gives renters a direct reason to act rather than wait.
Which is the practical conclusion. Report it to the borough's private sector housing team, in writing, with your screenshots and dates. If they do nothing, the First-tier Tribunal route is yours alone and does not require the council's permission or participation.
Ministry of Justice figures cited in the same March coverage showed landlord possession claims falling 11% year on year to 21,458 in the final quarter of 2025, with a median 27 weeks from claim to repossession by county court bailiff. Four months' notice plus roughly six months of court time is a long way from "you need to be out by the end of the month", which is what a surprising number of London tenants are still being told.
Take the photographs before you hand back the keys, keep the notice, and diarise a portal check for the first of every month. If the flat you left in June is advertised again in November at £2,600, that screenshot is the most valuable document you own.
If you are already planning the move, our rundown of areas that work for young professionals is a reasonable place to start on where the money goes furthest.