When Your Landlord Says 'I'm Selling': Ground 1A Rules

The arithmetic that matters most in a Ground 1A notice is not the four months you get to leave. It is sixteen. Under the new section 16M of the Housing Act 1988, the restricted period on re-letting starts the day the notice is served and runs for twelve months from the date the notice gives as the earliest possession proceedings can begin.

Tanfield Chambers reads that as a minimum sixteen months during which the landlord cannot let the flat, grant a licence for money, or market it for either purpose

. So if your flat is back on Rightmove at a higher rent in February, that is not bad luck. That is a criminal offence with your name attached to it.

Section 21 is now genuinely gone.

The Renters' Rights Act 2025 came into force on 1 May 2026, and the last date to issue court proceedings on a section 21 notice served before commencement was 31 July 2026

. Everything now runs through Section 8 and a named ground, and for London landlords who want a flat empty, the named ground is usually 1A.

Why more London landlords are reaching for the sale ground

The incentive structure is unusual at the moment.

ONS figures show average London house prices fell 2.5% in the year to June 2026, an improvement on the 3.1% fall in May, and the tenth consecutive month of annual declines in the capital, driven mainly by Inner London

. Central boroughs have taken the worst of it:

the ONS data put the average Westminster price at £854,000 in June 2026, down from £1,145,000 a year earlier, a fall of 25.4%

.

Rents went the other way.

The same ONS release has UK average private rents at £1,393 in July 2026, up 3.7% on the year, with the acceleration driven mainly by London

, and

London rents up around 3% in the year to July, against 2.2% a month earlier

.

A landlord watching capital values slide and rents climb has an obvious temptation: claim a sale, get vacant possession, quietly re-let at the new market rate. The Act anticipated exactly this, which is why the penalties are shaped the way they are.

What Ground 1A is and what it is not

Ground 1A is mandatory. If the landlord proves a genuine intention to sell the freehold or leasehold, or to grant a lease of more than 21 years, the court must make a possession order. There is no reasonableness test to argue about.

The constraints sit around it, not inside it.

Four months, under the new section 8(4AA)

| Four months | | Earliest use |

Cannot be used in the first 12 months of the tenancy; the notice cannot expire before the first anniversary

| Same twelve-month protected period | | Mandatory? | Yes | Yes | | Re-letting ban afterwards |

Twelve months from the possession date given in the notice

|

Twelve months, same restriction

|

In practice a landlord can serve after month eight, provided the notice does not expire before the end of month twelve

. If you have been in the flat six months and a Ground 1A notice lands with a possession date inside your first year, it is defective on its face.

The other thing tenants get wrong, constantly:

serving a Section 8 notice does not end the tenancy. It opens the gateway for a court to grant possession. Until a possession order is made or you leave voluntarily, rent is still due and repairs are still the landlord's job

. You do not have to be out on the date printed on the notice. Before you agree to go, speak to your borough's housing options team, because leaving before a court order can affect a later homelessness application.

What to check on the notice itself

Take a photograph of the envelope and the postmark, then work through this:

• Is it on the prescribed Section 8 form, with Ground 1A set out in full and particulars given? A notice that just says "landlord wants to sell" in a covering email is not a notice.
• Is the date given as the earliest date for proceedings at least four months after service?
• Does that date fall on or after the first anniversary of the tenancy?
• Are all the tenants named correctly, and is the landlord named the actual landlord rather than the managing agent?
• Did you receive the Renters' Rights Act Information Sheet?

Every landlord had to give tenants a copy of "The Renters' Rights Act Information Sheet 2026" by 31 May 2026, with a penalty of up to £7,000 per tenancy for missing it

. It is separate from the notice, but a landlord who skipped it has already shown you how carefully they read the Act.

Then email the letting agent one paragraph, and keep it dry: "Please confirm in writing the ground relied on, the date of service, the date specified for proceedings, and whether the property has been instructed for sale and with which agent." You want that answer on the record. If a sale never appears and the flat is re-advertised to let, that email is the first exhibit.

The re-letting restriction, in plain terms

The new section 16E prohibits letting the property on a tenancy of 21 years or less, granting a licence for money, or marketing it (or authorising anyone else to market it) for those purposes during the restricted period

. Marketing counts. The listing alone is the breach; nobody has to move in.

It applies whether or not the sale actually completes

. A landlord who serves Ground 1A in September, gets the flat empty, and watches the buyer pull out at Christmas still cannot let it until the restricted period expires. That is the whole point of the design.

How to check whether your old flat comes back

Do this on a calendar reminder, monthly, for a year after you leave. It takes ten minutes.

1. Portal alerts. Set saved searches on Rightmove, Zoopla and OnTheMarket for the exact postcode and bedroom count, both to rent and for sale. Listings for sale are lawful and expected. Listings to let are not.
2. Screenshot with the date visible. Capture the full listing page, the price, the agent, the photographs and the URL. Photographs are the giveaway, because agents reuse the old set. Save the file somewhere that keeps its metadata.
3. Check the Land Registry price paid data. It is free, published monthly, and shows completed sales by address. If the property sold, the ground was probably genuine and there is nothing to pursue. If eighteen months pass with no sale and a fresh let, you have a pattern.
4. Check the EPC register. Also free, searchable by postcode. A new certificate is needed for both a sale and a new let, so it proves nothing on its own, but the lodgement date tells you when something happened. If you were mid-dispute about the flat's efficiency before you left, our guide on how renters can use energy retrofit rules is worth a second read.
5. Keep your rent record. Any claim for money back is calculated on rent you actually paid, so you need statements, not memory. If you paid through one of the open banking rent apps, export the full history now rather than after you close the account.

Enforcement: who to tell and what you can get back

Three routes exist and they are not alternatives. A landlord can face all three.

Borough civil penalties. Report to the private rented sector or housing enforcement team at the council for the flat's borough, not your new one.

The council can impose a civil penalty of up to £7,000 for a first breach of the re-letting restriction and up to £40,000 for continued or repeated breaches

.

Shelter's legal guidance notes that prosecution is also available, with a maximum fine of £40,000 on conviction

. You get nothing directly from this, but it costs you nothing and boroughs increasingly act on portal evidence.

Rent repayment orders. This is the one that pays you.

For qualifying offences committed on or after 1 May 2026, the Renters' Rights Act raised the maximum recoverable from twelve to twenty-four months' rent, and the new offences include section 16J(1), knowingly or recklessly misusing a possession ground, and section 16J(2), letting or marketing a property within twelve months of using the moving-in or selling ground

.

The redress also reaches tenants who surrendered the tenancy within four months of a landlord misusing a ground

, so leaving early on the strength of a false sale claim does not shut you out. Applications go to the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber); an application fee applies and you can bring a claim without a solicitor.

Defending the possession claim itself. Rarely worth it if the sale is real, because the ground is mandatory. Worth it if the notice is defective on the dates.

How long any of this takes

Slowly, and more slowly in London.

Ministry of Justice statistics for April to June 2026 record a median of 27.1 weeks from landlord claim to repossession, down from 27.9 weeks in the same quarter of 2025

.

London courts handled 7,793 landlord claims and 5,440 orders in that quarter, 33% and 31% of the national totals

, and

private landlord repossessions were highest in Barking and Dagenham at 352 per 100,000 privately rented households

.

Read those numbers as a floor, not a schedule. Four months' notice plus a London queue measured in half a year means a landlord who serves in September is realistically looking at spring, assuming nothing is contested. That is leverage. It is also why some agents will push hard for a "voluntary" surrender with a small payment attached. If you are offered one, price it against a possible twenty-four month rent repayment order before you sign anything that waives your claims.

If the notice is valid and the sale is real, start looking now rather than at month three. Four months in a market where London rents are rising again is less time than it sounds, and the areas worth targeting are the ones where you can view on a weekday evening without crossing the river twice.