Selling A Tenanted Property: The Two Routes, And What Each One Costs In Time

Most articles about selling a let property argue about price. Almost none of them tell you what actually happens, in what order, and how long each step takes.

That is the more useful question, because the process is what decides the price. There are two ways out of a let property, and the difference between them is measurable in months.

Route A: end the tenancy, then sell the property empty. Route B: sell the property with the tenant in place.

This article walks the machinery of both, with every statutory statement referenced to the Act itself rather than to a summary of it. It describes the law in England.

To recover possession in order to sell, a landlord relies on Ground 1A, and the notice period is four months beginning with the date the notice is served. That comes from the Renters’ Rights Act 2025, section 3, which amends section 8 of the Housing Act 1988 to insert subsection (4AA).

Four months is the floor, not the expectation. Government guidance is explicit that notice may be served during the first twelve months of a new tenancy but cannot expire before those twelve months have ended, so a landlord in that position may need to give more than four months’ notice.

⚠️ You will often read that Ground 1A “cannot be used in the first twelve months”. That is a gloss and it is wrong in a way that costs you time. The restriction is on when the notice can expire, not on when it can be served.

If the tenant does not leave

Notice expiring is not the same as possession. If the tenant stays, the route is a possession claim in the county court, and the Ministry of Justice publishes what that takes.

Stage	Median time
Claim to order	8.0 weeks
Claim to warrant	15.9 weeks
Claim to repossession	26.4 weeks

Ministry of Justice, Mortgage and landlord possession statistics, January to March 2026. Accredited official statistics, England and Wales.

These are medians, so half of cases took longer, and the clock starts when the claim is issued, which is after the four months has already run. They are also not a single total: most tenancies end without a claim ever being issued, and those cases are not in the table. What it shows is the shape of the downside.

And a restricted period follows

Where a landlord relies on Ground 1 or Ground 1A, a restricted period applies, during which letting the property, licensing it for money and marketing it to let are prohibited (Renters’ Rights Act 2025 section 13, inserting section 16E into the Housing Act 1988).

⛔ We are not going to tell you how long that period lasts. A figure circulates widely and we could not trace it to primary legislation: section 16E uses the defined term without stating its length. If the length matters to your decision, check your position with your solicitor, and treat any number you are quoted online as unsourced until somebody shows you where it comes from.

The strategic point is not the duration but the existence. Route A temporarily removes the option of putting a tenant back in. If the sale then stalls, the property is empty, earning nothing, and cannot be re-let for a period.

A sale in which the tenancy continues relies on neither Ground 1 nor Ground 1A. Both prohibitions in section 16E are expressly conditioned on relying on one of those grounds, so neither is engaged.

That is worth being precise about, because it is easy to overclaim. The point is not that selling with a tenant is somehow approved. It is that the statutory machinery built to control possession-for-sale does not apply to a transaction that does not seek possession. The clock above never starts.

The tenant does not move, does not sign a new agreement, and in the ordinary case experiences the sale only as a change in who receives the rent. For the seller that has a plain financial consequence: the rent runs to completion. On Route A the income stops when the tenant leaves. On Route B there is no void at all.

A vacant house is priced on what someone will pay to live in it. A let property is priced on what it already pays.

These are the steps that sit after the handshake, and they are where tenanted sales go wrong.

1. The tenant must be told in writing who the new landlord is, with the new landlord’s name and address. The deadline is the next rent day, or the end of two months from the assignment where that rent day falls inside it (Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, section 3(1)).
2. Failing to do it is a summary offence, not a technicality (section 3(3)).
3. ⭐ Until that notice is given, the outgoing landlord is still liable to the tenant for breaches of the tenancy, and where the new landlord is also liable the two are jointly and severally liable (section 3(3A) and (3B)). The notice can be given by either party, which means the seller can close their own exposure by sending it themselves rather than waiting on the buyer.
4. An address for service must be given, or rent otherwise due is treated for all purposes as not being due until the landlord complies (Landlord and Tenant Act 1987, section 48).
5. The deposit has to stay protected. A deposit must be in an authorised scheme within 30 days of receipt, and on a sale it has to be moved or re-registered so the tenant holds current prescribed information naming the right landlord. The mechanics differ between schemes, so confirm which scheme holds it first.

Of those five, number three is the one worth acting on today if you are mid-sale. It costs a letter.

Search for how much a tenant takes off a property’s value and you will find confident percentages. We went looking for the research underneath them.

We read five sources giving five different ranges. Every one was published by a commercial firm with an interest in the answer, and not one named a valuation study, a dataset or a valuation body as its source. They disagreed by a margin wide enough that quoting any of them would have been arbitrary.

So we are not going to repeat a number we cannot stand behind, and that is worth saying out loud: the most widely quoted statistic about selling a tenanted property does not appear to have a public evidence base. If somebody quotes you a firm figure, the useful question is not whether it sounds plausible. It is: who measured that, on how many properties, and when?

What can be said is structural. Route A carries a four-month statutory floor, a possession route with a 26.4-week median if it reaches court, a period in which the property cannot be re-let, and a void at the end. Whatever the discount is, that is what it is being weighed against, and most conversations about the discount never put anything on the other side of the scale.

A tenanted property is priced on the income it already produces. Here is that calculation on one real property.

Yorkshire. A freehold block of 16 apartments, fully let. Recorded rent £11,915 per calendar month. Asking price £1,500,000.

£11,915 x 12 = £142,980 a year
£142,980 / £1,500,000 = 0.0953 = 9.5% gross

Real property, details anonymised, region only. Figures from our own listing record, as at 14 August 2026. Not an availability claim.

Nothing in that calculation asks what the block would fetch empty. That figure is gross, before mortgage, management, maintenance, insurance, voids and tax (net yield, and why gross is not the whole answer), and it is an asking price rather than an achieved one. But it shows what the buyer is actually doing, which is why the tenancy paperwork is a pricing input rather than an administrative afterthought.

Three published findings put a frame around all of the above, and they are worth reading alongside what the buyer is looking at.

The English Private Landlord Survey 2024, an Official Statistic commissioned by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government with a responding sample of over 9,000 landlords in England, found that 31% of landlords planned to decrease the size of their portfolio within two years, including 16% who planned to sell all their properties. Only 7% planned to increase. The decrease figure was 16% in 2018 and 22% in 2021.

A poll of National Residential Landlords Association members by the research consultancy Pegasus Insight, across 631 online interviews between 9 March and 3 April 2026, found that 21% of landlords had sold property in the period covered against 7% who had purchased. Three times as many sellers as buyers. The same research found 58% of landlords reporting tenant demand as very or quite strong, which is the part that keeps a let property saleable.

And Hamptons has reported that 23.0% of landlord purchases were of previously let property, a record.

Read together: more landlords are selling, demand for the tenancy itself is holding up, and the buyer on the other side of the table is more often another landlord than an owner-occupier. That has a direct consequence for your price. The person valuing your property is running a yield calculation. They are not imagining their furniture in it.

“Most people look at the deal and ask one question, what’s the yield? But that’s not actually the question. The question is, what does this deal actually look like in 12 months’ time?”

James Donohue, founder, Landlord Property Exchange

Four practical readings, taken only from what is above.

Count the clock before you count the discount. Four months is the statutory floor on Route A, and the possession statistics describe what happens when it does not go smoothly. Any comparison between the two routes that leaves the calendar out of it is not a comparison.

The rent is the thing that does not stop on Route B. For a property that is let and performing, the income between the decision and completion is real money, and on Route A it is money you are choosing to forgo.

A tenancy in good order is an asset in the negotiation. A clean rent record, a written tenancy, a protected deposit and current certificates are the evidence behind the income. They are what turns a projected yield into an observed one, and the observed one is worth more.

Send the notice yourself. If you are already mid-sale, the single cheapest thing on this page is the written notice to your tenant naming the new landlord. Your liability runs until it is given, and you are allowed to be the one who gives it. If you are still deciding, work through the five questions before you sell.

Can I sell my property with the tenant still in it? Yes, and selling with the tenant in place is a route in its own right. A tenancy does not block a sale. The buyer takes the property subject to the existing tenancy, the tenant does not have to move or sign a new agreement, and the rent continues throughout.

How much notice do I have to give if I want to sell with vacant possession? Four months under Ground 1A, beginning with the date the notice is served (Renters’ Rights Act 2025, section 3). If the tenancy is in its first twelve months the notice cannot expire before those twelve months have ended, so more than four months may be needed.

How long does a possession claim take if the tenant does not leave? The median time from claim to landlord repossession was 26.4 weeks in January to March 2026, on Ministry of Justice accredited official statistics for England and Wales. Half of cases took longer, and that clock starts after the notice period has already run.

Can I re-let the property if the sale falls through after I have served notice? Not immediately. Relying on Ground 1 or Ground 1A triggers a restricted period during which letting, licensing for money and marketing to let are prohibited (section 16E, Housing Act 1988). We do not state the length of that period because we could not trace it to primary legislation. Check your position with your solicitor.

How much less is a tenanted property worth than an empty one? We cannot give you a reliable single figure and we would be careful of anyone who does. We looked for the research behind the ranges in circulation and found five commercial sources, none of which named a valuation study or dataset. What we can tell you is what the alternative route costs in time, which is above.

Who buys tenanted property? Predominantly other landlords and property investors. Hamptons has reported that 23.0% of landlord purchases were of previously let property, a record.

Does the property have to be listed publicly? No. LP Exchange handles selling off-market, so a property is not listed on the open portals and does not carry a public listing history.

Every statutory statement above is referenced to primary legislation on legislation.gov.uk and was read on 14 August 2026: Renters’ Rights Act 2025 sections 3 and 13, Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 section 3, and Landlord and Tenant Act 1987 section 48. The court timings come from the Ministry of Justice, Mortgage and landlord possession statistics: January to March 2026, accredited official statistics covering England and Wales. The market findings name their publisher and sample size where they appear.

This article describes the law in England. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland operate different tenancy regimes and the timings here do not transfer.

This article is general information about how a tenanted sale works. It is not legal, financial, tax or investment advice, and it is not a valuation of any individual property. Always take independent advice on your own position before acting.