Can I Evict a Tenant to Sell My House? Ground 1A Explained

Can I Evict a Tenant to Sell My House? Ground 1A Explained

Yes. Ground 1A of Schedule 2 to the Housing Act 1988, inserted by the Renters' Rights Act 2025, lets a private landlord seek possession to sell the property. The tenancy must have begun at least 12 months before the date specified in the notice, the notice period is four months, and re-letting is then restricted.

This article is for general information purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Landlords should seek independent legal advice for their specific circumstances. It describes the position in England.

What Ground 1A actually requires

Ground 1A is a mandatory ground, meaning that if its conditions are met the court must order possession, without a separate reasonableness test. The conditions set out in Schedule 2 to the Housing Act 1988 are that the landlord seeking possession intends to sell a freehold or leasehold interest in the property, or to grant a lease of more than 21 years, and that the current tenancy began at least one year before the relevant date.

The ground is not available to social landlords, including registered providers and registered social landlords, and it does not apply to tenancies that transitioned from the Rent Act 1977 or the Rent (Agriculture) Act 1976. There is one exception to the one year condition, where notice of a compulsory acquisition has been given and the landlord intends to sell to the acquiring authority.

Intending to sell means what it says. Serving a Ground 1A notice without a genuine intention to sell is where the penalties discussed below begin.

The 12 month protected period, and when you can actually serve

The one year condition is measured to the relevant date, which Schedule 2 defines for this ground as the date specified in the Section 8 notice as the earliest date proceedings can begin, not the date the notice is served. The statute also states that both the first day of the tenancy and the relevant date count in the calculation.

Because Ground 1A carries a four month notice period, this has a practical consequence. A landlord can serve the notice from around month eight of the tenancy, so long as the date specified in the notice lands on or after the tenancy's first anniversary. A worked example: for a tenancy that began on 1 June 2026, a Ground 1A notice served on 1 February 2027 specifying 2 June 2027 would satisfy both the four month notice period and the one year condition.

Getting this arithmetic wrong invalidates the notice, and with it four months of waiting. Serving even a day early on the specified date is the kind of error courts are unlikely to overlook on a mandatory ground.

The notice: Form 3A, four months, then a 12 month window

A Ground 1A notice must be served on the prescribed form, Form 3A, with the ground and its particulars stated, and must give at least four months' notice under section 8(4AA) of the Housing Act 1988. Our guide to Form 3A and how to complete it covers the form itself, and the notice periods for every other ground are collected in our Section 8 notice periods table.

Once served, the notice has a shelf life. Proceedings must begin within 12 months of service under section 8(3)(c), so the usable window for issuing a claim runs from the specified date to the first anniversary of service, roughly eight months on a standard Ground 1A notice.

What the court will want to see about the sale

The landlord must prove, on the balance of probabilities, a genuine intention to sell at the date of the hearing, and the statute does not prescribe a fixed list of evidence. In practice, contemporaneous documents are what make the intention credible: an estate agent's instruction or market appraisal, correspondence with a conveyancer, a memorandum of sale if one exists, and anything showing the decision to sell predates or explains the notice.

Because the ground is new, there is not yet a settled body of case law on what will and will not suffice, and courts will decide on the facts of each case. A landlord whose paperwork shows the sale story assembled the week before the hearing should expect scrutiny, particularly as tenants and their advisers are alive to the misuse offences described below.

The catch: you cannot re-let if the sale falls through

Relying on Ground 1A triggers a statutory restriction on re-letting and re-marketing the property, under sections 16E and 16M of the Housing Act 1988, and it applies whether or not the tenant ever leaves. The restricted period runs from the day the notice is served until 12 months after the date specified in the notice, which makes the practical blackout at least 16 months from service on a standard notice.

Breach is a serious matter, with financial penalties of up to £40,000 and exposure to rent repayment orders, and the restriction catches marketing as well as letting, including authorising an agent to market. The full mechanics, the exceptions, and the arithmetic are set out in our companion guide to the section 16M restricted period.

The commercial consequence deserves emphasis. A landlord who serves a Ground 1A notice and then cannot sell is not free to return the property to the rental market for well over a year, so the ground suits a committed sale, not a market test.

The alternative: selling with the tenant in place

Ground 1A is not the only route to a sale, and for many landlords it is not the best one. Nothing in the legislation prevents selling a tenanted property to another investor with the tenant in occupation, in which case the buyer takes over as landlord, no possession proceedings are needed, and the section 16M restriction never arises because the ground is never relied on.

The trade-offs are commercial rather than legal. Tenanted sales typically reach a narrower market of investor buyers and can price below vacant possession value, against which sits an uninterrupted rent stream, no four month notice, no court stage, and no 16 month exposure if a buyer withdraws. A landlord weighing the two routes is really weighing a possible price premium against roughly a year of process and risk, and independent valuation advice on both bases is worth obtaining before serving anything.

Ground 1: moving back in, and who counts as family

Ground 1 is the companion mandatory ground for a landlord who requires the property as the only or principal home of themselves or close family, and it shares the same structure: a 12 month protected period measured to the relevant date, a four month notice period, and the same re-letting restriction on misuse. The family members covered are listed in the ground itself: the landlord's spouse, civil partner or cohabiting partner, and the landlord's parents, grandparents, siblings, children and grandchildren, plus the children and grandchildren of the landlord's partner.

The occupier must genuinely require the property as their only or principal home. As with Ground 1A, the intention is tested at the hearing, and using the ground to remove a tenant without the family move ever happening is an offence under section 16J of the Housing Act 1988.

Ground 4A: student HMOs and the summer window

Ground 4A is the mandatory ground built for the student market, and it is deliberately narrow. It applies only where the property is or is in an HMO, every joint tenant was a full-time student, or reasonably believed to be about to become one, when the tenancy was entered into, and the landlord gave a written statement before the tenancy began that possession might be sought on this basis to re-let to students.

Two timing conditions do the work. The date specified in the notice must fall between 1 June and 30 September, keeping evictions aligned to the academic cycle, and the gap between entering the tenancy and the tenant's entitlement to possession must be six months or less, which limits distant advance lettings. The notice period is four months, so a landlord targeting a summer possession date needs to serve by the preceding February or so. How these grounds fit into the wider Section 8 framework is covered in our overview of Section 8 notices and the grounds landlords can use.

Penalties for getting it wrong

Misusing these grounds is not just a failed claim, it is an enforcement event. A local housing authority can impose a civil penalty of up to £7,000 for relying on a ground without a reasonable belief that possession could be obtained, where the tenant then surrenders the tenancy within four months. Knowing or reckless misuse, and breach of the re-letting restriction, are criminal offences under section 16J of the Housing Act 1988, punishable by an unlimited fine on summary conviction, with a civil penalty of up to £40,000 available as an alternative to prosecution.

On top of that, both misuse of a possession ground and breach of the letting and marketing rules are offences on which the First-tier Tribunal can make a rent repayment order of up to 24 months' rent. The wider penalty landscape under the Act is set out in our Renters' Rights Act civil penalties table.

The mistakes that sink Ground 1A notices

The recurring errors are all date errors. Specifying a date less than four months after service, specifying a date before the tenancy's first anniversary, miscounting the anniversary itself by forgetting that both the first day and the relevant date are included, and letting the 12 month proceedings window lapse after service each invalidate or exhaust the notice.

Beyond dates, the common failures are particulars that do not actually state the intended sale, notices served by only some of several joint landlords without care over who the ground names, and marketing the property to let while the notice is live, which is itself a breach of the restriction rather than a mere tactical error. Since the ground is mandatory when done correctly, precision is rewarded, and every one of these errors is avoidable at the drafting stage.

A Ground 1A or Ground 1 notice stands or falls on dates and documents: when the tenancy began, when the notice was served, what date it specified, and what evidence sits behind the stated intention. LLCR's Form 3A notice builder works these dates through for each property, and its document vault keeps the service record alongside the tenancy file. Try the free compliance checker to see where a property stands first.