This is a question to the blog clinic from Angela whose son is a tenant
My son is quadriplegic. He has been renting a property for nearly eight years.
The landlord wants to sell. I am happy to buy the house but it does need a lot of work, ie retwiring, etc.. The house is on a double plot which is reflecting the asking price.
Does he have any rights will may enable me purchase at a realistic figure?
Answer
You don’t say what type of tenancy your son has but I am assuming it is an assured shorthold tenancy.
In which case the answer is, I am afraid, no.
A tenants rights all relate to the tenancy. If a tenant wants to buy a property he only has leverage to negotiate a better price if the landlord wants to sell with vacant possession and the tenant refuses to vacate.
With an assured shorthold tenancy, the tenant will only be able to delay the sale for the time it takes for the landlord to serve a section 21 notice and bring a claim for possession through the courts.
This will, for a periodic tenancy, probably take in the order of five months. If the tenant has a fixed term, then it may take longer if the fixed term has more than two months to run.
If your son had had a protected or an assured tenancy, where tenants have stronger security of tenure then he would have been in a better position to negotiate, as it would have been harder (and in some cases impossible) for the landlord to evict him. However, no protected tenancies have been created since January 1989, and all standard tenancies have been ASTs by default since February 1997.
I am afraid that, so far as I am aware, your son does not have any additional rights due to his disability. Particularly after the case of McDonald v. McDonald where the Supreme Court held that (effectively) there is no human rights act defence to a section 21 claim where a disabled tenant is being evicted by a private landlord.