Ground 1A: the 12-month rule that catches landlords who want to sell

Updated July 2026 · Based on official gov.uk guidance · General information, not legal advice

Ground 1A is the mandatory possession ground that replaced most of what Section 21 used to do for landlords who want to sell. It sounds simple — you intend to sell, so you get your property back. What catches people out is the price tag attached to using it: a restricted period during which you cannot let, licence or even market the property for letting. Get the timing wrong and you have a vacant house you are legally barred from renting out.

What Ground 1A requires

It is a mandatory ground, which means if you prove it, the court must order possession — there is no reasonableness test. But there are three hard gates:

• Four months' notice. Your Section 8 notice has to give at least four months before the earliest date you can start court proceedings.
• The 12-month protected period. The possession date in your notice cannot fall within the first 12 months of the tenancy. In practice that means you cannot usefully serve notice until around month eight.
• Genuine intention to sell. You need to be able to evidence it — estate agent instruction, valuation, correspondence. "I might sell" is not the ground.

The bit that costs money: the restricted period

This is the part landlords miss. The restricted period does not start when you get possession. The clock starts on the date you serve the Section 8 notice specifying Ground 1A. It runs until 12 months after the date specified in that notice as the earliest date proceedings could begin. That is how the Act is drafted, and how housing barristers are reading it.

Because Ground 1A needs four months' notice, that is a minimum of roughly 16 months from the day you serve during which the property is out of action as a rental.

"What if the sale falls through?"

This is the single most common question we see, and the answer is uncomfortable: the restriction still applies. A collapsed chain, a down-valuation, a buyer pulling out — none of it releases you. You either wait out the restricted period with the property empty — or sell it empty at whatever the market gives you — or you risk the penalty and the prosecution set out above. Nobody is going to give you a retrospective exemption because the market turned.

The practical consequence: do not serve a Ground 1A notice as a "let's see" move. Serve it when you are committed to selling, ideally with the property already prepared and an agent instructed, so the four months of notice runs in parallel with getting the sale ready rather than after it.

Selling with the tenant in place

You do not have to evict to sell. A tenanted property can be sold to another landlord, and the tenancy transfers with it. The costs: you will typically take a discount against vacant-possession value, and your buyer pool shrinks to investors. The gains: you keep the rent coming in, you avoid the four-month notice, and you avoid the restricted period entirely. For a lot of landlords, once you price in 16 months of lost rent, running costs and council tax on an empty property, selling tenanted is the better arithmetic. Run the numbers both ways before you serve anything.

More guides

Tenant leaves early after a Ground 1A notice · Unprotected deposit blocks your eviction · You've got a possession order — what next?