Valid temination of tenancy?

I recently informed a tenant that I was selling our house and that I would be sending her a termination of tenancy notice by registered post. I sent the termination the next day by registered post. I also sent it to her by email and also sent it by email to the RTB. I got back from holidays today and checked the tracking of the letter. It was not delivered as no one was home and she did not pick it up at the post office in the following week. It is now in the process of being returned. The fact I have proof I sent it by post and email is this a valid termination or should I start the process again and hand deliver it?

Did you make a statutory declaration as well as the NOT?

Yes.

Are you in a position to hand deliver it?
If so give it by hand and note by follow-up email “As handed to you in person at Xpm today, please find attached NOT”.

But you will probably need a new NOT and statutory declaration with the revised dates.

You'll likely need to start again with new dates; add 14 days to whatever you calculate from RTB website.

Do all of the following.

Post by recorded delivery - once you have a tracking number, An Post will show it as delivered. From memory, I think you can get an email as well.

Send pdf by email and send to your own email at the same time. That will give you a delivery time and date.

Hand deliver to the property; have some one with you who can photo the handover, or video you placing it in the letterbox.

If you choose, you can also send a PDF to your tenants phone via Whats App.

Phone your tenant & let them know NOT is on the way. Follow up with text message " confirming our phone call at 2pm Monday 18th April 2099" etc.

With all of this as documentary evidence, the tenant cannot claim they did not get notification.

I've said it previously, but I believe its better to serve NOT that you require property for your own use.

Edit to add: in the normal routine, you would not have to do all of these steps; but your tenant has established a certain truculent or possibly 'head-in-the-sand" attitude. So you need to cover all your bases.

Lorcan F said:

I recently informed a tenant that I was selling our house and that I would be sending her a termination of tenancy notice by registered post.

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I’m afraid that was a mistake and you will have to start the process again.

You should have sent the notice by certified mail.

Basically, you fill out a form and An Post certify that they have taken carriage of the letter for delivery.

There’s no point hand delivering the notice yourself - you can’t prove delivery.

There’s equally no point emailing a PDF of the notice - it has zero legal effect.

Please be very careful with the wording of your revised notice and your calculation of the notice period - it is incredibly easy to get these wrong.

Unless you really know what you doing, I would strongly recommend that you engage your solicitor to draft and issue the notice on your behalf.

Sarenco said:

There’s no point hand delivering the notice yourself - you can’t prove delivery.

There’s equally no point emailing a PDF of the notice - it has zero legal effect.

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Update: it was the High Court who recently accepted the claim of a tenant who refuted that any rental agreement existed.

If congruency exists in your actions, all will support evidence of delivery of the NOT, even if tenant tries to claim the dog ate the envelope.

If you hand deliver the termination notice, bring someone with you. Get them take photos of you putting the letter in the letter box. It is a bit of a rigmarole but to be 100% safe, take a picture of you holding the termination notice and statutory declaration, take a picture of you putting those in the envelope, then take a picture of you putting the envelope through the box.

Another option is express post. You pay a little bit extra but you will get a confirmation from An Post that the letter was delivered ie. put through the letter box. There is no need for anyone to be home. The postman just confirms that it was delivered to the house.

The RTB will accept a certificate of posting as good evidence that the notice issued on a particular day.

There really is no need for anything more elaborate than that.

Greenbook said:

Another option is express post. You pay a little bit extra but you will get a confirmation from A Post that the letter was delivered ie. put through the letter box. There is no need for anyone to be home. The postman just confirms that it was delivered to the house.

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In fact this is better than recorded delivery.

Tenant can’t act strategically and refuse acceptance or fail to collect at post office.

When I did an NOT I didn’t give the tenants an informal tip-off for fear of this.

Sarenco said:

There’s equally no point emailing a PDF of the notice - it has zero legal effect.

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I’m not so sure. The more evidence of notification the better if a tenant is strategically trying to avoid acceptance of the NOT.

Dr Strangelove said:

The more evidence of notification the better if a tenant is strategically trying to avoid acceptance of the NOT.

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You don’t need evidence that the tenant has received or accepted the notice.

Or evidence that the tenant has read and understood the notice.

You simply need evidence that the notice properly issued on a particular date.

A certificate from An Post is sufficient in that regard.

No need to over complicate things.