Is it legally possible for a tenant to replace their landlord?

Question

I was wondering if a tenant feels their landlord has wronged them, if there could be any legal argument, even an unusual one, that if a person has established a residence somewhere to some non-trivial extent, they have some inherent right or claim to that as their residence or home, and it may be possible to remove the landlord rather than the landlord removing the tenant.

Eviction is really common so in general I think tenants own property like any other situation, for example, a company can fire employees, a hostel can kick out a guest, and so on. Still, are there any interesting examples of this happening? One could be some kind of community outreach / movement or special legal circumstance to allow someone to stay. Another could be some way of having some third party or organization purchase the property from the landlord.

Answer 1

Is it legally possible for a tenant to replace their landlord?

Generally not. The landlord-tenant relationship flows from the landlord's ownership of the property and the tenant can do nothing to change that (short of buying the land from the landlord in a voluntary transaction).

If the landlord were a government agency, the tenant could petition the government to put a different employee in charge of managing the lease, and if the landlord were a trust it is barely conceivable that the tenant could assist some other party in removing the trustee and replacing the trustee with another trustee (particularly if the trust was a charitable trust or the tenant was also a beneficiary of the trust).

But, generally speaking, this is not possible.

Answer 2

Jurisdiction: england-and-wales

There is no general right to do this. However, in some specific circumstances it can be possible to do this, or achieve a similar effect.

Leasehold enfranchisement

If you live in a flat and are a tenant under a lease (as opposed to a tenancy agreement), and meet various conditions, you can effect a compulsory purchase of your freehold under Section 1 of the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993.

As an alternative to removing the landlord altogether, there is the "right to manage" under Section 71 of the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002.

Local authority management orders

This applies where your property is either an HMO or a "Part 3 House" as defined in Section 146 of the Housing Act 2004. Without going into too many details, an HMO is a house in multiple occupation or certain blocks of flats which do not meet the requirements of the Building Regulations 2010, and a "Part 3 House" is any property which falls within a zone that the local authority has designated as a "selective licensing zone" (a zone in which landlords are required to have a licence before they can rent their property).

In such properties, the local authority can make an "interim management order" (applicable for no longer than 12 months) or a "final management order" (no longer than 5 years) which enables them to "[secure] the proper management of the house" - effectively permitting the council to take over management from the landlord.

There is both a duty and a right to make such orders and different conditions attach to each. The conditions which must be met for an interim management order are set out in Section 102 and for a final management order in Section 113. Broadly, these conditions relate the health and safety of the property and whether or not an HMO or Part 3 licence is capable of being issued.

Local authorities will generally use other measures available to them before considering management orders as a last resort.

Answer 3

Yes, it is legal to simply purchase the property you are renting from the current landlord, then sell it to a new landlord with the stipulation that they renew your old lease.