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I have been living in a brussels' house for 3 years and 6 months so far. Under a 3,6,9 contract. My landlord just announced me that he is forced to return earlier than agreed and want to ocupoy the house. He made the announcement 6 months in advanced of the date of his return. We are a large family. And we are already searching for a new house. We have spotted one and the owner asks for immediate move. Within 3 weeks. Do I have to communicate my present landlord my intention to move well in advanced? One month as I have read in some forum? Could it be less than that? Would I get penalized? Thank you so much in advanced for anyone's help and/or advice
If you have been given 6 months notice, you have the right to give 6 weeks counter notice.
You ring up, give notice today, confirm with a registered letter. Then you can move out when you want, but you must pay another 6 weeks rent. It should say this in your contract.
Your landlord can give you a 6 month notice for him or a close member of his family can move in, you are also allowed to give a counter-notice giving only 1 month notice (and not 6!) to vacuate the property yourself. You do not have to pay penalties in this case and you can move kind of straight away. Of course it has to be done by registered letter and the one month period starts from the next first day of the month (March 1st?).
It is not always written in your contract but you can find clear references online if you look into the PDF brochure Code du Logement (Google it).
I am 100% sure of this as I received the counter-notice myself and it was all according to the law. In theory you are in the unfortunate position of having to look for an apartment so the laws allows you to quickly seal a new deal and the landlord has foresee the possibiity of not receiving rent payments for some remaining months.
I stand corrected - You do have a 1 month counter notice. Given that it does not explicitly say that it has to start on the 1st of the month, I would disagree with R and suggest that it would start immediately after you sent the letter.
http://www.ejustice.just.fgov.be/cgi_loi/loi_a1.pl?language=fr&la=F&cn=2...(text+contains+(%27%27))#LNK0083
"Lorsque le bailleur met fin au contrat conformément aux paragraphes 2 à 4, le preneur peut lui aussi, à tout moment, mettre fin au bail moyennant un congé d'un mois. "
I agree with J, you can give just a month's notice to leave at any time, the normal complete calendar month rule is irrelevant in this case. The landlord might even be quite happy to reduce that month as he wishes to move back in because of a change of circumstances.
Thanks J and Becasse. You are right and i'll take notice of that.
My sources (Code du Logement) didn't mention "à tout moment" so i assumed that the 1st of the month rule had to be respected :
"Si le bailleur exerce l’une des facultés de résiliation décrites au point a) (occupation personnelle, travaux, absence de motif mais indemnité), le preneur peut lui-même donner au bailleur un préavis d’une durée limitée à un mois et sans aucune indemnité même si ce « contrepréavis » intervient pendant les trois premières années du bail. Ceci ne dispense pas le bailleur de respecter le motif pour lequel il a mis fin au bail et de payer les indemnités éventuellement dues".
