When your building changes hands
Answers
The accommodation survives. The paperwork proving it sometimes does not.
The accommodation continues
A new owner takes the building subject to existing tenancies, and an accommodation granted as part of yours is part of the arrangement they bought. They cannot simply reimpose a pet policy on a tenant who was excepted from it.
Where the difficulty actually comes from
Records. A new manager inheriting a thin file may have no idea an accommodation was ever granted, particularly where it was agreed verbally or by an email nobody filed. From their side it looks like a tenant breaching the pet policy, and the first you hear is a notice.
What to do
- Keep your own copy of the request and the approval. This is the situation it exists for.
- When the building changes hands, send the new manager a short note with the documentation attached, before anything goes wrong.
- If you only ever had verbal approval, get the position confirmed in writing now rather than later.
- If your documentation has lapsed, this is the moment it starts to matter. Renew it.
Common questions
- Can a new owner make me reapply?
- Asking for current documentation is reasonable. Running the whole process again for a settled, working accommodation is not, and a blanket demand to all tenants with animals is worse.