Which
condo is this, if you don't mind telling? I ask this because enblocs have very specific mechanisms in place for tenants, depending not just on your tenancy agreement but on the Collective Sale Agreement (CSA) that is agreed upon between your landlord/owner and the developer.
An enbloc process typically takes anything from a year (very rare) to 2 years. This means that the owner knows that the estate is going to be sold when he rented the unit out. That being the case, the owner will have to agree to certain terms that the CSA sets out with regards to tenants (if he's signing the CSA, if not, he'll have to agree to them at a later stage). Eg in our CSA, the landlord must insert clauses into the tenancy agreement that gives him the right to boot out the tenant with 2 mths notice.
You are effectively on the loosing end. Lots of tenants have the short end of the stick when they suddenly (unknowingly) realised that they just signed a tenancy for an estate that is going enbloc. You can blame your landlord for not telling you, or your agent for not telling you.
It upsets me when i hear of unethical landlords/agents who hope to squeeze every rental out of their enbloc's flat without informing the tenant that at any time they may have to move out.
So here's the sneaky way back at them. There's two important dates for any enbloc: Legal Completion and Vacant Possession. Legal Completion (LC) means that your owner will collect (say) 90-95% of his profits for selling his unit collectively. If he still has a tenant in the unit, he has until Vacant Possession (VP) to clear the tenant out. The VP is typically 3-6 mths after LC and is meant for landlords to inform tenants that they have to clear out or demolition will begin. Typically between LC and VP noises will escalate as the developer comes in to conduct soil tests, drilling, even building a showroom on the premises since legally, the
property belongs to them at LC.
IF a landlord does not evict the tenant by VP, the landlord has to pay massive penalties for delaying the handing over of the estate to the developer. We're talking easily thousands if not tens of thousands because he is delaying the redevelopment of that land. Which is why most CSAs would require the landlord to insert the eviction notice clause (2 mths notice). IF your landlord didn't do that, legally you can stay in the premises until the contract is up. You can then tell the landlord if he wants you out of there soon, he pay for moving costs (at the minimum) or in some cases, even more.
You do NOT want to stay there after legal completion. The place becomes a ghost town, maintenance gets run down etc. Have a look at this for some advice too:
Bearing in mind tons of
condos are going enbloc nowadays, having such information is crucial so you won't get shortchanged.
good luck!
best of luck!
