Unfortunately, situations arise where tenants do not move out when the landlord wants them to. It is therefore important to have agreed on how eviction can take place.

The reason why the landlord wants access to the premises may be due to a breach of the lease agreement. Alternatively, it may be because the lease term has expired.

The rules for this are set out in the Tenancy Act and the Enforcement Act. These contain strict provisions for both residential and commercial premises.

How to evict a tenant?

It can often be tempting to change locks or other things to lock a tenant out. However, this is illegal.

An eviction, referred to in the law as a "deviation," shall be carried out with the assistance of the bailiff, who has the authority to lock a dwelling or premises so that the tenant cannot gain access.

What grounds does the bailiff require in order to assist?

In order to demand eviction, grounds for enforcement are required. Normally, this will be a court ruling. It is not sufficient to claim that the tenant has breached the agreement or that the lease term has expired.

This would normally be very time-consuming, and therefore the legislator has allowed for such a basis for enforcement to be agreed upon when entering into the agreement, cf. Section 13-2 of the Enforcement Act.

This agreed referral will save the landlord a lengthy and often costly court case.

The bailiff will then be able to assess whether the agreed basis for deviation exists. In that case, enforcement can proceed without a court order.

How do you proceed?

When the landlord believes that there has been a breach of contract or that the lease has expired, a notice must be sent with a 14-day deadline for voluntary vacating. If this does not happen, eviction will take place.

If this deadline is exceeded without the claim being met, the landlord may submit a request for compulsory eviction to the bailiff, who will then carry out the physical eviction.

Once this has been completed, the lease will be terminated, even if the tenant wishes to settle the account afterwards.

If the tenant pays all outstanding amounts before the eviction is carried out, the eviction will be averted. The tenancy will continue unchanged.

How else can you proceed?

If you have not agreed on a compulsory eviction clause, it will be significantly more time-consuming to remove a tenant from the premises.

Deviation may still occur without a compulsory deviation clause if there are obvious grounds for termination. However, this requires a great deal.

In other cases, you may have to go to the conciliation board and/or court to obtain a general basis for enforcement (judgment) before the tenant can be evicted.

Who can bind the tenant?

It is important that the actual tenant at any given time has agreed to compulsory eviction and that this applies to the existing lease.

If you have renewed/extended the agreement, it must be renegotiated.

If subletting occurs, a separate compulsory eviction clause should be included in the sublease agreement, so that the subtenant has agreed that compulsory eviction may take place.

Similarly, when transferring a lease, it is important that the new tenant agrees to assume the obligations of the previous tenant.