Can Landlord Kick You Out After Selling House?

Today’s topic is on another hot question that I get asked a lot, and that’s about an issue that many expats have faced in China. When your landlord decides to sell his apartment, the new property owner might want you out, so whether or not the landlord can give you the boot will be answered in this video.

The quick answer is no. This concept called Kauf bricht nicht Miete, which is German law concept that was incorporated into Chinese law a long time ago. It means transfer of property does not invalidate a lease. For your information, Chinese law uses the continental law system, and it is a combination of German and Japanese law, so you will find quite a lot of similarities between the three. In fact, the Japanese copied the Germans, and then the Chinese incorporated the best of the two into our legal system.

When a person buys property, they inherit all rights and responsibilities, and that includes existing rental agreements. Of course, once the new owner has the title transferred over, he is entitled to get paid rent, but it does not mean he has the right to kick the tenant out. Therefore, you should get in contact with the new landlord and ask to pay him instead. You do not necessarily need to sign a new contract with the new landlord either, but I would advise to do so because you want to make sure that the deposit is transferred to the new landlord. Or else, when your lease ends, you will have trouble collecting your deposit.

Note that the same principal applies for people inheriting property from deceased family, getting the apartment from an auction, being gifted the apartment, the bank gaining the title when a person fails to repay his mortgage, or the apartment being seized by court and sold off when your landlord gets sued.

If the landlord is insistent on your leaving, there would be a breach of contract in this case. You would be entitled to your full deposit back, plus the unused rent that you have paid for. Moreover, you might want to check your contract for contract breach penalties. The maximum breach penalty is 30% of the contract amount, and you might want to put this in future rental contracts as well. For example, if the rent for a month is 5000 RMB, and the rental contract is for 2 years, then the total amount would be 120,000 RMB. 30% of that would be 36,000 RMB.