The fact that they expect the occupants to just leave when asked as if they have somewhere to go is bizarre. Who are these people?
Well, I mean, I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to ask people to leave the property you just bought.
Like, don't get me wrong, I'm all for ensuring that there is good housing for everyone, and property values and gentrification are having a horrible effect on anyone not fortunate enough to be born into a family with some money, but it's not like it's a house the buyers had just let sit empty for years at a time. The seller probably should have been more involved in ensuring that the property was either actually empty or at the very least securing it and ensuring there were no existing contracts, as one of the residents there apparently had.
Like, there's plenty to be annoyed with regarding the buyers. This isn't one of the reasons.
Legal residence gives them the right to time to move on peacefully rather than be dumped immediately into the sometimes permanent downward spiral of homelessness because this would be awfully convenient for the new owner.
Buying the properly doesn't entitle you to skip this step. I can't imagine a world in which it ought to. This is something the prior owner ought to have ironed out prior to selling. Either the property was still a worthy project despite the issue or they should have taken their money elsewhere.
Put yourself in the place of the residents. You have few resources and nowhere to go. The government provides that the new owner must give you a finite and reasonable time to move elsewhere do you a) lose most of your few belongings and go sleep on the curb because some yuppy comes and yells at you or b) use that time to save money, make plans, and secure yourself a new place to live.
You see it from the perspective of someone with connections, family, money. Many people have none of these things. It wasn't a choice between the inconvenience of moving to a new home and thumbing their noses at her it was in all likelihood a choice between the street and keeping their lives together.
If you have never struggled you likely don't understand.
What I was suggesting was that no, it wasn't really unreasonable for the buyers to be surprised and expect squatters to not be present in their newly bought property. That is the responsibility of the seller. The seller sounds to have been fairly irreputable and tried to pawn off a problem property.
At no point did I suggest, or am I suggesting, that a buyer should be able to immediately force legal residents or tenants to vacate. I'm saying that they probably had every right to be a bit surprised and annoyed/frustrated to find that the seller hadn't really done their duty.
The story is farcical enough without inventing more ways to be upset at the buyers in the story, and such outrage really isn't useful for anyone.
We really need a semi official landlord rating website where you can expect to see ratings for landlords. A landlord shouldn't be able to get a second set of decent tenants at market rate 10 years after he screws over the first.
To be clear yelp for landlords with less of an extortion angle.
They have everywhere else to go.
If you don't want to buy a house with existing tenants you should check before you buy.