I'm using a throwaway account to try to make this as anonymous as possible. Sorry for the length...

tl;dr - We are long standing (good) tenants who are being evicted as LL is selling flat and has accepted an offer. EA manages both the tenancy and sale and they have been really poor, with virtually no commns from them about the whole 20 month long sales process. LL has never been in touch with us during tenancy, and everything has been through EA. Wanting to know if it would be helpful to contact LL directly to build relationship with him as we may need to ask for more time to find a new place .

I live with my flatmate in a flat in Manchester, which is managed by one of the city's bigger estate agencies. We've been here for quite a number of years and I'd like to think have been decent tenants, never missed rent payments, issues reported promptly, keep the flat clean and tidy etc etc.

Early last year the flat was put up for sale and it has been sitting unsold for well over 18 months. The same estate agents that manage the property have also been managing the sale and they've been pretty terrible during the whole process.

The landlord has been very hands off for our whole time here, and everything has been done through the EA. Landlord has never been directly in touch with us at any point during the 6yr tenancy and we're not sure how engaged he is with the management of the flat. Given this we don't really have any kind of relationship with him.

The sales process was very poorly managed by the EA. We only found out the flat was being sold when a photographer was booked to come and take photos, and it took a further month before the EA's sales manager contacted us to let us know about the sale (by which time it had been on Rightmove for weeks). The sales manager told us at first that the flat was being sold with us as sitting tenants. Turns out this wasn't correct and the landlord was wanting to sell with vacant possession.

Viewings were very infrequent, but were often badly handled, with the EA often giving us much less than 24 hours notice. On one occasion we were given 2 hours notice, another time they came round after forgetting to tell us. Worst of all they once came at the wrong time, let themselves in and walked into my bedroom when I was in the en suite shower.

Basically, they've been poor throughout and we've been kept completely in the dark about how the sale is progressing.

We've now received notice to quit and are looking to find a new home.

However, for various personal reasons related to health issues we may find it difficult to move within two months, although we are very actively trying to. Just in case anyone chimes in with this, we're not trying it on or trying to scam the landlord or anything. These are genuine reasons that could really delay any move.

We've finally been contacted by the sales team to discuss our moving out, a mere two weeks after the S.21 was issued and (as we found out) 6 weeks after the landlord accepted an offer.

Given our circumstances, we've asked the EA whether the landlord is able to give us some leeway with the date of eviction to help us have an extra few weeks if it is needed. Hopefully it won't be. However, this seems to have come as a bit of a surprise to the EA, and in my phone call with them I got the impression that the landlord has been told by the EA that we would definitely be out before the date on S.21 with no issues.

We genuinely don't know whether the landlord will be able to accommodate our request, and comments from the EU make me suspect that if we are not out by the date on the notice, this could potentially cause the sale to fall through.

I know a fair amount about landlord tenant law from previous jobs I've had, and I know legally we don't have to be out on the date on the S.21. I'm not really asking for advice about that.

My main question is, should we now be looking to contact the landlord directly and build some kind of relationship with him so this can be managed to everyone's satisfaction? I have very little trust in the EA to be helpful given their past performance. I wanted to find out from other landlords what they would be looking for from tenants in this situation.

I don't know how much the LL actually knows about how evictions work, and I suspect he's relied heavily on the EA to manage things.

We don't want to make things difficult for the LL, but the EA has really burnt out our goodwill with their mishandling of this. We don't want to jeopardise the sale, but at the same time we need to look after our own interests and make sure we have somewhere to move to before we leave.

My impression from reading other things in this and other forums is that the LL took a fairly big risk trying to sell with us still in the flat and leaving the eviction process until the very last minute. However, I don't know if he'd see it that way and I would not really want to be in the situation where we're still in the flat looking for somewhere, the sale has fallen through and the landlord blames us for it.