Notice to Vacate Letter: Free 30-Day Template for Tenants

The date, your landlord's name, the rental address and unit, a plain statement that you are ending the tenancy, and the date it ends. Add your forwarding address so the security deposit can be returned, a request for a move-out inspection if you want one, how you will return the keys, and a signature from every tenant on the lease. Colorado's statute itself says the notice must describe the property and the date the tenancy ends, and be signed. The generator above puts all of this in order.

Often, but the timing matters as much as the number. For a month-to-month tenancy, 11 of the 18 places in our table set 30 days or one month: 30 days before a rent due date in Arizona, Ohio and Tennessee; 30 days before the date you name in California, Georgia and Oregon; 30 days before the end of a monthly rental period in Florida; 30 days ending on the 1st of a month in DC; one month before the date you name in Texas; one month before the end of a rental period in New York outside New York City; the longer of 30 days or one rental period in Massachusetts. Washington sets 20 days before the end of a rental period, and Colorado sets 21 to 91 days, depending on how its tiers are read. In Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, New York City and Pennsylvania, the sections we read set only the landlord's notice, so your lease sets yours. Where the tenancy can end only at the end of a rental period or on a rent date, 30 days counted to a mid-month date does not end it that day. The generator above checks your exact date.

Often not under the statute, but your lease may ask for it. Colorado needs no written notice from a tenant whose fixed term ends on a set date; New York outside New York City needs none to end a tenancy for a definite term; and in Nevada a tenancy for a specified term ends without notice when the term runs out. Oregon is the exception: after the first year, a fixed term becomes month-to-month when it ends unless you give written notice at least 30 days before the end date. In Florida a lease can require 30 to 60 days' notice, but only if it makes the landlord give the same notice. A short non-renewal letter, delivered in a way you can prove, leaves a dated copy either way. Use the end of lease template above.

In a way you can prove. Certified mail with a return receipt, or hand delivery with a copy your landlord signs and dates, both show the day it arrived. Use email only if your lease says notices can go by email, and follow any address or method your lease names for notices. In 9 of the 18 places in our table (Arizona, California, Colorado, DC, Florida, Massachusetts, Oregon, Tennessee and Washington), the statute says the tenant's notice must be in writing, and California's lets it go by certified or registered mail. Mail takes days, so enter the day the letter will arrive, not the day you send it.

Ask your landlord to agree to the earlier date in writing, and keep the reply. Without that, plan on the tenancy and the rent running to the earliest end date the generator shows. A servicemember with qualifying orders has a separate federal route to end a lease, set out in our military lease termination guide.

It puts your forwarding address in writing, so your landlord knows where to send the deposit and any list of deductions. The deadline for returning it, and what the landlord must send with it, depend on your state: the security deposit return calculator works them out from your move-out date.