How do you terminate a month to month lease

Either the landlord or the tenant can terminate a month to month lease by giving 15-days notice to the other.

Attorney Rob Solomon: Hello, Rick. What can I do for you?

Rick: Yes sir. I got a question. I got some apartments and I rent them out month-by-month. The tenants, he's up to date on his rent but for other reasons I want to evict him because I just don't want him there no more.

I gave three-day eviction notice in the past to people and went through that procedure but that's when they owed me money. What do you do when they don't owe you money?

Attorney Rob Solomon: Okay, Rick. First of all, good that you have a month to month tenancy. I'm a big believer for landlords in month-to-month tenancies when you can note which range to have them because it frees up a landlord who would otherwise be stuck with tenants for whatever reason they don't really feel comfortable with or they want to sell the property. For tenants, that kind of a year-long lease means more to them but when a tenant wants to leave them generally get up and go, usually to Texas or some far-off place. I'm glad you have a month to month tenancy.

Having said that, you're quite right that a three-day notice only deals with an absence to pay rent, a lack of paying rent. The way you terminate a month to month tenancy is to give 15 days’ notice before the end of a rental period that you're terminating the month to month tenancy, so as a general proposition and where leases generally run from the first of the month or rental arrangements run from the first of the month to the last of the month, you would have to give before the 15th day of the month notice that this is ending on the 30th or the 31st, depending on which day of the month it falls on and that you are terminating their tenancy at that time.

This month is over. If you wanted to do it, again, or if you wanted to take advantage of this, you'd have to do it for the month of December now because November we've already passed the 15th.

You simply give that kind of notice telling the tenant that before the 15th, you give this notice before the 15th of December. You could give it now, it doesn't matter. It's got to be before the 15th that at the end of December, the tenancy is over and that they need to return possession of the premises to you.

You will understand because it sounds like you've done a little before that the notice is not the eviction. The notice is a notice. It sets up an eviction if they don't get out at that point. Don't confuse the notice with the eviction itself. It's the necessary notice you have to do to later perform an eviction if that's necessary.