Free Pennsylvania Lease Termination Letter Template

A Pennsylvania lease termination letter is the notice to quit described in the Landlord and Tenant Act of 1951, at 68 P.S. section 250.501. You need one at the end of a term or where a lease condition has been broken. The length of the lease, rather than how long anyone has lived there, sets the period.

Everything runs on the term of the lease, and every period counts from service.

The Main Periods

Subsection (b) covers expiration of a term or forfeiture for breach. Where the lease is for any term of one year or less, or for an indeterminate time, the notice specifies that the tenant shall remove within fifteen days from the date of service. A lease for more than one year carries thirty days from the date of service instead. Check the current statute before you count, since these periods can be amended.

Nonpayment Runs on the Calendar

The same subsection treats unpaid rent differently, and the figure depends on the season. Where the tenant fails on demand to satisfy rent reserved and due, a notice given on or after April first and before September first specifies removal within fifteen days from service, while a notice given on or after September first and before April first specifies thirty days.

Mobile Home Parks

Longer periods apply here. For a tenant of a mobile home park as the Mobile Home Park Rights Act defines it, subsection (c) provides that a lease for any term of less than one year or for an indeterminate time carries thirty days from service, and a lease for one year or more carries three months.

Fifteen days is the statutory figure for a month-to-month arrangement, and it is genuinely that short. Because a month-to-month tenancy counts as a lease for an indeterminate time, subsection (b) puts it in the fifteen-day tier alongside leases of a year or less.

Your lease can move it, though. Section 250.501 addresses whether the notice to quit may be given for a lesser time or waived where the lease so provides, so the first question in Pennsylvania is what the agreement says rather than what the statute defaults to.

A Pennsylvania lease termination letter starts with the lease, then the calendar.

1. Read the lease for any clause shortening or waiving the notice to quit.
2. Work out whether the term is one year or less, indeterminate, or more than a year.
3. Apply fifteen or thirty days from the date of service.
4. Check subsection (c) if a mobile home park lot is involved.
5. Serve the notice and record the date, since the period runs from service.

Subsection (b) tells you what the notice has to say about timing, which is more than most states do.

• The address of the premises
• The names of the landlord and the tenant
• A statement that the tenant shall remove within the applicable period from the date of service
• The term the notice relies on
• A forwarding address
• Signature and date

That third item is the one people miss. The statute frames the notice around removal within a number of days from service rather than around a calendar date, so a Pennsylvania lease termination letter reads more naturally when it states both: the period from service, and the resulting date.