Free Oregon Abandoned Property Notice

An abandoned property notice is the written notice a landlord must give before storing, selling or disposing of belongings a tenant left behind. In Oregon that notice is not optional, not a courtesy and not something that happens at the end of a waiting period. ORS § 90.425(3) opens with the sequence: “Prior to storing, selling or disposing of the tenant’s personal property under this section, the landlord must give a written notice to the tenant.” The notice starts the clock; it does not close it. Oregon then prescribes nine statements the notice must contain, a list of addresses it must go to, a standard of care for the goods while they are held, a sale procedure and a four-step waterfall for the money — and it makes none of that waivable in a lease.

Fill in the fields below and the generator produces a dated abandoned personal property notice you can print, sign, serve and keep a copy of. Nothing is stored and there is no charge. Fields you leave blank print as a dash so you can complete them by hand.

Watch: Free Oregon Abandoned Property Notice — Fillable PDF explained

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This notice does three jobs at once, and a template that treats it as a single announcement fails at least one of them. It is the event that makes lawful storage possible at all, because § 90.425(3) requires it “prior to storing, selling or disposing”; it is the document that sets the tenant’s contact deadline, which the landlord chooses subject to a statutory floor; and it is the record that decides, later, whether the landlord complied. § 90.425(16) makes “complete compliance in good faith with this section” a complete defence to a claim for loss or damage, and § 90.425(17)(a) prices the opposite: a non-complying landlord is “relieved of any liability” for the tenant’s ordinary damage to the premises and for unpaid rent, and owes up to twice the tenant’s actual damages. That is why the generator above asks which trigger applies before it prints a single sentence about storage charges, and why it asks for a real telephone number or address rather than leaving the tenant told to “contact the landlord.” A notice missing the described contact point is defective on its face however accurate the rest of it is.

• The tenant’s name and the address of the premises, including any unit number — not one of the nine statements § 90.425(5) mandates, but the identifying detail the notice needs to be a notice at all. The nine begin below.
• A statement that the personal property left upon the premises is considered abandoned — § 90.425(5)(a).
• The specified date by which the tenant must contact the landlord to arrange removal, which must be not less than five days after personal delivery or eight days after mailing — § 90.425(5)(b), (6)(b).
• A statement that the property is stored at a place of safekeeping — § 90.425(5)(c).
• A described telephone number or address the tenant may use to arrange removal — § 90.425(5)(d). A notice that says only “contact the landlord” is defective.
• A statement that the landlord will make the property available for removal by appointment at reasonable times — § 90.425(5)(e).
• The correct one of the two storage-charge statements: charges may be required before release under § 90.425(5)(f) where the trigger is (2)(a) or (2)(b), or may not be required before release under § 90.425(5)(g) where the trigger is the sheriff’s restitution under (2)(c).
• A statement that failure to contact by the specified date, or failure to remove the property within 15 days after that contact, lets the landlord sell or dispose of it — § 90.425(5)(h).
• If the landlord reasonably believes the property will be eligible for disposal and intends to dispose of it if unclaimed, a statement of that belief and intent — the conditional second sentence of § 90.425(5)(h), and the element most often left out.
• Where the property includes a recreational vehicle, manufactured dwelling or floating home, a statement that a lienholder or owner may have a right to claim it — § 90.425(5)(i), the ninth and last of the mandated statements, and the one most often missing from a checklist that stops at eight.

• Treating seven days of absence as abandonment. Oregon has no such rule. § 90.425(2)(b)’s seven days runs only where a tenancy has been terminated “by a court order that has not been executed.” The other seven-day figure, in § 90.410(2), gives the landlord a right to enter during an absence of more than seven days — not a right to dispose of anything.
• Charging storage after a sheriff’s eviction. § 90.425(5)(g) is flat: on the (2)(c) trigger the landlord “may not require payment of storage charges prior to releasing the personal property.” Demanding payment there is a breach of the section and puts § 90.425(17)(a) in play.
• Using the manufactured-dwelling clock for ordinary goods. The longer contact and removal periods in § 90.425(6)(a) and (5)(h) are written for manufactured dwellings and floating homes. Ordinary personal property runs on five days or eight days, then 15.
• Publishing a newspaper notice for a tenant’s furniture. The newspaper publication, the two-consecutive-weeks rule, the affidavit of publication and the tax-clearance step in § 90.425(10)(a)(B) apply to a recreational vehicle, manufactured dwelling or floating home. Ordinary goods are sold under ORS 79A.6100 instead.
• Mailing to the premises only. § 90.425(3)(b) joins the premises, any known post-office box and any known forwarding address with “and.” Skipping a known address is a defect in the notice, not a shortcut.
• Skipping the notice because the goods look worthless. The disposal thresholds sit in § 90.425(10), which is only reached after the notice, the contact deadline, the removal window and the conclusive presumption. They excuse a sale. They never excuse a notice.
• Omitting the intent-to-dispose sentence. Where the landlord reasonably believes the property will qualify for disposal and intends to dispose of it, § 90.425(5)(h) requires the notice to say so. A template that omits it cannot support a later disposal in exactly the cases where the landlord held that belief.
• Keeping the goods. § 90.425(1)(b) defines “dispose of the personal property” as throwing it away or giving it without consideration to a nonprofit or to someone unrelated to the landlord, and adds: “The landlord may not retain the property for personal use or benefit.”
• Writing the whole thing into the lease. § 90.425(26)(b) forbids requiring a waiver as part of a rental agreement, and ORS § 90.245(1)(a) bars a rental agreement term by which the tenant agrees to waive or forgo rights under the chapter.

For an ordinary tenant’s belongings, the clock has two stages and the notice starts it. First, the landlord gives written notice under ORS § 90.425(3). That notice names a date by which the tenant must make contact, and § 90.425(6)(b) sets the floor: “For all other abandoned personal property, including recreational vehicles, not less than five days after personal delivery or eight days after mailing of the notice.” Second, if the tenant does respond in time and says they intend to remove the goods, § 90.425(8) requires the landlord to make the property available “by appointment at reasonable times during the 15 days … following the date of the response.”

Two features of that structure are routinely lost in summaries. The five and eight days are floors — the words are “not less than” — so a landlord may give longer and many should. And the three-day difference between them is a mailing allowance built into the deadline itself, rather than an add-days-for-mailing rule bolted on afterwards. There is no separate mailing extension anywhere in the section.

The end point is § 90.425(9). If the tenant does not respond within the time the notice provides, or does not remove the property within the time required by subsection (8) or by any date agreed with the landlord, whichever is later, the property “is conclusively presumed to be abandoned,” and the tenant and any lienholder or owner given notice “have no further right, title or interest to the personal property and may not claim or sell the property” — except as to the distribution of sale proceeds, which survives. Only then do the disposal powers in subsection (10) open.

Not after any fixed number of days of silence. This is the single most common error in circulation about Oregon, and it is worth stating plainly: ORS § 90.425 does not define abandonment by a bare period of absence. Under § 90.425(2)(a) the test has two parts — the tenancy must have ended by termination, expiration, relinquishment or abandonment of the premises, and the landlord must reasonably believe “under all the circumstances that the tenant has left the personal property upon the premises with no intention of asserting any further claim to the premises or to the personal property.”

The seven days people remember belongs to a different trigger. § 90.425(2)(b) applies where “the tenant has been absent from the premises continuously for seven days after termination of a tenancy by a court order that has not been executed.” Both limbs are needed: a judgment terminating the tenancy, still unexecuted, and seven straight days of absence. Without the court order there is no seven-day rule.

ORS § 90.148 guards the other side of that line. Surrender of a dwelling unit “may be implied from the landlord’s acceptance of a tenant’s abandonment,” shown by landlord acts “inconsistent with the existence of the tenancy” — but the section then says that receiving the keys, or making reasonable efforts to mitigate damages by trying to re-rent the unit, “shall not constitute acts inconsistent with the existence of the tenancy.” And ORS § 90.410(3) makes the mitigation duty affirmative: “If the tenant abandons the dwelling unit, the landlord shall make reasonable efforts to rent it for a fair rental.” Re-listing the unit is required, and it does not by itself decide that the tenancy is over.

It depends entirely on how the tenancy ended, and this is where Oregon differs from almost every other state. Where the property is abandoned under § 90.425(2)(a) or (2)(b), § 90.425(5)(f) and § 90.425(8) both let the landlord “require payment of removal and storage charges … prior to releasing the personal property.” Where it is abandoned under § 90.425(2)(c), after the sheriff returned possession, § 90.425(5)(g) says the landlord “may not require payment of storage charges prior to releasing the personal property.”

What the landlord may charge, on the tracks where charging is allowed, is set by § 90.425(7)(d): “reasonable or actual storage charges and costs incidental to storage or disposal, including any cost of removal to a place of storage.” The section names no rate, no daily figure and no fee schedule for ordinary goods. The one express cap it does contain — storage charges no greater than the last monthly space rent — is written for a manufactured dwelling or floating home and does not reach an apartment tenant’s boxes.

§ 90.425(8) adds a protection for the landlord on the paying tracks: accepting that payment “does not operate to create or reinstate a tenancy or create a waiver pursuant to ORS 90.412 or 90.417.” Taking storage money does not accidentally revive the tenancy.

To every address on a three-item list, joined by “and.” § 90.425(3) gives the landlord a choice of method and then, if mail is chosen, no choice of address: the notice must be “personally delivered to the tenant” or “sent by first class mail addressed and mailed to the tenant at: (A) The premises; (B) Any post-office box held by the tenant and actually known to the landlord; and (C) The most recent forwarding address if provided by the tenant or actually known to the landlord.”

Read the conjunction. It is “and,” not “or”: a mailed notice goes to each of those addresses that exists. It is first class mail, and no return receipt is required for the tenant’s copy. Certified mail appears in § 90.425 in exactly one place — subsection (4)(b), for service on a lienholder of a recreational vehicle, manufactured dwelling or floating home — and never for the tenant. The qualifiers on (B) and (C) do real work too: the duty attaches to a post-office box or forwarding address the landlord actually knows, which is not the same as an obligation to go looking for one.

No. The value thresholds excuse the sale, never the notice. That is the sentence to take away, because the reverse reading is the natural one and it is wrong. Oregon’s disposal thresholds live in § 90.425(10), and subsection (10) opens only “if the personal property is presumed to be abandoned under subsection (9).” Subsection (9) is reached only after the subsection (3) notice, the subsection (6) contact deadline and the subsection (8) removal window. Nothing in the section permits immediate disposal of cheap goods without notice.

What the threshold actually does is let the landlord skip the sale and destroy or otherwise dispose of the property instead. For ordinary personal property it is a two-limb test under § 90.425(10)(b)(C): a statutory ceiling on reasonable current fair market value, or a value “so low that the cost of storage and conducting a public sale probably exceeds the amount that would be realized from the sale.” The second limb has no figure attached at all, and it matters: goods worth more than the ceiling may still be destroyed if storing and auctioning them would cost more than they would fetch. A summary that quotes only the ceiling understates the landlord’s power.

“Dispose of” is itself a defined term, and the definition closes an obvious loophole. § 90.425(1)(b): the landlord “may throw away the property or may give it without consideration to a nonprofit organization or to a person unrelated to the landlord. The landlord may not retain the property for personal use or benefit.” Disposal is not acquisition.

Two things may go before any of that. § 90.425(7)(b) lets the landlord “promptly dispose of rotting food” and allow an animal control agency to remove abandoned pets or livestock — and if no agency will take them, the landlord “shall exercise reasonable care for the animals given all the circumstances” and may give them to a humane society or similar organisation. Those are the only same-day powers in the section.

Ordinary goods are sold under the Uniform Commercial Code standard, and the surplus belongs to the tenant. § 90.425(11)(a)(B) sends a sale of “all other personal property” to ORS 79A.6100, Oregon’s enactment of UCC 9-610, whose subsection (2) reads: “Every aspect of a disposition of collateral, including the method, manner, time, place and other terms, must be commercially reasonable.” That is the whole procedural standard for a tenant’s furniture. There is no statutory requirement of a public auction, a newspaper advertisement or an appraisal on this limb — those requirements exist, but in the manufactured-dwelling and recreational-vehicle limb.

The money is then distributed in a fixed order set by § 90.425(13). The landlord may deduct “(A) The reasonable or actual cost of notice, storage and sale; and (B) Unpaid rent.” Two further steps apply only to the other limb: unpaid property taxes to the county tax collector for a manufactured dwelling or floating home, and any unpaid lien balance to a lienholder for a recreational vehicle, manufactured dwelling or floating home. Then comes the step that matters here: “the landlord shall remit to the tenant or owner the remaining proceeds, if any, together with an itemized accounting.” The itemized accounting is mandatory, not a courtesy.

If the tenant or owner “cannot after due diligence be found,” § 90.425(13)(e) directs the landlord to deposit the remaining proceeds with the county treasurer of the county in which the sale occurred, and “if not claimed within three years, the deposited proceeds revert to the general fund of the county.” Note what that three-year figure is: an abandonment period for the money. It has nothing to do with how long the goods are held.

The general landlord’s lien does not apply, and what replaces it is genuinely unsettled. Oregon does have a landlord’s lien statute: ORS § 87.162 gives a landlord “a lien on all chattels … owned by a tenant or occupant legally responsible for rent” and lets the landlord “retain the chattels until the amount of rent and advances is paid.” But it opens “Except as provided in ORS 87.156 and 90.120,” and ORS § 90.120(1) provides that “the provisions of ORS 87.152 to 87.212 … do not apply to the rights and obligations of landlords and tenants governed by this chapter.” § 87.162 sits inside that switched-off range.

Against that, the final subsection of the abandonment statute is written as a timing limit rather than a prohibition. § 90.425(27): “Until personal property is conclusively presumed to be abandoned under subsection (9) of this section, a landlord does not have a lien pursuant to ORS 87.152 for storing the personal property.” Read literally, that implies such a lien becomes available once the presumption attaches — which is hard to square with § 90.120(1). Both texts are set out here exactly as the statute prints them, and this page does not resolve the tension in either direction. No Oregon court decision is cited for it, so no resolution is claimed.

What is clear is the practical route, and it does not run through a lien. On the (2)(a) and (2)(b) triggers the landlord may require payment of removal and storage charges before releasing the goods. On the sheriff track the landlord may not. And unpaid rent is recoverable from the proceeds of a lawful sale under § 90.425(13)(a)(B) — out of the money, not by holding the goods hostage. See our Oregon security deposit laws guide for the separate accounting a landlord owes on the deposit itself.

There is a distinct notice list, and it reaches further than most landlords expect. Where ordinary personal property is abandoned as a result of the death of a tenant who was the only tenant and who owned the property, § 90.425(21) applies the section with changes. An heir or devisee, any personal representative named in a will or appointed by a court, and any person the tenant designated in writing to be contacted on death all have “the same rights and responsibilities regarding the abandoned personal property as a tenant.”

The notice under (21)(b) must be sent by first class mail to the deceased tenant at the premises; personally delivered or mailed first class to any heir, devisee, personal representative or designated person actually known to the landlord; and “sent by first class mail to the attention of an estate administrator of the State Treasurer.” That third copy is mandatory and is the element most often missed. The priority order in (21)(d) and (e) is also fixed: heirs, devisees, personal representatives and the State Treasurer’s estate administrator come first, and the tenant’s designated person is allowed to remove the property only if none of them contacts the landlord within the period. A landlord who releases property under this subsection “is not liable to another person that has a claim or interest in the personal property.”

No, and Oregon says so twice. § 90.425(26)(b): “A landlord may not, as part of a rental agreement, require a tenant, a personal representative, a designated person or any lienholder or owner to waive any right provided by this section.” And chapter-wide, ORS § 90.245(1) provides that a rental agreement may not provide that the tenant “agrees to waive or forgo rights or remedies under this chapter.”

§ 90.245(2) then prices the attempt, and the wording is precise about when the extra remedy runs: a prohibited provision is unenforceable, and “if a landlord deliberately uses a rental agreement containing provisions known by the landlord to be prohibited and attempts to enforce such provisions, the tenant may recover in addition to the actual damages of the tenant an amount up to three months’ periodic rent.” Deliberate use plus an attempt to enforce is what unlocks the three months; the unenforceability itself is automatic.

There is one narrow opt-out and it is not a lease clause. § 90.425(26)(a) lets the parties agree in writing to skip the procedure — but only in a writing “entered into in good faith,” signed by the landlord, the tenant (or, on a death, the person entitled to the property), and any owner and lienholder where a manufactured dwelling, floating home or recreational vehicle is involved, and made “after termination of the tenancy or no more than seven days prior to the termination of the tenancy.” A clause signed at move-in fails every one of those conditions.

Non-compliance costs the landlord the rent claim, not just damages. § 90.425(17)(a) is the sharpest provision in the section: if a landlord does not comply, the tenant “is relieved of any liability for damage to the premises caused by conduct that was not deliberate, intentional or grossly negligent and for unpaid rent and may recover from the landlord up to twice the actual damages sustained by the tenant.” The rent claim itself disappears.

Compliance cuts the other way just as hard. § 90.425(15) shields the landlord from responsibility for loss during storage “unless the loss was caused by the landlord’s deliberate or negligent act,” with double actual damages for a deliberate and malicious violation; and § 90.425(16) makes “complete compliance in good faith with this section … a complete defense” to a tenant, lienholder or owner claim for loss or damage. On the eviction track there is an extra exposure: ORS § 105.165(4) provides that a plaintiff who fails to permit the defendant to recover their personal property owes “twice the actual damages or twice the monthly rent, whichever is greater.”

One point this page will not assert either way: attorney fees on the tenant’s own claim. § 90.425(17)(b) and (c) expressly state that ORS 90.255 does not authorise a fee award on the lienholder’s and the tax collector’s claims. Subsection (17)(a) carries no such carve-out — but ORS 90.255 itself was not retrieved for the record behind this page, so whether fees run on the tenant’s claim is left open rather than guessed. For the sequence that produces an executed writ in the first place, see our Oregon eviction notice laws guide.

Nothing — the responsibility lands on the landlord the moment possession is returned. ORS § 105.161(1)(d) is explicit: “Following the sheriff’s removal of the defendant and return of possession of the premises to the plaintiff, the plaintiff shall be responsible for removing, storing and disposing of any personal property left by the defendant on the premises, as provided by ORS 105.165.” The goods are not taken to a sheriff’s facility and they are not the sheriff’s problem.

ORS § 105.165(1) then routes a residential tenancy straight back here: “If ORS chapter 90 applies to a dwelling unit, following restitution of the premises to the plaintiff by the sheriff … the plaintiff shall remove, store and dispose of any personal property left by the defendant on the premises as provided in ORS 90.425 or 90.675.” So an eviction does not create a separate, easier regime; it engages the third trigger in § 90.425(2)(c), with the storage-charge bar that comes with it. Subsection (2) of § 105.165, which does allow payment to be demanded before release, applies where chapter 90 does not govern the premises — it is the non-residential track and must not be carried across. § 105.165(3) does let the landlord add unrecovered removal, storage and sale costs to the judgment. Our Oregon landlord tenant laws overview covers how the wider chapter fits together.

Not the ones in a park or a marina, and Oregon splits them out by definition rather than by implication. § 90.425(1)(g) says “personal property” for this section includes manufactured dwellings and floating homes “not located in a facility” and excludes those “located in a facility and therefore subject to being stored, sold or disposed of as provided under ORS 90.675.” § 90.100(16) defines a facility as “a manufactured dwelling park or a marina.”

So there are three positions, not two. A manufactured dwelling or floating home in a park or marina is dealt with by a different statute entirely, and nothing on this page describes what that statute requires. A manufactured dwelling or floating home outside a facility is inside § 90.425, but on its manufactured-dwelling timings and with its extra copy-list. A recreational vehicle is inside § 90.425 and — this catches people — rides the short contact deadline, because § 90.425(6)(b) names recreational vehicles expressly in the five-day/eight-day limb, while still attracting the lienholder and owner notice copies under subsection (4). Everything else on this page is written for ordinary goods.

Nothing established here, and the honest answer is that no local measure was checked. The statutory record behind this page covers ORS 90.425 in full together with the chapter 90, 87, 105 and 79A sections it depends on. No Portland, Eugene, Salem or Multnomah County ordinance was retrieved, and Oregon cities do legislate on landlord-tenant matters in places. So this page states no local rule and rules none out. Check the city or county directly before relying on the state answer alone in a regulated jurisdiction, and keep the notice, the mailing record and a dated inventory of what was left behind — those are what any later dispute is argued from, whichever way a local overlay cuts. When the tenancy is being brought to an end in the first place, our Oregon tenant notice to vacate covers the notice a tenant gives on the way out.

Everything above turns on one question — what happens to the things a tenant leaves behind — and the answer is what it is because Oregon writes out, one by one, what the notice has to say. The route the tenancy took decides which rule applies, so the notice that ended it and the money still in dispute are governed separately.

Oregon eviction notice laws. Oregon security deposit laws. Oregon landlord tenant laws.

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