Free New York Abandoned Property Notice

Two different things are called “abandoned property” in New York, and one of them is a trap. There is a consolidated law titled the Abandoned Property Law, and it is the State’s unclaimed-funds escheat statute — dormant accounts, uncashed checks, unclaimed wages, gift certificates, virtual currency. It is administered by the State Comptroller and it says nothing whatever about a sofa left in a vacated apartment. The rules that actually govern a tenant’s belongings live in the Real Property Actions and Proceedings Law, and for an ordinary apartment New York has never enacted one. This page sets out what that means in practice: the collision to ignore, the one prohibition that does the work, the single storage rule New York does have and why it almost certainly is not yours, and what changes inside New York City.

Fill in the fields below and the generator produces a dated record of property left behind 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 New York Abandoned Property Notice — Fillable PDF explained

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This notice is not a statutory form, because New York has no statutory form for it to be. Nothing in the Real Property Law or the Real Property Actions and Proceedings Law prescribes a contents list, an address, a delivery method or a claim period for a notice about a tenant’s belongings — the only statutory notice in the eviction sequence is § 749(2)(a)’s requirement that the executing officer give “at least fourteen days’ notice, in writing,” and that notice is about removing people. What the form above does is build the record the statutes assume without requiring. In a state with a prescribed procedure, a landlord who followed it is safe because he followed it. In New York there is no such shelter, so what protects a landlord is being able to show what was left, when, what he told the tenant, where the goods went, and that he gave the tenant a real opportunity to collect them. The generator produces a dated notice naming the premises and the tenant, describing the property, stating where it is held and how to arrange collection, and leaving room to record how the notice was delivered. It costs nothing and it converts an undocumented clear-out into a documented one.

• The full names of the landlord or managing agent and of every tenant named on the lease.
• The address of the premises with the unit number, and the county it is in.
• The date of the notice — the fact every later question is measured against.
• How the tenancy ended: a voluntary move-out, a surrender of keys, a holdover, or execution of a warrant of eviction, with the date.
• The date the unit was found vacated and who found it.
• An itemised description of the property left behind, with photographs referenced by date.
• Where the property is being held, and whether it remains in the unit.
• How and when the tenant may collect it, including a contact name and telephone number and the hours access can be arranged.
• A statement that the landlord is not asserting any lien or charge over the property as a condition of its release.
• Any forwarding address the tenant supplied, and the address the notice was sent to.
• How the notice was delivered — personally, by mail, or affixed to the door — plus the landlord’s signature and the date.

• Citing the Abandoned Property Law. It is New York’s unclaimed-funds escheat statute, administered by the State Comptroller. Its own declaration of policy is about escheated lands and unclaimed property held for the State, and a complete census of its catch-all article found no landlord or tenant provision at all.
• Printing a number of days. There is no New York holding period for an ordinary tenancy — not a day count and not a “reasonable time” standard. A page that supplies one has invented it.
• Quoting the three-month rule as general law. RPAPL § 795(4) is manufactured-home law under article 7-B, it runs from the court’s final order of disposition, and it does not exist without a court declaration of abandonment.
• Saying the warrant orders removal of the property. § 749(1) commands the officer to “remove all persons named in the proceeding.” Everything a New York warrant says about the goods, it says by omission.
• Holding the goods until the arrears are paid. Lien Law article 8 creates no landlord’s lien and RPAPL article 2 has no distraint section, while § 768 makes removing an occupant’s possessions an unlawful means of eviction.
• Selling the belongings to cover the debt. No sale power exists for an ordinary tenancy. Even in the one place New York does regulate storage, the operator’s power at the end is “destruction or other disposition” — no sale, and no proceeds.
• Applying a value threshold. Several states let a landlord dispose of goods below a stated value. New York has no such threshold in either track, and none may be borrowed.
• Treating a New York City legal possession as a favour. The City’s own regulation puts the goods in the landlord’s hands “as bailee for the tenant,” and requires the landlord to endorse the warrant accepting responsibility for them.

New York’s statutes set no holding period, no minimum storage time and no “reasonable time” standard for an ordinary residential tenant’s belongings, and prescribe no disposal procedure at all. What they set instead is a prohibition: RPAPL § 768(1)(a)(iii) names “removing the occupant’s possessions from the dwelling unit” as an unlawful means of eviction. So the answer to “how many days do I have to keep this?” is that the question has no statutory answer in New York, and the question that does have one is “how do I lawfully get possession in the first place?”

That route is a summary proceeding under RPAPL article 7, ending in a warrant of eviction executed by a sheriff, constable or city marshal. Complete caption censuses of the three places a storage rule would have to live — Real Property Law article 7 “Landlord and Tenant” (sections 220 through 238-a), RPAPL article 7 (sections 701 through 768), and RPAPL article 2 — return nothing on the subject, and the same censuses over the same pages do find the neighbouring provisions that exist: the warranty of habitability, the deceased-tenant sections, the manufactured-home-park sections, the limitation on fees, the unlawful-eviction section. The sweep works. The rule is simply not there.

One caution before any of that is read as freedom. No New York case law was consulted for this page. Bailment and conversion are common-law questions, and a statute book that is silent about a duty is not a court that has held there is none. What can honestly be said is that the statutes impose no holding period. What cannot be said is that a landlord owes nothing.

No. It is the State’s unclaimed-funds escheat statute and it has nothing to do with a tenant’s furniture. This is the single most likely error on this topic, and it is likely precisely because the name matches the search.

Read the chapter’s own declaration of policy. § 102: “It is hereby declared to be the policy of the state, while protecting the interest of the owners thereof, to utilize escheated lands and unclaimed property for the benefit of all the people of the state, and this chapter shall be liberally construed to accomplish such purpose.” Then read what the chapter is organised into: escheat of real property; unclaimed property held or owing by banking organizations; unclaimed deposits and refunds for utility services; unclaimed property held or owing for payment to security holders; unclaimed property held by brokers; unclaimed or unknown owner court funds; unclaimed life insurance funds; unclaimed condemnation awards; escheat of property paid or deposited in federal courts; unclaimed property in the possession of the United States; miscellaneous unclaimed property; general provisions. Banks, utilities, securities, insurers and courts — not landlords.

And the catch-all does not catch tenancies either. Article XIII is the chapter’s “miscellaneous” bucket, which is where a stray landlord-tenant rule would have to sit if one existed. All eighteen of its sections were read by caption: unclaimed surplus from the sale of pledged property, unclaimed personal property of persons in certain state institutions, property arising from the administration of the vehicle and traffic law, proceeds from the sale of wrecked property, unclaimed wages, uncashed travelers checks and money orders, amounts held by foreign corporations, consumer credit balances, insurance proceeds, security deposits held by title insurance companies, spousal and child support, virtual currency. Not one is a landlord-tenant provision. Note that title-insurance entry in particular: a page skimming the chapter for the words “security deposits” will land on it and misread it. New York’s actual deposit rules are a separate subject, set out in our guide to New York security deposit laws.

For an ordinary apartment, there is no statutory period at all. New York does have exactly one statutory storage duty on this subject, and it is worth stating precisely so that nobody carries it where it does not belong.

RPAPL § 795(4) sits in article 7-B, captioned “Special Proceeding For the Removal of Abandoned Manufactured Homes”. It provides that where “any household goods or other personal property of the respondent remain in the home at the time of its disposition hereunder, the manufactured home community owner or operator shall provide for the storage of such household goods and personal property for a period of not less than three months from the date of the final order of the court providing for the disposition of the home.” At the end of that period the operator “shall have no further liability for the storage or safekeeping” and “may provide for the destruction or other disposition” of the goods.

Three limits are built into that sentence and every one of them matters. First, it is manufactured-home law. It is not the rule for an apartment, a house or a room. Second, the clock runs from the court’s final order of disposition of the home — not from the eviction, not from the move-out, not from the tenant’s last day — and there is no article 7-B route at all without a court declaration that the home has been abandoned. Third, what the operator gets at the end is “destruction or other disposition”. That is not a power of sale and it carries no right to proceeds. The only money the subdivision mentions is a self-storage charge recoverable from the respondent personally, which is a claim against the tenant rather than a right in the goods. A page that announces “New York gives you three months” without naming the article, the proceeding and the category of property is publishing manufactured-home law as general law.

There is also no value threshold anywhere in New York, in either track. Some states allow a landlord to dispose of goods worth less than a stated amount. § 795(4) attaches its duty to “any household goods or other personal property” without qualification and expresses the obligation purely in time. Nothing may be softened with “if the property has value”.

Because that is genuinely what the Legislature enacted, and the contrast is the clearest way to understand New York’s position. RPAPL § 749(1) requires the court to issue a warrant “describing the property, stating the earliest date upon which execution may occur pursuant to the order of the court, and commanding the officer to remove all persons named in the proceeding, provided upon a showing of good cause, the court may issue a stay of re-letting or renovation of the premises for a reasonable period of time.” The officer’s mandate is about people.

The one procedural clock the warrant does carry is in § 749(2)(a): the officer “shall give at least fourteen days’ notice, in writing and in the manner prescribed in this article for the service of a notice of petition, to the person or persons to be evicted or dispossessed and shall execute the warrant on a business day between the hours of sunrise and sunset.” Again, persons.

Then § 749(2)(b) writes a complete protective procedure for companion animals: check before executing, coordinate with the tenant for the animal’s safe and proper care, and failing that coordinate with a humane society, society for the prevention of cruelty to animals or municipal pound, with reasonable efforts to tell the tenant where the animal has gone. New York looked at the same doorway, on the same day, in the same statute, and legislated for the cat. The absence of any equivalent for possessions is not an oversight a page can fill in; it is the state of the law.

One more feature of § 749 has practical consequences on the day. § 749(3) provides that nothing in the section deprives the court of the power to stay or vacate the warrant for good cause “prior to the execution thereof, or to restore the tenant to possession subsequent to execution of the warrant.” The proceeding is not necessarily over when the marshal leaves. For how the proceeding gets there in the first place, see our guide to New York eviction notice laws.

No, on both counts, and the prohibition is criminal rather than merely civil. RPAPL § 768(1)(a) makes it unlawful to evict or attempt to evict “an occupant of a dwelling unit who has lawfully occupied the dwelling unit for thirty consecutive days or longer or who has entered into a lease with respect to such dwelling” except pursuant to a warrant of eviction, another court order or a governmental vacate order — and paragraph (iii) lists among the prohibited means “engaging or threatening to engage in any other conduct which prevents or is intended to prevent such occupant from the lawful occupancy of such dwelling unit or to induce the occupant to vacate the dwelling unit including, but not limited to, removing the occupant’s possessions from the dwelling unit, removing the door at the entrance to the dwelling unit; removing, plugging or otherwise rendering the lock on such entrance door inoperable, or changing the lock on such entrance door without supplying the occupant with a key.”

§ 768(2) prices it: an intentional violation is a class A misdemeanor, each violation is “a separate and distinct offense”, and a civil penalty attaches per violation. § 768(1)(b) adds a duty to “take all reasonable and necessary action to restore to occupancy” an occupant removed by any of those acts — and it is a failure to take that action, not the original violation, that carries the additional daily penalty, which runs from the date restoration to occupancy is requested until it occurs and is capped at six months.

And there is no lien to fall back on. A complete caption census of Lien Law article 8, “Other Liens On Personal Property”, lists artisans’ liens, self-storage facilities, bailees of animals, bailees of motor vehicles and boats, silk manufacturers and throwsters, bailees for hire, truckmen and draymen, motion picture film laboratories, hospitals, and corporate mortgages. There is no landlord’s lien and no lodging-house lien on it. RPAPL article 2 contains no distraint section either. Unpaid rent in New York is pursued as unpaid rent, not by holding a tenant’s possessions hostage.

The honest limit of § 768, stated rather than glossed over. The section protects an occupant, and it governs eviction and attempted eviction. It does not, on its face, tell a landlord what to do with goods left behind by a tenant who has already fully and voluntarily gone. That case is the genuine gap. It should not be filled by stretching § 768, and its silence is not permission.

Yes — but the difference is in who ends up holding the goods, not in a clock. Neither New York City nor the rest of the State has a statutory holding period. The statute is the same: RPAPL § 749 applies statewide. What differs is that City evictions are executed by New York City Marshals, officers of the City’s Civil Court supervised by the Appellate Divisions through the Department of Investigation, and DOI issues a Marshals Handbook of Regulations that says what happens to the property.

Two things must be said about that Handbook before it is relied on. It is a City agency’s regulation, not a statute. And the edition the City serves carries an effective date of April 24, 2013; that it remains the posted current Handbook is what the City’s own publication shows, but its continued force was not independently confirmed for this page. Read what follows with that attached.

The Handbook draws the line that decides everything: “The distinction between an eviction and a legal possession is that in an eviction both the tenant and his or her personal property are removed from the premises, whereas in a legal possession the tenant is removed from the premises and his or her property remains under the care and control of the landlord as bailee for the tenant.” A landlord who takes a legal possession endorses the back of the warrant: “Possession of the tenant’s premises with the contents intact is hereby acknowledged. The landlord accepts responsibility for all the property on the premises, releases the marshal from any liability, and agrees to save the marshal harmless from any action resulting from the enforcement of this warrant.” That hold-harmless endorsement “may not be used during an eviction; it is reserved solely for legal possession.”

On the broom-clean route the goods leave: the marshal hires a bonded moving company licensed by the State Department of Transportation and directs it to deliver the items to a warehouse licensed by the City, and “where a landlord has requested a full eviction (e.g. possession of premises in broom-clean condition) the cost of removal of the tenant’s property and its delivery to a bonded warehouse must be borne by the landlord.” The marshal must remain on the premises until everything is loaded and secured, and “under no circumstances shall the tenant’s property ever be permitted to remain on the sidewalk.”

A notice is required either way. Handbook section 6-13 provides that after the warrant is executed “a marshal is required to notify evicted tenants, in English and in Spanish, of the whereabouts of their property”, on a form that “must be affixed to the front door of the apartment”, and that the notice goes up “regardless of whether the marshal has performed an eviction or a legal possession, and regardless of whether the property is stored in a private warehouse, is left in the vacated premises, or is otherwise left in the care and custody of the landlord”. Section 6-5 requires a written inventory. Note what that notice does and does not do: it tells the tenant where the goods are. It sets no deadline, no claim period and no disposal date. Nothing in the Handbook prescribes a holding period, and what a licensed warehouse may eventually do with unclaimed goods was not verified for this page and is not stated here.

One statutory NYC addition is worth knowing because it expires. RPAPL § 749-a requires that a City marshal “shall provide notice of execution of a warrant of eviction by physical posting of the notice and by an electronic filing” — and the section carries a printed sunset: repealed June 30, 2028.

This page will not answer that, because the law consulted for it does not. The temptation is to state a rule in one direction or the other, and both would be inventions.

Here is what is actually knowable. Because New York has no general abandoned-property statute, such a clause is not a waiver of any statutory right — there is no statutory right there to waive. So the question is not resolved by an anti-waiver provision, and none exists on this subject: a complete census of Real Property Law article 7 surfaced an anti-waiver section on a different topic, which shows the sweep would have found one here had the Legislature enacted it. It found none.

What does apply generally is RPL § 235-c, which provides that if a court “finds a lease or any clause of the lease to have been unconscionable at the time it was made the court may refuse to enforce the lease, or it may enforce the remainder of the lease without the unconscionable clause, or it may so limit the application of any unconscionable clause as to avoid any unconscionable result”, with the parties given a reasonable opportunity to present evidence “as to its setting, purpose and effect”. That is a general backstop, not an answer about this clause. Whether a disposal clause is enforceable turns on common law and on § 235-c, and no case law was read here. This page publishes neither that such a clause is valid nor that it is void. A landlord relying on one, or a tenant facing one, should take advice on the actual document. The wider map is in our guide to New York landlord tenant laws, and the rules on ending a tenancy are in our guide to New York lease termination laws.

Everything above turns on one question — what happens to the things a tenant leaves behind — and the answer is what it is because New York wrote a duty for the animals and none for the furniture. The route the tenancy took decides which rule applies, so the notice that ended it and the money still in dispute are governed separately.

New York eviction notice laws. New York security deposit laws. New York landlord tenant laws.

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