Free Nevada 5-Day Notice to Quit (NRS 40.254)

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Nevada has no 5-day pay-or-quit for residential rent. Unpaid rent runs on a single 7-judicial-day notice under NRS 40.253(1)(a). Nevada’s real 5-day notice is the notice to surrender under NRS 40.254 — the second-step notice on the no-cause, lease-violation and nuisance track, giving the tenant 5 judicial days to contest by affidavit. Build a compliant NRS 40.254 notice below.

5-Day Notice to Quit NRS 40.254 Judicial Days Free PDF

A Nevada 5-Day Notice to Surrender under NRS 40.254 is the second notice a landlord serves to convert an existing unlawful detainer into a summary eviction. NRS 40.254 reaches an unlawful detainer under NRS 40.250 (holdover after the term), NRS 40.251 (expired no-cause notice), NRS 40.2514 (nuisance, waste, unlawful business, unlawful subletting) or NRS 40.2516 (failure to perform a lease condition). It must name the justice court, give the tenant 5 judicial days to contest by filing an affidavit, and advise the tenant of the right to ask the court to stay the removal order for up to 10 days under NRS 70.010(2). Service must follow NRS 40.280. It does not apply to unpaid rent: NRS 40.254 does not list NRS 40.2512, so a nonpayment case runs on the single 7-judicial-day notice under NRS 40.253(1)(a) and needs no second notice. The form below builds a compliant notice; our Nevada eviction notice laws guide covers the full process, and the tenant screening laws by state hub helps you place reliable tenants in the first place.

The Nevada 5-Day Notice to Surrender under NRS 40.254 is the second written notice on the no-cause and lease-violation track. It presupposes that the tenant is already guilty of an unlawful detainer — because a fixed term expired (NRS 40.250), because a no-cause notice under NRS 40.251 ran out, because of nuisance, waste, unlawful business or unlawful subletting (NRS 40.2514), or because a 5-day notice to perform a lease condition under NRS 40.2516 went uncured. This second notice moves the matter toward a court-ordered summary eviction in the justice court that has jurisdiction over the rental.

The notice does four things in one document. First, it fixes the tenant in unlawful detainer. By continuing to hold the premises after the underlying notice expired without cure or surrender, the tenant is in unlawful detainer under NRS 40.250, 40.251, 40.2514 or 40.2516. The notice states that status and identifies the ground and the earlier notice it rests on.

Second, it opens the 5-judicial-day contest window. Under NRS 40.254(1)(c)(1) the tenant must be told of the right to contest by filing an affidavit with the justice court before that court’s close of business on the fifth judicial day after the day of service, stating why the tenant is not guilty of unlawful detainer. NRS 40.254(1)(b) requires the notice to identify the court so the tenant knows where to file.

Third, it advises the tenant of the 10-day stay. NRS 40.254(1)(c)(2) requires the notice to tell the tenant of the right to ask the court to stay execution of an order for removal, or an order for nonadmittance, for a period not exceeding 10 days under NRS 70.010(2), stating the reasons a stay is warranted. A notice that omits this advisory is defective on its face, and most templates omit it.

Fourth, it warns of summary eviction. The notice states that if the tenant does not surrender or file a timely affidavit, the landlord may file its own affidavit and the court may issue a summary order for removal under the NRS 40.253 procedure that NRS 40.254 borrows — directing the sheriff or constable to post the order and remove the tenant. The form on this page assembles all four elements and computes the 5-judicial-day deadline from the date of service.

Two different tracks run through NRS Chapter 40, and the commonest Nevada mistake is to blend them. The nonpayment track lives in NRS 40.253 and NRS 40.2512. NRS 40.253(1)(a) authorizes a single notice to pay rent or quit — the tenant must pay or surrender before the close of business on the seventh judicial day following the day of service — and NRS 40.2512(1)(b) sets the same seven judicial days for residential property (five days is the figure for commercial premises, and ten days for a mobile home lot). NRS 40.253(1)(b) provides a shorter four-full-day option, but only where the landlord elects it and the rent is reserved by a period of one week or less and the tenancy has not continued more than 45 days.

Nonpayment needs no second notice, and gets no five-day window. NRS 40.253(3)(b)(1) says the notice must advise the tenant of the right to contest “by filing, within the time specified in subsection 1 for the payment of the rent or surrender of the premises, an affidavit”. For a residential nonpayment case that time is the same seven judicial days. There is no separate five-judicial-day affidavit period for unpaid rent, and NRS 40.254 — the section that creates the five-judicial-day window — lists NRS 40.250, 40.251, 40.2514 and 40.2516 but not NRS 40.2512.

The other track is this page’s subject. NRS 40.254 is the supplemental summary-eviction remedy for a tenant already guilty of an unlawful detainer under NRS 40.250, 40.251, 40.2514 or 40.2516. The landlord serves the underlying notice first — 30 days for a month-to-month or 7 days for a week-to-week no-cause termination under NRS 40.251(1)(b), 3 days’ notice to surrender for nuisance or waste under NRS 40.2514, or 5 days to perform a lease condition under NRS 40.2516 — and then serves this NRS 40.254 notice to surrender to invoke the summary procedure. That is Nevada’s genuine two-notice structure.

The summary-eviction machinery is set out in NRS 40.253(3) through (6), which NRS 40.254 adopts with its own notice requirements substituted. The notice must identify the court with jurisdiction, advise of the affidavit right, and advise of the NRS 70.010(2) stay. If the tenant files a timely affidavit, the court sets a hearing; if not, the landlord files its own affidavit and the court may issue a summary order for removal. The order directs the sheriff or constable to post it in a conspicuous place within 24 hours of receipt, and to remove the tenant not earlier than 24 hours but not later than 36 hours after posting. Where the unlawful detainer rests on the controlled-substance ground in NRS 40.2514(5), NRS 40.254(3) entitles the landlord to reasonable attorney’s fees incurred at a contested hearing.

Service rules are at NRS 40.280, which governs the notices required by NRS 40.251 to 40.260 — this notice among them — and requires service by a sheriff, constable, licensed process server, or an authorized agent of a Nevada-licensed attorney, not by the landlord personally, using one of three statutory methods, with a signed proof of service filed before a summary order can issue. One operational rule binds the whole framework: the ground, the sequence and the service must be exact. Serving this notice on a nonpayment case, skipping the underlying notice, self-serving, omitting the stay advisory, or miscounting judicial days each hands the tenant a defense and restarts the clock.

The single most important thing to understand about this page is that the NRS 40.254 notice is not the first step, and is not a rent notice at all. It presupposes an unlawful detainer that some earlier notice already created.

Step one — the notice that creates the unlawful detainer. For a no-cause termination that is a notice of at least 30 days for a month-to-month tenancy, or at least 7 days week-to-week, under NRS 40.251(1)(b) — and that notice must itself contain a statement advising the tenant of the NRS 40.251(2)–(4) extensions available to a tenant who is 60 or older or has a physical or mental disability, and to a federal, tribal or state worker during a shutdown. For nuisance, waste, unlawful business or unlawful subletting it is 3 days’ notice to surrender under NRS 40.2514. For an uncured lease violation it is 5 days to perform or surrender under NRS 40.2516. Only when that notice has expired without cure or surrender does anything on this page apply.

Step two — this NRS 40.254 notice to surrender. It is not a fresh demand for anything; it is the declaration that the tenant is now in unlawful detainer, the opening of the 5-judicial-day affidavit window, and the mandatory advisory about the 10-day stay under NRS 70.010(2).

And the case that does not use this notice at all — unpaid rent. If the only problem is that the rent was not paid, the landlord serves one notice: the 7-judicial-day notice to pay rent or quit under NRS 40.253(1)(a). When it expires unpaid and no affidavit was filed inside that same 7-judicial-day window, the landlord goes straight to its affidavit of complaint under NRS 40.253(5). Serving an extra “5-day” notice adds no rights, is not authorised by NRS 40.254, and simply delays possession. Use our Nevada 7-day notice to pay rent or quit instead.

The NRS 40.254(1)(c)(1) contest window is measured in judicial days, not calendar days: the tenant may file before the court’s close of business on the fifth judicial day after the day of service. The count excludes the day the notice is served, every Saturday and Sunday, and Nevada legal holidays. Five judicial days routinely spans a week or more of the calendar, and treating them as calendar days produces a short notice a tenant can defeat.

What counts as a judicial day. A judicial day is a day the courts are open for business. The day of service itself never counts — the count begins the next judicial day. Weekends are always excluded, and Nevada state holidays observed by the courts are excluded as well. When a holiday falls on a weekend, the observed weekday is the day excluded.

Nevada legal holidays that fall inside a typical count include New Year’s Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Presidents’ Day, Memorial Day, Juneteenth, Independence Day, Labor Day, Nevada Day (the last Friday in October), Veterans Day, Thanksgiving Day and the Friday after, and Christmas Day. Nevada Day is a distinctive Nevada holiday that out-of-state landlords routinely forget, and it lands in late October — a common eviction-season window.

Worked example. A 5-day notice served on a Monday of a normal week (no holiday) opens the count on Tuesday and closes at the end of the fifth judicial day, which is the following Monday — Saturday and Sunday are skipped. The tenant has until that court’s close of business on the Monday to surrender or file a contesting affidavit. Note that the statute measures against the court’s close of business, not the landlord’s office hours.

Worked example with a holiday. A 5-day notice served in late October that spans Nevada Day (the last Friday in October) loses that Friday from the count as well as the weekend. What looks like five calendar days on the wall calendar can stretch to eight or nine actual days. The generator on this page carries the Nevada court holidays for 2026 and 2027 so the computed deadline always reflects the correct judicial-day count.

Why the cushion helps. Because a miscount is the most common reason a correctly-drafted Nevada notice is later thrown out, many landlords give a day or two beyond the statutory minimum. Extra days work in the tenant’s favor and create no defect, while a short count is fatal. If you serve near a holiday cluster — the Nevada Day / Halloween window or the Thanksgiving pair — recount by hand before the landlord files its summary-eviction affidavit.

Complete the form below to generate a Nevada 5-Day Notice to Surrender under NRS 40.254. The form computes the 5-judicial-day contest deadline from the date of service, states the unlawful-detainer ground and the earlier notice it rests on, and includes the affidavit-contest language, the mandatory NRS 70.010(2) stay advisory, and the summary-eviction warning. Confirm the underlying NRS 40.251, 40.2514 or 40.2516 notice has already expired, and arrange service through a sheriff, constable, or licensed process server under NRS 40.280. Do not use this form for unpaid rent — use the 7-judicial-day notice under NRS 40.253(1)(a) instead.