Free New York Sublease Agreement

A sublease puts a new occupant into your apartment while you stay on the lease and stay liable to the landlord. In most states whether you may do that at all is decided by your lease. New York is different. Real Property Law § 226-b gives a tenant in a dwelling with four or more residential units the right to sublease, subject to the landlord’s advance written consent — and says that consent “shall not be unreasonably withheld.”

Fill in the fields below and the generator produces a clean, dated PDF you can print, sign and hand to your subtenant. Nothing is stored and there is no charge. Fields you leave blank print as a dash so you can complete them by hand.

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It gives a right to sublease, not a right to sublease without asking. Advance written consent is still required; what the statute removes is the landlord’s freedom to refuse arbitrarily. It is also a floor rather than a ceiling: rent-regulated tenancies carry additional rules of their own, and a building with fewer than four residential units sits outside § 226-b(2) — though the § 226-b(1) assignment rule carries no unit threshold and still applies. Read your lease alongside the statute rather than instead of it.

• The full address including apartment number, and the number of residential units in the building.
• The names and contact details of the sublessor, the subtenant and the owner.
• The master lease dates and the sublease dates — a sublease cannot outlast the lease it hangs from.
• The rent payable to the sublessor, the due date and the method of payment.
• The security deposit amount, what it may be applied to, and when it will be returned.
• The subtenant’s business address and permanent home address, both of which § 226-b(2)(b) requires in the request.
• Your reason for subletting and your own address for the sublease term.
• The written consent of any co-tenant or guarantor, or a note that there is none.
• A copy of the master lease attached and acknowledged as a true copy.
• Signature lines for sublessor, subtenant and, on consent, the owner.

• Sending an incomplete request. § 226-b(2)(b) lists seven items. A request missing one of them has not started anything.
• Sending it by ordinary mail. The statute prescribes certified mail, return receipt requested — the receipt is what dates the request.
• Assuming the right applies everywhere. Four or more residential units is the threshold; a three-family house is outside § 226-b(2).
• Confusing sublease with assignment. Under § 226-b(1) consent to an assignment may be withheld unconditionally, without cause.
• Ignoring the ten-day information request. § 226-b(2)(c) lets the landlord ask for more; not answering hands them a reason.
• Forgetting rent regulation. Stabilised and controlled tenancies carry further rules that sit on top of § 226-b.
• Thinking a sublease ends your liability. It does not. You remain the tenant.

Yes — and unusually, the statute is on your side about how that permission may be refused. Real Property Law § 226-b is titled “Right to sublease or assign”, and subsection (2)(a) reads:

Three things follow. You still have to ask, and ask in advance. The building has to have four or more residential units. And if the landlord says no, the question is not whether they were entitled to — it is whether the refusal was reasonable.

This is the distinction most pages blur, and in New York it decides the outcome. Subsection (1) deals with assignment:

So for an assignment the owner may simply say no, without giving a reason. The trade-off the statute builds in is that an unreasonable refusal entitles you to be released from the lease on thirty days’ notice — and that release is expressly your sole remedy. You do not get to assign anyway, and you do not get damages.

For a sublease, none of that applies: the right exists and the consent standard is reasonableness. If you are staying on the lease and installing an occupant, you are subletting. If you are handing the whole remaining term to someone else and walking away, you are assigning — and you have swapped a reasonableness standard for an unconditional veto.

Subsection (2)(b) tells you exactly how to ask, and exactly what to enclose. The tenant must inform the landlord “by mailing a notice of such intent by certified mail, return receipt requested”, and that request “shall be accompanied by the following information”:

• the term of the sublease;
• the name of the proposed sublessee;
• the business and permanent home address of the proposed sublessee — both, not either;
• the tenant’s reason for subletting;
• the tenant’s address for the term of the sublease;
• the written consent of any co-tenant or guarantor of the lease;
• a copy of the proposed sublease, with a copy of the tenant’s lease attached if available, acknowledged by tenant and proposed subtenant as being a true copy.

The generator above collects all seven and prints them on the PDF, because a request that leaves one out is not the request the statute describes. If the landlord later refuses and you want to argue the refusal was unreasonable, the first thing examined will be whether you asked properly in the first place.

Subsection (2)(c) then gives the landlord a short window: “Within ten days after the mailing of such request, the landlord may ask the tenant for additional information as will enable the landlord to determine if rejection of such request shall be reasonable.” Answer that in writing and keep the copy.

The statute sets the standard without defining it, which is normal for a reasonableness test. What can be said safely is what the enquiry looks like: it is about the proposed subtenant and the proposed arrangement, not about whether the landlord would prefer the apartment back. A refusal grounded in the subtenant failing the same screening the landlord applies to any applicant — income, references, rental history — is a very different thing from a blanket policy of refusing every request.

That is also the practical reason to screen your subtenant properly before you name them. If you propose someone who cannot document income or has an eviction history, you have handed the landlord a reasonable ground. A completed rental application with written consent to screening is the cheapest insurance available here.

A sublease does not move your obligations to the owner. Rent still comes from you; damage is still yours to answer for. That is what makes the subtenant’s reliability your problem rather than the landlord’s, and it is why the acknowledgement appears on the generated PDF rather than being left to assumption.

Two payment relationships now run in parallel and should never be blended. You owe the owner under the lease; the subtenant owes you under the sublease. Keep the subtenant’s deposit separate from your own money, state in the sublease what it may be applied to and when it comes back, and itemise any deduction in writing.

If your apartment is rent stabilised or rent controlled, the regulatory scheme carries further rules of its own that sit alongside § 226-b. We have not read those provisions for this page, so we are not going to describe what they contain — naming a limit we have not opened would be worse than sending you to the source. If your tenancy is regulated, check the rules that apply to it, or ask the agency that administers them, before you advertise the room.

§ 226-b(2)(b) does not describe a letter in general terms; it lists what must accompany the request. Each item exists for a reason, and knowing the reason makes the request easier to get right.

The term of the sublease

The landlord is entitled to know how long the arrangement runs, not least because a sublease cannot outlast the master lease it hangs from. Give exact dates rather than a duration.

The name of the proposed sublessee

A request that does not name the person is not a request the landlord can assess. “Someone suitable” is not a proposed sublessee.

Their business address AND their permanent home address

The statute asks for both, and this is the item most often half-answered. The permanent home address is not the apartment being sublet — it is where the proposed subtenant is established.

Your reason for subletting

A short, truthful statement. Tenants sometimes leave this out as if it were intrusive; it is a statutory requirement, and omitting it weakens any later argument that the refusal was unreasonable.

Your address for the term of the sublease

Where the landlord can reach you while someone else occupies the apartment. You remain the tenant; this is how notices reach you.

The written consent of any co-tenant or guarantor

If someone else signed the lease with you, or guaranteed it, their written consent belongs in the request. If there is nobody, say so rather than leaving the item blank.

A copy of the proposed sublease, with your lease attached if available

The statute adds a specific formality: the sublease copy is to be “acknowledged by the tenant and proposed subtenant as being a true copy of such sublease”. Both of you acknowledge it. The generator above produces the sublease; attach it with your lease.

§ 226-b(2)(c) gives the landlord a defined opportunity to ask for more: “Within ten days after the mailing of such request, the landlord may ask the tenant for additional information as will enable the landlord to determine if rejection of such request shall be reasonable.”

Two practical points follow. The ten days run from the mailing, which is why the certified-mail receipt matters so much — it fixes the date the clock started. And the purpose of the enquiry is stated in the statute itself: information that bears on whether refusing would be reasonable. A request for something unrelated to that assessment is worth noting in your reply rather than simply complying with in silence.

Answer in writing. Everything in this process is evidence later, and an email you sent is worth more than a phone call you remember.

The assignment half of § 226-b is worth understanding even if you intend to sublet, because people routinely describe one and do the other.

Under subsection (1) the owner’s consent to an assignment “may be unconditionally withheld without cause”. There is no reasonableness test at all. What the statute gives instead is an exit: if the owner unreasonably withholds consent, the owner “shall release the tenant from the lease upon request of the tenant upon thirty days notice”.

The sting is in the next clause: that release “shall be the sole remedy of the tenant”. So an unreasonable refusal does not let you assign anyway, and it does not sound in damages. It lets you leave. And the subsection closes by confirming the other side of it: “If the owner reasonably withholds consent, there shall be no assignment and the tenant shall not be released from the lease.”

Set beside the sublease rule, the structure is coherent. Subletting keeps you on the lease, so the statute protects your ability to do it. Assignment takes you off the lease and substitutes a stranger into the owner’s contract, so the statute leaves the owner a veto and compensates you with an exit instead.

The sublease creates a second tenancy in which you occupy the landlord’s role. Rent comes to you; the deposit is held by you; house rules are enforced by you. If the subtenant stops paying, that is your problem to solve and your obligation to the owner continues unchanged in the meantime.

Screen accordingly. A completed rental application with written consent to screening does two jobs at once here: it tells you whether the person can afford the rent, and it makes your § 226-b request stronger, because a proposed subtenant who passes ordinary screening is a much harder person for a landlord to refuse reasonably.

Then record the condition of the apartment before handover, in writing and with dated photographs. The deposit conversation at the end of a sublease is settled by what was written down at the beginning, and by nothing else.

A sublease rarely arrives on its own. Most people reach one because something else has changed — a job in another city, a relationship ending, a lease with months left on it — so it is worth knowing what the alternatives cost before you commit to this one. Our guide to breaking a lease in New York sets out the early-exit routes and what each of them exposes you to, and in some situations ending the tenancy outright is cleaner than running a sublease you will have to manage from a distance.

The two disputes that actually follow a sublease are about money and about possession. On money, the deposit is where most of it happens, and the rules that govern what a landlord may take and when it has to come back are set out in New York security deposit laws — worth reading before you decide what to hold from your subtenant, and before you assume you know what the owner may hold from you.

On possession, the notices and timelines that apply if things go wrong are covered in New York eviction notice laws. You are the landlord in the sublease relationship, so those rules are as likely to be yours to use as to be used against you.

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