Free Oregon Notice of Non-Renewal

Direct answer: an Oregon landlord may decline to renew only inside the first year of occupancy. ORS 90.427(3)(c) provides that “at any time after the first year of occupancy, the landlord may terminate the tenancy only” for a tenant cause under one of the named sections, or “for a qualifying landlord reason for termination and with notice in writing as described in subsections (5) and (6) of this section.” For a lease with a term, ORS 90.427(4)(c) goes further: “if the specified ending date for the fixed term falls after the first year of occupancy, the fixed term tenancy becomes a month-to-month tenancy upon the expiration of the fixed term” unless the parties agree a new term, the tenant gives notice, or the landlord has a qualifying reason. So the document people search for as an “Oregon notice of non-renewal” only ends a tenancy in three situations: inside the first year of occupancy, on one of the four qualifying landlord reasons in ORS 90.427(5)(a) with 90 days, the reason and supporting facts, and one month’s periodic rent paid at delivery, or on one of three narrow routes — the 60-day owner-occupant sale route added by Senate Bill 586 in 2025, the three-strikes fixed-term route in ORS 90.427(7), and the landlord-occupied one-or-two-unit exception in ORS 90.427(8). The form below is built to that structure and refuses to produce a document that rests on the expiry of the term. Everything after it is the statute, subsection by subsection, with the local overlays in Portland and Eugene mapped rather than waved at.

Start with the occupancy date, because every branch in ORS 90.427 turns on whether the first year of occupancy has passed — and ORS 90.427(1)(a) measures that from occupancy, not from the current agreement. Then choose the statutory route. The generator derives the notice period from the route, adds the three days ORS 90.155(2) attaches to service by mail, prints the qualifying reason and the supporting facts on the face of the document, and states the relocation payment position. It will not produce a file for a post-first-year no-cause termination, and it will not produce a file for a qualifying-reason route with no reason or no supporting facts, because ORS 90.427(6)(a)(A) requires both.

Watch: Oregon non-renewal and ORS 90.427 explained

▶ Watch overview

Direct answer: only during the first year of occupancy, and after that only for a reason the statute names. ORS 90.427(3)(b) gives the landlord a genuine no-cause right, but it is bounded by a single clause: “At any time during the first year of occupancy, the landlord may terminate the tenancy by giving the tenant notice in writing not less than 30 days prior to the date designated in the notice for the termination of the tenancy.” Read the opening words. The right exists during the first year of occupancy and nowhere else in that paragraph. The very next paragraph closes the door: ORS 90.427(3)(c) provides that “except as provided in subsection (8) of this section, at any time after the first year of occupancy, the landlord may terminate the tenancy only” for a tenant cause under ORS 86.782(6)(c), 90.380(5), 90.392, 90.394, 90.396, 90.398, 90.405, 90.440 or 90.445, or for a qualifying landlord reason with the notice described in subsections (5) and (6).

That is a different architecture from the one most fifty-state tables assume. Those tables are built around a single question — how many days? — and they answer it by tenancy length. Oregon does not have a length-of-tenancy tier. It has a threshold, and on the far side of the threshold the question changes from “how many days” to “on what basis.” A landlord who serves a technically perfect 90-day notice on a three-year tenant, with the right dates and the right service method, has still served nothing at all if the notice does not identify a qualifying reason and state the facts behind it.

The word “non-renewal” is itself part of the problem. It is a contract idea: an agreement runs to a date, one party declines to extend it, and the relationship stops. Residential tenancy in Oregon does not work that way past the first year. The rental agreement may end. The tenancy does not, because the statute continues it. The landlord who says “I am simply not renewing” has not made a decision the law recognises — the law has already decided, and the decision is that the tenancy continues on a month-to-month basis.

Direct answer: it runs from occupancy, it counts every tenant, and signing a new lease does not restart it. ORS 90.427(1)(a) defines the term inside the section itself: “‘First year of occupancy’ includes all periods in which any of the tenants has resided in the dwelling unit for one year or less.” Three separate rules are packed into that sentence, and each of them catches somebody.

It is occupancy, not tenancy paperwork

The clock starts when the tenant began residing in the dwelling unit. It does not start at the signing of the current rental agreement, and it is not reset by a renewal, an amendment, a change of managing agent or a sale of the property. A tenant who moved in under a one-year lease in March 2024, signed a fresh one-year lease in March 2025 and signed another in March 2026 is not in a first year of occupancy in any sense the statute recognises. The landlord who computes the first year from the most recent signature is the archetypal Oregon casualty: the paperwork looks new, the occupancy is old, and the notice is void.

It is “any of the tenants”

The definition is deliberately written to the household, not to the individual. If one co-tenant has resided in the unit for eighteen months and a second moved in last month, the tenancy is out of the first year of occupancy. The reverse reading — that the newest tenant restarts the clock — would let a landlord manufacture a fresh first year by adding an occupant, and the statute’s language forecloses it. Adding a roommate to a rental agreement does not buy a landlord a no-cause route.

It is a period, not a date

The definition says “includes all periods in which,” so the question is asked of the moment the notice is delivered. A notice delivered on day 360 of occupancy is a first-year notice. A notice delivered on day 370 is not, even if the tenancy began the same day and even if the landlord had been preparing the notice since day 300. The generator on this page asks for the occupancy start date for exactly this reason, and refuses a first-year route where the delivery date falls outside the first year.

Direct answer: a fixed term ending after the first year of occupancy converts into a month-to-month tenancy by operation of law. This is the provision the ranking pages and the general answer layer get most consistently wrong, and it is the one that turns an ordinary non-renewal letter into an unlawful act. ORS 90.427(4)(c) reads: “Except as provided by subsection (8) of this section, if the specified ending date for the fixed term falls after the first year of occupancy, the fixed term tenancy becomes a month-to-month tenancy upon the expiration of the fixed term, unless: (A) The landlord and tenant agree to a new fixed term tenancy; (B) The tenant gives notice in writing not less than 30 days prior to the specified ending date for the fixed term or the date designated in the notice for the termination of the tenancy, whichever is later; or (C) The landlord has a qualifying reason for termination and gives notice as specified in subsections (5) to (7) of this section.”

Take the exceptions one at a time, because their asymmetry is the whole point. Exception (A) needs agreement — both parties. Exception (B) belongs to the tenant alone: the tenant may walk away at the end of the term on 30 days’ written notice, and nothing in (4)(c) gives the landlord a mirrored right. Exception (C) is the landlord’s, and it is not a notice of non-renewal — it is a qualifying-reason termination under subsections (5) to (7), with everything those subsections demand. There is no fourth exception, and in particular there is no exception for a landlord who simply gives a lot of notice.

The other half of subsection (4)

The subsection has two more paragraphs that matter. ORS 90.427(4)(a) provides that “the landlord may terminate the tenancy during the fixed term only for cause” with notice under the same list of for-cause sections — so a mid-term termination is a cause question, never a notice-period question. And ORS 90.427(4)(b) supplies the first-year fixed-term route: “if the specified ending date for the fixed term falls within the first year of occupancy, the landlord may terminate the tenancy without cause by giving the tenant notice in writing not less than 30 days prior to the specified ending date for the fixed term, or 30 days prior to the date designated in the notice for the termination of the tenancy, whichever is later.”

That “whichever is later” clause is a small trap with a clean logic. It means the landlord cannot compress the notice by serving late. Serve 45 days before the ending date and the tenancy can end on the ending date. Serve 10 days before the ending date and the tenancy cannot end on the ending date at all; the earliest lawful termination becomes 30 days after delivery, which is 20 days past the date the lease says it ends. The lease term expiring does not do the work — the notice does, and the notice needs its full run. The calculator on this page implements exactly that comparison rather than assuming the lease end date controls, and our Oregon lease termination rules guide works through the same comparison from the tenant’s side of the agreement.

Direct answer: there are exactly four, they are about the landlord’s plans for the property rather than the tenant’s conduct, and each has a condition inside it that is easy to miss. Subsection (5) opens: “The landlord may terminate a month-to-month tenancy at any time or a fixed term tenancy on or after the expiration of the fixed term by giving the tenant notice in writing” — and then paragraph (a) supplies the period, “not less than 90 days prior to the date designated as the termination date in the notice,” followed by the four conditions.

(A) Demolition or conversion to a non-residential use

The statutory words are “the landlord intends to demolish the dwelling unit or convert the dwelling unit to a use other than residential use within a reasonable time.” Two limits sit inside that. The intention must be genuine and it must be to demolish or to convert to a use that is not residential — converting apartments into different apartments, or into short-term rentals that are still residential occupancy, is not obviously within it. And the work must be contemplated within a reasonable time: a plan to demolish in five years is not the same statement as a plan to demolish next quarter, and the supporting facts required by (6)(a)(A) are where that difference becomes visible.

(B) Repairs or renovations that make the unit unfit

The words are “the landlord intends to undertake repairs or renovations to the dwelling unit within a reasonable time and: (i) The premises is unsafe or unfit for occupancy; or (ii) The dwelling unit will be unsafe or unfit for occupancy during the repairs or renovations.” This is not a renovation ground. It is an unfitness ground, and the unfitness is the operative fact. Work that is disruptive, noisy, expensive or simply easier with the unit empty does not satisfy it. The question the notice has to answer with facts is why the unit is or will be unsafe or unfit while the work is done — which system is being replaced, what is being opened up, what permit has issued, and over what period.

(C) The landlord or immediate family moving in

The words are “the landlord intends for the landlord or a member of the landlord’s immediate family to occupy the dwelling unit as a primary residence and the landlord does not own a comparable unit in the same building that is available for occupancy at the same time that the tenant receives notice to terminate the tenancy.” The second half is a real condition, not a formality: a landlord with a comparable vacant unit in the same building cannot displace a tenant to house a family member. And “immediate family” is defined at ORS 90.427(1)(b) as an adult related by blood, adoption, marriage or domestic partnership as defined in ORS 106.310 or similar law elsewhere; an unmarried parent of a joint child; a child, grandchild, foster child, ward or guardian; or a child, grandchild, foster child, ward or guardian of any of those. A cousin, a friend, a business partner or an employee is outside the definition.

(D) An accepted offer from a buyer who will live there

The words are “the landlord has accepted an offer to purchase the dwelling unit from a person who intends in good faith to occupy the dwelling unit as the person’s primary residence and has provided written evidence of the offer with the notice.” Three elements: an accepted offer, a buyer whose good-faith intention is to occupy as a primary residence, and written evidence of the offer served with the notice rather than promised for later. A sale to an investor, to a buyer who intends to re-let, or to a buyer whose intentions are unrecorded does not open this ground — and a notice that names the ground but attaches nothing fails on the face of the document.

Direct answer: it is paid when the notice is handed over, not when the tenant moves, and only a landlord with four or fewer units is excused. ORS 90.427(6)(a) is a two-part obligation on any landlord terminating under subsection (5): “(A) Specify in the termination notice the reason for the termination and supporting facts; and (B) At the time the landlord delivers the tenant the notice to terminate the tenancy, pay the tenant an amount equal to one month’s periodic rent.” The conjunction is “and.” A landlord who does one and not the other has not complied with subsection (6), and a termination in violation of subsection (6) is exactly what ORS 90.427(9)(a) prices at three months’ rent plus actual damages.

The timing is the trap

Most relocation-assistance regimes in the United States pay on or around the move. Oregon’s does not. The payment is made at the time the landlord delivers the notice. A landlord who serves a 90-day qualifying-reason notice intending to pay on the way out has served a defective notice on day one, and the defect is not cured by paying later — the statutory condition attached to the delivery, and the delivery has happened. Practically, that means the money should move in the same act as the service: handed over with the notice, or mailed with it, and documented as such.

It is periodic rent, not market rent

The measure is one month’s periodic rent — the rent for one rental period under the existing agreement. It is not the market rate, not the rent the landlord hopes to charge next, and not a figure negotiated with the tenant. Worth knowing: “periodic rent” is not a defined term in ORS 90.100, although “rent” is — defined as any payment to be made to the landlord under the rental agreement, periodic or otherwise, in exchange for the right to occupy the dwelling unit, and expressly excluding security deposits, fees and utility or service charges. So the amount is measured on rent proper, not on the total the tenant pays each month, and a landlord who calculates the payment on a rent-plus-utilities figure is paying more than the statute asks while a landlord who nets something off is paying less than it asks.

The four-or-fewer carve-out, exactly as written

ORS 90.427(6)(b): “The requirements of paragraph (a)(B) of this subsection do not apply to a landlord who has an ownership interest in four or fewer residential dwelling units subject to this chapter.” Four things follow directly from that sentence, and every one of them is misreported somewhere on this search results page.

• The threshold is four or fewer. Not one, not two, not “a small landlord.”
• It counts ownership interests in residential dwelling units subject to ORS chapter 90 — the whole portfolio, not just the building the notice concerns. A landlord with four rented houses is inside it; a landlord with five is outside it.
• It excuses paragraph (a)(B) only. The 90-day period in (5)(a) and the reason-and-supporting-facts requirement in (6)(a)(A) still apply in full. The carve-out is about money and nothing else.
• There is no individual-versus-entity distinction anywhere in ORS 90.427. An owner holding four units through a limited liability company is inside the carve-out on the face of the text, and a natural person holding twelve is outside it.

One consequence worth naming: because subsection (6)(b) refers to paragraph (a)(B) by its new letter, the carve-out cross-reference itself moved when Senate Bill 586 renumbered the section. A form or guide citing “ORS 90.427(6)(a)(C)” for the payment obligation is citing a designation that no longer exists.

Direct answer: SB 586 inserted a 60-day sale route, repealed the 120-day offer-to-purchase deadline, and renumbered the qualifying reasons and the payment obligation. Senate Bill 586 of the 2025 regular session of the Eighty-third Legislative Assembly — Oregon Laws 2025, chapter 291 — amended ORS 90.427 and ORS 105.124 in place. Its relating clause is “relating to termination of tenancy due to sale of dwelling unit,” and its section 3 provides that “this 2025 Act takes effect on the 91st day after the date on which the 2025 regular session of the Eighty-third Legislative Assembly adjourns sine die.” The session adjourned sine die on 27 June 2025, which puts the effective date at 26 September 2025. Four changes matter for a non-renewal page.

1. The new 60-day sale route, ORS 90.427(5)(b)

Paragraph (b) now allows a notice “not less than 60 days prior to the date designated as the termination date in the notice if: (A) The landlord has accepted, and has provided written evidence of, an offer as provided in paragraph (a)(D) of this subsection; and (B) At the time of giving the notice, the landlord pays the tenant an amount equal to one month’s periodic rent in addition to an amount, if any, to be paid under subsection (6)(a)(B) of this section.” Read (B) closely. The extra month is in addition to the (6)(a)(B) month. A landlord with five or more units who wants the 60-day route therefore pays two months’ periodic rent in total, both at the time of the notice. A landlord with four or fewer units is excused from the (6)(a)(B) month by (6)(b) — which is what the words “if any” are doing — but still owes the (5)(b)(B) month if the landlord wants to shorten the period. The 60-day route is not a discount. It is a purchase.

2. The 120-day offer-to-purchase deadline is gone

SB 586 deleted the paragraph requiring the notice and the written evidence to be provided “not more than 120 days after accepting the offer to purchase,” in subsection (5) and again in the parallel provision within subsection (8), and substituted the requirement that written evidence of the offer be provided with the notice. Any page still stating a 120-day window is describing repealed law.

3. The qualifying reasons moved down a level

Before SB 586 the four reasons sat at ORS 90.427(5)(a) through (5)(d). Because the new 60-day route needed to be paragraph (b), the reasons were pushed into subparagraphs: they are now ORS 90.427(5)(a)(A) through (5)(a)(D). A guide citing “ORS 90.427(5)(c)” for the landlord-move-in reason is citing the old scheme.

4. The payment obligation moved, and the remedy narrowed

The old (6)(a)(B), which required the notice to state that the agreement terminates on a designated date not less than 90 days after delivery, was deleted — the 90 days now lives in (5)(a) — and the payment obligation moved up from (6)(a)(C) to (6)(a)(B). In subsection (9), the list of provisions whose violation triggers the three-months’-rent remedy was narrowed: references to (3)(c)(B) and (4)(c) were struck, leaving violations of subsections (5), (6) and (7).

Direct answer: it is the only way a fixed term ending after year one fails to roll over without a qualifying landlord reason, and its prerequisites are built long before the notice is written. Subsection (7) provides that “a fixed term tenancy does not become a month-to-month tenancy upon the expiration of the fixed term if the landlord gives the tenant notice in writing not less than 90 days prior to the specified ending date for the fixed term or 90 days prior to the date designated in the notice for the termination of the tenancy, whichever is later,” and then imposes three sets of conditions.

(a) The violations

“The tenant has committed three or more violations of the rental agreement within the preceding 12-month period and the landlord has given the tenant a written warning notice at the time of each violation.” Both halves matter. Three violations without warnings is nothing. Warnings issued in a batch after the third violation is nothing, because the statute says at the time of each. This route cannot be assembled retrospectively, which is why it is almost never available to a landlord who did not decide to build it months in advance.

(b) What each warning must say

Each written warning notice must “(A) Specify the violation; (B) State that the landlord may choose to terminate the tenancy at the end of the fixed term if there are three violations within a 12-month period preceding the end of the fixed term; and (C) State that correcting the third or subsequent violation is not a defense to termination under this subsection.” Element (C) is the one omitted by every generic warning letter in circulation. A warning that describes the problem and asks the tenant to fix it is a good tenancy-management document and a useless subsection (7) prerequisite.

(c) What the 90-day notice must say and when it goes

The notice must “(A) State that the rental agreement will terminate upon the specified ending date for the fixed term or upon a designated date not less than 90 days after delivery of the notice, whichever is later; (B) Specify the reason for the termination and supporting facts; and (C) Is delivered to the tenant concurrent with or after the third or subsequent written warning notice.” Note (C): the termination notice cannot precede the third warning. A landlord who anticipates the third violation and serves early has served out of sequence.

Two further points that are absent from every secondary source we could find. First, subsection (7) is a fixed-term-only route. It has no application to a month-to-month tenancy, because what it does is prevent a conversion that only fixed terms undergo. Second, no relocation payment attaches to it: the (6)(a)(B) obligation is expressed as applying to a landlord that terminates “under subsection (5),” and a subsection (7) termination is not one. The reason-and-facts requirement still applies, because (7)(c)(B) imposes its own.

Direct answer: this is the statute’s only genuine no-cause route after the first year, and it is narrow enough that most landlords who reach for it do not qualify. Subsection (8) opens: “If the tenancy is for occupancy in a dwelling unit that is located in the same building or on the same property as the landlord’s primary residence, and the building or the property contains not more than two dwelling units, the landlord may terminate the tenancy at any time after the first year of occupancy.”

Both conditions have to hold at once. The unit must share a building or a property with the landlord’s primary residence — a second home, an investment property or a unit the landlord occupies occasionally is not within it. And that building or property must contain not more than two dwelling units. A triplex is outside subsection (8) even if the landlord lives in one of the three. A house with two accessory units is outside it. A duplex where the landlord lives in one half is the paradigm case.

Two mechanical points. First, subsection (8) is the express exception in both ORS 90.427(3)(c) and ORS 90.427(4)(c) — those paragraphs each begin by carving it out, which is why a landlord-occupied duplex escapes both the just-cause rule and the automatic rollover. Second, ORS 90.427(12)(a) lists the notices that need not state a reason: those under subsection (2), (3)(a) or (b), and (8)(a)(B) or (b). SB 586 removed (8)(a)(C) from that list, which makes sense — the 30-day sale route now depends on a stated and evidenced sale, so it is no longer a no-reason notice. ORS 90.427(12)(b) separately allows a landlord giving a no-reason notice to include an explanation without having to prove it, provided the notice states that it is given without stated cause, that the recipient has no right to cure, and that the giver need not prove the reason in court.

Direct answer: writing, a route, a specific termination date, and — for every subsection (5) or (7) notice — the reason and the supporting facts. ORS 90.427 does not publish a single checklist of contents the way some states do. It distributes the content requirements across the route paragraphs, and the effect is that what a notice must say depends on which route it is on.

What “supporting facts” actually means

This is the requirement most often satisfied in form and failed in substance. A notice that says “terminated pursuant to ORS 90.427(5)(a)(C)” has specified a reason by reference and stated no facts at all. A notice that says “the landlord’s son will move into the unit” has stated one fact and left out the condition that makes the ground available. The statute asks for the reason and the facts that support it, which for each ground means something specific:

• (A) demolition or conversion — what is to be demolished or what non-residential use is intended, and the timescale that makes it “within a reasonable time.”
• (B) repairs or renovations — what work is planned, why the premises is or will be unsafe or unfit for occupancy while it is done, and over what period.
• (C) landlord or immediate family occupancy — who will occupy, their relationship within the ORS 90.427(1)(b) definition, that the occupancy is as a primary residence, and that the landlord owns no comparable unit in the same building available at the time the tenant receives the notice.
• (D) accepted offer to purchase — that an offer has been accepted, that the buyer intends in good faith to occupy as a primary residence, and the written evidence attached.
• (7) three strikes — each of the three or more violations, its date, and the date of the written warning that accompanied it.

The practical test is whether a reader who knows nothing about the tenancy could tell from the notice alone why the ground is available. If the answer requires a follow-up conversation, the notice has not stated supporting facts.

The veterans’ assistance statement, and why nothing in ORS 90.427 will remind you of it

ORS 90.391 is one sentence long and it reaches every termination notice in the chapter: “Except as provided in ORS 408.515(3), a notice of termination of tenancy under any provision of this chapter must include the information required by ORS 408.515.” Note what it does not do. It does not list sections, so there is no point looking for ORS 90.427 in it — the reference is to the whole of chapter 90, which necessarily includes the termination routes on this page.

ORS 408.515(1) then specifies the content, and it specifies content rather than prescribing a form of words: the document must include “a statement that if the recipient is a veteran of the armed forces, assistance may be available from a county veterans’ service officer or community action agency,” and either contact information for the service officer appointed under ORS 408.410 for the county in which the recipient lives together with contact information for a community action agency serving that area, or “a statement that contact information for a local county veterans’ service officer and community action agency may be obtained by calling a 2-1-1 information service.” The two limbs are conjunctive: the assistance statement plus one of the two contact routes. ORS 408.515(2) applies the same requirement to a forcible entry and detainer summons under ORS 105.110 and to certain lien and trust-deed foreclosure documents, and ORS 408.515(3) exempts documents sent or served by the judicial department.

This is the element most commonly missing from a hand-drafted Oregon notice, precisely because nothing in the termination statute prompts it. The generator on this page carries it as a checkbox so that omitting it is a decision rather than an oversight. Because ORS 408.515 states required content and not statutory wording, the sentence the generator prints is a compliant drafting of that content rather than a quotation of the statute.

Direct answer: personal delivery, first class mail, or mail plus attachment where the rental agreement provides for it — and mail costs three days that the notice itself must state. ORS 90.155(1) sets out the permitted methods. There are three, and the list is shorter than the one multi-state templates carry.

The mail-and-attachment method in ORS 90.155(1)(c) is more demanding than it looks, and the demands run both ways. The agreement has to provide for the method from the tenant to the landlord as well; the landlord’s copy goes by first class mail addressed to the tenant at the premises with a second copy attached in a secure manner to the main entrance of the part of the premises the tenant possesses; and for notices travelling the other way the agreement must describe the landlord’s designated location “with particularity,” reasonably located in relation to the tenant and available at all hours. A rental agreement that authorises posting only for the landlord has not created a (1)(c) method.

The three days are part of the drafting, not part of the argument

ORS 90.155(2) is unusually explicit: where a notice is served by mail “the minimum period for compliance or termination of tenancy, as appropriate, shall be extended by three days, and the notice shall include the extension in the period provided.” The second half is the operative one. A landlord cannot post a bare 90-day notice and expect a court to add three days at the hearing; the notice has to be written with 93 days already in it. A 30-day first-year notice put in the post is a 33-day notice. A 60-day subsection (8) notice put in the post is a 63-day notice. The calculator on this page applies the extension automatically whenever a mail-based service method is selected, and the generated document states it.

One boundary is worth stating precisely rather than smoothing over, because it affects the arithmetic. By its terms ORS 90.155(2) attaches the three days to service “by mail under subsection (1)(b) of this section.” It does not by its terms attach them to the (1)(c) mail-and-attachment method or to the (1)(d) email method. Since both of those involve a first class mailing in practice — and since ORS 90.155(5) requires a termination notice sent by email to be sent by first class mail as well — this page and its generator apply the three days to every method that includes a mailing. That is the conservative reading, and a landlord who adds three days it turns out were not required has served a long notice, which is lawful. A landlord who omits three days that were required has served a short one, which is not.

Document the service, then keep the file

Oregon does not require a filed proof of service for a termination notice the way some jurisdictions require an affidavit, but the landlord carries the burden of showing that a valid notice was properly delivered if the matter reaches an action for possession under Oregon’s eviction procedure. Record the date, the method, the person who delivered or mailed it, and for a (1)(c) attachment the fact that the rental agreement authorises the method. The generated PDF includes a proof-of-service block for that purpose. Keep the notice, the record of service, the rental agreement and — critically for a subsection (5) notice — evidence that the one month’s periodic rent was paid at delivery. There is no four-year retention rule in Oregon law; retain the file for as long as a claim arising from the tenancy could be brought, which for the ORS 90.427(9) remedy is at least a year from when the tenant knew or should have known.

Direct answer: if the tenant has done something, ORS 90.427 is the wrong statute. Both ORS 90.427(3)(c)(A) and ORS 90.427(4)(a) point away from the non-renewal machinery to a list of for-cause sections. A landlord dealing with unpaid rent, a lease breach or dangerous conduct does not need a qualifying reason, does not owe one month’s periodic rent, and does not wait 90 days — but does have to use the right section, with its own notice period and its own cure rights. Our Oregon eviction notice rules guide works through those routes in detail; the table below is the map that tells you which one you are on.

The strategic point for a landlord is that the two families of routes cannot be blended. A notice that recites a lease violation and then gives 90 days as though it were a qualifying-reason notice is neither a for-cause notice nor a subsection (5) notice: it states no qualifying reason and it gives no cure right. If the facts support a cause, use the cause section. If they do not, and the first year of occupancy has passed, the question is whether one of the four qualifying reasons is genuinely available — and if none is, the honest answer is that the tenancy continues.

This search results page is in unusually poor health. Three of the top results are broken, blocked or no longer resolve; several of the rest are consumer question-and-answer threads; and the generative answer layer — the text that appears above the blue links and increasingly instead of them — states the fixed-term rule backwards. The claims below were observed on pages currently ranking or in the answer text served for these queries. The corrections are from the statute.

The pattern behind those errors predicts the next one. Almost every incorrect claim above comes from a fifty-state table in which Oregon occupies one row and the author needed a number for that row. Oregon does not have a number. It has a threshold, four reasons, a payment, three narrow routes and a rewritten subsection scheme — and a table cell cannot hold that, so the cell gets filled with the figure that looks most like a national average. The failure is structural rather than careless, which is why it keeps being repeated by pages that are otherwise carefully made.

Serving a no-cause notice after the first year at all

The first and largest. A document reciting the end of the term and a number of days states no route under ORS 90.427, satisfies neither (6)(a)(A) nor (7)(c)(B), and does not prevent the (4)(c) conversion. It cannot support an action for possession, the time spent running its period is lost, and if the tenant relies on it and moves, subsection (9) attaches.

Measuring the first year from the current lease

ORS 90.427(1)(a) measures periods in which any of the tenants has resided in the dwelling unit for one year or less. A renewal signature is not an occupancy date. This is the error that most often turns a notice the landlord believed was a routine 30-day first-year notice into a bare no-cause termination of a long tenancy.

Naming the subsection instead of stating the facts

“Pursuant to ORS 90.427(5)(a)(B)” is a citation. ORS 90.427(6)(a)(A) asks for the reason and supporting facts. What work, why the unit will be unfit, over what period. Who is moving in, in what relationship, and that no comparable unit in the building is available.

Paying the month at move-out, or not at all

The obligation is discharged at delivery of the notice or it is not discharged. A landlord with five or more units who serves a qualifying-reason notice without paying has violated subsection (6) on day one.

Assuming the four-or-fewer carve-out covers more than the money

It excuses paragraph (a)(B). It does not excuse the reason, the facts or the 90 days. A landlord with two rental houses still needs a qualifying reason to end a post-first-year tenancy.

Buying the 60-day sale route without paying for it

ORS 90.427(5)(b)(B) requires the extra month’s periodic rent at the time of giving the notice, in addition to any (6)(a)(B) amount. A 60-day sale notice with a single month paid, from a landlord who is not within the (6)(b) carve-out, is a short notice with a shortfall in the payment.

Assembling the three-strikes route after the fact

Written warnings must have been given at the time of each violation, each must have carried the two statements in (7)(b)(B) and (C), and the 90-day notice must be delivered concurrent with or after the third warning. None of that can be produced retrospectively, and a landlord who tries will have created a paper trail that proves the sequence was wrong.

Reaching for subsection (8) without meeting both conditions

The landlord’s primary residence must share the building or the property, and the building or property must contain not more than two dwelling units. A landlord who lives in one unit of a three-unit property is outside subsection (8) and back inside the just-cause rule.

Serving a fixed-term notice too late and treating the lease end as the termination date

Under (4)(b) and (7) the period is measured against the specified ending date or the designated date, whichever is later. Serve inside the window and the earliest lawful termination moves past the end of the lease. Writing the lease end date into a late notice states a date the statute does not allow.

Mailing without building in the three days

ORS 90.155(2) extends the minimum period and requires the notice to include the extension. A mailed 90-day notice that states 90 days is short, and the defect is on the face of the document.

Serving from a city with an ordinance without checking it

Portland and Eugene impose their own periods and payments on top of the statute, and the local requirement governs where it is stricter. A state-compliant notice served at a covered address can still be defective under the ordinance, and in Portland the ordinance is what makes the state’s new 60-day sale route unavailable.

Omitting a tenant, or the veterans’ statement

Every adult tenant on the rental agreement should be named and served. And ORS 90.391 attaches a content requirement to termination notices that has nothing to do with ORS 90.427 and is therefore the element a landlord drafting from the termination statute alone will never think of.

Terminating inside the shadow of protected tenant conduct

ORS 90.385 prohibits retaliation for the tenant conduct it protects. Oregon does not supply a presumption that shifts the burden, so the tenant must prove motive — but a qualifying-reason notice served weeks after a habitability complaint, with thin supporting facts and no contemporaneous documentation of the landlord’s plans, is how a landlord loses a case the statute would otherwise have allowed.

Direct answer: nearly all residential tenancies, with two real boundaries — the arrangements ORS 90.110 puts outside chapter 90 altogether, and manufactured dwelling or floating home facility tenancies, which ORS 90.427(13) switches off. Before working through the routes it is worth knowing whether the arrangement is inside the statute at all, because a landlord who assumes an exclusion applies has usually assumed wrong.

Outside chapter 90 entirely — ORS 90.110

ORS 90.110 opens with an anti-evasion clause that does a great deal of work: “Unless created to avoid the application of this chapter, the following arrangements are not governed by this chapter.” An arrangement dressed up to escape the act does not escape it. Subject to that, the excluded arrangements are residence at a public or private institution incidental to detention or to medical, geriatric, educational, counselling, religious or similar service, but not off-campus non-dormitory housing; occupancy of a dwelling unit for no more than 90 days by a purchaser before the scheduled closing of a real estate sale or by a seller after closing, under the terms of the sale agreement; occupancy by a member of a fraternal or social organisation in the part of a structure operated for the organisation’s benefit; transient occupancy in a hotel or motel; occupancy by a squatter; vacation occupancy; occupancy by an employee of the landlord whose right to occupy is conditional on employment in and about the premises; occupancy by the owner of a condominium unit or a holder of a proprietary lease in a cooperative; and occupancy under a rental agreement covering premises used primarily for agricultural purposes.

Two of those exclusions still route the ending of the arrangement through a statute. Buyer or seller occupancy under ORS 90.110(2) may be terminated only pursuant to ORS 91.130, and conditional employee occupancy under ORS 90.110(7) only pursuant to ORS 91.120. And a tenant who holds but has not exercised an option to purchase is expressly not a purchaser for the purposes of the 90-day sale exclusion, which closes an obvious workaround.

What is not on that list is worth as much attention as what is. Sharing a dwelling with the owner is not an exclusion. Renting a single house is not an exclusion. Renting to a family member, a friend or a former employee is not an exclusion. Renting month to month rather than on a written agreement is not an exclusion. Each of those is asserted somewhere in the material a landlord will find while searching, and none of them takes the tenancy outside chapter 90 or outside ORS 90.427. Our Oregon landlord and tenant law guide covers the chapter as a whole, including the obligations that continue to run during a notice period.

Inside chapter 90 but outside most of ORS 90.427 — facility tenancies

ORS 90.427(13) provides that “subsections (2) to (9) of this section do not apply to a month-to-month tenancy subject to ORS 90.429 or other tenancy created by a rental agreement subject to ORS 90.505 to 90.850.” That is the manufactured dwelling and floating home world: where the tenant owns the home and rents the space in a facility, essentially the whole of the machinery on this page falls away. No first-year-of-occupancy line, no four qualifying reasons, no one month’s periodic rent, no three-strikes route and no subsection (9) remedy. Termination of a facility space tenancy is governed by ORS 90.630, which is a for-cause structure of its own and contains no no-cause right. A landlord who downloads a general Oregon termination notice for a park space has used the wrong instrument, and the error is invisible on the face of the document because both are “Oregon termination notices.”

The definitions that decide the edge cases

ORS 90.100 defines “dwelling unit” as a structure or the part of a structure used as a home, residence or sleeping place by one person maintaining a household or by two or more persons maintaining a common household — and, for a manufactured dwelling, recreational vehicle or floating home where only the space is rented, as the space rented rather than the home. The chapter separately defines “month-to-month tenancy,” “week-to-week tenancy” and “fixed term tenancy,” which is what makes the routes in ORS 90.427 map cleanly onto the tenancy in front of you. It does not define “first year of occupancy” — that lives at ORS 90.427(1)(a) — and it does not define “periodic rent.”

Direct answer: Portland is the one that changes the arithmetic, and it applies to non-renewal expressly. The state just-cause rule is the floor. Three Oregon cities build on top of it, and where a local requirement is stricter it is the one that governs. Everything below is stated at the level we were able to verify, and where we could not open the primary text we say so rather than repeating what other pages assert.

Portland — Portland City Code 30.01.085

Portland’s Mandatory Renter Relocation Assistance provision is the most consequential local overlay in the state, and its trigger list is broader than the phrase “no-cause eviction” suggests. Subsection B reaches a termination without cause, a termination for a qualifying landlord reason under the state act, and the case where a landlord declines to renew or replace an expiring rental agreement — which is to say, non-renewal as such. For any of those, the landlord must deliver a written termination notice not less than 90 days before the termination date and pay relocation assistance in an amount fixed by unit size.

Eugene — Ordinance 20694 and the Eugene Code

Eugene adopted a relocation-assistance regime by Ordinance No. 20694, passed by the City Council on 24 July 2023 and effective 25 August 2023. The ordinance amended Eugene Code sections 8.405, 8.415, 8.425, 8.430 and 8.440, and added a new section 8.437, “Rental Housing – Cause of Action for Failure to Pay Relocation Assistance.” The relocation requirements sit within EC 8.425, and the existence of a free-standing cause of action at EC 8.437 tells you how the city intends the obligation to be enforced: a tenant who is not paid can sue on the ordinance itself rather than having to wait for a possession action to raise it as a defence.

We are not going to print Eugene’s payment amount, payment deadline or exemption list on this page, because we could not open the operative code text from a primary source — the municipal code host refused the request and the city’s published document copies would not yield extractable text. Figures for Eugene circulate widely in secondary guides and we have no way to confirm them against the code as currently amended. Before serving at a Eugene address, read EC 8.425 and EC 8.437 directly, or ask the city’s rental housing programme. Treat any Eugene number you find elsewhere, including on pages ranking for this query, as unverified until you have seen it in the code.

Milwaukie — Milwaukie Municipal Code chapter 5.60

Milwaukie has a tenant-protection chapter, Milwaukie Municipal Code chapter 5.60, titled “Milwaukie Renter Additional Protections,” with an applicability section at MMC 5.60.030. Secondary sources describe it as a notice-period ordinance that lengthens the period for a termination without cause and excepts week-to-week tenancies and buildings or properties of not more than two dwelling units where one is the landlord’s primary residence — broadly tracking the shape of ORS 90.427(8). We could not open the chapter text itself; the code hosts returned refusals and the city’s own document link resolved to nothing. So we are stating the chapter and its subject and no numbers.

One thing we can say clearly, because it is a negative that matters: we found no evidence that Milwaukie imposes a relocation payment. Milwaukie is regularly listed alongside Portland and Eugene in roll-up guides as a relocation-assistance city, and nothing we could reach supports that. Do not budget for a Milwaukie relocation payment on the strength of a list, and do not assume there is none either — read chapter 5.60.

Direct answer: a defective notice is a defence to the action for possession, and for the subsection (5), (6) and (7) routes it is also a claim worth three months’ rent plus actual damages. Oregon does not leave the consequences of a bad termination to general principles. ORS 90.427(9)(a) provides that if a landlord terminates a tenancy in violation of subsection (5), (6) or (7), “(A) The landlord shall be liable to the tenant in an amount equal to three months’ rent in addition to actual damages sustained by the tenant as a result of the tenancy termination; and (B) The tenant has a defense to an action for possession by the landlord.” Paragraph (9)(b) sets the limitation: the tenant is entitled to that recovery if the action is commenced “within one year after the tenant knew or should have known that the landlord terminated the tenancy in violation of this section.”

Read the trigger list carefully — it narrowed in 2025

Before Senate Bill 586 the remedy also attached to violations of ORS 90.427(3)(c)(B) and (4)(c). Those references were struck, so subsection (9) as it now stands reaches violations of subsections (5), (6) and (7). That does not make a bare post-first-year no-cause notice harmless — it does not terminate the tenancy, it does not support an action for possession, and a landlord who acts on it is exposed on other grounds — but a page that says “any defective Oregon notice costs three months’ rent” is overstating the reach of subsection (9). The remedy is aimed at the qualifying-reason machinery: serving without a real reason, without the supporting facts, without the payment, or without the (7) prerequisites.

The defence in the possession action

The commonest sequence is the plainest one. The landlord serves a notice, the tenant does not leave, the landlord files, and the tenant raises the notice. If the notice is defective the action fails, the tenant remains in possession, and the landlord starts again from the beginning — which for a qualifying-reason route means a fresh 90 days and, if the earlier payment cannot simply be re-used, a fresh payment at delivery of the new notice. Oregon’s eviction procedure moves quickly at the front end: under ORS 105.135(2)(a) the first appearance is set seven days after the judicial day following payment of the filing fees, or fifteen days in a nonpayment case. That speed cuts both ways — it does not give a landlord time to repair a notice mid-action.

Retaliation, and what Oregon does not provide

ORS 90.385(1) provides that a landlord “may not retaliate by increasing rent or decreasing services, by serving a notice to terminate the tenancy or by bringing or threatening to bring an action for possession after” the tenant has complained to a government agency charged with enforcement, or expressed in writing an intention to; made a good-faith complaint to the landlord related to the tenancy; organised or joined a tenants’ union or similar organisation; testified against the landlord in a judicial, administrative or legislative proceeding; successfully defended a possession action within the previous six months, subject to two exceptions; used or intended to use the dwelling as a family child care home in compliance with ORS 90.358; or performed or expressed an intention to perform any other act asserting or invoking a right secured to tenants under federal, state or local law. Under ORS 90.385(3) the tenant is then entitled to the remedies in ORS 90.375 and has a defence to a retaliatory possession action.

Here is what Oregon does not give the tenant, and it is a point on which guidance copied from other states is regularly wrong: there is no presumption of retaliation and no burden shift. The words do not appear in ORS 90.385. The tenant carries the burden of proving the retaliatory motive. The only six-month period in the section sits inside paragraph (1)(e) and does nothing more than fix how recently the tenant must have won a possession action for that particular predicate to count. Landlords should not relax on the strength of that, because motive is proved from documents and timing, and a qualifying-reason notice with thin supporting facts served shortly after a habitability complaint supplies both. Subsection (4) preserves the landlord’s right to bring a possession action notwithstanding subsections (1) and (3) in the circumstances it lists, including where rent was in default when the notice was served.

The ORS 90.375 remedy

Where a landlord goes beyond a bad notice and actually removes or excludes the tenant, seriously attempts or threatens to, or wilfully diminishes or threatens to diminish essential services by interrupting heat, running water, hot water, electricity or another essential service, ORS 90.375 lets the tenant obtain injunctive relief to recover possession, or terminate the rental agreement and recover “an amount up to two months’ periodic rent or twice the actual damages sustained by the tenant, whichever is greater.” Note the words up to: it is a ceiling on the award, not an automatic entitlement, and guides that drop those two words overstate it. The section also lets the tenant recover damages without terminating the agreement or seeking an injunction, and where the tenant does terminate, the security deposit and prepaid rent come back under ORS 90.300.

Fair housing sits alongside all of it

A termination that targets a tenant on the basis of a protected characteristic violates the federal Fair Housing Act and Oregon fair housing law regardless of whether the ORS 90.427 route was correctly executed, and disparate-impact analysis reaches facially neutral practices that fall disproportionately on a protected class. A pattern of qualifying-reason terminations concentrated in one part of a portfolio is the kind of fact that gets examined. Our Oregon tenant screening rules guide covers the front-end obligations that shape the same exposure.

The arc below assumes the commonest post-first-year scenario: a landlord who intends to move an immediate family member in, terminating under ORS 90.427(5)(a)(C) on 90 days. Substitute the period and the conditions your own route carries.

Subsection letters on this page are the ones in force after Senate Bill 586 took effect on 26 September 2025. Where a source you are comparing against uses a different scheme — the qualifying reasons at (5)(a) to (5)(d), or the payment at (6)(a)(C) — that source predates the amendment.

• ORS 90.427 (Termination of tenancy without tenant cause; effect of termination notice), read as amended by Senate Bill 586 (2025), including subsections (1)(a), (1)(b), (2), (3)(a) to (3)(c), (4)(a) to (4)(c), (5)(a) and (5)(b), (6)(a) and (6)(b), (7), (8), (9), (12) and (13)
• Enrolled Senate Bill 586, 83rd Oregon Legislative Assembly, 2025 Regular Session — Oregon Laws 2025, chapter 291; amending ORS 90.427 and ORS 105.124; effective the 91st day after sine die, 26 September 2025
• Enrolled House Bill 2134, 83rd Oregon Legislative Assembly, 2025 Regular Session — Oregon Laws 2025, chapter 115, sections 1 to 3
• ORS 90.155 (Service or delivery of written notice), subsections (1)(a) to (1)(d), (2), (3), (4) and (5)
• ORS 90.391 (Information to veterans required in notice) and ORS 408.515 (Information on services for veterans), subsections (1), (2) and (3)
• ORS 90.385 (Retaliatory conduct by landlord) and ORS 90.375 (Effect of unlawful ouster or exclusion)
• ORS 90.392 (Termination of tenancy for cause), ORS 90.394 (Termination of tenancy for failure to pay rent), ORS 90.396 (Acts or omissions justifying termination in 24 hours), ORS 90.398 (Termination of tenancy for drug or alcohol violations)
• ORS 90.110 (Exclusions from application of chapter) and ORS 90.100 (Definitions)
• ORS 90.323 and ORS 90.324 (rent increase notice and the annual maximum), ORS 90.630 (termination of facility space tenancies)
• ORS 105.110, ORS 105.124, ORS 105.135 and ORS 105.137 (forcible entry and detainer procedure, the residential eviction complaint form, first appearance and default)
• Portland City Code 30.01.085 (Mandatory Renter Relocation Assistance) and 30.01.086 (Evaluation of Applicants for Dwelling Units), read from the published City Code
• City of Eugene Ordinance No. 20694 (2023), amending Eugene Code 8.405, 8.415, 8.425, 8.430 and 8.440 and adding EC 8.437
• Milwaukie Municipal Code chapter 5.60 (Milwaukie Renter Additional Protections)
• Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. § 3601 et seq.

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