Free Pennsylvania Month-to-Month Rental Agreement

A Pennsylvania month-to-month tenancy is an indeterminate term, and Section 501 of the Landlord and Tenant Act of 1951 governs the notice to quit. A landlord wanting possession at the end of such a term must notify the tenant in writing to remove, and the notice must specify that the tenant remove within fifteen days from the date of service. Two things make Pennsylvania unlike the other states in this set: the clock runs from service rather than from a rental date, and § 501(e) expressly allows the lease to shorten the period or waive it altogether.

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Pennsylvania’s residential tenancies still run on the Landlord and Tenant Act of 1951, and the Act words its own provisions as sections — “Section 501” — while the familiar 68 P.S. § 250.501 citation is a publisher’s overlay the statute itself never uses. Under that Act the written agreement carries unusual weight, because § 501(e) lets it shorten or waive the notice to quit and because nothing in the section addresses a tenant’s own notice. A Pennsylvania month-to-month agreement should therefore be explicit about both: what period each side will give, and whether the parties are relying on the statutory default or displacing it. The generator above asks how the term is described, which is the fact § 501(b) turns on.

• The full names of the landlord and of every adult tenant
• The address of the premises, including the unit number
• That the term is indeterminate, which is the description § 501(b) attaches the fifteen-day period to
• The rent, the interval it covers, and the day it falls due
• The notice the landlord will give, and whether the parties are relying on § 501(b) or on a shorter period permitted by § 501(e)
• The notice the tenant will give, which § 501 does not supply
• Whether the tenant is waiving notice under § 501(e), stated plainly if so
• The address each party sends notice to
• The security deposit, where it is held, and what the tenant is told about its return
• Which utilities and services each party pays for, and the pet, smoking and guest rules

• Assuming the fifteen days cannot be contracted away. § 501(e) says in terms that the notice may be for a lesser time or waived by the tenant if the lease so provides. A tenant signing a Pennsylvania lease should read the notice clause carefully for exactly this reason.
• Stating fifteen days as the tenant’s period too. § 501 is about a landlord repossessing. It sets no period for a tenant giving notice, and treating it as symmetric reads something into the section that is not there.
• Counting from a rent date. Every period in § 501 runs from the date of service. There is no alignment to a rental date or a period end.
• Applying the residential periods to a mobile home space. § 501(c) sets a separate regime for a tenant of a mobile home park — thirty days or three months rather than fifteen or thirty — and its nonpayment period is seasonal.
• Searching for “250.501” in the Act. The Act words its own provisions as “Section 501”. The 250.501 form is a Purdon’s overlay, and looking for it in the statute text finds nothing.

Fifteen days from service, where the landlord is ending it. Section 501 of the Landlord and Tenant Act of 1951 provides that a landlord desirous of repossessing real property from a tenant may notify the tenant in writing to remove, and § 501(b) sets the periods: where the lease is for any term of one year or less or for an indeterminate time, the notice shall specify that the tenant remove within fifteen days from the date of service; where the lease is for more than one year, within thirty days; and in case of failure of the tenant, upon demand, to satisfy any rent reserved and due, within ten days.

A month-to-month tenancy is an indeterminate term, so fifteen days is the ordinary answer.

This is the provision that makes Pennsylvania different from every other state covered in this wave. § 501(e) reads: “The notice above provided for may be for a lesser time or may be waived by the tenant if the lease so provides.”

Elsewhere on this site the standard line is that a private contract cannot cut below a statutory notice floor — and in Arizona, Kentucky and Massachusetts that is right, because those sections set minimums. Pennsylvania’s fifteen days is not a minimum. It is a default that applies where the lease is silent, and the Act expressly contemplates a lease that shortens it or removes it entirely.

For a tenant, that turns the notice clause of a Pennsylvania lease into one of the most important paragraphs in the document. A waiver of notice is not a technicality; it means the protection § 501(b) would otherwise give is gone. For a landlord, it means the lease is where the notice question is actually settled, and drafting it deliberately is better than relying on a default the same statute invites you to displace.

Read § 501 from its opening words and the scope is clear: “A landlord desirous of repossessing real property from a tenant except real property which is a mobile home space as defined in the … ‘Mobile Home Park Rights Act,’ may notify, in writing, the tenant to remove from the same at the expiration of the time specified in the notice under the following circumstances, namely, (1) Upon the termination of a term of the tenant, (2) or upon forfeiture of the lease for breach of its conditions, (3) or upon the failure of the tenant, upon demand, to satisfy any rent reserved and due.”

Two things follow. The periods in § 501(b) are not free-standing — they attach to those three circumstances, and (b) itself opens “Except as provided for in subsection (c), in case of the expiration of a term or of a forfeiture for breach of the conditions of the lease”. And every period the section sets is a period in the landlord’s notice to quit.

There is no provision fixing a period for a tenant giving notice before leaving. A great many summaries report Pennsylvania’s fifteen days as though it applied in both directions; the section does not say that, and this page is not going to say it either. A tenant’s notice obligation in Pennsylvania comes from the lease, which is another reason the agreement should state it rather than leave it to be assumed.

§ 501(f) supplies three methods, and it is one of the more generous service provisions in this set. The notice may be served personally on the tenant, or by leaving it at the principal building upon the premises, or by posting it conspicuously on the leased premises.

Posting is a real option here, which it is not everywhere. That matters when a tenant cannot be found, and it is another reason the date of service is the fact to record: with three permissible methods, the question is rarely whether service was valid and almost always when it happened.

A related provision added in July 2024, § 501(g), states that the section does not apply to a landlord repossessing from a person who is not, and never has been, a tenant of the property — a clarification about occupants who were never in a tenancy at all.

§ 501(c) sets different periods for a tenant of a mobile home park as defined in the Mobile Home Park Rights Act. Where the lease is for less than one year or for an indeterminate time, the notice specifies removal within thirty days rather than fifteen; where it is for one year or more, within three months.

The nonpayment period there is seasonal, which is unusual enough to be worth stating plainly: a notice given on or after 1 April and before 1 September specifies removal within fifteen days, and a notice given on or after 1 September and before 1 April specifies thirty days. The longer winter period is doing obvious work.

§ 501(c.1) goes further still: it bars recovery of a mobile home space upon the termination of a lease, whatever the lease term, where the resident is complying with the park’s rules, is paying the rent due, and wishes to continue living there. It is not an absolute bar — § 501(c.2) preserves recovery where a resident is legally evicted under the Mobile Home Park Rights Act, where the parties agree in writing to end the lease, or where the resident decides at the end of a lease that they no longer wish to stay and says so in writing. But on the ordinary route, a compliant, paying resident who wants to remain cannot be moved simply because a term has run out. If the premises are a mobile home space, none of the fifteen-day analysis on this page applies.

You will see this provision cited as 68 P.S. § 250.501. That is the Purdon’s Statutes numbering, and it is a publisher’s overlay: the Act of 1951 words its own provisions as “Section 501” and never uses the 250.501 form. If you go looking for “250.501” inside the text of the Act you will not find it, which is a common and avoidable dead end.

The notice period ending does not remove anyone. § 502 of the same Act deals with the complaint and summons that follow, and requires the tenant to be summoned to answer on a date not less than seven nor more than ten days from the date of the summons. Our guide to Pennsylvania eviction notice laws covers that process and the notices belonging to it.

On the money side, see Pennsylvania security deposit laws for what may be withheld and when the accounting is due, and Pennsylvania rent increase laws for the notice a change of rent takes on an indeterminate term — a separate question from the notice to quit that § 501 governs.

A periodic tenancy is the arrangement where rent changes most often, because there is no fixed term holding the number still. The notice a rent change takes is a separate question from the notice that ends the tenancy, and the two are easily confused — so they are worth reading together. Our guide to Pennsylvania rent increase laws covers how a rent change works on a periodic tenancy here.

The deposit is the other thing a month-to-month tenancy makes harder, because the tenancy can end on short notice and the clock for returning the money starts running the moment it does. Pennsylvania security deposit laws cover what a landlord may deduct and the deadline for accounting for the rest — a deadline that is easy to miss when a tenancy can end at any point in the year rather than at the end of a lease term.

If the notice is ignored, ending a tenancy stops being a paperwork question and becomes a court one. Pennsylvania eviction notice laws set out the notices that come next and how they must be served. A termination notice and an eviction notice are different documents doing different jobs, and serving the wrong one is one of the more common ways a straightforward ending turns into a contested case.

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