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 ques