Free Pennsylvania Notice of Non-Renewal
Pennsylvania is two jurisdictions in one for this document. Statewide, 68 P.S. § 250.501(b) gives the tenant 15 days to remove where the lease term is one year or less or indeterminate and 30 days where it is more than one year, counted from the date of service. In Philadelphia, Phila. Code § 9-804(12)(a) forbids a notice of non-renewal on the expiration of a lease of less than one year without good cause. Choose the jurisdiction and the generator changes what it produces.
Direct answer: outside Philadelphia a Pennsylvania landlord may decline to renew without giving a reason, and inside Philadelphia, for a lease of less than one year, they may not. Statewide the governing provision is 68 P.S. § 250.501, headed “Notice to Quit,” which lets a landlord notify a tenant to remove “upon the termination of a term of the tenant” and then fixes the period in subsection (b): “where the lease is for any term of one year or less or for an indeterminate time, the notice shall specify that the tenant shall remove within fifteen days from the date of service thereof, and when the lease is for more than one year, then within thirty days from the date of service thereof.” That is a window to leave counted from service, not a countdown to the end of the term, and the two are not the same date. Layered on top of it, Philadelphia Code § 9-804(12)(a) provides that no landlord shall, “upon expiration of a lease of less than one year,” issue a notice to vacate, a notice of non-renewal or a notice to terminate unless there is good cause and the tenant is told in writing what it is — and the tenant may challenge that determination at the Fair Housing Commission within fifteen business days, which suspends the notice while the challenge is pending. The form below asks which jurisdiction the property is in before anything else, because the answer changes the document, the clock and whether a document may issue at all.
Key takeaways
- The period runs from service, not backwards from the end of the term. Section 250.501(b) says “within fifteen days from the date of service thereof.” Nothing in the section says “before the lease ends.” A notice served on the first of the month on an indeterminate tenancy asks the tenant to be out by the sixteenth, whatever the calendar says about rental periods.
- A lease of exactly one year takes 15 days, not 30. The thirty-day branch requires a lease “for more than one year.” The commonest drafting error in this area is treating a one-year lease as a thirty-day lease, and it produces a notice that is longer than it needs to be rather than shorter, so it rarely gets caught.
- The lease can shorten the notice, or delete it. Section 250.501(e): “The notice above provided for may be for a lesser time or may be waived by the tenant if the lease so provides.” Pennsylvania is one of the few states where the statutory period is a default the lease may override downward. Read the lease before counting days.
- Philadelphia removes the no-cause option for sub-one-year leases. Section 9-804(12)(a) requires good cause and a written statement of its basis. Section 9-804(12)(c) adds a consequence for skipping it: “the lease shall renew on a month-to-month basis, unless the tenant elects otherwise.”
- Mail does not serve a Pennsylvania notice to quit. Section 250.501(f) lists three methods and only three: personally on the tenant, by leaving it at the principal building upon the premises, or by posting it conspicuously on the leased premises. Mail belongs to § 250.502(b), which is service of the summons at a later stage.
- Pennsylvania has no general anti-retaliation statute. Section 250.205 bars termination or non-renewal for participation in a tenants’ organisation or association — that is its entire scope, and it states no remedy and no presumption window. Any page giving Pennsylvania a six-month retaliation presumption has imported it from elsewhere.
Generate Your Pennsylvania Notice of Non-Renewal
Start with the jurisdiction and the lease term — between them they decide the clock and, in Philadelphia, whether a document may lawfully issue at all. For a Philadelphia property on a lease of less than one year the generator requires a good cause under Phila. Code § 9-804(12)(a) and will not produce a file without one, because a bare notice of non-renewal is exactly what that subsection forbids. Everywhere else in Pennsylvania no reason is required and the generator produces a notice to quit on the § 250.501(b) clock.
1. Jurisdiction and lease term — these decide everything
2. The clock under § 250.501(b) and § 9-804(11)(a)
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Choose the jurisdiction and the lease term, then enter the service date. Section 250.501(b) counts the period from service, so the service date is the only date the clock cares about.
3. Tenant and rental property
4. Landlord or authorised agent
5. Service — 68 P.S. § 250.501(f)
6. Certifications
Watch: Pennsylvania non-renewal, § 250.501 and the Philadelphia overlay
Pennsylvania Non-Renewal at a Glance
Statewide clock
15 or 30 days from service
Authority
68 P.S. § 250.501
Philadelphia
Good cause, § 9-804(12)
Tenant challenge
15 business days, FHC
The thing almost every page gets wrong. Section 250.501(b) does not say “fifteen days before the term ends.” It says the notice “shall specify that the tenant shall remove within fifteen days from the date of service thereof.” It is a window to leave, measured forward from service. Landlords who count backwards from the last day of the lease are answering a different question from the one the statute asks, and in a contested case the answer they get is the one the magisterial district judge will not accept.
Can a Pennsylvania landlord refuse to renew a lease?
Direct answer: yes outside Philadelphia, and no inside Philadelphia for a lease of less than one year. Everywhere in the Commonwealth except the City of Philadelphia, the end of a term is a complete answer in itself. Section 250.501 asks for a period, not a reason.
The statute that governs is the Landlord and Tenant Act of 1951, the Act of April 6, 1951, P.L. 69, No. 20, whose internal Section 501 is codified at 68 P.S. § 250.501. It sits in Article V of the Act, headed “Recovery of Possession,” and the section’s own heading is “Notice to Quit.” That heading is worth pausing on, because it explains a confusion that runs through most of the pages ranking for this query. Pennsylvania has no statute called “notice of non-renewal.” The document a landlord serves to end a tenancy at the natural end of its term is the same instrument the Act uses to end a tenancy for breach or for unpaid rent. Only the trigger and the number of days differ.
Subsection (a) sets out the three triggers. A landlord who wants the property back “may notify, in writing, the tenant to remove from the same at the expiration of the time specified in the notice” in three circumstances: “(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.” A notice of non-renewal is trigger (1). It is not a lesser or informal document; it is the same statutory notice to quit, resting on the first of the three grounds the Act names.
Two things follow from the wording that matter in practice. The first is that subsection (a) is permissive — the landlord “may notify”. The Act does not itself say that the notice is a precondition to a possession action; that character comes from the case law and from the pleading requirements before a magisterial district judge. The second is that the subsection contains