Free Puerto Rico Notice of Non-Renewal

Direct answer: a Puerto Rico landlord may decline to continue an ordinary private lease and does not have to prove a cause — but the lease does not end on its own, and no statute gives the landlord a number of days. Puerto Rico is a civil-law jurisdiction, and the controlling provision is Article 1335 of the Código Civil de Puerto Rico de 2020, codified at 31 L.P.R.A. § 10105: “Llegado el plazo convenido en el arrendamiento, este continúa en los mismos términos contratados hasta que cualquiera de las partes notifique a la otra su voluntad de resolver el contrato.” — “Once the term agreed in the lease arrives, it continues on the same contracted terms until either of the parties notifies the other of its will to resolve the contract.” That single sentence changes the whole instrument. On the mainland a notice of non-renewal is optional politeness attached to a lease that expires by itself; in Puerto Rico the notice is the operative act, and a landlord who serves nothing keeps a running lease on the same rent and the same terms indefinitely. This page states what the Code actually says, corrects the two claims the current search results are built on — a supposed territory-wide just-cause requirement and a supposed fifteen-day tácita reconducción window — and generates a bilingual notice that recites the article, records the date it was given, and says plainly where the law leaves a gap.

Start with the two questions that actually decide the document: which Civil Code governs the lease, and whether the unit is private, voucher-assisted or public housing. Everything else follows. The generator produces the notice in Spanish first and English beneath, recites Article 1335 in its own words, and prints the date the notice is given, which is the fact that decides when the lease stopped continuing. It refuses to produce a private notice for a public housing unit, refuses a voucher tenancy with no stated good cause, and refuses an effective date earlier than the period your own lease demands.

Watch: Puerto Rico Notice of Non-Renewal and Civil Code art. 1335 explained

▶ Watch overview

For an ordinary private residential lease, yes — and no statute requires the landlord to prove a cause. This has to be said clearly because the opposite claim circulates widely, and it is the single most consequential thing a Puerto Rico landlord or tenant can get wrong. The claim is that Puerto Rico requires just cause to end a tenancy, that roughly seven statutory causes are enumerated somewhere, and that the landlord must prove one of them in court. We went looking for that rule in the statute books. It is not there.

The Civil Code contains no just-cause article. The lease is regulated at Chapter VI of Book Five of the Código Civil de Puerto Rico de 2020, articles 1331 to 1350, codified at 31 L.P.R.A. §§ 10101 to 10173. Read straight through, that chapter defines the lease (art. 1331), sets its duration (arts. 1332–1334), governs its continuation after the term (art. 1335), regulates assignment and sublease (art. 1336), competing tenants (art. 1337), capacity (art. 1338), object (art. 1339), rent (arts. 1340–1341), form (arts. 1342–1344), the parties’ obligations (arts. 1345–1347) and resolution for breach (arts. 1348–1350). At no point does it condition the end of a lease on proof of an enumerated cause. Articles 1348 and 1349 are breach remedies, not a just-cause regime: they say when a party may cut a lease short during its term, which is the opposite of the question a non-renewal asks.

The ejectment statute contains no grounds either. The desahucio, Puerto Rico’s summary ejectment action, sits at articles 620 to 634 of the Ley de Procedimientos Legales Especiales, 32 L.P.R.A. §§ 2821 to 2838. It is worth being concrete about what those articles contain, because a reader who has been told Puerto Rico is a just-cause jurisdiction will expect a list. Article 620 says who may sue. Article 621 says whom they may sue. Article 622 allocates jurisdiction by amount. Articles 623 to 627 set the procedure and the evidence. Articles 628 to 631 govern appeal and bond. Articles 632 to 634 govern execution. There is no article listing grounds, because the statute is procedural. The substantive right to possession comes from the Civil Code — article 725 (31 L.P.R.A. § 7863) gives the action to “la persona con derecho a poseer un bien” against “cualquier poseedor sin derecho a poseer”, the person entitled to possess against any possessor with no right to possess. Once the lease has stopped continuing, the tenant is a possessor without right, and that is the whole of it.

What a landlord still may not do. The absence of a just-cause statute is not a licence. A non-renewal that is really a refusal to rent on the basis of race, colour, religion, sex, familial status, national origin or disability violates the federal Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. § 3601 et seq., which applies in Puerto Rico exactly as it applies in Ohio; 42 U.S.C. § 3617 separately makes it unlawful to coerce, intimidate, threaten or interfere with a person who has exercised a fair housing right, which is the federal hook for a retaliation claim. A non-renewal aimed at a tenant in assisted housing because that tenant is a survivor of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault or stalking runs into 34 U.S.C. § 12491. And the general civil-law duty of good faith in the performance of contracts operates in Puerto Rico as it does across the civil-law world. The point is narrower than it sounds: the Civil Code does not require the landlord to state a reason, but the reason still has to be lawful.

Tácita reconducción is the civil-law rule that a lease carries on after its term without anyone signing anything. It is not the common-law holdover tenancy, and treating the two as the same is where mainland templates fail in Puerto Rico. A holdover tenancy is something the landlord may accept or refuse; tácita reconducción, under the current Code, is what happens by default unless someone stops it.

Article 1335 of the Civil Code of 2020, 31 L.P.R.A. § 10105, is titled “Continuación del arrendamiento concluido o tácita reconducción” and reads in full:

Read what that sentence actually does. It has three moving parts, and each one matters to the document you are about to generate.

• “Continúa en los mismos términos contratados” — the lease continues on the same terms. Not a new lease, not a converted month-to-month tenancy on statutory terms: the same contract, the same rent, the same obligations, the same clauses. A landlord who was hoping the term would run out so a new rent could be set has, on that date, achieved nothing.
• “Hasta que cualquiera de las partes notifique” — the continuation ends when a party notifies. That is the operative act. It is what a notice of non-renewal is in Puerto Rico: not a courtesy warning that an expiry is coming, but the legal event that ends the continuation.
• “Su voluntad de resolver el contrato” — the content of the notice is the party’s will to resolve. The article requires no reason, no ground and no citation. It requires that the will be communicated.

The second paragraph is a genuine trap for guarantors and their landlords. Article 1335 provides that where a party gives that notice, the obligations a third party granted to secure the principal contract cease as regards that party. In plain terms: a guarantor or surety who backed the original term does not automatically back the continuation once resolution has been notified. A landlord relying on a parent’s guarantee, or a corporate surety, should not assume it survives the end of the agreed term.

What the notice must contain under article 1335

Very little, which is why the drafting risk is real. The article requires notification of the will to resolve. It does not prescribe writing, a period, a form, a delivery method or a recital. It follows that almost every element of a well-drafted Puerto Rico notice of non-renewal is there for evidentiary reasons rather than because a statute compels it — and that is a very different thing from the mainland, where a missing statutory element voids the notice outright. In Puerto Rico the question a court will be asked is simpler and harder: can you prove you notified, and when? Everything in the generated document is built around answering that question.

This is not an academic question, and getting it wrong changes the answer to every other question on this page. The Código Civil de Puerto Rico de 2020 was enacted as Act 55 of 1 June 2020. Article 1820 provides that the Code begins to govern one hundred and eighty days after its approval, which is 28 November 2020. Article 1819 repeals the Civil Code of 1930 in its entirety.

But article 1813, in the transitional provisions, 31 L.P.R.A. § 11718, says this:

The consequence. A residential lease signed in, say, 2019 for a term that has been continuing ever since is a contract that was in course of execution on 28 November 2020. On the face of article 1813 the 2020 Code’s article 1335 does not govern it, and the old regime does — which is a materially different rule, set out in the next section. A lease signed after 28 November 2020, or an older lease that the parties re-signed as a new contract after that date, is squarely under article 1335.

What we cannot tell you. Where an older lease has itself continued past its original term, whether that continuation counts as the same contract still “en curso de ejecución” or as a fresh arrangement governed by the new Code is a real interpretive question, and we located no Puerto Rico appellate decision resolving it. We are not going to invent an answer. The practical response is the conservative one: if the lease predates 28 November 2020, give notice in a way that satisfies both regimes — in writing, before the current term ends, with the effective date falling at the end of a rent period, and delivered by a method that produces a receipt. The generator prints a transitional recital when you select the pre-2020 option, so the document does not silently assume a Code that may not apply.

Nearly every page that says anything specific about Puerto Rico non-renewal describes the same mechanism: the tenant who stays fifteen days with the landlord’s acquiescence triggers an implied renewal, and the renewed term matches the rent interval — a year for an annual rent, a month for a monthly rent, a day for a daily rent. That is an accurate statement of the Civil Code of 1930, and the Civil Code of 1930 no longer exists.

Why the difference matters commercially. Under the old article 1471 a landlord who missed the deadline lost a defined block of time — a month, or at worst a year — and then got another chance. Under article 1335 there is no next chance to wait for, because there is no next expiry. The continuation has no end date. A landlord who does nothing in 2026 is in exactly the same position in 2031: same rent, same terms, and still needing to serve the notice that was never served. That is the single largest change the 2020 Code made to Puerto Rico landlord practice, and it runs in the tenant’s favour on rent and in nobody’s favour on clarity.

The Civil Code fixes no minimum, and we could not find one anywhere else in Puerto Rico law for a residential non-renewal. That is the answer, and it is worth stating plainly because it is the answer nobody publishes. Article 1335 requires notification of the will to resolve. It attaches no number of days. Nothing in articles 1331 to 1350 supplies one. The desahucio articles, 620 to 634, impose no pre-suit notice requirement at all — they are about what happens once you are in court. There is no Puerto Rico analogue to California’s Civil Code § 1946.1 or Florida’s § 83.57.

So what period should you actually give?

First, read the lease. Because the Code supplies no period, the lease’s own notice clause is not a supplement to the statutory minimum — it is the whole of the obligation. Puerto Rico leases very commonly carry a thirty-, sixty- or ninety-day non-renewal clause, and where one exists it binds. The generator asks you for that number and refuses to print an effective date earlier than the clause allows, because the clause is the only enforceable timing rule in play.

Second, where the lease is silent, give notice before the term ends. This is the whole strategic point of article 1335 and of the three-element test described earlier. A notice delivered before the agreed term arrives prevents the continuation from ever beginning, because the parties cannot be taken to have tacitly agreed to continue where one of them has already said it will not. A notice delivered afterwards must instead terminate a continuation that is already running — a weaker, more disputable position.

Third, align the effective date with the end of a rent period. No statute requires this. It is prudence: rent under article 1341 (31 L.P.R.A. § 10142) is payable by periods, presumed in arrears where nothing was stipulated, and a resolution that lands mid-period invites a proration argument you gain nothing from having.

Not by default, and this is the second structural difference from mainland practice. Article 1333 of the Civil Code of 2020, 31 L.P.R.A. § 10103, provides: “El arrendamiento de inmuebles se considera celebrado por el término de un año, salvo cuando se haya convenido un término distinto.” — “The lease of immovable property is deemed made for a term of one year, unless a different term has been agreed.”

So a Puerto Rico tenancy with no written term is not a month-to-month arrangement terminable on thirty days’ notice. It is an annual lease. Article 1332 (§ 10102) permits a lease of determinate or indeterminate duration, and the parties may of course agree a monthly term — but where they have agreed nothing, the Code supplies a year, not a month.

This is why the fifty-state non-renewal tables that circulate online are not merely incomplete for Puerto Rico — several of them omit the territory entirely — but affirmatively misleading if applied. The mainland framework is: fixed term expires by itself; periodic tenancy runs month to month until a statutory notice period is served. Puerto Rico’s framework is: every immovable lease has a term, one year if nothing else was agreed, and when that term arrives the lease continues rather than ends. There is no periodic-tenancy layer to attach a thirty-day rule to.

A practical consequence for short lets. A landlord who lets a unit on a handshake for “a few months” and never reduces the term to writing may find the tenancy is deemed annual under article 1333, and then continuing indefinitely under article 1335. Article 1342 (§ 10151) requires no special formality for the contract’s validity, and article 1343 (§ 10152, as amended by Act 122-2026) requires writing only where the lease of an immovable is agreed for a term longer than six years. Freedom of form is not the landlord’s friend here: the informality that makes the lease easy to create makes the term impossible to prove.

No. It was repealed, in stages, ending in 1998. The Ley de Alquileres Razonables was Act 464 of 25 April 1946. It froze rents at their 1 October 1942 level and imposed controls on residential and commercial letting as a wartime emergency measure tied to the federal Emergency Price Control Act of 1942; its own article 23 provided that its operative provisions would cease when the Legislative Assembly declared by concurrent resolution that the emergency had ended.

That declaration came in Act 57 of 25 June 1995 (P. del S. 721), whose title is “Para derogar en forma escalonada y progresiva la Ley Núm. 464 de 25 de abril de 1946, según enmendada, conocida como ‘Ley de Alquileres Razonables’” — to repeal, in a staged and progressive manner, the Reasonable Rents Act. Its operative articles ran on a three-year ladder:

Three years after 25 June 1995 is 25 June 1998. There has been no rent-control statute of general application in Puerto Rico since. The Legislative Assembly’s own stated reason, recorded in the exposition of motives of Act 57, was that federal and Commonwealth subsidies — the Act names the federal Section 8 programme expressly — were a more effective mechanism for housing low-income households than freezing rents, and that the 1946 controls had become an anachronism that pushed covered properties out of the rental market and discouraged their maintenance.

A notice of non-renewal alleges nothing. It says the contract will not continue. That is a different instrument from the mid-term remedies, and confusing the two is the most common drafting error we see on Puerto Rico documents. The Code separates them cleanly at Section Seven of the lease chapter, “La Resolución del Arrendamiento”.

Article 1348 (31 L.P.R.A. § 10171) — resolution by the landlord. The landlord may resolve the contract where the tenant:

• (a) “abandona o deja de usar el bien arrendado, o varía el uso convenido” — abandons or ceases to use the leased property, or varies the agreed use;
• (b) “incumple la obligación de conservar… el bien arrendado” — breaches the duty to conserve the property, whether personally or through a third party acting on the tenant’s account;
• (c) “deja de pagar el alquiler convenido durante dos (2) períodos consecutivos” — fails to pay the agreed rent for two consecutive periods.

That third limb is worth pausing on, because it is more generous to the tenant than most mainland statutes: on a monthly rent, the Code’s own resolution ground does not arise until two consecutive months have gone unpaid. A lease may of course provide otherwise, and a landlord with a written lease will usually be relying on the contract rather than on article 1348. But a landlord with no written default clause has this and only this.

Article 1349 (§ 10172) — resolution by the tenant. The mirror image: the tenant may resolve where the landlord breaches the duty to keep the property fit for the agreed use, breaches the warranties as to eviction or hidden defects, or deprives the tenant of part of the use by reason of improvements being carried out — in which last case the tenant may instead claim a proportionate reduction of rent for the period of deprivation. Article 1350 (§ 10173) adds simply that the parties may agree an early resolution.

The drafting rule that follows. Do not put a nonpayment allegation in a non-renewal notice. If the tenant owes two periods’ rent, the instrument is a resolution under article 1348(c) or under the lease’s own default clause, and it stands or falls on proof of the arrears. If the landlord simply does not want to continue, the instrument is an article 1335 notification and proof of arrears is irrelevant to it. Mixing them gives the tenant a defence to the stronger claim and dilutes the weaker one. The generator carries an optional express statement that no fault is alleged, precisely so the document cannot be read as a defective nonpayment claim. Where the tenant wants out early instead, our Puerto Rico breaking-a-lease rules guide takes the tenant’s side of article 1349, and the wider framework sits in our Puerto Rico landlord and tenant law guide.

Desahucio is Puerto Rico’s summary ejectment action, and it is fast. It is governed by articles 620 to 634 of the Ley de Procedimientos Legales Especiales — titles XVI and XVIII of the Code of Civil Procedure of 1933, as amended — codified at 32 L.P.R.A. §§ 2821 to 2838. The substantive right comes from Civil Code article 725 (31 L.P.R.A. § 7863), which gives the action to the person entitled to possess against any possessor with no right to possess.

Two features of this procedure deserve a landlord’s attention. The first is that there is no statutory pre-suit notice requirement in the desahucio articles at all — which reinforces the point made above that the notice of non-renewal derives its force from Civil Code article 1335 rather than from the ejectment statute — our Puerto Rico eviction notice rules guide takes the court stage further. What the landlord must be able to prove in court is that the tenant no longer has a right to possess, and after 28 November 2020 that means proving that the continuation under article 1335 was ended by notification, and when. The second is the appeal bond under article 630: a tenant who wants to appeal must post security or, in a nonpayment case, deposit the debt. That is a real constraint, and it is why desahucio in Puerto Rico moves faster than eviction in most mainland jurisdictions.

The Code prescribes no method, so choose the one you can prove. Article 1335 says notifique and stops. There is no Puerto Rico equivalent of California’s Code of Civil Procedure § 1162 or the District of Columbia’s § 42-3206 setting out a service cascade for tenancy notices. The live page this replaced asserted a “personal delivery, substituted service plus mailing, or posting plus mailing” hierarchy attributed to Puerto Rico civil-procedure rules. That hierarchy is Californian, and we have removed it rather than repeat it.

What remains is an evidentiary problem, and it has a clean answer. Because everything turns on proving that you notified and when, rank the methods by the quality of the proof they generate:

Name every tenant. Article 1337 (31 L.P.R.A. § 10107) contemplates that a property may be let to more than one person. A notification is effective against the party notified; a landlord who serves one of three co-tenants has a document that is at best partly effective. List every adult tenant on the face of the notice and deliver to each.

Keep the file. The proof you will need is the notice itself, the receipt or attestation of delivery, the lease showing the agreed term and any notice clause, and the rent ledger showing which periods were paid. The live page this replaced instructed readers to retain those records for four years. We have removed that instruction: no Puerto Rico retention period for a tenancy notice was located, and inventing one is worse than saying nothing. Retain the file for as long as any claim arising from the tenancy could be brought, and take advice on the limitation period if the tenancy ended badly. Where money is still held at the end of the tenancy, our Puerto Rico security deposit rules guide covers what happens to it, and the seven-day entry rule mentioned above is set out in the Puerto Rico notice to enter form.

The Civil Code answer changes completely once federal money is in the tenancy. This is where the just-cause instinct is correct — just not for private lettings.

Housing Choice Voucher (Section 8) tenancies

Under 24 C.F.R. § 982.310(a), during the term of the lease an owner may not terminate the tenancy except on three grounds: a serious violation, including but not limited to failure to pay rent or other amounts due under the lease, or repeated violation of the lease terms; a violation of federal, State or local law that imposes obligations on the tenant in connection with the occupancy or use of the premises; or other good cause.

Section 982.310(d)(1) gives examples of other good cause, and they are broader than landlords expect: the family’s failure to accept the offer of a new lease or revision; a family history of disturbance of neighbours or destruction of property, or of living or housekeeping habits resulting in damage to the unit or premises; the owner’s desire to use the unit for personal or family use or for a purpose other than as a residential rental unit; and “a business or economic reason for termination of the tenancy (such as sale of the property, renovation of the unit, or desire to lease the unit at a higher rental)”. That last item is the one that matters for non-renewal: a voucher owner who wants the unit back for commercial reasons has a recognised ground, provided it is stated.

Section 982.310(d)(2) is the limit: during the initial lease term the owner may not terminate for other good cause unless the owner is terminating because of something the family did or failed to do. And § 982.310(e) requires the owner to give the tenant written notice specifying the grounds, and to give the housing agency a copy of any eviction notice. The generator asks for the good cause, prints it, and prints the certification that a copy is going to the agency.

Public housing in Puerto Rico

A public housing lease is not cancelled by a private notice at all. The procedure sits at 17 L.P.R.A. §§ 1015 to 1015h, the Procedimiento para Cancelar Contratos de Arrendamiento. Section 1015a, headed Desahucio — Parámetros, requires the administration to weigh all the circumstances of the case, including the gravity of the fault or offence against the harm cancellation would cause the family; to prove participation in expressly prohibited activities; to establish a causal nexus between the conduct and the sanction of eviction; and to give written notification of the intention to terminate the contract at least thirty days before the administrative evidentiary hearing. The parameters expressly include the presence of minors, elderly people or people with disabilities in the household, and the presence of domestic violence victims. Section 1015d permits the administration to condition cancellation on the tenant guaranteeing that the person whose conduct provoked it has left the unit and remains off the lease.

Because of that, this generator refuses to produce a document where you select a public housing tenancy. It is not a matter of adding a paragraph. The instrument required is an administrative notice of intention to cancel, feeding an evidentiary hearing, and a private notice of non-renewal is not a defective version of it — it is a different thing entirely. Article 632 of the desahucio statute makes the same point from the enforcement side: where the dwelling is subsidised under a programme administered by the Puerto Rico Department of Housing, the applicable regulations governing the eviction process must be complied with.

Fair housing and the Violence Against Women Act

The federal Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. § 3601 et seq., applies in Puerto Rico. A non-renewal motivated by race, colour, religion, sex, familial status, national origin or disability is unlawful whatever the Civil Code says about needing no reason, and 42 U.S.C. § 3617 reaches coercion, intimidation, threats and interference directed at someone who has exercised a fair housing right. HUD accepts complaints; private actions are available.

34 U.S.C. § 12491, the Violence Against Women Act housing provisions, bars denial of admission, denial of assistance, termination of participation and eviction on the basis that an applicant or tenant is or has been a victim of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault or stalking — but only for housing assisted under a covered housing program as that term is defined in the statute. It does not reach an unassisted private letting. We flag this because the opposite claim — that a VAWA-style bar applies to Puerto Rico non-renewals generally — is in circulation, and a private landlord who believes it will misunderstand their own position, while an assisted-housing landlord who does not know about it will breach a rule that genuinely binds them.

We located no statute requiring it — and you should still serve it bilingually. Article 1335 prescribes no language any more than it prescribes a form. But the practical case is one-sided. Spanish is the working language of daily life and of the Court of First Instance across most of Puerto Rico; a desahucio is heard there; the tenant’s understanding of the notice is a foreseeable issue in any dispute about whether the will to resolve was actually communicated; and producing both versions costs nothing. A landlord who serves an English-only notice on a Spanish-speaking tenant has handed the tenant an argument about notification that no statute obliged them to concede.

The generator therefore produces the Spanish text first and the English beneath, on the same document, with a line stating that both versions are of the same notice and that the Spanish text governs where they diverge. The key terms are worth learning in the original, because they are what a Puerto Rico court, attorney or notary will use:

Serving nothing and waiting for the term to run out

The first and by far the most expensive. There is no expiry event under article 1335. A landlord who lets the term arrive in silence has a lease running on the original rent, indefinitely, and will be in the same position next year having lost twelve months of whatever the market moved.

Using a mainland template that recites a statutory notice period

A document asserting that “Puerto Rico law requires 30 days’ written notice” states something no Puerto Rico statute says. At best it is surplusage; at worst the tenant points to it and asks which statute, and the answer is none. State the period’s real source — your lease clause, or your own election — and the document survives the question.

Relying on the fifteen-day rule

Waiting for the tenant to be fifteen days into a holdover before treating the lease as renewed, or assuming a month-to-month renewal will follow, applies articles 1456 and 1471 of a Code repealed on 28 November 2020. Under article 1335 the continuation begins immediately and has no term.

Assuming the lease governs when it may not

Where the lease predates 28 November 2020, article 1813 puts the applicable regime genuinely in question. Serving a notice that recites only article 1335 on a 2018 lease is not fatal, but it is avoidable: draft so the notice works under either regime.

Alleging nonpayment inside a non-renewal

Article 1348(c) requires two consecutive unpaid periods for the Code’s own nonpayment resolution ground. A non-renewal that also asserts arrears invites the tenant to litigate the arrears, and if the arrears fail the notice looks like a pretext. Keep the instruments separate.

Serving one tenant out of several

A notification binds the person notified. Name and serve every adult tenant on the lease.

Serving by a method that proves nothing

Certified mail returned unclaimed proves dispatch. Email proves transmission. Neither proves that the will to resolve was communicated on a given date, which is the fact in issue. Pair any postal or electronic method with a physical one, or use a notary.

Forgetting the guarantor consequence

Article 1335’s second paragraph means third-party security may not follow the tenancy past the notified resolution. A landlord who intends to keep a guarantee in place through a continuation should take advice rather than assume.

Treating an assisted tenancy as a private one

A voucher tenancy needs a stated good cause under 24 C.F.R. § 982.310 and a copy of the notice to the housing agency. A public housing tenancy needs the administrative procedure at 17 L.P.R.A. §§ 1015 et seq. and its thirty days’ written notice before the evidentiary hearing. Neither is served by a private notice of non-renewal.

Self-help

Changing locks or cutting utilities instead of filing a desahucio. The statutory route is fast — appearance within ten days, judgment within a mandatory ten — and the unlawful route forfeits it.

We read the pages that rank for “puerto rico notice of non renewal” before writing this one. The picture is unusually poor, and it is worth setting out because a reader arriving here has probably already read some of them.

The most striking finding from that review was a negative one. Not one page ranking for this query cites any authority for a Puerto Rico landlord’s non-renewal notice period. The figures that appear are lifted from lease templates or from for-cause procedures. That is not a gap we can fill with a better number, because the correct answer is that the Code supplies none — so what we can offer instead is the article that actually governs, the reason the period comes from your lease, and a document that says so on its face.

A page that is honest about its limits is more useful than one that is confident everywhere. These points were researched and not resolved, and none of them is papered over above or in the generated document.

• Whether an article 1335 notice takes effect immediately. The article says the lease continues “until” a party notifies. No Puerto Rico appellate decision construing the timing was located. The page therefore treats the lease clause as the source of the period and, where the lease is silent, treats the chosen date as the landlord’s own election.
• Whether a pre-2020 lease that has continued past its term remains a contract “en curso de ejecución” under article 1813. This decides whether the repealed fifteen-day rule or article 1335 applies to a great many existing Puerto Rico tenancies. We found no authority settling it.
• The full text of 17 L.P.R.A. §§ 1015 to 1015h. The chapter’s scope, section headings and the thirty-day pre-hearing notice were established, but we were unable to read every section in full from an official source. The page describes the procedure at that level and directs public housing landlords to the administering authority rather than summarising sections we did not read.
• Any Puerto Rico record-retention period for a tenancy notice. None located. The “retain for four years” instruction that appeared on the previous version of this page has been removed rather than re-cited.
• Any Puerto Rico statutory anti-retaliation provision for private tenancies. None located. Retaliation protection in the sources we could read runs through federal fair housing law and through programme rules in assisted housing, and that is how the page states it.
• Any statutory service cascade for tenancy notices. None located. The service table above is ranked by evidentiary quality, not by statutory hierarchy, and says so.

• Código Civil de Puerto Rico de 2020, Act 55 of 1 June 2020, as amended — official consolidated text published by the Oficina de Gerencia y Presupuesto (bvirtualogp.pr.gov), read directly. Chapter VI of Book Five, El Arrendamiento, arts. 1331–1350 (31 L.P.R.A. §§ 10101–10173); art. 725 (§ 7863); transitional provisions arts. 1806–1817 (§§ 11711–11722); arts. 1819–1820
• Art. 1335, Continuación del arrendamiento concluido o tácita reconducción, 31 L.P.R.A. § 10105 — quoted in full above from the official text
• Art. 1813, Contratos en curso, 31 L.P.R.A. § 11718; art. 1812, 31 L.P.R.A. § 11717
• Código Civil de Puerto Rico de 1930 (repealed), arts. 1456 and 1471, formerly 31 L.P.R.A. §§ 4063 and 4092 — the fifteen-day tácita reconducción rule and the rent-interval renewal term
• Ley de Procedimientos Legales Especiales (titles XVI and XVIII of the Code of Civil Procedure of 1933, as amended) — official consolidated text published by the Oficina de Gerencia y Presupuesto, arts. 620–634, 32 L.P.R.A. §§ 2821–2838, including the amendments made by Act 129-2007, Act 86-2011, Act 142-2011 and Act 95-2026
• Act 57 of 25 June 1995 (P. del S. 721), repealing in stages Act 464 of 25 April 1946, the Ley de Alquileres Razonables — full text of the exposition of motives and arts. 1–6
• 17 L.P.R.A. §§ 1015–1015h, Procedimiento para Cancelar Contratos de Arrendamiento, including § 1015a (Desahucio — Parámetros) and § 1015d (Cancelación de contrato — Condiciones)
• 24 C.F.R. § 982.310 (owner termination of tenancy, Housing Choice Voucher programme), paragraphs (a), (d)(1), (d)(2) and (e)
• 34 U.S.C. § 12491 (Violence Against Women Act housing protections; covered housing programmes)
• Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. § 3601 et seq., and 42 U.S.C. § 3617
• Practitioner commentary on tácita reconducción under the 2020 Code and its three elements, Microjuris Puerto Rico (2024)
• Ayuda Legal Puerto Rico, Inc. — public legal-information materials on retaliation in housing and on Section 8 responsibilities

Published by Tenant Screening Background Check

Established 2004 · 20+ Years · All U.S. States & Territories · Statute-Based · Attorney-Reviewed

A Private Eye Reports™ service trusted by landlords, property managers, and attorneys.