Free Wisconsin Lease Extension Agreement

A lease extension is an agreement to carry an existing tenancy into a further term. It continues the existing lease rather than replacing it with a new one — that is the usual distinction between an extension and a renewal — though leases and statutes often use the two words for the same thing, so what governs is what the document in front of you actually says. It is not a new lease unless the parties sign one, and in Wisconsin it is mostly a matter of contract — nothing in the sections captured for this page gives a tenant a right to renew, so whether you may renew at all depends on what the lease says. Two Wisconsin statutes change how that plays out. § 704.15 attaches a condition to automatic-renewal clauses in a lease of residential property, and § 704.25 decides what happens if the term simply runs out with nobody doing anything — subject to § 704.25(4), which lets the lease or a later agreement displace that whole section.

Fill in the fields below and the generator produces a clean, dated PDF that the landlord and every tenant can sign and keep a copy of. Nothing is stored and there is no charge. Fields you leave blank print as a dash so you can complete them by hand.

Watch: Free Wisconsin Lease Extension Agreement explained

▶ Watch overview

This document records that an existing tenancy is continuing, on what terms, and for how long. It amends the lease rather than replacing it: every term the parties do not change carries forward. That is worth stating plainly, because the commonest renewal dispute is not about the rent but about a term one side assumed had lapsed. Wisconsin adds two wrinkles. A renewal that happens automatically under a clause in a lease of residential property is conditional on the landlord’s § 704.15 reminder, and a renewal that happens by default — because the term ran out and the tenant stayed — is a different animal from the one the lease describes, because § 704.25(3) strips the renewal option out of it unless the parties have agreed otherwise under § 704.25(4).

• The parties, exactly as they are named on the lease being renewed.
• The property, including the unit number.
• Whether the premises are leased primarily for private residential purposes – § 704.15 reaches a lease of residential property, and § 704.25(2)(a) and (2)(b) split on the same line.
• The date the original lease was signed and the date its term ends.
• Whether the existing lease contains an automatic-renewal or extension clause at all.
• If it does, the date by which the lease requires the tenant’s notice to the contrary.
• If it does, whether the § 704.15 reminder was given, and on what date.
• Whether the lease already says anything that displaces § 704.25 – which § 704.25(4) permits, by the lease itself or by an agreement at any subsequent time.
• The new term – its start date, and its end date if it is a fixed term.
• The rent for the new term, and whether it has changed.
• Every other term that is changing, and a statement that the rest continue unchanged.
• Whether the renewal option, any purchase option, and any restriction on the landlord’s power to sell without first offering the premises to the tenant are being carried into the new term.
• What happens to the deposit already held.

• Treating the § 704.15 window as a minimum. It is bounded at both ends — at least 15 days, and not more than 30. Early is as fatal as late.
• Measuring the window from the end of the term. It runs from the deadline the lease sets for the tenant’s notice, which is usually earlier.
• Applying § 704.15 to every lease. Its opening words are “a provision in a lease of residential property”. It does not answer the question for a letting that is not residential — and § 704.25(2)(a), the year-to-year holdover rule, is expressly the nonresidential one.
• Assuming a failed reminder ends the lease. It does not. The consequence is that the automatic-renewal clause cannot be enforced against the tenant.
• Letting the term lapse and calling the result a renewal. Under § 704.25(3) a right to renew or extend, a right to purchase, and any restriction on the landlord’s power to sell without first offering to sell the premises to the tenant — a right of first offer — all fail to carry into a holdover tenancy.
• Reading § 704.25 as a rule the lease cannot touch. Subsection (4) provides that the section governs “except as the parties agree otherwise either by the terms of the lease itself or by an agreement at any subsequent time”. Everything § 704.25 does is a default. Check the lease before relying on any of it — in either direction.
• Accepting rent after the term ends without deciding what it means. Section 704.25(2)(c) treats that as the landlord’s election to continue the tenancy, and the annotation printed with the section — Vander Wielen v. Van Asten, 2005 WI App 220 — records a case where acceptance of a holdover tenant’s monthly rent payment bound both parties to a one-year tenancy.
• Assuming 28 days is the notice period for every periodic tenancy. § 704.19(3) writes two exceptions into the same sentence: if rent is payable on a basis less than monthly, notice at least equal to the rent-paying period is sufficient — seven days for a week-to-week tenancy — and all agricultural tenancies from year to year require at least 90 days.
• Assuming the reason for declining a renewal never matters. § 704.44(1m)(d) voids a residential rental agreement that allows the landlord to refuse to renew because the tenant contacted an entity for law enforcement, health or safety services, and § 704.45(1) prohibits a landlord in a residential tenancy from refusing to renew a lease where a preponderance of evidence shows it would not have happened but for retaliation for a protected tenant act.
• Reading “only at the end of a rental period” as absolute. Section 704.19(2)(b)2 provides that nothing in the section prevents termination before the end of a rental period because of an imminent threat of serious physical harm under § 704.16, or for criminal activity or drug-related criminal activity, nonpayment of rent, or breach of any other condition of the tenancy under § 704.17.

Only if the lease says so, and even then only conditionally. Nothing in the sections captured for this page gives a tenant a right to renew, nor does anything in § 704.44 or § 704.45, which are set out below; the rest of chapter 704 was not read section by section and no other chapter was searched. So the starting point is the lease. Many residential leases do contain a clause saying the term renews or extends unless the tenant gives notice by a stated date. Section 704.15 does not forbid those clauses; it attaches a condition to them. Chapter 704 does contain a section that voids certain residential rental agreement provisions outright — § 704.44 — and a section prohibiting retaliatory conduct, § 704.45. Both are set out further down this page, and both speak directly to refusing a renewal.

Wis. Stat. § 704.15 applies to “a provision in a lease of residential property”, and provides that such a provision “is not enforceable against the tenant unless the lessor, at least 15 days but not more than 30 days prior to the time specified for the giving of such notice to the lessor, gives to the tenant written notice in the same manner as specified in s. 704.21 calling the attention of the tenant to the existence of the provision in the lease for automatic renewal or extension”.

Take the scope first, because it is the part most often dropped. The section does not say “a provision in a lease”. It says a provision in a lease of residential property. A letting that is not residential is outside it, and this page says nothing about what governs an automatic-renewal clause in such a lease — the question was not researched. The distinction is not academic here, because § 704.25 draws its own line on the same axis: as you will see below, the year-to-year holdover rule is expressly the nonresidential one.

Then three things in that sentence do the work. The first is the window, which is bounded at both ends. Fifteen days is the floor and thirty days is the ceiling, so a landlord who sends the reminder six weeks out has not complied any more than one who sends it a week out. The second is what the window is measured against: not the end of the term, but “the time specified for the giving of such notice to the lessor” — the tenant’s own deadline under the clause. In a lease requiring sixty days’ notice before a term ending on 30 June, the tenant’s deadline is 1 May, and the reminder window sits in April. The third is the content: the notice must call the tenant’s attention to the existence of the automatic-renewal provision. A general letter about the end of the term does not obviously do that.

The consequence of failing is precise and it is worth being precise about. The section’s stated consequence is that the clause is not enforceable against the tenant. It does not say the lease ends. What else follows depends on the lease and on law not read for this page.

One more thing about § 704.15, because a later section of this page introduces a default-rule escape and it would be easy to carry it across. § 704.25(4) does not reach § 704.15. By its own words it governs “this section”, and the section it sits in is § 704.25. Nothing in the captured text suggests a lease can contract out of the § 704.15 reminder requirement.

This is the question most renewal disputes actually turn on, and Wisconsin answers it in § 704.25. If a tenant holds over after a lease expires, subsection (1) gives the landlord the option to “proceed in any manner permitted by law to remove the tenant and recover damages for such holding over”. Nothing obliges the landlord to accept the tenant’s continued occupancy. The tenant does not acquire a new term by staying; what the tenant acquires is exposure to removal proceedings and to a damages claim.

But the landlord may choose the other route. For premises leased primarily for private residential purposes, § 704.25(2)(b) covers “all other leases” — premises leased for less than a year for any use, or leased for any period primarily for private residential purposes — and provides that where the tenant holds over, “the landlord may elect to hold the tenant on a month-to-month basis; but if such lease provides for a weekly or daily rent, the landlord may hold the tenant only on the periodic basis on which rent is computed”.

It is worth noticing what that subsection is not. Paragraph (2)(a) is headed “Nonresidential leases for a year or longer” and allows a landlord to elect a year-to-year tenancy, but only for premises “leased for a year or longer primarily for other than private residential purposes”. That is the commercial rule. On the text of (2)(a) and (2)(b) read together, a residential holdover election is month-to-month rather than year-to-year. That textual reading is not the end of the matter, and the section below on the case annotations explains why.

Whichever route is taken, § 704.25(6) supplies the exit: “Any tenancy created pursuant to this section is terminable under s. 704.19.” So a holdover tenancy is not open-ended. It runs until one side gives the § 704.19 notice described further down this page.

Subsection (2)(c) is the part that surprises people. “Acceptance of rent for any period after expiration of a lease or other conduct manifesting the landlord’s intent to allow the tenant to remain in possession after the expiration date constitutes an election by the landlord under this section unless the landlord has already commenced proceedings to remove the tenant.”

So the question “did the landlord agree to the tenant staying?” can be settled by banking one payment. A landlord who wants to keep the removal option open needs to have started proceedings before that happens, and a tenant who wants certainty about their position should note the date the first post-expiry payment was accepted. Note also how wide the trigger is: acceptance of rent is only one route into it. “Other conduct manifesting the landlord’s intent to allow the tenant to remain in possession” carries the same effect, so a landlord who negotiates, schedules works or issues keys for the new period is on the same ground.

The most easily missed provision on this page is § 704.25(3). A periodic tenancy arising by holding over runs “upon the same terms and conditions as those of the original lease except that any right of the tenant to renew or extend the lease, or to purchase the premises, or any restriction on the power of the landlord to sell without first offering to sell the premises to the tenant, does not carry over to such a tenancy”.

Three valuable rights therefore drop out by default: the renewal or extension option, any purchase option, and any restriction on the landlord’s power to sell without first offering the premises to the tenant. That third one is worth naming accurately, because it is commonly described as a right of first refusal and the statute does not describe it that way. What the subsection addresses is a restriction on selling without first offering to sell the premises to the tenant — a right of first offer. A tenant who has been relying on a renewal option in the lease and who simply stays on past the end of the term has, on the face of that subsection, lost it.

That is the strongest practical argument for signing a written renewal rather than letting the term drift. It is an argument, though, and not an unqualified rule, because of the subsection that comes next.

One subsection governs everything said above about holding over, and it is easy to read past. § 704.25(4), “Effect of contrary agreement”: “This section governs except as the parties agree otherwise either by the terms of the lease itself or by an agreement at any subsequent time.”

So the removal-and-damages option in (1), the month-to-month election in (2)(b), the acceptance-of-rent rule in (2)(c) and the stripping of the renewal, purchase and first-offer rights in (3) are all default rules, not mandatory ones. A lease can provide differently, and so can a later agreement — including the renewal itself. The words “at any subsequent time” are doing real work: the parties are not confined to what they wrote at the outset.

That cuts both ways and is worth knowing in both directions. A tenant relying on “holding over destroys the renewal option” should check whether the lease says otherwise. A landlord relying on the same sentence should check the same thing. And parties who want a different outcome from the statutory default can write one, which is a good reason to address the point expressly in a renewal rather than leaving § 704.25 to supply the answer.

Do not extend the point further than the subsection does. It says “this section”. It makes § 704.25 a default. It says nothing about § 704.15’s reminder or about § 704.19’s notice periods, and this page does not treat either of those as waivable.

A correction first, because an earlier version of this page said the opposite of the truth. It said that case law applying § 704.25 had not been read, and that no case law had been consulted at all. Both statements were wrong. The captured pages carry the Wisconsin Legislature’s own annotations, printed underneath the sections they belong to, and several of them bear directly on this page. They are retracted here rather than quietly deleted, because a false “not researched” tells a reader to stop looking.

The one that matters most is annotated to § 704.25 itself: “Upon the landlord’s acceptance of a holdover tenant’s monthly rent payment, both parties were bound to a one-year tenancy, on the same terms and conditions as set forth in the expired lease. The existence of a one-year holdover tenancy does not mean, however, that the landlord could not subsequently accept a surrender of the premises from the tenant and release the tenant from the tenant’s obligations as a holdover tenant.” The citation given is Vander Wielen v. Van Asten, 2005 WI App 220, 287 Wis. 2d 726, 706 N.W.2d 123, 04-1788.

Read that against the textual reading two sections above. The text of (2)(a) and (2)(b) splits year-to-year from month-to-month on whether the letting is primarily residential, and a court nevertheless arrived at a one-year holdover tenancy on the landlord’s acceptance of a monthly rent payment. The annotation is a one-paragraph summary: it does not state whether the premises in that case were residential, nor how long the expired term ran, and the annotation is printed against the section as a whole rather than against a particular subsection. So it does not overturn the (2)(b) reading. What it does do is make a flat statement that a Wisconsin holdover of a home can never become a one-year tenancy unsafe to print, and this page therefore does not print one. If the length of a holdover tenancy is the question that matters to you, read the case, not this page.

The same annotation carries a second point that belongs on a renewal page. A one-year holdover tenancy did not stop the landlord from later accepting a surrender of the premises and releasing the tenant. A separate annotation to § 704.29, citing the same case, develops the same theme: dealing exclusively with a successor tenant, proposing a new long-term lease to that successor, accepting higher rent from the successor and never telling the original tenant the landlord held them responsible “clearly evidenced an intent to accept the tenant’s surrender of the premises”. Conduct decides these questions in Wisconsin far more often than paperwork does — which is the same lesson § 704.25(2)(c) teaches from the other direction.

Further annotated cases sit in the same captures — the Legislature prints a good many, and this page does not attempt a census of them. These are the ones that bear on the material here, though none is about renewal as such. Milwaukee City Housing Authority v. Cobb, 2015 WI 27, annotated to § 704.17, is summarised as deciding that federal law preempts the right-to-remedy provision of § 704.17(2)(b) when a public housing tenant is evicted for drug-related criminal activity — relevant because § 704.19(2)(b)2 routes early termination through § 704.17. Vincenti v. Stewart, 107 Wis. 2d 651, and Univest Corp. v. General Split Corp., 148 Wis. 2d 29, are annotated to § 704.27 and go to what holding over costs, which the next section takes up. Clark Oil & Refining Corp. v. Leistikow, 69 Wis. 2d 226, also annotated to § 704.17, is taken up in the retaliation section below. And Koble Investments v. Marquardt, 2024 WI App 26, annotated to § 704.14 and to § 704.17, records a lease held “void and unenforceable under s. 704.44 (10)” — and the trigger had two halves, both of which matter: the lease prohibited the “use of the premises for an unlawful purpose” and did not include the notice of domestic abuse protections that § 704.14 requires. The annotation adds that the provision’s possible validity under § 704.17(3m) “had no impact on whether that same provision violated the distinct requirements under sub. (10)”.

To be exact about the limits of all this: what was read is the annotations the Legislature prints alongside these sections in the captured pages. No case law beyond those annotations was read for this page, and an annotation is a summary, not a holding.

§ 704.27 is printed immediately after § 704.25 in the capture, and it is the reason letting a term drift is an expensive way to decide nothing. Where a tenant remains in possession without the landlord’s consent after a lease expires, after a tenancy is terminated by notice from either side, or after termination by valid agreement, the landlord recovers damages suffered because of the failure to vacate on time — and “In absence of proof of greater damages, the landlord shall recover as minimum damages twice the rental value apportioned on a daily basis for the time the tenant remains in possession.”

The section defines rental value as the amount for which the premises might reasonably have been rented, but not less than the amount actually paid or payable for the prior rental period, and it includes the money equivalent of obligations the tenant took on as part of the rental agreement, such as payment of taxes, insurance and repairs. The two annotations narrow and confirm that: the section “requires a minimum award of double rent when greater damages have not been proved” (Vincenti), and rental value “includes only those obligations that the tenant is required to pay during a holdover period regardless of whether or not the tenant uses the premises” (Univest).

Set that beside § 704.25(2)(c). If the landlord has elected to continue the tenancy, the tenant is not holding over without consent and the § 704.27 exposure is not the right lens. If the landlord has not elected, it is. That is precisely why the date of the first accepted post-expiry payment is worth recording.

If the answer is not to renew, § 704.19 governs. It applies to “a periodic tenancy, whether a tenancy from year-to-year, from month-to-month, or for any other periodic basis according to which rent is regularly payable” and to a tenancy at will. Under subsection (2)(a), either party may terminate “only by giving to the other party written notice complying with this section”, unless one of three conditions is met: the parties expressly agreed another method and that agreement is established by clear and convincing proof; the premises have been surrendered; or subsection (6) applies, which fixes the termination date where a periodic tenant vacates without notice and fails to pay rent.

The length is in subsection (3): at least 28 days’ notice, except that if rent is payable on a basis less than monthly, notice at least equal to the rent-paying period is sufficient, and all agricultural tenancies from year to year require at least 90 days. Twenty-eight days is not thirty, and a notice calculated on a thirty-day assumption may be given later than the statute allows.

Timing matters as much as length, and this is the part that has to be stated with its exception attached. Subsection (2)(b)1 provides that a periodic tenancy can be terminated by notice “only at the end of a rental period”, and that for a year-to-year tenancy the end of the rental period is the end of the rental year even though rent is payable more frequently. Subsection (2)(b)2 then qualifies it in terms: “Notwithstanding subd. 1., nothing in this section prevents termination of a tenancy before the end of a rental period because of an imminent threat of serious physical harm, as provided in s. 704.16, or for criminal activity or drug-related criminal activity, nonpayment of rent, or breach of any other condition of the tenancy, as provided in s. 704.17.” So the end-of-period rule is the no-fault timing rule. It is not an absolute one, and it should never be quoted without (2)(b)2 beside it.

Subsection (4) is forgiving about form — the notice may be “formal or informal” so long as it substantially informs the other party of the intent to terminate and the date, and it “is not invalid because of errors… which do not mislead, including omission of the name of one of several landlords or tenants”.

Subsection (5) even rescues some wrong dates. If a notice says the tenancy ends on the first day of the next rental period rather than the last day of the current one, and it was given in time, the notice is valid; where the tenant gave it, the landlord may require removal on the last day of the rental period, and where the landlord gave it, the tenant may remove on the last day the notice specified. Any other inaccurate date — because the notice does not allow the length of time subsection (3) requires, or does not correspond to the end of a rental period — leaves the notice valid but not effective until the first date that could properly have been specified, unless the party receiving it elects to treat the stated date as effective.

Subsection (7) tells you which day the clock starts on, and it is not always the day the notice was sent: personal delivery counts from the day of giving or leaving; leaving a copy and mailing counts from the day of leaving or the date of mailing, whichever is later; registered or certified mail counts from the second day after mailing within the state and the fifth day after mailing elsewhere; personal service counts from the day of service; and actual receipt counts from the day of receipt. Whichever applies, that day is counted as the first day of the notice period. Subsection (8) supplies the effect: “If a notice is given as required by this section, the tenant is not entitled to possession or occupancy of the premises after the date of termination as specified in the notice.”

Because (2)(b)2 works by cross-reference, the qualifier means nothing unless you know what it points at. The full text of § 704.16 is in the same captured page as § 704.15, so it can be stated rather than left as a bare citation.

Subsection (1) lets a residential tenant terminate the tenancy and remove from the premises where both of two things apply: the tenant or a child of the tenant “faces an imminent threat of serious physical harm from another person if the tenant remains on the premises”, and the tenant gives the landlord notice in the § 704.21 manner together with a certified copy of one of the listed documents. The list is specific: an injunction order under s. 813.12(4) protecting the tenant; one under s. 813.122 protecting a child of the tenant; one under s. 813.125(4) protecting either, based on conduct that would constitute stalking under s. 940.32 or an attempt or threat to do so; a condition of release under ch. 969 ordering the person not to contact the tenant; a criminal complaint alleging stalking of the tenant or a child under s. 940.32; or a criminal complaint filed after an arrest for a domestic abuse offence against the tenant under s. 968.075. Subsection (1m) provides a parallel route for sexual assault, on an injunction order or criminal complaint under s. 940.225, 948.02 or 948.025.

Subsection (2) states the rent consequence, and it is the practical heart of the section: a tenant who removes in those circumstances and provides the certified copy and complying notice “shall not be liable for any rent after the end of the month following the month in which he or she provides the notice or removes from the premises, whichever is later”, subject to the landlord’s duty to mitigate under § 704.29(2). Subsection (2m) says the same for the sexual assault route.

Subsection (3) runs the other way. A landlord may terminate the tenancy of an “offending tenant” whose acts, including verbal threats, cause another tenant or that tenant’s child in the same rental unit, multiunit dwelling, apartment complex or manufactured or mobile home community to face an imminent threat of serious physical harm — where the offending tenant is the named offender in one of the listed orders or complaints, and where the landlord gives written notice complying with § 704.21 requiring the tenant to vacate on or before a date at least 5 days after the notice is given. The notice must state the basis for its issuance and the tenant’s right to contest the termination in an eviction action under ch. 799, and if the tenant contests it the tenancy may not be terminated without proof by the landlord by the greater preponderance of the credible evidence. Subsection (4) adds a lock-changing duty: on request with a certified copy, the landlord shall have the locks changed, or may permit the tenant to change them, within 48 hours, at the tenant’s cost.

§ 704.17 is the second route (2)(b)2 names, and it is the section that supplies Wisconsin’s pay-or-vacate and remedy-or-vacate machinery for nonpayment of rent, waste, a material violation of § 704.07(3), and breach of any other covenant or condition — with different notice periods for month-to-month and week-to-week tenants, for tenancies under a lease of one year or less and year-to-year tenancies, and for leases of more than one year, plus a separate criminal-activity route in subsection (3m). Those are termination-for-cause rules rather than renewal rules, and this page does not set out their periods; the point for a renewal decision is simply that they exist, that they can operate before the end of a rental period, and that under § 704.17(5) provisions in a lease for termination contrary to that section are invalid except in leases for more than one year, with provisions contrary to subsection (3m) invalid in any lease.

A correction opens this section, because an earlier version of this page said that § 704.44 “was not captured” and that the page could not say whether a Wisconsin landlord needs a reason to decline a renewal. Both statements were wrong, and the answer was in this project’s own files the whole time. The four section captures used for the rest of this page are a subset of chapter 704; the complete chapter, running to some 131,000 characters, is held separately as the Legislature’s chapter-704 PDF text. Two of its sections are squarely about refusing to renew, and they are set out here from that complete text rather than from the four-section captures.

§ 704.44, “Residential rental agreement that contains certain provisions is void”, opens: “Notwithstanding s. 704.02, a residential rental agreement is void and unenforceable if it does any of the following.” The first item on the list is the one that matters here. Subsection (1m) catches an agreement that “allows a landlord to do any of the following because a tenant has contacted an entity for law enforcement services, health services, or safety services” — and paragraph (d) in that list is “Refuse to renew a rental agreement”. The other paragraphs are (a) increase rent, (b) decrease services, (c) bring an action for possession of the premises, and (e) threaten to take any action under paragraphs (a) to (d). Note what the trigger is: the tenant’s contacting law enforcement, health or safety services. It is not a general good-cause requirement.

The rest of § 704.44’s list voids a residential rental agreement that: (2m) authorises eviction or exclusion other than by the judicial eviction procedures under ch. 799; (3m) provides for acceleration of rent on tenant default or breach, or otherwise waives the landlord’s duty to mitigate damages under § 704.29; (4m) requires the tenant to pay the landlord’s attorney fees or costs in a dispute arising under the agreement — though this does not prevent either party recovering costs or fees under a court order under ch. 799 or 814; (5m) authorises the landlord or its agent to confess judgment against the tenant; (6) states that the landlord is not liable for property damage or personal injury caused by the landlord’s negligent acts or omissions; (7) imposes liability on the tenant for (a) personal injury arising from causes clearly beyond the tenant’s control or (b) property damage caused by natural disasters or by persons other than the tenant or the tenant’s guests or invitees; (8) waives the landlord’s obligation to deliver the premises fit or habitable or to maintain them during the tenancy; (9) allows termination based solely on the commission of a crime in or on the rental property where the tenant, or someone lawfully residing with the tenant, is the victim as defined in § 950.02(4); and (10) allows termination for a crime committed in relation to the rental property where the agreement omits the notice § 704.14 requires — the subsection Koble Investments turned on. Subsections (6) and (7)(b) each preserve ordinary maintenance obligations a tenant has under § 704.07 or has assumed by agreement.

§ 704.45, “Retaliatory conduct in residential tenancies prohibited”, is the more direct answer, and it is a prohibition on the landlord’s conduct rather than on a lease clause. Subsection (1): “Except as provided in sub. (2), a landlord in a residential tenancy may not increase rent, decrease services, bring an action for possession of the premises, refuse to renew a lease or threaten any of the foregoing, if there is a preponderance of evidence that the action or inaction would not occur but for the landlord’s retaliation against the tenant for doing any of the following: (a) Making a good faith complaint about a defect in the premises to an elected public official or a local housing code enforcement agency. (b) Complaining to the landlord about a violation of s. 704.07 or a local housing code applicable to the premises. (c) Exercising a legal right relating to residential tenancies.”

Three things about that are worth stating carefully. The standard is a preponderance of the evidence, and the test is a but-for one: the action or inaction “would not occur but for” the retaliation. The protected acts are the three listed, and (c) — exercising a legal right relating to residential tenancies — is considerably wider than the two complaint routes before it. And there are two limits inside the section itself: subsection (2) provides that notwithstanding subsection (1) a landlord may still bring an action for possession where the tenant has not paid rent, other than a rent increase prohibited by subsection (1); and subsection (3) provides that the section does not apply to complaints about defects caused by the negligence or improper use of the tenant affected by the action or inaction. The section’s history is 1981 c. 286, and it carries a cross-reference to s. ATCP 134.09 of the Wisconsin administrative code, which was not read for this page.

So the answer to the question in this heading is a qualified one, and the qualification is the whole of it. Nothing read for this page requires a Wisconsin landlord to have a good reason to decline a renewal, and nothing read for this page gives a tenant a right to renew. What § 704.44(1m)(d) and § 704.45(1) do is make certain reasons unlawful: a lease clause permitting non-renewal because the tenant called law enforcement, health or safety services voids the whole agreement, and an actual refusal to renew that would not have happened but for retaliation for a protected complaint or for exercising a tenancy right is prohibited outright. A landlord who declines a renewal shortly after one of those tenant acts should expect the timing to be the issue. The annotation the Legislature prints with § 704.45 makes the same point from the case-law side: Dickhut v. Norton, 45 Wis. 2d 389 (1970) — “a landlord cannot evict a tenant solely because the tenant has reported building code violations”. That is an annotation, and so a summary rather than a holding.

This also puts the eviction-defence annotation mentioned earlier in its place. Clark Oil & Refining Corp. v. Leistikow, 69 Wis. 2d 226, annotated to § 704.17, records that only a limited number of defences may be raised in an eviction action, among them “whether the eviction is in retaliation for the tenant’s reporting housing violations”. Read beside § 704.45 that is not an isolated scrap: it is the procedural face of the same prohibition.

Two different sources sit behind this page, and it is worth being exact about which did what. The bulk of it rests on the Legislature’s section pages for chapter 704’s sections 704.15, 704.17, 704.19 and 704.25. Those pages also print the neighbouring sections in full, which is why this page is able to state § 704.16, § 704.21, § 704.23, § 704.27 and § 704.29(2) rather than merely cite them, and why the Legislature’s case annotations to those sections were available to be read. But those four pages are only a subset of chapter 704. The complete chapter is also held for this project as the Legislature’s chapter-704 PDF text, and that is the source for § 704.44 and § 704.45 as set out above — neither of which appears in the four section pages except as a citation inside an annotation.

An earlier version of this page got that badly wrong, and the correction is recorded rather than quietly made. It said “Section 704.44 was not captured” and that searching for “good cause”, “refuse to renew” and “nonrenewal” returned nothing, so the page could not say whether a Wisconsin landlord needs a reason to decline a renewal. Both statements were false. They were true only of the four section pages, and were written as though those four pages were the whole of the available material. They were not: the complete chapter, containing both provisions, was in this project’s files throughout. A false “not researched” is worse than a gap, because it tells a reader to stop looking. The string “704.44” does appear in the four section pages — six times, not three as this page previously said, twice each in the pages for §§ 704.15, 704.17 and 704.19 and not at all in the page for § 704.25, every one of them inside the same Koble Investments annotation.

What genuinely was not researched is narrower. The rest of chapter 704 beyond the sections discussed here was not read section by section, and no chapter outside 704 was read at all. The § 704.45 cross-reference to s. ATCP 134.09 of the Wisconsin administrative code was not followed, and that rule may well carry obligations this page does not describe. No rent-increase notice period is printed here, because none was found in the material read. Local ordinances were not searched — and in Wisconsin that is a real limitation, not a formality. On case law, the position is the one set out above: the annotations the Legislature prints with these sections were read, and nothing beyond them; an annotation is a summary, not a holding, and none of the cases named here was read in full. Check all of that before relying on a silence.

An extension is mostly a matter of contract, so what it can do is decided by the existing lease before it is decided by statute. The place state law bites hardest is the rent, because continuing a tenancy is when it usually changes. Our guide to Wisconsin rent increase laws sets out the notice that has to come first, which is often the real deadline in that negotiation.

The second place is what happens when the parties do not agree. An expiring term does not resolve itself, and Wisconsin eviction notice laws explain the notices and timelines that follow if a tenant stays on without a new agreement.

For the obligations that run between a landlord and a tenant throughout the tenancy, and the rules that apply to both sides, see Wisconsin landlord tenant laws.

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.