Tenancy At Will
Categories: Trusts and Estates
Hans loves his little apartment by the river. It’s close to everything, it’s got plenty of closet space, and his cat Frank loves looking out the wide, tall windows. Hans signed a twelve-month lease when he moved into this place, and it’s been about ten months, which means he needs to start considering his options. Does he sign another lease and lock himself into an extra year here? Does he move? Or does he try and go with a third option: “tenancy at will?”
“Tenancy at will” is basically lease-free rental living. It’s an agreement between a landlord and a tenant saying that the tenant will live in the landlord’s rental property and pay rent, and the landlord will care for said property in accordance with all laws and regulations, but there is no rental lease.
“Tenancy at will” is also called “month-to-month tenancy” or “at-will tenancy.” The laws and rules about tenancy at will vary by state, county, and sometimes even city, but generally speaking, even with no lease, we’ll still have to give our landlord 30 days’ notice if we plan to move out. And even with no lease, our landlord still has to give us 30 days’ notice before raising the rent. We still have to abide by the same rules we did when we had a lease—no huge dogs, no loud parties, no painting the walls black—but on the flip-side, so does our landlord. They still have to fix stuff and take care of the property and everything.
Tenancy at will isn’t an option always and everywhere—landlords tend to like the constancy and predictability of leases—but we might see this in instances where an area has a lot of short-term renters (like corporate clients), or in places where the rental market maybe isn’t as hot as it is elsewhere. Why? Because landlords want to hold onto good tenants, especially if there aren’t a whole lot of other tenants to choose from. So if someone like Hans has a lease, and that lease expires, his landlord might offer him a tenancy-at-will deal: Hans has the flexibility of renting month-to-month, the landlord still gets to collect rent every month, and Frank gets to keep his view. Win-win-win.
