Switching to monthly lease

[Waleep Alvi]

I have a tenant whose lease expires in 60 days. How do I notify this tenant that if she chooses to stay after the end of the 1yr lease, I will need her to sign a new monthly lease?

[Kyle J.]

@Waleep Alvi This is usually spelled out in the lease. For example, in the standard California Association of Realtors lease, it says the following:

Lease shall terminate on________ (date) at _____AM/ PM.
Tenant shall vacate the Premises upon termination of the Agreement, unless: (i) Landlord and Tenant have in writing extended this agreement or signed a new agreement; (ii) mandated by local rent control law; or (iii) Landlord accepts Rent from Tenant (other than past due Rent), in which case a month-to-month tenancy shall be created which either party may terminate as specified in paragraph 2A. Rent shall be at a rate agreed to by Landlord and Tenant, or as allowed by law. All other terms and conditions of this Agreement shall remain in full force and effect.

For what it’s worth, I sign all my tenants to one year leases initially, and then after the initial one year is up, I just allow them to go month-to-month. (And they usually end up staying 5-7+ years.) 

They don’t sign anything after the one year is up. It just automatically transitions to month-to-month, because that’s how my lease reads. But you need to read your lease to see what it says to be sure what, if anything, is required.

(Most likely it also automatically converts to month-to-month, but the only way to be sure is to actually read it.)