New York's Good Cause Eviction Law: What Landlords With 10 Units or Fewer Need to Know

If you own a rental in New York City, or in one of a growing list of upstate and Hudson Valley towns, New York's Good Cause Eviction Law changes two things you probably assumed were entirely up to you: how much you can raise the rent and whether you can decline to renew a lease. The good news for a landlord with a handful of units is that the law includes a small-landlord exemption built around the exact same 1-to-10-unit range that defines Vantric's own audience — but qualifying for it, and proving it, takes more than assuming you're too small to be covered.

This guide walks through what the New York good cause eviction law actually requires, who is exempt and who isn't, where in the state it currently applies, and the one notice almost every landlord in New York now has to serve — even the ones who qualify for an exemption.

What Is New York's Good Cause Eviction Law?

Good Cause Eviction became New York Real Property Law Article 6-A on April 20, 2024, as part of that year's state budget agreement. In plain terms, it does two things for a covered unit: it requires a landlord to have a statutorily defined "good cause" — nonpayment, a lease violation, nuisance behavior, the owner's own need to occupy the unit, or a few other listed reasons — before declining to renew a tenant's lease or pursuing a holdover eviction, and it sets a threshold above which a rent increase is presumed unreasonable and can be challenged in court. The New York Attorney General's official summary is the clearest plain-language overview of what the statute covers.

It is not rent control. You can still raise rent, and you can still decline to renew a lease for cause. What changed is that a tenant in a covered unit can now raise an "unreasonable" rent hike or a renewal refusal as a defense in housing court, and the burden shifts to you to justify it.

Where It Applies: New York City vs. Opt-In Towns Upstate

Good Cause Eviction applies automatically to covered units in New York City. Everywhere else in the state, it only applies if the local city, town, or village government has voted to opt in — the law was written that way specifically so it would not blanket the entire state at once.

As of 2026, roughly 19 municipalities have opted in, including New York City, Albany, Ithaca, Kingston, Poughkeepsie, Rochester, Beacon, Newburgh, Nyack, Hudson, New Paltz, Fishkill, Catskill, Croton-on-Hudson, and Binghamton, with more towns voting on it regularly. A few of those localities have also used their opt-in authority to tighten the rules beyond the state default — Albany, for example, narrowed its small-landlord exemption so it only applies if the owner actually lives in a building with fewer than four units.

If you own rental property outside New York City, check with your specific town, village, or county clerk's office before assuming the law does or doesn't reach you, since this list keeps changing and local variations on the exemptions are legal under the statute. New York's Division of Homes and Community Renewal maintains a statewide Good Cause Eviction overview that's a faster way to check current coverage than searching town by town.

The Small Landlord Exemption: Do You Qualify With 10 Units or Fewer?

This is the part most competitor coverage treats as a footnote, and it's the one that matters most if you manage rentals on the side of a day job. Under the statute's default small-landlord exemption, you are exempt from Good Cause Eviction if you are a natural person who holds a direct or indirect ownership interest in no more than 10 residential units statewide.

A few details make or break whether you actually qualify:

• Entities count through their owners. If you hold your rental through an LLC or other entity, the exemption looks through to every natural person with an ownership interest in that entity (and any affiliated entity). Each of those individuals has to own 10 units or fewer, statewide, for the entity to qualify.
• You may have to prove it in court. If a tenant challenges an eviction and you claim the small-landlord exemption, the law requires you to provide the name of every natural-person owner, how many units each one owns, and the addresses of those units — excluding each owner's own principal residence. You cannot simply assert the exemption; you have to document it.
• Local opt-ins can shrink the exemption. As noted above, some upstate localities have narrowed the small-landlord definition below the statewide 10-unit default, so don't assume the state number applies if your property sits in an opt-in town.

If you're growing from a couple of side-hustle units toward a larger portfolio, this is a threshold worth watching closely — crossing it in New York doesn't just change your bookkeeping, it changes your legal obligations to every tenant you have.

Other Exemptions: Owner-Occupied Buildings, Condos, New Construction, and Luxury Rents

Beyond the small-landlord exemption, several other categories of housing fall outside Good Cause Eviction entirely:

• Owner-occupied buildings with 10 or fewer units. This is a separate exemption from the small-landlord one — it applies based on the building itself, not your total statewide holdings, as long as you occupy a unit in it.
• Condominiums and cooperatives. Units owned as condos or co-ops are exempt regardless of who owns them or how many.
• Rent-regulated and income-restricted units. Rent-stabilized, rent-controlled, and income-restricted affordable housing units are covered by their own separate rules and fall outside this law.
• New construction. A building that received its temporary or permanent certificate of occupancy on or after January 1, 2009 is exempt for 30 years from the date that certificate was issued — a unit finished in 2010, for example, doesn't fall under Good Cause Eviction until 2040.
• Higher-rent units. In New York City, units renting above 245% of the local Fair Market Rent published annually by HUD are exempt; opt-in localities outside the city can set that threshold differently (some have set it as high as 345%).
• Employer-provided housing and sublets. Housing tied to current employment, and subtenants, are also excluded.

If none of these apply to your property and you don't meet the small-landlord threshold, the unit is presumed covered.

The Rent Increase Standard: What Counts as "Reasonable" Right Now

For a covered unit, Good Cause Eviction doesn't cap rent the way rent stabilization does — but it sets a "Local Rent Standard" that determines what a court will treat as presumptively reasonable. That standard is the regional Consumer Price Index plus 5 percentage points, capped at 10% total, whichever is lower. An increase above that line is presumptively unreasonable, meaning the tenant can raise it as a defense, and you carry the burden of justifying the increase with evidence of higher operating costs — property taxes, insurance, maintenance — or a substantial capital improvement.

That standard moves every year with inflation, and it's tracked by the state Division of Homes and Community Renewal (DHCR). As of DHCR's May 2026 update, the Consumer Price Index used for New York City came in at 3.38%, which put the city's Local Rent Standard at 8.38% for that period. If you own outside the city, check the figure your locality is using, since opt-in towns can apply their own regional CPI data.

This standard only limits what's "reasonable" for a covered unit — it doesn't override the separate, statewide rule that any landlord raising rent more than 5% owes written notice in advance: 30 days if the tenant has lived there less than a year, 60 days for one to two years, and 90 days beyond that. For the mechanics of communicating an increase without triggering a dispute or losing a good tenant, see our full guide on how to raise rent, and run the math with Vantric's rental calculator before you send the notice.

The Good Cause Eviction Notice: Required Even If You're Exempt

Here's the part that trips up landlords who correctly conclude they're exempt and then assume the law has nothing to do with them: since August 18, 2024, every landlord in New York — covered or exempt — has been required to include a Good Cause Eviction Law Notice, under Real Property Law § 231-C, with every new lease, every lease renewal, every notice of non-renewal, every rent demand, and every eviction petition. If your unit is exempt, the notice has to say so and identify exactly which exemption applies.

Skipping this notice is not a paperwork technicality. New York courts have already dismissed eviction proceedings — without prejudice, meaning the landlord has to start over — because the required § 231-C notice was missing or defective; one 2025 housing court decision threw out a case for exactly this reason, on top of the existing requirement that any termination notice already has to comply with the state's separate rent-increase and non-renewal notice statutes. Build this notice into your lease template and every renewal or rent-demand letter now, whether or not you believe your unit is covered, and revisit your lease renewal process to make sure it's included every time, not just the first time you signed a tenant.

What Happens If You Don't Qualify for an Exemption

If your unit is covered and none of the exemptions apply, you can still run your rental the way you always have — you just need a documented, statutory reason before declining to renew, and you need to expect a rent increase above the Local Rent Standard to draw a challenge. Screening tenants carefully up front, keeping a clean record of lease violations if they occur, and pricing rent increases against your actual documented costs rather than the market rate alone will keep you in the position of being able to justify any decision a tenant contests.

Where this gets genuinely complicated — a tenant disputing your small-landlord exemption, a contested non-renewal, or a rent increase challenge that's headed to housing court — is exactly the situation where a consultation is worth the cost before you respond. Our guide on when you need an attorney for landlord-tenant issues covers what that typically costs and how to find help that doesn't charge big-firm rates for a routine matter.

Keep Your Exemption Documented as You Grow

The small-landlord exemption is the most landlord-friendly part of this law, but it only protects you if you can actually produce the ownership and unit-count records a court will ask for. That gets harder to track by memory once you own property through more than one entity, or you're adding units and getting closer to the 10-unit line.

Start with Vantric's free landlord tools to keep unit counts, leases, and rent-increase notices organized in one place, or sign up for a free trial to manage your New York rentals alongside everything else in your portfolio. If you're comparing New York's rules to another state you own in, our security deposit law hub has the New York state page with deposit limits and return deadlines in one place.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Good Cause Eviction Law coverage, exemption thresholds, and the Local Rent Standard change by locality and by year. Confirm current requirements for your specific municipality with the New York State Division of Homes and Community Renewal or a qualified New York attorney before relying on any figure in this guide.