New York Landlord Tenant Laws: 2026 Guide

New York landlord tenant laws work on two overlapping levels at once, and mixing them up is the most common mistake independent landlords make. If you own a rental anywhere in the state, from a two-family house in Buffalo to a triplex in Brooklyn, you're bound by a statewide baseline that applies no matter where your property sits, plus a smaller, stricter layer that kicks in only inside New York City and a growing list of opt-in towns.

Most guides blend the two together, which is exactly how a landlord upstate ends up worrying about rules that were never written for them, or a landlord in Queens misses one that absolutely applies.

This guide draws that line clearly, then walks through the parts of New York landlord tenant law that affect nearly every independent landlord in the state: security deposits, late fees, the eviction process, habitability obligations, notice to enter, rent-increase notices, and required disclosures.

New York Landlord Tenant Laws at a Glance: Statewide Rules vs. NYC-Only Rules

The dividing line matters because it determines which rules actually reach your property. Everything below the fold in this section applies to every residential landlord in New York State, regardless of how many units you own or which county your property sits in.

Statewide rules that apply everywhere, set primarily by the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019 (HSTPA):

Security deposits capped at one month's rent
A 14-day deadline to return deposits after move-out
Late fees capped at $50 or 5% of monthly rent, whichever is less
Application and background-check fees capped at $20 per applicant
The implied warranty of habitability (New York Real Property Law § 235-b)
The 14-day rent demand notice before a nonpayment eviction case can be filed

Rules that apply only in New York City, plus a short list of opt-in towns (Albany, Ithaca, Kingston, Poughkeepsie, Beacon, and others that have separately voted in):

The Good Cause Eviction Law, which limits non-renewal and large rent increases for covered units — we cover the exemptions and rent-increase standard in detail in our Good Cause Eviction Law guide
Annual window guard and lead paint notices
Mandatory bedbug infestation history disclosure
The $20 application fee cap's specific enforcement history, which has been litigated most aggressively in NYC housing court

If your property is outside New York City and outside an opt-in municipality, you can generally skip the Good Cause Eviction analysis entirely and focus on the statewide rules. Everyone else needs both.

Security Deposits: The One-Month Cap and 14-Day Return Rule

New York caps security deposits at one month's rent for nearly all residential leases statewide, a change the HSTPA made in 2019 that eliminated the larger deposits some landlords used to collect upfront. This cap applies regardless of how many units you own or where the property is located.

Once a tenant moves out, you have 14 days to either return the full deposit or send an itemized statement of deductions along with whatever portion you're keeping. Miss that 14-day window and New York courts treat it as a forfeiture: you lose the right to make any deductions at all and owe the tenant the entire deposit back, even if the damage was real and expensive to fix. This is one of the least forgiving deposit-return rules in the country, and it's worth building a hard calendar reminder around rather than trusting memory.

A few other deposit rules worth knowing:

If your building has six or more units, the deposit must sit in an interest-bearing bank account, and tenants are entitled to that interest annually or at the end of the tenancy.
You must disclose the name and address of the bank holding the deposit.
Deductions can only cover unpaid rent and damage beyond normal wear and tear — for a breakdown of what actually counts as deductible damage versus what doesn't, see our guide on normal wear and tear vs. damage.

Vantric's free tools include a move-out and deposit tracker built around exactly this kind of hard deadline, so the 14-day clock doesn't quietly become a problem you find out about from a small claims filing.

Late Fees and Application Fee Limits

New York's late fee cap is one of the strictest in the country and catches out landlords who copied a lease template from a different state. Under Real Property Law § 238-a, you cannot charge a late fee until at least 5 days have passed after rent was due, and the fee itself cannot exceed $50 or 5% of the monthly rent, whichever is less.

For most New York rentals, where monthly rent well exceeds $1,000, that means the effective cap is $50 flat — a 5% fee only wins out on rents under $1,000 a month. Any lease clause promising a higher fee or a shorter grace period is unenforceable, no matter what the tenant signed.

Application fees are capped even lower. Since the HSTPA took effect, landlords may charge an applicant no more than $20 for a background and credit check, and only if you actually provide the report and a receipt from the company that ran it. If an applicant hands you a background or credit check completed within the prior 30 days, you're required to waive the fee rather than charge for a duplicate check.

You also cannot charge any other upfront fee — no "processing fee," no "administrative fee" — beyond that $20 background-check cost and, later, the capped security deposit.

If you're weighing how to price a unit's rent within these constraints, our rental calculator helps you land on a market-fair number before you even get to fee structuring. For the mechanics of enforcing a late fee once it's earned, our guide on late fees for rent covers grace periods and collection in more depth.

The Eviction Process: Notices, Court Steps, and Where Good Cause Fits In

New York's eviction process for nonpayment starts before you ever file in court. You're required to serve a 14-day rent demand — a written notice telling the tenant exactly how much is owed and that you'll begin a nonpayment eviction proceeding if it isn't paid within 14 days. If the tenant pays the full amount owed within that window, you cannot proceed with the eviction case at all, no matter how many times rent has been late before.

Once the 14 days pass without payment, you can file a nonpayment petition in housing court (or the local justice court outside New York City), a process the New York courts system's own landlord guide walks through step by step. The tenant is served and given a court date, and if you win a judgment, the court issues a warrant of eviction that a sheriff or marshal — never you — carries out.

New York does not permit self-help evictions: you cannot change the locks, remove a tenant's belongings, or shut off utilities to force someone out, even after you win in court. Doing so exposes you to real damages the tenant can sue for, on top of whatever rent you were owed.

For lease violations other than nonpayment, the required notice period depends on the violation and your lease terms, but generally runs 10 to 30 days before you can file a holdover proceeding.

If your property sits in New York City or an opt-in town and doesn't qualify for the small-landlord exemption, the Good Cause Eviction Law adds another layer on top of this process — limiting your ability to decline a lease renewal or push through a large rent increase without a statutorily defined reason. That analysis is detailed enough to warrant its own read; see our Good Cause Eviction Law guide for the exemption thresholds and rent-increase standard.

Warranty of Habitability: What You're Required to Maintain

Every residential lease in New York carries an implied warranty of habitability under Real Property Law § 235-b, whether or not the lease mentions it. Neither you nor the tenant can waive it, even by agreement. In practice, this means you're responsible for keeping the unit free of conditions that endanger health or safety: functioning heat during the winter, hot water, working plumbing and electrical systems, and freedom from serious pest infestations or structural hazards.

There's no fixed statutory number of days to complete a repair — courts apply a "reasonable person" standard that scales with the severity of the problem. A heating outage in January demands a same-day or next-day response; a cosmetic issue does not. If you don't act, a tenant can bring an HP proceeding in housing court to force repairs, and in serious cases, courts have allowed tenants to withhold rent until conditions are fixed.

Preventing that situation is far cheaper than litigating it. A seasonal maintenance routine, covered in our rental property maintenance guide, catches most of these issues before they become a habitability complaint.

Notice to Enter and Rent Increase Notice Requirements

New York State does not have a statute spelling out a specific number of hours' notice before a landlord can enter a rental unit outside New York City. Instead, courts rely on the tenant's right to "quiet enjoyment" of the property, and case law generally treats 24 hours' advance notice as reasonable for a non-emergency entry, with entry limited to reasonable hours.

Inside New York City, that expectation is more concrete: city rules treat 24 hours as reasonable notice for an inspection and roughly a week's notice for scheduled repair work, typically during weekday business hours. In a genuine emergency — a fire, an active leak, a gas smell — you can enter without any advance notice at all.

Rent increases carry their own notice requirement under Real Property Law § 226-c, which applies statewide whenever you intend to raise the rent by 5% or more at renewal, or choose not to renew a lease at all. The required notice period scales with how long the tenant has lived there or the length of their current lease term, whichever is longer:

30 days' notice if the tenant has occupied the unit for less than one year and doesn't have a lease of at least one year
60 days' notice if the tenant has occupied the unit for one to two years, or has a lease term of one to two years
90 days' notice if the tenant has occupied the unit for more than two years, or has a lease term of two years or more

Miss the deadline and the existing lease terms simply continue until the correct notice period has run — you don't get to backdate a shorter notice after the fact. If you're calculating a defensible rent number to include in that notice, our rental calculator and our guide on how to raise rent without losing good tenants both help you land on an increase you can support with comps rather than a round number.

Required Disclosures and Staying Compliant in 2026

Beyond deposits, fees, and notices, New York layers on a set of required disclosures that catch first-time landlords off guard:

Lead paint: Federal law requires a lead-based paint disclosure form and an EPA pamphlet for any building built before 1978, regardless of location in the state.
Bedbug history: You must disclose the unit's and building's bedbug infestation history to incoming tenants, tracked over roughly the prior year.
Window guards: If a child age 10 or younger lives in the unit, window guards are required, and you must send an annual notice to all tenants about the requirement, not just those with children.
Flood history: If the property has previously flooded, you're required to disclose that history along with information about flood insurance.
Source-of-income protections: New York's Human Rights Law generally prohibits refusing an applicant based on lawful source of income, including housing vouchers, though the exact exemptions differ by building size and location.

None of these disclosures are optional paperwork you can skip because you're a small operation — several carry per-violation penalties that add up fast if a tenant or inspector flags a missing form. Building a simple lease-signing checklist that includes every disclosure your specific property triggers is the cheapest insurance available against a compliance complaint.

New York's rules reward landlords who track deadlines precisely rather than approximately: a 14-day deposit return, a 14-day rent demand, and a 30/60/90-day rent-increase notice all have hard cutoffs with no grace period once you're on the wrong side of them. Vantric's free landlord tools are built to keep those deadlines visible instead of buried in a spreadsheet, and if you're ready to manage your New York rentals in one place, you can start a free trial today.

This article provides general information for independent landlords and isn't legal advice. Landlord-tenant law changes frequently and can vary by municipality within New York — confirm current requirements with the New York State Homes and Community Renewal office or a local attorney before making decisions based on this guide.