Month-to-Month Lease Laws in Florida

Ending a month-to-month lease in Florida is a lot simpler than ending a year-long lease—landlords and tenants can terminate their agreement at any time, as long as they give a minimum of 15 days written notice. This timeline also applies to other changes, like raising the rent.

In this article

Creating a month-to-month lease
Notice requirements
Ending a month-to-month lease

Tenants with a verbal or expired lease agreement are month-to-month

There are typically three ways to establish a month-to-month tenancy in Florida:

1. The landlord and tenant signed a written lease that explicitly created a month-to-month tenancy.
2. The landlord and tenant signed a fixed-term lease that expired—but the tenant kept paying rent and the landlord accepted those payments, thus establishing a month-to-month agreement.
3. There is no written lease, but the tenant pays rent monthly.

Month-to-month leases are one type of periodic tenancy (versus a fixed-term tenancy). There are pros and cons to both agreements—periodic tenancies are more flexible, but they are more unpredictable since either party could end them at any time with just a few weeks of notice.

Fifteen days’ notice is required to end a month-to-month lease

Both landlords and tenants can terminate a month-to-month lease at any time, as long as they inform the other person in writing at least 15 days before the next rent payment is due. This timeline is much quicker than in other states, which generally require at least a month’s notice.¹

For the 15 days notice to count under Florida law, it must be a physical letter—either mailed or personally delivered to the other person. (Landlords can also leave a copy of the letter at the tenant’s residence if they’re not at home to accept it.)²

Florida law also gives specific guidelines for ending other types of periodic tenancies, including week-to-week ones:³

• If a tenant pays rent weekly, seven days notice is required to terminate the lease
• If a tenant pays rent quarterly, 30 days notice is required
• If a tenant pays rent yearly, 60 days notice is required

Month-to-month tenancies can be terminated for any reason

Ending a tenancy is not the same thing as an eviction. A landlord can only evict a tenant if they’ve done something wrong, such as violate the terms of the lease or commit crimes on the property. But a landlord can terminate a month-to-month tenancy for any reason—or no reason at all. The only exception is discrimination (on the basis of race, gender, or any other protected class under fair housing laws) or retaliation against a tenant for exercising their legal rights.

That said, a landlord can formally evict a month-to-month tenant if they have broken the terms of their lease agreement in some way. The process is the same as the one used to evict a tenant with a year-long lease.

Lease terms can be changed with 15 days’ notice

Florida law doesn’t explicitly state how much notice a landlord must provide to change the terms of a month-to-month lease—but since doing so effectively terminates the old lease and replaces it with a new one, we can assume that the 15 days’ notice rule applies. This is not a particularly tenant-friendly law, since that means landlords can raise the rent with approximately two weeks’ notice.

Related articles

[1] Fla. Stat. Ann. § 83.57

[2] Fla. Stat. Ann. § 83.56(4)

[3] Fla. Stat. Ann. § 83.57