How does a New Jersey landlord lawfully end a tenancy, and when may a tenant leave early?

The Anti-Eviction Act covers residential premises generally, including a mobile home and a lot in a mobile home park. Three sets of premises sit outside it: owner-occupied premises with not more than two rental units; a hotel, motel or other guest house rented to a transient or seasonal guest; and a unit held in trust for, or permanently occupied by, an immediate family member of the owner, where that family member has a developmental disability. Premises outside the act are governed by the older summary-dispossess sections, under which a landlord may end the tenancy without giving a reason by serving a notice to quit.

The switch counts rental units, not units in the building. An owner who lives in a three-family house rents two units, so that building is outside the act; the first owner-occupied building inside the act is a four-family, with three rental units. A reader works out which side of the line a building falls on by asking how many of its units are rented and whether the owner lives in one of them. The same arithmetic sets the exemption in the state's security-deposit law.

The switch changes: ending a month-to-month tenancy; is a reason required; when a fixed-term lease ends; and how a termination notice is delivered.

Landlord: no single figure exists, because the period depends on the ground relied on. Tenant: the statute states no tenant period.

Every period in the Anti-Eviction Act is measured forward from service of the notice to the earliest day the landlord may start a possession case: each period is stated as so much notice prior to the institution of the action for possession. The statute does not name a date on which the tenancy ends and does not tie the period to a rental-period boundary, so a reader counts forward from delivery. On the older track the notice to quit also runs forward from service, and the statute says nothing about whether it must expire at the end of a rental period.

Whether the termination date must fall on a rental-period boundary or a rent-due date differs between tenancy types or is not settled by the statute; the rule for each is stated above.

Tiers: Covered premises take a period keyed to the ground the landlord relies on. Three days for the disorderly-conduct, damage-to-premises and criminal-conviction grounds. One month for a rules violation, a substantial lease breach, habitual late payment, or the tenant's refusal of reasonable proposed changes to the lease. Two months where the owner of a building of three residential units or fewer, or the owner of three or fewer condominium or cooperative units, will personally occupy the unit or has contracted to sell it to a buyer who will. Three months where the owner will board up or demolish premises cited for substantial health and safety violations, must comply with an inspector's citation, is correcting an illegal occupancy, or is a government agency retiring the premises under a redevelopment plan. Eighteen months where the owner permanently retires the building or the mobile home park from residential use. Three years on a conversion to condominium, cooperative or fee-simple ownership of two or more units. Public-housing tenancies follow the federal regulations instead. Nonpayment of rent, and failure to pay a validly noticed increase, carry no period under this section at all. Premises outside the act take a flat period keyed to the tenancy: three months for a tenancy at will or from year to year, one month for a tenancy from month to month, and one full term's notice for a tenancy of any other term.

Ceiling on the notice a lease may require: In any case where a tenant is entitled by law to a notice to quit, three months' written notice is by statute enough (section 46:8-9). It works as a safe harbor for the party giving notice rather than as a limit on what a lease may require.

A lease may not change the period. A lease provision by which a tenant covered by the Anti-Eviction Act agrees that the tenancy may be ended or not renewed other than for good cause, or waives any other right under the act, is against public policy and unenforceable (section 2A:18-61.4). The bar runs in one direction: it protects the tenant's rights and does not stop a lease giving the tenant more than the statute does. No comparable clause protects a tenant of premises outside the act.

Source of the period: it depends on the ground for termination.

For premises the Anti-Eviction Act covers there is no notice period for ending a tenancy without a reason, because there is no route to do so: the landlord must rely on one of the statutory grounds and give the period that goes with it, anywhere from three days to three years. The notice must be in writing and must state the cause in detail. The grounds keyed to a lease breach, such as disorderly conduct, a rules violation, a substantial breach or habitual late payment, additionally require an earlier written notice to cease, and the statute sets no interval between the two documents. Three of the no-fault grounds add that no case may be started until an existing written lease expires. For premises outside the act the landlord ends the tenancy with a demand and a written notice to quit: three months for a tenancy at will or from year to year, one month for a tenancy from month to month, and one term's notice for a tenancy of any other term (section 2A:18-56). New Jersey states no period for a tenant who wants to leave. Every notice provision in the landlord-tenant article and in Title 46 chapter 8 runs from the landlord to the tenant, and the only terminations a tenant may start are the specific early-termination rights described further down, each with its own period. What notice a departing tenant owes is therefore a matter of the lease and of the common law of periodic tenancies.

Yes: a statute bars no-cause termination or non-renewal for covered tenancies across the state once its coverage conditions are met.

How a tenancy comes inside the rule: the landlord-tenant statute itself defines coverage.

Who is covered: The act reaches any house, building, mobile home or lot in a mobile home park leased for residential purposes, except owner-occupied premises with not more than two rental units, transient or seasonal lodging in a hotel, motel or guest house, and a unit held in trust for or permanently occupied by an immediate family member of the owner where that family member has a developmental disability. Because the exception counts rental units rather than units in the building, an owner-occupied two-family and an owner-occupied three-family are both outside the act. A sale does not reset the protection: a tenant of covered premises may not be removed by the landlord's successor in ownership or possession except for good cause, under federal law that supersedes the act, or on a state or local agency's eminent-domain or code-enforcement action that complies with the relocation laws. A successor who is not bound by the old lease may still offer the tenant a different lease.

No-fault grounds: Five of the eighteen grounds do not depend on anything the tenant did. The owner may board up or demolish premises cited for substantial health and safety violations that it is not economically feasible to fix, comply with an inspector's citation where compliance is impossible with the tenant in place, correct an illegal occupancy, or, as a government agency, retire the premises under a redevelopment plan for a blighted area: three months' notice, and on the board-up and demolition routes the landlord must notify the Department of Community Affairs when the eviction notice is served. The owner may permanently retire the building or the mobile home park from residential use: eighteen months' notice, and no case until any lease expires. At the end of a lease the owner may propose reasonable changes of substance in its terms, including a change in the term itself, which the tenant refuses in writing to accept: one month's notice, with the owner carrying the burden of showing the change is reasonable and does not substantially cut the rights of a protected senior or disabled tenant. The owner may convert to condominium, cooperative or fee-simple ownership of two or more units: three years' notice, and never against a protected senior or disabled tenant or a qualified tenant under the Tenant Protection Act of 1992. Finally, the owner of a building of three residential units or fewer, or of three or fewer condominium or cooperative units, may take back a unit to live in personally or to sell to a buyer who will live in it: two months' notice, and no case until a written lease expires.

Relocation payment: There is no general relocation payment. One exists for displacement caused by an illegal occupancy: a municipality may adopt an ordinance entitling the tenant to relocation assistance equal to six times the monthly rent, payable by the owner, and where the municipality has adopted no such ordinance the statute itself gives the tenant reimbursement of six times the monthly rent. Payment falls due five days before the tenant is removed; unpaid, it carries interest at eighteen percent a year, and if it is still unpaid thirty days after removal the balance plus interest plus a further six months' rent becomes a lien on the property with the priority of a mortgage. A mortgagee in possession through foreclosure is excluded. On the board-up, demolition and permanent-retirement grounds there is no cash figure in the act; instead no warrant for possession issues until the state's relocation assistance laws have been satisfied. On a conversion the owner may stop the court granting further one-year stays of eviction by giving the tenant hardship relocation compensation or waiving five months' rent.

Local ordinances: a statute expressly permits local just-cause rules. New Jersey expressly lets municipalities go further than the state act: nothing in the 1986 amendments authorizes a suit to keep dwelling units vacant, limits any other defense, or prohibits a provision of a local ordinance that is not less restrictive (section 2A:18-61.1f). The one carve-out shields a purchaser at a foreclosure, execution or bankruptcy sale from a more restrictive local ordinance on stated conditions. Rent regulation is a separate question and is carried on the rent-increase page, where New Jersey is not preempted and more than a hundred municipalities run rent control.

For premises the Anti-Eviction Act covers, a landlord may not evict or fail to renew any lease except for good cause as the act defines it, and the act lists eighteen grounds. Thirteen turn on what the tenant did, including nonpayment, disorderly conduct after a notice to cease, wilful or grossly negligent damage, a rules violation, a substantial lease breach, failure to pay a validly noticed increase, habitual late payment, the end of the employment the tenancy went with, and several criminal convictions including human trafficking; those belong with the eviction rules. Five are no-fault and are set out above. Each ground carries its own notice period, so the ground the landlord picks decides how much notice the tenant gets. Expiry of the term is not a ground, so a covered tenancy does not end simply by running out. For premises outside the act no ground is required at all: holding over after the term, following a demand and a written notice to quit, is itself the basis for a possession case.

A statute requires notice before a fixed term ends, or notice of non-renewal (30 days).

For premises the Anti-Eviction Act covers, the only route to the end of a lease is the landlord's proposal, at the end of the term, of reasonable changes of substance in the lease terms, including a change in the term itself, which the tenant then refuses in writing to accept; the landlord gives one month's notice before starting a possession case. Where the tenant is a protected senior or disabled tenant, or a qualified tenant under the Tenant Protection Act of 1992, or was noticed under the board-up ground, the landlord must prove the proposed change is both reasonable and does not substantially reduce the rights the tenant held before the conversion. For premises outside the act no notice of this kind exists; the landlord serves the notice to quit for the length of the tenancy instead.

After the term, the statute presumes renewal or a periodic tenancy when rent is accepted. Where the original term was one month or longer and the tenant stays past it, the tenancy created by the landlord's acceptance of rent is a tenancy from month to month (section 46:8-10). Two conditions travel with the rule: it operates only on acceptance of rent, and it yields to any agreement in the lease to the contrary. On covered premises the monthly tenancy that results is protected by the Anti-Eviction Act like any other.

A fixed-term lease of covered premises does not end merely by expiring, because expiry is not one of the statutory grounds. The landlord's only end-of-term route is the refusal-of-reasonable-changes ground on one month's notice, and three of the no-fault grounds expressly bar a possession case until an existing written lease runs out. For premises outside the act, holding over after the term, following a demand and a written notice to quit, is a basis for a case in itself. If the tenant stays and the landlord takes rent, a tenancy from month to month arises by statute unless the lease says otherwise. New Jersey has no statute requiring a landlord to remind a tenant before an automatic-renewal clause takes effect; the state's renewal-reminder law reaches consumer service contracts, not leases.

A tenant who stays after a demand and a written notice for delivery of possession, and does so wilfully and without force, commits an unlawful detainer by statute. If the landlord takes rent instead, the holdover becomes a tenancy from month to month. For premises the Anti-Eviction Act covers, holding over is not itself a ground: the landlord must still establish one of the statutory grounds and serve the notice that goes with it.

Damages: Double rent for the holdover period.

New Jersey has two double-rent statutes, with different triggers and different measures, and they should not be run together. Where the tenant gave notice of an intention to quit at a stated time and then did not give up possession, the tenant owes the landlord double the rent that would otherwise have been payable, and it keeps running for as long as the tenant stays; there is no wilfulness element and the landlord need not demand anything (section 2A:42-5). Where the term has ended and the tenant wilfully holds over after the landlord's demand and written notice for possession, the person holding over owes at the rate of double the yearly value of the property for as long as it is detained, which is a rental-value measure rather than twice the contract rent (section 2A:42-6). Neither section applies where the landlord accepts rent and a new monthly tenancy arises.

What a consented holdover becomes: A holdover the landlord accepts rent for becomes a tenancy from month to month, and on covered premises that new tenancy carries the full protection of the Anti-Eviction Act.

Yes: an appellate decision imposes the duty; no statute does.

When it attaches: The duty attaches whenever the landlord seeks rent from a tenant who left before the end of the term. The Supreme Court framed it as part of the landlord's own case rather than as something the tenant must raise, so it is live from the moment the unit is empty.

Burden of proof: on the landlord.

The standard: The landlord must make a reasonable effort to re-let, and a landlord with other vacant apartments must treat the one the tenant left as if it were one of the vacant stock. A court weighs, among other things, whether the landlord personally or through an agency offered or showed the unit to prospective tenants or advertised it in local newspapers, and the tenant may answer that evidence by showing suitable tenants were offered and turned down. The Court said there is no standard formula and each case turns on its own facts.

No authority addresses a clause accelerating the remaining rent.

Whether a lease may waive the duty is not settled.

No New Jersey statute imposes a duty to mitigate; the duty comes from the Supreme Court of New Jersey, which held in 1977 that a landlord seeking rent from a defaulting residential tenant must make a reasonable effort to re-let, and overruled the older rule that let a landlord leave the unit empty and sue for the whole term. The same decision put the burden on the landlord, departing from the ordinary contract rule that the party in breach must prove damages could have been reduced, on the reasoning that the landlord is better placed to show what was done. The Court reserved the commercial question in 1977 and answered it in 1991 by applying the same rule to a commercial lease, which confirms the burden but adds nothing to the residential rule. Whether a lease may contract the duty away is not settled: no statute addresses it, and the only authority is a county court statement, quoted by the Appellate Division while deciding a commercial case, that a residential lease may not do so. No New Jersey statute addresses a clause accelerating the remaining rent on default.

No statute addresses a fee a landlord may charge for ending a lease early; the general damages rules govern.

No New Jersey statute authorizes, caps or bars a fee for ending a residential lease early, and neither the landlord-tenant article nor Title 46 chapter 8 contains a liquidated-damages rule for dwellings. The one express bar on such a charge is military: a landlord may impose no penalty or charge on a service member, or on a co-signer, for a termination under the state civil relief act. What New Jersey has instead runs the other way, toward the tenant: six times the monthly rent payable by the owner to a tenant displaced by an illegal occupancy, and a five-months' rent waiver an owner may use to stop further stays of eviction on a conversion. The Department of Community Affairs rules on multiple dwellings, on relocation and eviction, and on rooming and boarding houses contain no early-termination fee, buy-out cap or re-letting charge; the fee provisions there are licensing, registration and inspection fees. What a landlord may recover from a tenant who leaves early is set by the general damages rules and by the landlord's duty to re-let.

Early-exit rights by ground: domestic violence and related grounds, a statutory right to end the lease; military service beyond the federal act, state orders or National Guard duty are covered; death of the tenant, a statutory route; and other statutory grounds.

Domestic violence and related grounds: a victim may end the lease on notice.

Who qualifies: The tenant may end the lease where the tenant, or a child of the tenant, faces an imminent threat of serious physical harm from a named person if the tenant stays. Every route into the right is keyed to domestic violence as the Prevention of Domestic Violence Act of 1991 defines it, which reaches sexual assault, criminal sexual contact, stalking, harassment, cyber-harassment and a list of other offenses, but only where the offender is a spouse or former spouse, a present or past household member, a person with whom the tenant has or expects a child, or a person the tenant has dated. Sexual assault or stalking by a stranger, a neighbor, a co-worker or the landlord does not qualify, and there is no human-trafficking route for a tenant.

Documentation: Written notice that the tenant or a child of the tenant faces an imminent threat of serious physical harm from a named person, together with any one of six documents: a certified copy of a permanent restraining order from a New Jersey court; a certified copy of a permanent restraining order from another jurisdiction; a law-enforcement agency record of the violence or certifying that the tenant or the child is a victim; medical documentation from a health care provider; certification from a certified Domestic Violence Specialist or the director of a designated domestic violence agency; or documentation from a licensed social worker. Note the trap in the first two routes: they require a permanent order, so a tenant holding only a temporary restraining order must use one of the other four. The notice and the documentation go to the landlord together.

Window: The statute states no window. There is no look-back limiting how old the incident may be and no deadline by which the tenant must act after it.

Notice: 30 days; the termination takes effect that many days after notice. The termination takes effect on the thirtieth day after the landlord receives notice that meets the statute, unless the landlord and tenant agree on an earlier date. The notice must be written and must say that the tenant or a child of the tenant faces an imminent threat of serious physical harm from the named person, and the supporting document goes with it. A public-housing tenant gives notice in accordance with the regulations for public-housing leases.

Rent owed: Rent is paid pro rata up to the day the lease ends on the thirtieth day, and nothing beyond it. The lease ends only if the victim acts in good faith and meets the statute's requirements.

Cost to the tenant: The statute fixes rent pro rata and bars the parties from agreeing to waive any right or remedy it creates, but it does not say the termination is without penalty and it names no fee bar. An early-termination charge is therefore not expressly prohibited here, unlike the military termination, which bars any penalty or charge outright. The deposit is returned under the deposit rules, which give a tenant leaving under this act a faster track.

Other tenants on the lease: the victim's termination ends the lease for everyone on it. The co-tenants' lease also ends, expressly notwithstanding the Anti-Eviction Act's ground requirement. The co-tenants may enter a new lease for a new term at the landlord's option, and nothing stops them staying on if the landlord permits it. A separate route in the domestic-violence law lets a court grant the victim exclusive possession of the home instead, whoever owns or leases it.

Locks: The victim may require the landlord to change the locks. Since November 2023 a court issuing a temporary or a permanent restraining order may order the landlord to change the locks on the unit where the victim lives; the victim then asks the landlord in writing. If the landlord has not installed new locks within forty-eight hours of that written request, the victim may change them, and must give the landlord a copy of the new keys within forty-eight hours afterwards. The victim pays for the change and may seek the cost back from the person restrained as part of the order. A landlord is not liable to the victim, to another tenant of the same unit, or to a visitor for damage to the unit, to property in it, or to people there during the stated window after a victim-installed lock change. The right is not self-executing: it runs through the court order.

Later screening: no statutory protection.

The landlord must keep the victim's documentation or status confidential.

The landlord's side: The landlord chooses whether to offer the remaining tenants a new lease and may let them stay on. The documentation the tenant supplies may be used as evidence in a possession case or in an action for unpaid rent or damage arising out of the tenancy, with the tenant's consent, or where the law otherwise requires it. A landlord is shielded from liability for a stated window after a victim changes the locks. Seasonal rentals are outside the act entirely, meaning a term of not more than 125 consecutive days for a person whose permanent home is elsewhere, and the landlord carries the burden of proving that a rental is seasonal. The act does not alter, limit or impair leases that already existed when it took effect in December 2008.

A tenant who, or whose child, faces an imminent threat of serious physical harm from a named person may end a residential lease before its expiry date by giving the landlord written notice to that effect together with one of six documents evidencing domestic violence. The termination takes effect on the thirtieth day after the landlord receives it, or earlier by agreement, and rent is paid pro rata to that day. Any co-tenants' lease ends with it, expressly overriding the Anti-Eviction Act, and the landlord decides whether to offer them a new one. The landlord may not disclose the documentation and may not put it into any shared database. The parties may not agree to waive the act's rights and remedies. Since 2023 a restraining order may direct the landlord to change the locks, and the victim may change them if the landlord has not acted within forty-eight hours. Seasonal rentals of not more than 125 consecutive days are outside the act, and the landlord must prove a rental is seasonal.

Military service: State orders or National Guard duty are covered.

When the state rights attach: The right reaches a lease executed by the tenant, or for the tenant, before the tenant entered military service. A lease of personal property additionally needs more than ninety consecutive days of service, but that condition does not apply to a dwelling. The state definition of military service covers both active service of the United States and active duty in the military service of the state on the Governor's order, so a Guard member called out by the Governor is covered.

New Jersey has its own civil relief act, and its lease section goes past the federal one. A tenant who entered military service after signing the lease may end it by written notice delivered to the landlord at any time after the period of service begins; putting the notice in a properly addressed and stamped envelope in the mail counts as delivery. On a lease with monthly rent the termination takes effect thirty days after the first rent day falling after the notice; on any other lease it takes effect on the last day of the month following the month of the notice, with rent for the earlier period worked out pro rata and rent paid in advance for the later period refunded. On termination the former tenant and any co-signer have no further liability except for damage to the property, and the landlord may impose no penalty or charge on either of them for the early termination, whether or not the service member signed alone. The landlord may apply to court before the termination date for whatever modifications justice and equity require. Anyone who knowingly seizes, holds or detains the departing tenant's belongings commits a disorderly persons offense punishable by up to six months in jail, a fine of up to $1,000, or both. A companion section bars eviction during service of a service member's spouse, children or dependents without leave of court, but only where the agreed rent does not exceed $150 a month, a figure set in 1979 and never raised, which leaves it of little practical use today.

Death of the tenant: A statute provides for ending the lease on the tenant's death. Where the lease is for a term of one year or more and the property is the tenant's dwelling, it may be ended early on the death of the tenant, or on the death of the tenant's spouse where the two signed jointly. Notice is given by the tenant, by the executor or administrator of the estate, or by the surviving spouse. The termination takes effect on the fortieth day after the landlord receives written notice, rent is paid up to that day, and the property must be given back at least five working days before the fortieth day. The right can be contracted away: it does not apply to any lease whose terms explicitly provide otherwise.

Other grounds: A lease for a term of one year or more of the tenant's dwelling may also be ended early in four further situations, on the same fortieth-day timetable and with the same five-working-day surrender. First, where the tenant or the tenant's spouse suffers a disabling illness or accident, on a treating physician's certification that the person can no longer work, proof of the lost income, and proof that any pension, insurance or other subsidy is not enough to keep the rent paid. Second, where the tenant or the tenant's spouse, one of them at least sixty-two, is accepted into an assisted living facility, a nursing home or a continuing care retirement community, with a physician's certification of need and documentation of acceptance. Third, where one of them is at least sixty-two and is accepted into housing reserved for low or moderate income households, provided the tenant is not already living in such housing. Fourth, where the dwelling is not accessible to the tenant or a household member with a disability that is not likely to be temporary, and the landlord, asked to make it accessible at the landlord's own expense, was unable or unwilling to do so. The statute prescribes no form for any of these, only the documents that must be attached, and all four can be contracted away by an explicit lease term, as the death right can. Separately, a tenant may petition a court to end a lease that contains a provision violating clearly established tenant rights, which is a court-ordered termination rather than a notice the tenant serves. A tenant of premises outside the Anti-Eviction Act who has been there two years, keeps to the lease and has a physician-certified terminal illness may ask the court for one-year stays of eviction with a right to renew the lease at its expiry, subject to reasonable changes the landlord proposes in writing. Ending a lease because the landlord will not keep the home habitable is covered on the habitability page.

No statute treats absence as ending the tenancy; the common law governs.

New Jersey has no statutory presumption that turns an absence into an ended tenancy. There is no absence period, no notice of belief of abandonment and no rebuttal window. The Abandoned Tenant Property Act deals with the goods a tenant leaves behind, and it starts only once the tenancy has already ended: it applies where a warrant for removal has been executed and possession restored to the landlord, or where the tenant has given written notice of voluntarily giving up possession. A landlord who believes a tenant has gone must still end the tenancy the ordinary way, on a statutory ground with its notice for covered premises or on a notice to quit for other premises, and what the departing tenant owes is governed by the landlord's duty to re-let. What may be done with property left behind is covered separately from this page.

For premises the Anti-Eviction Act covers, the notice is served personally on the tenant, the lessee or the person in possession, or by leaving a copy at that person's usual place of abode with a member of the family above the age of fourteen who lives there, or by certified mail; if the certified letter is not claimed, the notice is sent again by regular mail. For premises outside the act the notice to quit is served personally or by leaving a copy at the usual place of abode with a family member above fourteen, and only where neither can be done may it be served on any person actually occupying the premises or, where entry is refused or nobody is there, posted on the door or another conspicuous part of the premises, which the statute treats as lawful service.

Documents in sequence: The one no-fault route that ends a covered lease at its term takes two documents: the landlord's written notice proposing reasonable changes of substance in the lease terms, and then, after the tenant refuses them, the one-month notice before a possession case. The grounds keyed to a lease breach also take an earlier written notice to cease, which belongs with the eviction rules.

Electronic delivery: the termination statute is silent on it.

What the notice must contain: A notice for covered premises must state the cause of the termination in detail. A notice to quit for other premises must state the cause for the disorderly-conduct, damage, rules and covenant grounds and must demand that the tenant leave within three days of service; for a holdover after the term it is a demand and a written notice for delivery of possession. Where the landlord is ending a tenancy because of building, housing or health code enforcement, public acquisition of the premises, or a government-sponsored voluntary rehabilitation program, the state's relocation and eviction rules require the notice to give the reasons in detail and to carry a capital-letter statement telling the tenant the move is because of government action, that relocation benefits may be available under the relocation assistance and residential eviction laws, and the address and telephone number of the local relocation office.

Three federal layers reach New Jersey and none of them is state law. The federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act runs alongside the state civil relief act, and a service member may use either. The Protecting Tenants at Foreclosure Act supplies the ninety-day notice a foreclosure purchaser who will personally occupy must give, and it reaches monthly tenants and owner-occupied two- and three-family buildings that the state act leaves out; New Jersey has no ninety-day foreclosure notice of its own. The federal Violence Against Women Act gives no general early-termination right, so a New Jersey victim uses the state Safe Housing Act instead.

The federal CARES Act 30-day notice to vacate for covered properties, as read in this state's courts: no state appellate decision construes it. No New Jersey appellate decision construes the federal thirty-day notice for covered dwellings: neither the Supreme Court of New Jersey nor the Appellate Division has published a decision reading it, and the Legislature has not written it into state law. Most New Jersey possession law is decided in the Special Civil Part and in unpublished Appellate Division opinions, so the statement here is about published appellate authority. In practice the federal thirty-day floor rarely binds in New Jersey, where the shortest no-fault period on covered premises and the monthly-tenancy period on the older track are each one month. (Appellate picture read as of September 2, 2026.)

Sommer v. Kridel, 74 N.J. 446, 378 A.2d 767 (1977) (Supreme Court of New Jersey; residential lease; bears on the duty to re-let): A landlord who seeks rent from a residential tenant who left before the end of the term must make a reasonable effort to re-let, and where the landlord has other vacant apartments must treat the empty one as part of that vacant stock. The landlord carries the burden of proving reasonable diligence as part of the landlord's own case, and the court weighs whether the unit was offered, shown or advertised, with no standard formula. The court expressly left open whether the same duty applies to a commercial lease.

McGuire v. City of Jersey City, 125 N.J. 310, 593 A.2d 309 (1991) (Supreme Court of New Jersey; arose from a commercial lease; bears on the duty to re-let): A commercial lessor is governed by the same rule on reducing damages that applies to a residential lessor, and the lessor bears the burden of showing what was done to re-let. The case arose from a commercial lease, so it extends the residential rule outward and restates the burden rather than adding anything to what a residential landlord must do.