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

Two of the notice rules are geographic. The tiered landlord notice in section 226-c applies everywhere in the state. The tenant's one-month notice in section 232-b applies only to premises outside the city of New York, and no statute states a period for a tenant inside the city. The Good Cause Eviction Law applies automatically in the city of New York and elsewhere only where the local legislative body has adopted it by local law; outside an adopting locality no ground is required to end a tenancy or let a term expire.

The switch is the address. Premises inside the city of New York fall under section 232-a and, for the ground requirement, under Article 6-A automatically. Premises outside it fall under section 232-b, and Article 6-A reaches them only if the village, town or city has adopted the article by local law. The state housing agency is the statutory publisher of the list of adopting localities, together with each one's high-rent exemption figure and its own definition of a small landlord, in an annual publication due by August 1.

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

Landlord: no single figure exists, because the statute states a tier table with no default track. Tenant: the statute states a tenant period for part of the state only.

The tenant's period is stated only for premises outside the city of New York, where one month's notice is required; inside the city no statute states a tenant period. The landlord's tiered periods are stated as a minimum number of days of notice against a decision not to renew, and sections 232-a and 232-b frame the count against the end of the term rather than forward from delivery, so a monthly tenancy ends at a period boundary. That one month is a calendar month before the term expires, not 30 counted days, which is why a notice given mid-month reaches the end of the month after next. Tenancies at will and at sufferance run on a different anchor: the 30 days in section 228 run forward from service, and the landlord may re-enter or sue at the expiration of 30 days after the notice was served.

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: The landlord's period is set by how long the tenant has been there, measured as the longer of the tenant's cumulative occupancy and the length of the tenancy in each lease: at least 30 days where the tenant has occupied the unit for less than a year and has no lease term of at least a year; at least 60 days where the tenant has been there more than one year but less than two, or holds a lease term of at least one year but less than two; and at least 90 days after more than two years, or with a lease term of two years or more.

A lease may not change the period. Section 226-c applies notwithstanding any provision of a lease or other tenancy agreement to the contrary, so a lease cannot shorten the landlord's period. That bar is section-specific rather than chapter-wide. Where the Good Cause Eviction Law applies, section 218 separately makes void any agreement by which a tenant waives or modifies the rights that article gives.

Source of the period: a termination-notice statute states it.

A landlord who does not intend to renew a residential tenancy must give written notice of at least 30, 60 or 90 days, set by how long the tenant has lived there; the same schedule governs a rent increase of five percent or more, which belongs to the rent-increase page. Missing the period does not void the termination: the tenancy continues on its existing terms from the day the landlord gave actual written notice until the period has run, whatever the lease says. Inside the city of New York a monthly tenant may not be removed for holding over unless the landlord serves a notice stating that the landlord elects to terminate and that summary proceedings will follow if the tenant does not leave on the day named. A cooperative housing corporation owes no such notice to a tenant who is a shareholder or unit owner of the corporation, unless the corporation is one of those named in the private housing finance law. Outside the city of New York a tenant may end a monthly tenancy by notifying the landlord at least one month before the term expires, and no notice at all is needed to end a tenancy for a definite term; inside the city no statute states a period for the tenant. A tenancy at will or at sufferance is ended by a written notice of at least 30 days requiring the tenant to leave. The two sides are not symmetric by design: the landlord's obligation is tiered and statewide, the tenant's is a flat month and only outside the city.

Only for a defined subset of tenancies. The Good Cause Eviction Law applies in the city of New York by the statute's own terms, and elsewhere only where a village, town or city adopts it by local law.

How a tenancy comes inside the rule: more than one route brings a tenancy inside the rule.

Who is covered: Where it applies it reaches all housing accommodations except fifteen categories: premises of a small landlord, meaning ten units in the state unless the adopting locality sets another figure; an owner-occupied building with no more than ten units; a sublet where the sublessor wants the unit for personal use; occupancy incident to employment that has lawfully ended; units already under rent or eviction regulation; income-restricted units; condominium and cooperative units and units under an attorney-general offering plan; new construction, for thirty years after a temporary or permanent certificate of occupancy issued on or after January 1, 2009; seasonal dwellings; hospitals, continuing-care and assisted-living residences, adult care and senior residences and not-for-profit independent retirement communities; manufactured homes in a manufactured home park; hotel rooms and transient class B use; dormitories; religious-institution housing; and units renting above the adopting locality's high-rent figure or, where the local law sets none, above 245 percent of the fair market rent the federal housing department publishes. A landlord that is an entity and cannot name every natural person holding a direct or indirect interest in it does not qualify as a small landlord. As of a March 2026 publication by the Attorney General's office, Albany, Ithaca, Kingston, Poughkeepsie and Rochester had adopted the article; that publication states its own date on its face and tells readers to check with their own city, and the state housing agency is the statutory publisher of the current list.

No-fault grounds: Three of the ten grounds are no-fault, and each must be made out by clear and convincing evidence. The landlord seeks the unit in good faith as a principal residence for the landlord or for a spouse, domestic partner, child, stepchild, parent, step-parent, sibling, grandparent, grandchild, parent-in-law or sibling-in-law, and no other suitable unit in the building is available; that ground is not available against a tenant who is 65 or older or who is a disabled person. The landlord seeks in good faith to demolish the unit. Or the landlord seeks in good faith to withdraw it from the rental market. A fourth ground reaches a tenant who will not agree to reasonable changes at renewal, including a rent increase that is not unreasonable, but only where the landlord gave written notice of the changes at least 30 and no more than 90 days before the current lease expires.

The statute expires by its own terms on June 15, 2034.

Local ordinances: a statute expressly permits local just-cause rules. Section 213 expressly lets a village, town or city outside the city of New York adopt the article by local law, and bars an adopting locality from preempting or altering its terms; a locality may set only its own high-rent exemption figure and its own definition of a small landlord. Where a town and a village inside it both adopt, the town's law does not apply within the village. Local rent regulation is a separate question with its own answer: the state authorizes a locality to opt into rent stabilization, and that posture is carried on the rent-increase page.

Where the Good Cause Eviction Law applies, a landlord may not remove a tenant by an action to evict or recover possession, by exclusion from possession, by failure to renew any lease, or otherwise, except on one of the ten grounds the article lists; the bar reaches non-renewal, not only eviction. Everywhere else in the state, and for every exempt unit, no reason is required to end a periodic tenancy or to let a fixed term expire, and the landlord gives the tiered notice and nothing more. The article preserves every other law governing the manner, timing and contents of notice to tenants, and any agreement by which a tenant waives or modifies its protections is void as contrary to public policy. A tenant who gives up possession under the owner-occupancy, demolition or market-withdrawal grounds has an action for damages and fees where the landlord made a fraudulent statement about the proposed use, and that action is the only civil claim the article creates. The whole package is repealed on June 15, 2034 by its own terms.

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

The landlord must give the same 30, 60 or 90 days before declining to renew, set by the longer of the tenant's cumulative occupancy and the length of the tenancy in each lease. A landlord who gives it late does not lose the termination: the tenancy continues on its existing terms from the day actual written notice was given until the period has run. The tenant owes no notice at all to end a tenancy for a definite term.

After the term, the statute presumes renewal or a periodic tenancy when rent is accepted. Where the term was longer than one month, holding over by itself does not give the landlord the option to hold the tenant to a new term. If the landlord accepts rent for a period after the term ended, and the parties have not agreed otherwise expressly or by implication, a month-to-month tenancy arises beginning on the first day after the old term expired.

Automatic-renewal reminder (15 days before): A lease clause that renews the term for a further period unless the tenant gives notice of an intention to quit is inoperative unless the landlord first calls the tenant's attention to it. The reminder must be in writing, served personally or by registered or certified mail, and given at least 15 days and no more than 30 days before the date the tenant's own notice falls due under the lease. Without it the renewal clause simply does not operate.

A fixed term does not simply lapse on the landlord's side: the tiered non-renewal notice applies to a lease that is ending as much as to a periodic tenancy. The tenant needs no notice to leave at the end of a definite term. Holding over after a term longer than one month gives the landlord no option to bind the tenant to a further term, and the landlord's acceptance of rent instead creates a month-to-month tenancy starting the day after the old term ended. A reminder is required before an automatic-renewal clause can operate. Where the Good Cause Eviction Law applies, the non-renewal notice must also carry the statutory good-cause notice and identify the ground relied on.

A tenant who stays in possession of any part of the premises after the term expires without the landlord's permission is a holdover, and the landlord's route is a summary proceeding for possession; rent accepted after that proceeding has begun does not end it or defeat an award of possession. A squatter is not a tenant for this purpose, and no tenant or lawful occupant of a home may be removed except in a court proceeding.

Damages: Double rent for the holdover period.

Double rent has one narrow trigger: a tenant who gave notice of an intention to quit and then did not hand over possession on the date that notice specified must pay the landlord double the rent otherwise payable, for as long as the tenant stays, recovered at the same time and in the same way as the single rent. It is not a general holdover penalty and it does not follow from a landlord's own termination notice. Where it does not apply, the landlord recovers reasonable compensation for the use and occupation of the property, with no statutory multiplier.

Yes: a statute imposes the duty.

When it attaches: The duty attaches when the tenant vacates in violation of the terms of the lease. It is not conditioned on a statutory abandonment, on the landlord accepting a surrender, or on the landlord electing a particular remedy.

Burden of proof: on the landlord.

The standard: The landlord must act in good faith and, according to the landlord's own resources and abilities, take reasonable and customary actions to rent the premises at fair market value or at the rate agreed during the term of the tenancy, whichever is lower. The Appellate Division has held that a landlord need not use a traditional broker to satisfy the duty, and that a unit going unrented for months is not by itself proof that the efforts were unreasonable.

No authority addresses a clause accelerating the remaining rent.

The lease may not waive the duty.

Since 2019 a New York landlord whose residential tenant leaves early must try to re-let. Once a new tenant's lease is in effect it terminates the previous tenant's lease, which caps what the departing tenant can owe. Any lease provision exempting the landlord from the duty is void as contrary to public policy. Mitigation is not a defense the tenant must plead: the statute puts the burden on the party seeking damages, and the Appellate Division has read that, in the ordinary case of a landlord suing for rent, as making the landlord show reasonable and customary efforts as part of its own case. The duty does not reach the real-estate purchase contracts the statute carves out. No statute addresses a lease clause accelerating the remaining rent on default, so nothing bars or limits one. Before the statute, the Court of Appeals had held that a landlord owed no duty to re-let at all, in a commercial office-lease case whose lease disclaimed the duty expressly and which the lower courts had extended to homes; that rule no longer governs a residential lease.

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

No New York statute authorizes, caps, or bars a fee for ending a residential lease early. The one fee-limiting section reaches only payments demanded before or at the beginning of the tenancy, together with a background and credit check capped at actual cost or $20 whichever is less, a late fee of no more than $50 or five percent of the monthly rent whichever is less and only once rent is more than five days late, and a charge for a dishonored check; none of them touches a charge on the way out, and any lease provision waiving or limiting that section is void against public policy. What actually bounds a departing tenant's exposure is the landlord's non-waivable duty to re-let and the rule that a new tenant's lease ends the old one. This answer rests on the statutes rather than on the state's administrative rules; the fee section's own text is the only place the statutes point to a regulation, and it authorizes fees rather than limiting them.

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 and a spouse or dependent may terminate in their own right; 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: A tenant, or a member of the tenant's household, who is a victim of domestic violence as the social services law defines it and who reasonably fears remaining in the premises because of potential further domestic violence. That definition covers a person over the age of sixteen, any married person, or a parent accompanied by a minor child, where the act would violate the penal law, caused actual physical or emotional injury or a substantial risk of it, and was committed by a family or household member. Family or household member reaches relatives by blood or marriage, spouses and former spouses whether or not they still live together, people with a child in common, people who live or once lived in the same household, and people who are or have been in an intimate relationship whether or not they ever shared a home and whether or not the relationship is sexual. Sexual abuse and stalking are named acts, so they qualify where the person responsible is a family or household member and not otherwise. There is no separate track for an assault by a stranger and none for human trafficking, which reaches the statute only through the same relationship test.

Documentation: Within 25 days of the notice the tenant must give the landlord one or more of: a temporary or final order of protection; a record, complaint or report from a federal, state or local law-enforcement agency; a record from a health care provider for treatment related to domestic violence; or a written verification from a qualified third party. Qualified third party is defined broadly and reaches law-enforcement officers, employees of a state court, licensed attorneys, physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, registered nurses, therapists and clinical professional counselors, staff of a government or non-profit service that advises victims of domestic violence, and clergy. A sworn or notarized statement carrying the required information satisfies the verification. The court system posts sample forms, and the statute says they satisfy the requirements but are not required. The sequence matters to a landlord: the notice comes first and starts the 30 days, and the paperwork may lawfully arrive up to 25 days later.

Window: There is no look-back period. The statute does not require the incident to have happened within any stated time before the notice, and its trigger is a reasonable fear of potential further violence rather than the recency of what has already happened. The only clock is the 25 days the tenant has to supply documentation after giving notice.

Notice: 30 days; at least that many days must pass between the notice and leaving. The tenant gives written notice to the landlord or the landlord's agent and to any co-tenant other than the person responsible for the violence, and where the tenant says the landlord is that person, someone the tenant authorizes may deliver it instead. The notice must state that the tenant or a household member has experienced domestic violence and reasonably believes they cannot safely remain. It names the termination date, which may be no earlier than 30 days after delivery, so 30 days is a floor and a later date may be chosen. A notice sent by first-class mail counts as delivered five days after mailing.

Rent owed: Rent runs pro rata to the termination date and stops there. Prepaid rent and other payments covering the period after that date are refundable within ten days of the written notice being delivered, once the tenant has vacated. The tenant has a defense to any action for rent or for breach of the lease and owes nothing after the effective termination date, but keeps liability for rent that accrued before vacating and giving notice.

Cost to the tenant: No fee, penalty or forfeiture may be imposed for the termination. The landlord may still withhold from the security deposit to the extent the lease or another statute allows, but may not withhold anything for the early termination this section grants or because the tenant exercised the right.

Other tenants on the lease: the lease continues for the other tenants. The landlord may not terminate or sever the co-tenancy without the consent of the remaining tenants, and must give them at least 30 days from the termination date to decide whether to consent. Those who stay keep the right to add an additional occupant under the roommate provision. Where the terminating tenant is the sole leaseholder, the premises must be delivered free of all tenants and occupants.

Locks: Lock changes are not addressed.

Later screening: more than one form of protection. Two separate bars operate. The landlord may not divulge, describe or characterize the termination as an early termination to a prospective landlord or to any third party. Independently, refusing to rent, discriminating in the terms, conditions or privileges of a rental, or publishing a statement expressing any limitation or discrimination, because of a person's or a family member's status as a victim of domestic violence, is a misdemeanor carrying a fine of $1,000 to $2,000 for each offense, with a private action for compensatory damages and punitive damages of up to $2,000 an offense plus costs and fees. That second bar does not apply to owner-occupied buildings with two or fewer residential units.

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

The landlord's side: The landlord may require the documentation the statute lists and keeps every ground for recovering possession that is not based on or derived from the tenant's status as a victim. Liquidated damages of up to $1,000, plus actual damages, costs and attorney's fees, are available against a landlord only for a knowing or intentional violation. The terminating tenant must deliver the premises free of tenants and occupants but is expressly not responsible for making sure the abusive household member is gone, so the landlord cannot make that a condition of the termination. A landlord making reasonable and good-faith efforts to comply is not civilly liable to other tenants, guests, invitees or licensees. A tenant cannot waive the section.

A tenant, or a tenant whose household member is a victim, who reasonably fears staying because of potential further domestic violence may end the lease by written notice to the landlord and to any co-tenant other than the person responsible. The notice must say that domestic violence has occurred and that the person cannot safely remain, and it must name a termination date at least 30 days out. Documentation follows within 25 days: an order of protection, a law-enforcement record, a health care record, or a written verification from a qualified third party, any one of which is enough. The tenant pays rent to the termination date, is owed prepaid rent back within ten days of delivering the notice once the unit is empty, and owes nothing after that date. The landlord may not charge a penalty, may not keep the deposit because the right was used, must keep the status and the paperwork confidential, and may not describe the ending to anyone as an early termination. Remaining tenants stay on the lease unless they consent to a severance, and they have at least 30 days from the termination date to decide. Who counts is decided by the social services definition the section borrows, which requires the act to have been committed by a family or household member, a category that includes intimate partners whether or not they ever lived together. The anti-discrimination section that sits beside it uses a different and narrower definition, so a tenant can qualify for one and not the other.

Military service: State orders or National Guard duty are covered and a spouse or dependent may terminate in their own right.

When the state rights attach: The state right reaches only a lease executed by or for a person who entered military service after signing it. A lease signed during service and followed by orders is covered by the federal act instead, which remains available as a floor, so the state provision is not a superset. Military service here means federal active service, active duty in the state's military service on the governor's order, and state active duty by National Guard members called by this state's governor or by another state's.

A person who entered military service after signing the lease may end it by written notice delivered at any time after service began, and placing a properly stamped and addressed notice in the mail is enough. The same provision reaches a lease for a home that was also executed by or for the person's spouse. A monthly lease ends 30 days after the first rent-due date following the notice; any other lease ends on the last day of the month after the month the notice was delivered or mailed, with unpaid rent prorated and rent paid in advance refunded. The landlord may apply to court before the termination date named in the notice, and the relief is then subject to whatever modifications or restrictions the court thinks justice and equity require. Knowingly seizing or holding the tenant's belongings to press a claim for rent accruing after the termination is a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year's imprisonment or a $1,000 fine. Dependents are entitled to the same benefits, and where no court case is pending they may claim the benefit from the landlord directly, who must grant it unless their ability to comply has not been materially impaired by the service. Separately, no household of a person in military service may be evicted from a home except by leave of court, and the court must stay the proceeding for up to six months on application unless the ability to pay the agreed rent is not materially affected; that restraint carries no rent ceiling, unlike the federal provision.

Death of the tenant: A statute provides for ending the lease on the tenant's death. The executor, administrator or legal representative of a deceased tenant may end a residential lease by notice to the landlord. The termination takes effect on the date the estate both notifies the landlord and surrenders possession, so there is no waiting period and no notice figure to count. The option must be accompanied by the written consent of any co-tenant or guarantor of the lease. The estate stays liable for rent and any debt incurred before the termination date, expressly including damage to the premises and any expense the landlord incurs as a direct result of the death, but owes no damages or penalty for inadequate notice. Notices must go by registered or certified mail, return receipt requested. Proprietary cooperative leases are excluded, and any waiver is void against public policy. A companion section covers assignment instead: the estate may ask for consent to assign or sublet, the landlord has ten days to ask for more information and thirty days from the request or from that information to consent, refuse, or elect to terminate, silence counts as consent, and if the landlord terminates or unreasonably refuses consent the lease is deemed terminated and the estate and any other tenant are discharged as of the last day of that month.

Other grounds: A tenant aged 62 or older, or a tenant with a disability, or that tenant's spouse or dependent, may end the lease on moving into an adult care facility, a residential health care facility, subsidized or senior housing, or a family member's home for at least six months. The notice carries a physician's certification and, for a move to a relative, a notarized statement from that relative; the termination takes effect no earlier than 30 days after the next rent-due date following delivery, and a mailed notice counts as delivered five days after mailing. The statute prints its own worked example: mailed May 5, received May 10, next rent due June 1, termination effective July 1. A senior who then cancels the care-facility contract within three business days may reinstate the original lease until midnight of the fifth business day after the termination notice was delivered, and the lease continues as if there had been no interruption. Any replacement lease the landlord signed in the meantime is cancelled by the statute: the landlord owes the disappointed incoming tenant only a refund of rent and security, owes a broker nothing, and any broker's fee paid on either lease is refunded to whoever paid it. Separately, where the building is destroyed or so injured by the elements or any other cause as to be untenantable and unfit for occupancy, and the tenant was not at fault, the tenant may quit and surrender, owes no rent for the time after the surrender, and has rent adjusted to that date, unless an express written agreement says otherwise. Ending the lease because the landlord will not keep the home habitable, and protection against retaliation, are covered on the habitability page.

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

New York has no abandonment statute for a home. Nothing deems a tenancy ended after a stated absence, and there is no notice of belief of abandonment for the landlord to serve and the tenant to answer. When a tenant walks away, the lease continues until something else ends it. The landlord's duty to re-let attaches at that point, and a new tenant's lease terminates the old one once it is in effect. Where the tenant instead held over after a fixed term, acceptance of rent creates a month-to-month tenancy. A landlord who wants possession back brings a summary proceeding, and the older route of accepting the tenant's surrender and re-entering, which releases the tenant from further liability for rent, still sits in the background. What happens to property a tenant leaves behind is covered separately from this page.

New York prescribes delivery notice by notice rather than once for all of them. The tiered non-renewal notice and the tenant's one-month notice outside the city of New York require writing and say nothing about how it travels. The monthly-tenancy notice inside the city of New York must be served the way a notice of petition in a summary proceeding is served: personal delivery, or delivery to a person of suitable age and discretion who lives or works at the property where admittance can be obtained, or affixing a copy to a conspicuous part of the property or placing it under the entrance door, with a mailing by both registered or certified mail and regular first-class mail within one day of the substituted delivery. A notice ending a tenancy at will or at sufferance must be delivered to the tenant or to a person of suitable age and discretion living on the premises, or affixed to a conspicuous part of the premises where it may conveniently be read. A deceased tenant's estate must send its notice by registered or certified mail, return receipt requested. The automatic-renewal reminder must be served personally or by registered or certified mail. A servicemember's notice may go by ordinary stamped mail.

Electronic delivery: the termination statute is silent on it.

Mailing: 5 days are added to the period when the notice is mailed. Two termination statutes deem a mailed notice delivered five days after mailing: the senior and disability termination, and the domestic-violence termination, which applies the rule to first-class mail. Both push the start of the period later rather than capping how far mailing can extend the tenancy. Neither reaches the tiered non-renewal notice, which carries no deemed-delivery rule at all, and that is a common trap because it is the notice landlords use most.

What the notice must contain: Where the Good Cause Eviction Law applies, a statutory notice must be appended to or written into any initial lease, any renewal lease, the tiered non-renewal notice, a fourteen-day rent demand, and the petition itself. The form is printed in the statute. It states the unit's street address, unit number and municipality, answers whether the unit is subject to the article, marks every exemption claimed where it is not, and on a non-renewal identifies the ground relied on by letter, including the clear-and-convincing standard for a market withdrawal and the figure above which a rent increase is presumptively unreasonable. The other content rules are short: the notice inside the city of New York must say that the landlord elects to terminate and that summary proceedings will follow if the tenant does not leave on the day designated; the tenancy-at-will notice must require the tenant to remove from the premises; the domestic-violence notice must state that violence occurred and that the tenant cannot safely remain; and the automatic-renewal reminder must call the tenant's attention to the clause in the lease.

New York's own statutes stand beside the federal servicemember act, the federal Violence Against Women Act and the federal 30-day notice for covered dwellings. Two state provisions reach further than the federal ones they parallel: the state servicemember act covers active duty in the state's military service and National Guard members called by this state's or another state's governor, which the federal definition does not, and the state's restraint on evicting a servicemember's household carries no rent ceiling, while the federal section applies only below an indexed monthly rent. Nothing in the state's termination statutes adopts or codifies the federal 30-day notice.

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 York appellate decision construes the federal 30-day notice for covered dwellings. The federal provision is unrepealed and unamended, and neither the decisions elsewhere holding it lapsed nor those limiting it to nonpayment bind a New York court. (Appellate picture read as of September 2, 2026.)

Holy Properties Ltd., L.P. v. Kenneth Cole Productions, Inc., 87 N.Y.2d 130, 637 N.Y.S.2d 964, 661 N.E.2d 694 (1995) (New York Court of Appeals; arose from a commercial lease; bears on the duty to re-let): A lease is a present transfer of an estate in land rather than an ordinary executory contract, so once the lease is executed the tenant's obligation to pay rent is fixed by its terms and the landlord owes no duty to re-let abandoned premises to reduce damages; the landlord may do nothing and collect the rent, accept the surrender and re-let for its own account, or re-let for the tenant's account after notice. The case arose from a commercial office lease whose own terms expressly disclaimed any duty to mitigate, and the statutory duty enacted in 2019 now governs residential leases instead.

14 E. 4th St. Unit 509 LLC v. Toporek, 203 A.D.3d 17, 159 N.Y.S.3d 419 (1st Dep't 2022) (Appellate Division, First Department; residential lease; bears on the duty to re-let): The 2019 statute settles that the duty to re-let applies to every residential lease in the state, and it is not an affirmative defense for the tenant to plead: the burden sits on the landlord to establish that it took reasonable and customary actions. A landlord need not show it used a traditional broker as part of its own case, and the fact that the apartment was not re-rented for more than a year is not itself proof that the efforts were unreasonable. The tenant had vacated a non-regulated Manhattan apartment six months before the lease ended.