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

The chapter governs residential rental agreements throughout Vermont, and ten kinds of occupancy fall outside it: institutional occupancy; a purchaser under a contract of sale; a member of a fraternal, social or religious organization; transient hotel and motel stays taxed under the rooms and meals title; a condominium owner or a cooperative's proprietary lessee; a mobile-home lot, which its own title governs; a campground transient; stays funded by general or emergency assistance, and hotel stays funded by federal emergency rental assistance, that last limb having run only through September 30, 2025; a person occupying without right or permission who is not a tenant; and a hospital-funded or designated-agency-funded hotel stay for health-care treatment or recovery. Inside the chapter, housing provided to a farm employee as a benefit of employment is a separate regime with its own notice and its own court process, and the notice periods on this page do not reach it. Certified recovery residences are also carved out of the breach-notice and possession sections, so a resident may be moved or exited immediately where the stated conditions are met.

Coverage turns on the kind of occupancy rather than on where in the state the home is or when the lease was signed: a reader checks the ten excluded classes first, and a mobile-home lot tenant reads the manufactured-home-park page instead. Inside the chapter, the farm-employee switch is the employment: the separate regime applies where the housing is a benefit of the job and the employer ends it when the employment ends. The recovery-residence carve-out applies where the residence is certified and the conditions in the exclusions subsection are met, and it was widened rather than repealed in 2026 even though the published statutes show it as repealed.

The switch changes: every answer on this page.

Landlord: no single figure exists, because the statute states a tier table with no default track. Tenant: the statute states tenant periods only for some tenancy types.

Vermont counts three different ways in the same section, and which one applies turns on whether the rental agreement is written. Where there is no written agreement the days run forward from actual notice — the statute says the termination date must be at least 60 or 90 days after the date of the actual notice — and the notice itself names that date. Where there is a written agreement the notice runs backward from the end of the stated term: it must be given at least 30 or 60 days before the term ends, so the tenancy ends at the term's end rather than on a date the landlord picks. A tenant's own notice is a full rental payment period, given before the termination date the notice names. Actual notice means receipt, not sending, so every one of these clocks starts when the notice reaches the other party.

The termination date may fall on any day.

Tiers: Five tracks. Where there is no written rental agreement and rent is payable monthly, the landlord gives at least 60 days for a tenant who has lived continuously in the same home for two years or less and at least 90 days for a tenant of more than two years, in each case counted forward from actual notice. Where there is no written agreement and rent is payable weekly, 21 days. Where there is a written rental agreement, the landlord's no-cause notice must be given at least 30 days before the end of the stated term for a tenancy of two years or less and at least 60 days before it for a tenancy of more than two years, and 7 days for a written week-to-week agreement. Where there is no written agreement and the landlord has contracted to sell the building, 30 days from actual notice. And where a person rents one or more rooms in their own home and shares the living room, kitchen or bathroom, either side may end it on 15 days if rent is monthly and 7 days if it is weekly. A tenant's own notice is one rental payment period unless a written agreement says otherwise.

A lease may not change the period. The rule differs by side. A rental agreement may not contain a provision that attempts to circumvent or circumvents the obligations and remedies the chapter establishes, and any such provision is unenforceable and void, so the landlord's notice periods cannot be shortened by the lease; the section stating them carries no opt-out of its own. The tenant's period is different: the section giving a tenant the right to end a tenancy on one rental payment period's notice opens with the words unless inconsistent with a written rental agreement, so a written lease may set a different tenant notice.

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

Vermont runs two landlord tracks that differ in the number of days, in the tier that selects them and in how the days are counted, and the fact that decides which applies is simply whether the rental agreement is written. Without a written agreement the landlord ends a monthly tenancy for no cause on at least 60 days' notice if the tenant has lived there two years or less and at least 90 days if longer, and a weekly tenancy on 21 days, each counted forward from the day the notice is received. With a written agreement the landlord's no-cause notice must reach the tenant at least 30 days before the end of the stated term, or 60 days before it once the tenancy has run more than two years, and 7 days on a written week-to-week agreement. A landlord without a written agreement who has contracted to sell the building may terminate on 30 days. Where the landlord rents rooms inside their own home and shares the kitchen, living room or bathroom, either party may end the arrangement on 15 days for a monthly rent or 7 for a weekly one. A tenant otherwise gives one full rental payment period's notice, which a written lease may change. In every case the termination date must be specifically stated in the notice. Two further rules travel with the notice: more than one notice may be outstanding at a time, on different or unrelated grounds and dates, without invalidating each other; and a notice is spent unless the eviction proceeding is started within 60 days of the termination date the notice named.

No: no statewide rule requires a reason, and no statute expressly authorizes local ordinances.

Local ordinances: no statute or decision addresses them. No Vermont statute addresses local just-cause or eviction-control measures in either direction. The landlord-tenant chapter contains exactly one clause authorizing a municipal ordinance and it is about security deposits, which shows the drafters knew how to give a town that power when they meant to, and makes the silence on termination meaningful without turning it into a bar. Vermont municipalities are creatures of charter and a charter change takes an act of the General Assembly; the codified charters carry no just-cause eviction provision. There is also no Vermont statute on local rent regulation either way, which the rent-increase page carries.

No reason is required to end a Vermont tenancy. The statute says so in its own headings, which name termination for no cause and termination for no cause under the terms of a written rental agreement. What Vermont requires instead is notice, and a good deal of it: 60 or 90 days on an oral monthly tenancy by how long the tenant has lived there, or 30 or 60 days before the end of the stated term where the agreement is written. Nothing in the chapter conditions a no-cause termination on a ground, a payment or a landlord's purpose. The separate for-cause notices, 14 days for unpaid rent and 30 or 14 days for a breach, belong to the eviction page, and a landlord may have both kinds of notice outstanding at once.

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

A written Vermont lease does not end by itself. The landlord's notice to terminate for no cause must be given at least 30 days before the end or expiration of the stated term where the tenancy has continued two years or less, and at least 60 days before it where the tenancy has continued more than two years; a written week-to-week agreement takes 7 days. The notice must state the termination date specifically. A tenant leaving at the end of a written term gives one rental payment period's notice unless the agreement provides otherwise.

After the term, no statute governs conversion; the common-law rule applies. No Vermont statute converts an expired term into a periodic tenancy, and none makes the acceptance of rent create one. The chapter's only rule about rent taken after a tenancy has ended runs the other way: a landlord's acceptance of full or partial rent after a termination for reasons other than unpaid rent, or at any time during an eviction action, neither requires the action to be dismissed nor waives the landlord's remedies, and that is said expressly for a no-cause termination. What a holdover becomes, absent a new agreement, is left to the common law.

Vermont is one of the states where letting a written lease run out is not enough: the landlord must give a no-cause notice before the term ends, 30 days for a tenancy of two years or less and 60 days after that, or 7 days on a written weekly agreement. There is no statutory reminder before an automatic-renewal clause takes effect and no statutory conversion of a holdover into a new tenancy. Where the building is being converted to condominiums the notice is governed by the condominium chapter instead.

A tenant who stays in possession after the tenancy has ended without the landlord's express consent holds without right, and the landlord's remedy is an action for possession, damages and costs under the ejectment chapter of the judicial-procedure title. There is no tenancy at sufferance in the statute and no rule turning the holdover into a new tenancy. The notice that ended the tenancy has a shelf life: it will not support a judgment of eviction unless the proceeding is started within 60 days of the termination date the notice named.

Damages: No statutory enhancement: the landlord recovers ordinary rent or use and occupancy.

Vermont attaches no statutory penalty to a holdover: no double rent, no multiple of any kind, no daily charge and no liquidated sum. The landlord recovers possession, and the damages and costs the ejectment action proves. The one doubling provision in the chapter is unrelated: a landlord who wilfully withholds a security deposit is liable for twice the amount, which the deposits page carries.

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

When it attaches: The duty arises as soon as the landlord has notice that the tenant has abandoned the property, even if the lease has not been formally ended. It is suspended where the party in breach hinders or prevents the landlord from re-letting.

Burden of proof: on the tenant.

The standard: Reasonable efforts to re-let. The party arguing that the landlord failed to make them carries the point, and merely arguing that re-letting was possible does not meet it: without concrete evidence the question is speculative.

No authority addresses a clause accelerating the remaining rent.

Whether a lease may waive the duty is not settled.

No Vermont statute imposes a duty to mitigate; the words do not appear in the landlord-tenant chapter. The Supreme Court of Vermont supplied the duty in 1994, holding that a landlord must make reasonable efforts to lessen its damages when a tenant abandons the property, and that the duty arises as soon as the landlord has notice of the abandonment even if the lease has not been formally terminated. In 2008 the same court restated that holding as a general rule of contract law binding any party who is not in breach. Two limits belong with it: the duty does not apply where the party in breach hinders or prevents re-letting, and the tenant who says the landlord failed to try carries the point and must produce concrete evidence rather than argue the possibility. One tension has to be stated because Vermont has not resolved it. Both decisions arose from commercial leases, and the abandonment section of the residential chapter, which the 1994 decision did not consider, says a tenant who abandons remains liable for the rent until the rental agreement expires, and that the agreement ends only if the landlord in fact re-lets, on the date the new tenancy begins. Read alone that section looks like a rule that lets a residential landlord sit still. No Vermont appellate decision has reconciled the two, so a residential landlord should expect the duty to apply and a residential tenant should not assume the statute answers the question.

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

No Vermont statute authorizes, caps or bars a fee for ending a residential lease early, and none caps the damages a landlord may recover after an early departure. Two backstops apply instead. A rental agreement may not contain a provision that attempts to circumvent or circumvents the obligations and remedies the chapter establishes, and any such provision is unenforceable and void, so a charge that operated to defeat a right the chapter gives — for instance a fee for using the termination right a victim of abuse, sexual assault or stalking has, which the statute says is exercised without penalty or liability — is void. And a tenant who leaves early remains liable for rent until the agreement expires unless the landlord re-lets, subject to the landlord's duty to make reasonable efforts to do so. The other money rules in the chapter are not early-termination fees: application fees are banned outright, storage costs after an abandonment are recoverable, and the cost of a lock change requested by a victim falls on the tenant unless the parties agree otherwise. This answer rests on the statutes rather than on the Code of Vermont Rules, and no section of the chapter gives any agency power to make rules about what a lease may charge.

Early-exit rights by ground: domestic violence and related grounds, a statutory right to end the lease; military service beyond the federal act, the state adds nothing to the federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act; death of the tenant, no statute; and other statutory grounds.

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

Who qualifies: A protected tenant, meaning a tenant who is a victim of abuse, sexual assault or stalking, or a parent, foster parent, legal guardian or caretaker with at least partial physical custody of such a victim. Abuse takes its meaning from the abuse-prevention statute and sexual assault and stalking from the protection-order statute. Two grounds open the right: a reasonable belief that it is necessary to leave because of a fear of imminent harm to any protected tenant from abuse, sexual assault or stalking; or that a protected tenant was the victim of a sexual assault that occurred on the premises within the preceding six months. Human trafficking is not a covered ground.

Documentation: A written notice of termination together with documentation from one or more of four sources: a court, law enforcement or other government agency; an abuse, sexual assault or stalking assistance program; a legal, clerical, medical or other professional from whom the tenant, or the tenant's minor or dependent, received counseling or other help about the abuse, sexual assault or stalking; or the tenant's own self-certification of victim status, signed under penalty of perjury, on a standard form adopted for that purpose by a federal or state government entity, including the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development or the Vermont Department for Children and Families, or by a nonprofit that provides support services. Any one of the four is enough, so Vermont is among the states where no court order and no police report is required. The notice and the documentation go to the landlord together.

Window: 180 days; the incident or documentation must fall within that window before the notice. The six-month look-back attaches to one ground only. Where the right rests on a sexual assault that happened on the premises, the assault must have occurred within the six months before the notice of termination. Where it rests on a reasonable belief that leaving is necessary because of a fear of imminent harm, the statute states no window at all, and nothing requires the incident behind that fear to be recent.

Notice: 30 days; at least that many days must pass between the notice and leaving. The notice and the documentation must reach the landlord not less than 30 days before the date of termination, so the 30 days is a minimum measured backward from the date the tenant names rather than a period running forward from service. The tenancy ends on the stated date without penalty or liability.

Rent owed: The termination is without penalty or liability, and the agreement ends on the date the notice states. The chapter states no rent obligation beyond that date and no window of rent after the tenant leaves; what the tenant pays for is the 30 days or more built into the notice itself.

Cost to the tenant: Nothing may be charged for the termination itself, which the statute says is without penalty or liability. Two collateral costs do fall on the tenant unless the parties agree otherwise: installing new locks, and installing any additional security measures the tenant asks for.

Other tenants on the lease: the statute is silent on the other tenants.

Locks: The victim may require the landlord to change the locks. A protected tenant may require the landlord to change the locks, and the landlord must do it within 48 hours of the request. Where the person the tenant needs protection from is also a tenant of the same home, the request must include a copy of a court order requiring that person to leave the premises. The landlord must give a key to every tenant except that person. If the landlord does not change the locks, the tenant may change them without the landlord's prior knowledge or permission, provided the new locks are of equal or better quality, the landlord is told within 24 hours, and the landlord is given a key. The tenant pays for the change unless the parties agree otherwise. A protected tenant may also ask for additional security measures such as a security system or a camera on at least seven days' notice, and a landlord may not unreasonably refuse.

Later screening: no statutory protection.

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

Withdrawing the notice: The notice may be revoked and the rental agreement then stays in effect, by either of two routes, and in each case only while the landlord has not yet entered into a rental agreement with a new tenant. The tenant may give the landlord a written revocation. Or the tenant may simply not leave: if the tenant has not vacated as of the termination date and the home has not been re-let, the tenancy continues. The second route means a Vermont notice can be undone by doing nothing.

The landlord's side: A landlord who acts in good-faith reliance on this subchapter, or on information given or action taken by a protected tenant under it, is immune from liability for damages to that tenant, except for gross negligence or wilful misconduct. Against that, the landlord must keep the tenant's documentation and status confidential and may not unreasonably refuse a request for additional security measures.

A protected tenant may end the rental agreement without penalty or liability where they reasonably believe it is necessary to leave because of a fear of imminent harm from abuse, sexual assault or stalking, or where a protected tenant was the victim of a sexual assault on the premises within the previous six months. Not less than 30 days before the termination date the tenant gives the landlord a written notice and documentation from any one of four sources, the last of which is the tenant's own self-certification signed under penalty of perjury on a government or nonprofit form. A protected tenant is the victim, or a parent, foster parent, legal guardian or caretaker with at least partial physical custody of one. The landlord must keep the documentation and the tenant's status confidential and may not give another person access to it unless the tenant authorizes it, a court order or a government regulation or record-review requirement demands it, or it is needed as evidence in court, in which case it stays under seal and may be used only for a claim under this subchapter. The tenant may require a lock change within 48 hours and may change the locks alone if the landlord does not. The notice may be revoked, in writing or by simply not leaving, so long as the home has not been re-let. The subchapter says nothing about other tenants on the lease, requires no lease disclosure of the right, and creates no protection against the termination being held against the tenant in a later application. Human trafficking is not a covered ground.

Military service: The state adds nothing to the federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act.

Vermont adds nothing to the federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act. There is no state servicemembers relief act: the word servicemember appears twice in the whole of the Vermont Statutes, in a judicial-bureau default provision and in a license-suspension procedure, both of which are the ordinary state-court machinery for the federal act's affidavit rather than any right about housing. The military and public-safety title carries no tenancy right, and the 2026 act on military affairs, which rewrote thirty-one sections of that title, created none. A Vermont service member ending a lease for military service relies on the federal act alone.

Death of the tenant: No statute gives a right to end the lease on the tenant's death.

Other grounds: Vermont gives a tenant one further statutory way out and it belongs to the habitability page: where the landlord fails to repair after actual notice and the failure materially affects health and safety, the tenant may end the rental agreement on reasonable notice, which the statute leaves as a standard rather than a number of days. There is nothing else. No care-facility, age or disability ground, no job-transfer ground, no casualty or natural-disaster ground, and no landlord-harassment ground. Two landlord-side grounds appear alongside them: a landlord without a written agreement who has contracted to sell the building may terminate on 30 days, and where the building is being converted to condominiums the notice is governed by the condominium chapter instead.

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

Vermont defines abandonment but does not let it end a tenancy. A tenant has abandoned a home only where all three of these are true together: circumstances would lead a reasonable person to believe the home is no longer occupied as a full-time residence, rent is not current, and the landlord has made reasonable efforts to find out what the tenant intends. There is no notice of belief of abandonment and no window for a tenant to answer one, because the finding triggers no termination. What it does is fix liability and unlock the rules for property left behind: a tenant who abandons remains liable for rent until the rental agreement expires, and the agreement ends only if the landlord re-lets the home before then, on the date the new tenancy begins. Re-letting is therefore the only event that ends the tenancy, and the landlord's duty to make reasonable efforts to re-let comes from the courts rather than from this section. What may be done with property left behind is covered separately from this page.

Vermont funnels every notice in the chapter through one defined term. Actual notice means receipt of written notice hand-delivered or mailed to the last known address, so there are two methods and the operative event is the other party's receipt rather than the sender's dispatch. Every notice period on this page is counted from or to that receipt. Posting on the door is nowhere authorized; the word does not appear in the chapter. Service of the summons once an eviction action is filed is governed by the judicial-procedure title and is covered on the eviction page. The one place Vermont requires an officer to serve a termination notice is housing provided to a farm employee as a benefit of employment, where a law-enforcement officer must serve the notice with the summons and complaint.

Electronic delivery: the termination statute is silent on it.

Mailing: Vermont adds no days for mailing, and the three days that circulate as an add-on are not one. Because notice means receipt, the statute creates a rebuttable presumption that a notice was received three days after mailing where the sender proves it went by first-class or certified mail. That is an evidentiary presumption about when the clock started, and it can be rebutted in either direction: a tenant may show later receipt, and a landlord may show earlier.

What the notice must contain: The notice must be written, and in all cases the termination date must be specifically stated in it. There is no statutory form, no requirement to state a ground for a no-cause termination and no advisory language. The only prescribed wording anywhere in the chapter is the notice for housing provided to a farm employee.

Vermont's landlord-tenant chapter cites no federal statute for terminations, and the state has adopted no version of the federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, so that act operates in Vermont on its own terms. The federal Violence Against Women Act gives no right to break a lease, and Vermont's own termination right for victims of abuse, sexual assault or stalking is broader than anything federal law supplies. The chapter's only federal cross-references are incidental: a self-certification form adopted by a federal body, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development, counts as acceptable documentation for that right, and one limb of the occupancy exclusions covered hotel stays funded by federal emergency rental assistance only through September 30, 2025, a window that has now closed.

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 Vermont statute codifies or narrows the federal requirement, and no standing court order addresses it. A landlord of a covered dwelling should treat the federal requirement as unresolved in Vermont's courts rather than as expired. (Appellate picture read as of September 4, 2026.)

O'Brien v. Black, 162 Vt. 448, 648 A.2d 1374 (Supreme Court of Vermont, 1994; arose from a commercial lease; bears on the duty to re-let): A landlord has a duty to make reasonable efforts to lessen its damages when a tenant abandons the leased property, and that duty arises as soon as the landlord has notice of the abandonment even if the lease has not been formally terminated. The lease was commercial, a retail space in a Burlington shopping mall, and the court reasoned from the principle that a lease is essentially a contract. The party arguing that the landlord failed to make the efforts carries the point, and merely arguing that re-letting was possible does not meet it.

Century Partners, LP v. Lesser Goldsmith Enterprises, Ltd., 2008 VT 40, 184 Vt. 215, 958 A.2d 627 (Supreme Court of Vermont; arose from a commercial lease; bears on the duty to re-let): Restating the 1994 rule as a general principle of contract law, the court held that the party who is not in breach has a duty to make reasonable efforts to lessen the damages, because an injured party should not recover for a loss that reasonable effort could have avoided. The dispute arose from a commercial lease and the duty was applied against a tenant rather than a landlord, which is why the rule reads as a general one rather than a landlord's alone.

JW, LLC v. Ayer, 2014 VT 71, 197 Vt. 118, 101 A.3d 906 (Supreme Court of Vermont; residential lease; bears on abandonment): The residential abandonment section and the judicial-procedure rule on property left after a writ of possession deal with two different situations: the writ rule covers property left after any ejectment, including a commercial one, while the residential section reaches only a dwelling unit that has been abandoned or that the tenant has vacated. The decision fixes what the word abandoned reaches in the residential chapter.