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

The rules on this page are general property rules, not rules written for homes. The notice period, the abandonment procedure, the re-letting election, the casualty right and the eminent-domain rule apply to a commercial lease and a house lease in the same words. Three provisions do carve out homes: the habitability duty applies with respect to residential property, the death-of-tenant termination right belongs to a lessee of residential premises and reaches leases entered into or renewed on or after July 1, 2012, and the squatter definition speaks to dwelling units. The security-deposit article applies to residential rental premises used for dwelling purposes. A site rented for a factory-built home is outside all of this: it has its own chapter, it is not residential rental property for the purposes of the ordinary possession article, and unlike an ordinary tenancy it may be ended only for good cause.

There is no date, place or opt-in test to apply. What a reader has to know is which body of law they are in: an ordinary house or apartment tenancy falls under the general landlord and tenant article, so a comparison with a state that has a residential act is comparing a general property rule with a residential one. A site rented for a factory-built home falls under a separate chapter with a good-cause requirement. The death-of-tenant right is the one provision with a date gate, reaching leases entered into or renewed on or after July 1, 2012.

The switch changes: every answer on this page.

Landlord: one calendar month. Tenant: one calendar month.

West Virginia does not count days. The notice must run for one full rental period and it must expire at the end of a period, so a month-to-month tenancy takes one month's written notice ending on the last day of a rental period. The Supreme Court of Appeals settled that reading in 2001, holding that the statute requires a landlord to give notice equal to a full period of the tenancy, and it settled how the period is identified as well: where the length of the tenancy is indefinite, the terms on which rent is paid are the measure, so a tenancy at a monthly rent is month to month. The practical effect is that a notice served in the middle of a month does not end the tenancy a month later; it ends it at the close of the next full period. Depending on when it is served, the real lead time on a monthly tenancy runs from 28 to 31 days at a minimum and is longer than a month whenever the notice goes out mid-period. A year-to-year tenancy is anchored differently again, at three months before the end of any year.

The termination date must fall on a rental-period boundary or a rent-due date.

Tiers: One split, by the length of the tenancy's own period. A tenancy from year to year takes three months' written notice before the end of any year. A periodic tenancy whose period is less than a year takes either that same three months or, in practice, notice for one full period before the end of any period, which is one month for a month-to-month tenancy and one week for a week-to-week one. Nothing turns on how long the tenant has lived there, on the type or age of the building, on the landlord's portfolio, or on where in the state the property is. A fixed term is outside the rule altogether.

Ceiling on the notice a lease may require: A lease may not require a longer notice period than the article provides. The sentence sits in the death-of-tenant section but is drafted to the whole article, and it says that any lease provision or agreement requiring a longer notice period than the article provides is void and unenforceable. Read with the notice section's own clause allowing a shorter period or none, the result is a one-way ratchet: the parties may cut the period down or away entirely but may not extend it. No West Virginia court has construed the sentence, so the ratchet is the text's reading rather than a settled one.

The parties may agree to a different period, including no notice at all. The notice section does not apply where, by special agreement, some other period of notice is fixed or no notice is to be given. West Virginia is therefore one of the very few states where the periodic-termination notice can be bargained down to nothing, and the clause runs in both directions. Only one limit exists and it runs the other way: a separate sentence, drafted to the whole article, voids any lease provision or agreement requiring a longer notice period than the article provides. So a lease may shorten or remove the notice but may not lengthen it. No court has tested the interaction, and the security-deposit article's anti-waiver clause does not help here because it protects that article only.

A statute requires the landlord's and tenant's periods to be equal, or bars a lease from imposing a longer period on one side.

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

Either party may end a tenancy from year to year by giving the other written notice of an intention to terminate, at least three months before the end of any year. A periodic tenancy whose period is less than a year may be ended by the same notice, or by notice for one full period before the end of any period, which for a month-to-month tenancy means one month's notice expiring at the end of a rental period. The periods are the same for both sides; the statute says so in its opening words. The statute also says who may be served rather than how. A notice to the tenant may be served on the tenant or on anyone holding the leased premises, or any part of them, under the tenant. A notice by the tenant may be served on anyone who at the time owns the premises in whole or in part, on that owner's agent, or according to the common law. None of this applies where the parties have agreed a different period or no notice at all, and none of it applies to a tenant whose term is to end at a certain time. No reason has to be given.

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

Local ordinances: a statute bars municipalities from limiting the rental of property but names no eviction or just-cause measure, and whether it reaches one is an open question. West Virginia bars municipalities from prohibiting or effectively limiting the rental of a property, in whole or in part, and from regulating the duration, frequency or location of such a rental. A municipality may still regulate activities that arise when a property is used as a rental, provided the regulation applies uniformly to all properties whether or not they are rented, and it may still impose a hotel occupancy tax. Two points of scope matter and should be read together with the bar. First, the clause does not name eviction, just cause, non-renewal or rent regulation; what it names is prohibiting or effectively limiting a rental and regulating its duration, frequency or location, so whether a local just-cause or notice ordinance would count as effectively limiting a rental is an open question that no West Virginia decision answers. Second, unlike two neighboring subsections of the same section, this one is not limited to municipalities taking part in the state's home rule program; it is written to municipalities generally. How far a locality may go on the amount of rent is answered on the rent-increase page.

No ground is required in West Virginia to end a periodic tenancy or to let a fixed term expire. There is no good-cause statute for ordinary residential tenancies, the phrase does not appear in the property chapter at all, and the notice statute runs the other way by letting the parties agree to no notice whatever. The state's only restraint on a locality points the same direction: a municipality may not prohibit or effectively limit the rental of a property or regulate a rental's duration, frequency or location, though it may regulate activities arising from a rental if the regulation applies to all properties alike. One tenancy in West Virginia does require a ground, and it is a different regime: a site rented for a factory-built home may be ended only for good cause, which the statute defines, and that is covered on the manufactured-home-park page.

The term ends on its date; no statute requires notice from either side.

After the term, no statute governs conversion; the common-law rule applies. No West Virginia statute converts a holdover into a periodic tenancy, and none says that accepting rent does so; the common law governs. What the Code does supply is a definition confirming that a holdover periodic tenant is still a tenant. When the Legislature created a squatter remedy in 2024 it wrote into the definition that a squatter does not include a tenant who holds over in a periodic tenancy under the notice section, so a holdover in that position keeps the article's protections and is ended by the ordinary one-full-period notice rather than by the squatter route.

A fixed-term lease ends on its own date and neither side owes a notice, because the notice statute says in terms that no notice is necessary from or to a tenant whose term is to end at a certain time. Nothing in the landlord and tenant article or the security-deposit article requires notice of non-renewal, and nothing requires a landlord to remind a tenant before an automatic-renewal clause takes effect. If the tenant stays on and the tenancy becomes periodic, the common law rather than a statute is what makes it so, and the tenancy is then ended by the ordinary notice for one full period.

A tenant who holds over in a periodic tenancy stays a tenant under the landlord and tenant article and is expressly not a squatter, so the landlord cannot use the squatter remedy against them. The tenancy continues until it is ended by a notice running one full period and expiring at the end of a period, and possession is then recovered through the wrongful-occupation proceeding covered on the eviction page.

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

West Virginia has no holdover damages statute of any kind. There is no double rent, no multiplier, no liquidated cap and no statutory measure for the period a tenant stays past the end of the tenancy; the words appear nowhere in the Code. A landlord's recovery is the rent owed and whatever ordinary damages can be proved, and possession is obtained through the wrongful-occupation proceeding covered on the eviction page. Where the landlord has elected the re-letting route described under the duty to reduce losses, the departing tenant's exposure is the shortfall between the old rent and the new.

No duty: a statute lets the landlord elect to hold the tenant liable without re-letting.

When it attaches: Nothing attaches unless the landlord chooses it. The statute lets the landlord, at his election, add to the abandonment notice a further notice that after taking possession he will lease the premises to someone else. Only then does the re-letting arrangement come into play, and with it the tenant's liability for the shortfall. Without the election the tenancy simply ends on the notice and the landlord recovers the rent owed up to the point he became entitled to possession.

The standard: Where the landlord makes the election, the statute sets a measure rather than a standard of effort. The tenant remains liable on the lease for the unexpired portion of the term for the difference between the rent the landlord receives from the new tenant and the amount payable under the original lease, and remains bound by the lease's other covenants. Nothing requires the landlord to look for a new tenant, to advertise, or to accept any particular replacement, and no statute or decision says what a reasonable effort would be.

No authority addresses a clause accelerating the remaining rent.

Whether a lease may waive the duty is not settled.

A West Virginia landlord has no obligation to find a new tenant after one leaves early. The statute makes re-letting a choice: the landlord may, at his election, add to the abandonment notice a further notice that he will lease the premises to someone else once he has taken possession, in which case the tenant stays liable for the unexpired term for the difference between the new rent and the old and for the lease's other covenants. If the landlord does not elect it, the tenancy ends on the notice and he recovers the rent owed to the point he became entitled to possession. The Supreme Court of Appeals said the same thing in 1905, holding that a tenant's abandonment does not dispense with notice and that the tenancy and the liability for rent go on, and that the landlord may at his choice re-let and recover the difference or let the premises stand vacant. Two limits on that authority belong on the page beside it: the case was a commercial lease of a building in Wheeling and it is 120 years old, and no West Virginia appellate decision has ever cited the re-letting section itself. The state's modern appellate law states the general contract and tort principle that a party must reduce avoidable loss, but it does so in cases that are not about leases. Nothing allocates the burden of proof, nothing addresses a clause accelerating the remaining rent, and no fee regime displaces any of it.

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

No West Virginia statute authorizes, caps or bars a fee for ending a residential lease early, and none caps what a landlord may recover after an early departure. The landlord and tenant article and the security-deposit article carry no early-termination charge, no buy-out, no liquidated-damages clause and no re-letting fee, and the phrase does not appear anywhere in the Code outside a telephone-services section. The consumer-protection chapter does not mention landlords at all. Two anti-waiver rules exist and neither reaches a fee: one protects the security-deposit article only, and the other protects the death-of-tenant termination right and voids a lease requiring a longer notice period than the article provides. One caution belongs on the page: West Virginia's administrative rules include a legislative rule on the prevention of unfair or deceptive acts or practices in landlord-tenant transactions, and that rule has not been read for this page. Its text could carry a fee or notice rule the statutes do not, so the statutory answer above should not be treated as the whole picture.

Early-exit rights by ground: domestic violence and related grounds, no statute; 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: no statute gives a victim a right to end the lease early.

West Virginia gives a survivor of domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking or trafficking no right to end a residential lease early. There is no such provision in the landlord and tenant article, none in the security-deposit article, none in the domestic-relations chapter that carries the state's domestic-violence law, and none in the criminal chapter. What a survivor can get is different in kind: a court may include in a protective order a term granting the petitioner possession of the residence or household the parties jointly lived in when the abuse occurred, and may order the person restrained to stay away from it. That reallocates possession between the two of them. It does not end the lease, does not release the survivor from rent, does not oblige the landlord to re-let, and gives the survivor no notice right against the landlord. A survivor who leaves early is in the same position as any other tenant leaving early, which means the ordinary notice rules and the landlord's re-letting election described elsewhere on this page. The same three sections creating a survivor's termination right have been introduced in three consecutive sessions and have died in committee each time, so the gap is one the Legislature has been asked to close and has not.

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

When the state rights attach: The state right attaches only to a member of the West Virginia National Guard, and only once the Governor has called them to state active duty for a period of thirty days or more. It writes no lease mechanics of its own, so what a covered member gets is the federal act's own machinery, including its notice and effective-date rules. There is no shorter deployment threshold than the federal act's, no independent right for a spouse or dependents, and no faster effective date.

West Virginia has its own service members civil relief section, and it works by adoption rather than by writing new rules. A member of the West Virginia National Guard called to state active duty by the Governor for a period of thirty days or more has all of the protections, rights and benefits afforded to a person on federal active duty under the federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act. Because that act includes the residential lease-termination right, a Guard member on a thirty-day state activation may end a lease under it even though no federal orders exist and the federal act would not otherwise reach them. That is the whole of the state's addition; a covered member follows the federal notice and effective-date rules. One further military rule sits elsewhere and is about timing rather than termination: on the abandoned-property clock, a tenant who has told the landlord they are on active duty in the armed forces gets sixty days rather than thirty to remove belongings.

Death of the tenant: A statute provides for ending the lease on the tenant's death. This is West Virginia's strongest single tenant-side right and it belongs to the estate rather than to the landlord. On the death of a lessee of residential premises, an heir, personal representative, devisee or assignee of the deceased tenant may end the lease before its expiry, whatever else the Code says. The termination takes effect on the last day of the calendar month that is two months after either the date the notice is hand-delivered to the other party to the lease or the date it is deposited in the mail, postage prepaid, addressed to that party, as shown by the postmark. It is a month-end date rather than a day count, so a notice given early in a month and one given late in it produce the same effective date. Ending the lease this way does not free the estate from rent and other sums owed before or during the two-month notice period, nor from the amounts needed to restore the premises to the condition they were in when the tenancy began, ordinary wear and tear excepted. Neither the landlord nor the estate side may waive the right, by contract or otherwise. It reaches residential leases entered into or renewed on or after July 1, 2012.

Other grounds: Two further grounds let a West Virginia tenant out, and both can be overridden by the lease. Where buildings on the leased premises are destroyed by fire or otherwise, in whole or in part, without the tenant's fault or negligence, the rent is reduced in a reasonable proportion unless the lease provides otherwise, and if the landlord does not rebuild or replace as soon as he reasonably can, the tenant may after a reasonable time surrender possession and be relieved of all further liability for rent from the surrender. The abatement comes first and the surrender second. Where the whole tract is taken under eminent domain, the tenant's liability to pay rent ends unless the lease expressly provides otherwise, and a partial taking reduces the rent proportionally. Beyond those, and beyond the death and military rights described above, West Virginia has no early-termination ground: none for a move into a care facility, none for age or disability, none for a job transfer, and none for harassment by the landlord. Ending a lease over conditions in the home is covered on the habitability page.

The landlord serves a notice of belief and the tenant has a window to respond. The tenant's window to respond is 30 days.

Answering the presumption or notice: The tenant answers in one of two ways depending on which track applies, and the difference is easy to miss because both sit in the same section with the same one-month window. On the ordinary track the tenant's answer is payment: paying the rent within the month defeats the notice. On the housing-authority track, where rent is not a condition of the lease agreement, the tenant's answer is a written statement that they have not abandoned the property, and silence for the month ends the tenancy.

Where a tenant whose rent is in arrears and unpaid abandons the leased property, the landlord or the landlord's agent must post a written notice in a conspicuous part of the property requiring the tenant to pay the rent within one month. If the rent is not paid in that time the landlord is entitled to possession, may enter, and the tenant's right to the property ends; the landlord may recover the rent owed up to the point he became entitled to possession. Where a tenant of a housing development run by a housing authority abandons the property and rent is not a condition of the lease, the authority posts the same kind of notice requiring the tenant to respond in writing within one month stating that they have not abandoned, and the tenancy ends if no such response comes. Two things about this deserve saying plainly. Self-help is authorized on this route, which is unusual; the landlord may enter rather than going to court. And the Code nowhere defines what it means to abandon, so there is no absence period and no bright line, only the two conditions that the rent be in arrears and unpaid and that the tenant have abandoned. The landlord's re-letting election described under the duty to reduce losses is bolted onto this same notice. What happens to belongings left behind, including a longer removal period for a tenant who has told the landlord they are on active duty, is covered separately from this page.

West Virginia says who may be served and not how. The notice must be in writing. Where the notice is to the tenant, it may be served on the tenant or on anyone holding the leased premises, or any part of them, under the tenant. Where it is by the tenant, it may be served on anyone who at the time owns the premises in whole or in part, on that owner's agent, or according to the common law. There is no prescribed delivery method for a termination notice: no personal-service rule, no certified-mail rule, no posting rule, no added days for mailing, and no requirement that a sheriff or process server deliver it. The two places the Code does prescribe a method are elsewhere: the abandonment notice must be posted in a conspicuous part of the property, and the death-of-tenant notice runs from hand delivery or from mailing postage prepaid as shown by the postmark. Service of the court papers that start a possession case is a separate matter covered on the eviction page.

Electronic delivery: the termination statute is silent on it.

What the notice must contain: The statute asks for very little: writing, and a statement of the party's intention to terminate. There is no form, no requirement to state a ground, no advisory language, and, unlike several states, no statutory requirement that the notice name the date the tenancy is to end. The common law fills part of that gap. In 1905 the Supreme Court of Appeals held that a notice ending a tenancy from year to year must designate the time when the tenancy is to close, so a notice that names no date is at risk even though the statute does not require one. Nothing in the article authorizes or forbids sending a termination notice electronically, so the point is simply unaddressed.

The landlord and tenant article cites no federal statute for terminations. The federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act enters West Virginia law by adoption instead: a Guard member called to state active duty by the Governor for thirty days or more gets all of that act's protections, so its lease-termination right does double duty here on a trigger federal law does not reach. The federal Violence Against Women Act supplies no right to end a lease early, and West Virginia supplies none of its own, so a survivor here has neither. The article's one other federal touchpoint is on the abandoned-property clock, where a tenant who has told the landlord they are on active duty in the armed forces gets sixty days rather than thirty to remove belongings.

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 West Virginia appellate decision construes the federal CARES Act's 30-day notice for covered dwellings. A landlord of a federally backed or subsidized property in West Virginia should therefore expect the question to be open, with no state authority either way. (Appellate picture read as of September 4, 2026.)

Stewart v. Johnson, 209 W. Va. 476, 549 S.E.2d 670 (2001) (Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia; residential lease; bears on ending a periodic tenancy): Where a month-to-month tenancy exists, the notice statute requires a landlord to give notice equal to a full period of the tenancy, so one month's notice is needed rather than any fixed number of days. The court also held that the length of a tenancy indefinite in duration may be determined by the terms on which rent is paid, so a tenancy at a monthly rent is month to month, and that a month-to-month tenancy agreement need not be in writing to be valid. The facts were residential: an oral month-to-month tenancy of a house occupied alongside an employment relationship.

Arbenz v. Exley, Watkins & Co., 57 W. Va. 580, 50 S.E. 813 (1905) (Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia; arose from a commercial lease; bears on the duty to re-let): A tenant's abandonment of the premises, even where the landlord knows of it, does not dispense with the notice needed to end the tenancy: the tenancy and the liability for rent go on until the tenant ends the estate by notice, whether or not the tenant continues to occupy. The court added that the landlord may, at his choice, re-let and recover the difference or let the premises stand vacant, which is the state's only appellate statement that a landlord need not find a new tenant. It also held that a notice ending a tenancy from year to year must designate the time when the tenancy is to close. The case arose from a commercial lease of a building and lots in Wheeling and was decided in 1905, so its statements are commercial and old; the re-letting section itself has never been cited by a West Virginia appellate court.