Real Property: Landlord-Tenants: Leasehold Estates: Periodic Tenancy
Periodic Tenancy: - Lease continues for successive intervals. Until L or T give proper notice of termination.
- Can be created expressly (L conveys to T from month to month or year to year)
- Can be created by implication:
- Land is leased with no mention of duration, but provision is made for rent payment at set intervals
- An oral term of years in violation of the statute of frauds creates an implied periodic tenancy measured by the way rent is tendered.
- L and T negotiate on the phone for a commercial lease. They orally agree on a 5 year lease with rent at $1,000 a month. This is not a tenancy for years because it violates the statute of frauds.
- If T sends L a check for $1,000 and L accepts it: T’s first rental payment renders his interest an implied periodic tenancy, with the intervals based on the way rent is tendered.
- The holdover: In a residential lease, if L elects to hold over a T who has wrongfully stayed on past the conclusion of the original lease an implied periodic tenancy arises—measured by the way rent is tendered.
- Termination by notice – usually written.
- At common law – notice must be given equal to the period itself, unless otherwise agreed.
- In a month-to-month periodic tenancy --> 1 months notice
- In a week-to-week periodic tenancy --> 1 week’s notice
- Exception: year-to-year or greater --> 6 months notice.
- Note: parties may lengthen or shorten notice periods by private agreement.
- Note: periodic tenancy must end at the conclusion of a natural lease period.
- EX: L leased Blackacre to T on Jan. 1, 2003, for a periodic tenancy of month-to-month. On May 15, 2003, T sends written notice of termination. T is bound until June 30.