Most guidance on lease renewal timing answers one question: when do I send the letter? That is the visible step, but it is the fourth one in a sequence that starts weeks earlier and does not end until the tenant has actually signed, or you have a plan for the unit if they do not. Here is the full calendar.
1. Why the earlier milestones matter more than the send date
A renewal notice sent on time but built on a rushed decision is still a rushed decision. Landlords who treat renewal as a single event, the letter going out, tend to skip the two steps that actually determine whether the renewal is a good idea: whether this tenant is one you want to keep, and what the market has done since the last renewal. Building both into the calendar, ahead of the notice itself, is what turns the letter into the easy last step instead of a rushed one.
2. The full calendar
| Time before lease end | What to do |
|---|---|
| ~120 days | Review the tenant's payment history, maintenance requests, and any lease violations. Decide, in principle, whether you want to offer a renewal at all. |
| ~90 days | Pull current market comps and land on a renewal number. See our rent increase calculator guide for the method. |
| ~75 days | Confirm the notice period your state, city, and lease actually require, especially if the number from the last step is a meaningful increase. |
| ~60 days | Send the renewal notice, or the rent increase notice if the rent is changing outside a renewal packet. |
| ~30 days | Follow up once if you have not heard back. This is also the point to start a contingency plan in case the tenant does not renew. |
| ~14 days | If there is still no response, treat the unit as a likely vacancy: line up a listing, a cleaner, and any make-ready work so you are not starting cold at lease end. |
| Lease end | Confirm the signed renewal, or begin move-out coordination: inspection, deposit return timeline, and the vacancy make-ready work. |
Your lease may specify its own notice period, and your state or city may too, sometimes stepping up further for larger rent increases or longer-tenured tenants. Notice requirements genuinely vary by state, so use the table above to plan your own internal deadlines, then confirm the actual legal minimum for your unit before you commit to a send date. HUD's state-by-state directory is a solid starting point: hud.gov/states. Whichever is longer, your lease or your local law, that one governs.
3. The renew-or-not decision, made early instead of by default
The 120-day milestone above exists because the renew decision is easy to skip past. Without a deliberate check-in, the default outcome is renewing everyone on the same terms, which is fine for a tenant in good standing and a real cost if it is not. A short list to run through at that milestone:
- Payment history. Consistent on-time payment is the single strongest predictor that a renewal will go smoothly.
- Maintenance and communication pattern. A tenant who reports issues promptly and reasonably is usually cheaper to keep than one who does not, independent of the rent they pay.
- Lease compliance. Unauthorized occupants, pets, or repeated noise complaints are worth weighing against the cost of turnover before you decide.
If the answer is a clear yes, the rest of the calendar is straightforward. If it is not, that is a decision better made with 90 days of runway than with 10.
4. If you are already behind
Missing the 90-day or 60-day milestone does not mean starting over. Compress the process: check the market and the legal notice period in the same sitting, and send the notice as soon as both are confirmed. If the legally required notice period is longer than the time remaining before your original target date, the effective date of the increase or renewal simply moves out to whenever a compliant notice period allows, which is still a better outcome than sending a notice that does not hold up.
5. Running this calendar across more than one unit
With one or two units, the calendar above works from memory. Past that, the failure mode changes: it is rarely a single missed milestone, it is the same milestone missed on the unit you were not thinking about that week. A few habits that hold up as the number of leases grows:
- Track lease-end dates in one place, not per unit. A single spreadsheet or calendar with every lease-end date, sorted chronologically, is enough to see the next 120 days across your whole portfolio at a glance instead of checking unit by unit.
- Set the milestone reminders off the lease-end date, not the calendar month. A recurring reminder tied to each unit's own 120/90/60/30-day marks survives units renewing on staggered dates, which a single monthly review does not.
- Batch the market-comp work. If several units in the same building or neighborhood are approaching renewal within weeks of each other, one comp pull often serves all of them, rather than repeating the research per unit.
- Keep the payment and maintenance history somewhere you can pull in minutes, not hours. The 120-day renew-or-not decision above only works if that history is quick to check; if it takes an afternoon to reconstruct, the milestone quietly stops happening.
This is also the point where a system that flags upcoming lease ends automatically, rather than relying on a person to notice them, starts paying for itself: not because the calendar changes, but because the calendar stops depending on someone remembering to look at it.
Put it together
Lease renewal timing is really four decisions on a schedule: whether to renew, what to charge, how much legal notice that requires, and when to start planning for a vacancy if the answer comes back no. Put dates on all four, not just the send date, and the letter itself stops being the hard part.
TenantPulse does this math for you
This guide is the manual version. TenantPulse reads your local comps and each tenant's renewal risk automatically, then drafts the offer and the outreach email for you to review and send.
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Frequently asked questions
When should I send a lease renewal notice?
A common planning default is 60-90 days before lease end for a full renewal decision, with a simpler no-change reminder closer to 30-45 days out. That is a convention, not a legal deadline: your lease and your state or local law can both require a specific minimum, and whichever requires more notice governs.
What is the lease renewal process, step by step?
In order: review the tenant's payment and maintenance history, decide whether you want to offer a renewal at all, check the market to land on a number, send the renewal notice with enough lead time, follow up once if you do not hear back, and either confirm the signed renewal or begin move-out coordination by the lease end date.
What if I'm already inside 30 days and haven't sent anything?
Send the notice now rather than waiting for a cleaner starting point. Check whether your state's minimum notice period is longer than the time you have left; if it is, your legal effective date may need to move later than your original target, which is still better than sending nothing.
Do month-to-month tenants need anything on this calendar?
There is no lease-end date to plan around, but the same notice-period logic applies to any rent change: give the legally required lead time before the new rent takes effect. See our rent increase notice guide for the standalone version of that document.
Does the calendar change if I'm also raising the rent?
The milestones stay the same, but the notice period itself can get longer: some states and cities require more lead time once an increase crosses a certain size. Confirm the requirement for your specific increase before you lock in the send date, not after.