New York landlords are losing significant rental income—and sometimes entire eviction cases—due to a fundamental misunderstanding of how the state's 30-day notice requirement works in holdover proceedings. According to Alexander Paykin, a New York real estate attorney and founder of Paykin Law, the error is not about missing a deadline but misinterpreting how notice periods are calculated.
Under New York law, tenants who have lived in a unit for less than a year are entitled to 30 days' notice before a holdover proceeding can begin. Tenants with one year of occupancy or a one-year lease are entitled to 60 days. Tenants with two or more years are entitled to 90 days. However, these periods are not measured in calendar days but in lease periods. For example, if a lease runs from the first to the last day of the month, serving notice on the last day of July means the 30-day period covers August. Serving on August 1st means August does not count, and the period starts on September 1st—adding an entire month to the process.
This confusion often arises because landlords download templates from online sources, fill in dates, and have a friend serve the notice. By the time they realize the notice is defective, months have passed. "Lots of potential clients I've seen lose three months of their lives and three months of rental income on a defective notice," Paykin says. If the defect is caught before filing, the landlord must serve a corrected notice and wait through the full period again. If not caught until trial, the case may be dismissed, forcing the landlord to start over—potentially losing a year of rent.
The problem is exacerbated by New York City's backlogged court calendars, where three to four months can stretch into seven or eight. Tenants increasingly have access to free legal aid, while small landlords often handle evictions themselves to avoid legal fees. Yet a single defective notice costs more in lost rent than hiring an attorney for the entire proceeding. Paykin advises landlords to involve a landlord-tenant attorney at the notice stage to prevent costly errors.
