Free rent increase letter template

What is a rent increase letter?

It is a dated, signed statement from a landlord telling a tenant that the rent is going up: the current rent, the new rent, the date the new amount starts, and the property it applies to. Everything else in it is optional. Its job is to be unambiguous and to be provable later, which is why it is written rather than mentioned in passing at the door.

Rent increase letter or rent increase notice?

Same document, two names. You will see it asked for as a notice of rent increase, a rental increase notice, a rent increase form or a sample letter to increase rent, and the request means the same thing every time. "Notice" is the word that turns up in leases and statutes; "letter" is the word people use when they sit down to write one. The template above produces one document that answers to both.

What to put in a rent increase notice

Six things carry the whole document, which is what the form is built around:

• The date you are writing, because every notice period is measured against it
• The tenant's name, every name that is on the lease
• The full rental address, including the unit
• The current monthly rent and the new monthly rent, both as figures
• The date the new rent first becomes payable
• Your name, signature and a way to reach you

Optional, and worth adding when it fits: a reason for the increase, a line confirming the rest of the lease is unchanged, and a date by which you would like to know whether the tenant is staying. That last one is the most useful of the three, because it turns a one-way announcement into something you get an answer to.

Working out the increase

Three numbers, and the tool computes all three as you type. The monthly increase is the new rent minus the current rent. The percentage is that difference divided by the current rent. The annual figure is the monthly increase multiplied by twelve, and it is the one worth looking at before you decide the number is small.

Rent going from $1,500 to $1,600 is an increase of $100 a month. Divide $100 by $1,500 and you get 6.67%, which the letter rounds to 6.7%. Over a year it is $1,200, which is most of a month's rent. A $75 increase on $2,000 is 3.75%, rounded to 3.8%, and $900 a year. The percentage is what a tenant will compare against everything they have read; the annual figure is what it actually costs them. What is the average rent increase per year gives the measured national figure from the BLS series, and why it is a sanity check rather than your number.

Rent increase letter sample

This is what the form above produces, from the fields alone. The address is deliberately generic: it is not modelled on any particular state or city, because the rules that decide whether a notice like this is valid are not the same in any two of them.

Five short paragraphs. The tenant learns the amount, the date, the size of the change and what to do next, and has a number to call. Nothing in it needs interpreting.

The 52 days is simply what those two dates produce. It is not a period that satisfies any particular state, and picking a longer or shorter gap is the part you have to decide for yourself.

How much notice do you have to give?

This is the one question the template cannot answer for you, and any page that answers it in a single number for the whole country is guessing. How much notice a rent increase needs, whether the amount itself is capped, whether the increase can land mid-lease at all, and how the notice has to be delivered are all set by state law, sometimes by city or county rules on top of that, and by the lease you both signed. Two landlords in neighbouring jurisdictions can be under genuinely different rules, so a figure someone quotes you online is worth nothing until you have checked it where your property is.

So do it in this order. Read the lease first, because it may require more notice than the law does and you are bound by it either way. Then check your state and city rules, or ask a local landlord association or a lawyer. Then set the effective date so the days-of-notice figure above clears whichever requirement is longer, and give yourself margin for delivery time. Nothing on this page is legal advice.

Common mistakes

Counting the notice period from the wrong day is the frequent one. The tool counts from the letter date, not from the day you decided, and not from the first of the month. If you post it rather than hand it over, the day it arrives is later than the day you wrote it, and some rules care about that.

After that: raising the rent mid-term on a fixed lease that does not allow it; leaving one of two named tenants off the notice; writing "about $1,600" instead of a figure; and giving a reason so vague it reads as an invitation to negotiate. Sending it only by text or in conversation is the other one, because six months later you cannot show what you said or when.

After you send it

Keep a copy of the signed letter, note the date and the way you delivered it, and file both with the lease rather than in your sent folder. When the new rent starts, update the amount you are expecting so your rent ledger stops flagging every payment as short, and update the figure on your rent roll if you keep one. If the tenant is not staying, you will want the dates and the payment record to hand for the landlord reference letter they are about to ask you for.

A rent increase is a change to the lease record, not just to one month's income. What belongs in a lease record covers what to keep alongside it.