Your Tenant Gave Notice. Here Is the Next 30 Days.

Published 2026-08-21

The usual turnover failure is not laziness. It is sequencing. The inspection happens a few days late, quotes come in a week after that, the statement goes out once the work is finished — and somewhere in there the deposit deadline passed. Doing the right things in the wrong order is how a landlord ends up owing money on a tenancy that ended cleanly.

Here is the order.

Day 0 — the day notice arrives

  • Acknowledge in writing. Confirm the end date you both now believe in. Ambiguity about the date is ambiguity about every deadline that follows.
  • Check the notice is adequate for your jurisdiction and the lease. If it is short, decide immediately whether to accept it as a mutual agreement — in writing — or to hold the tenant to the full period.
  • Get a forwarding address. Ask now, while they still want something from you. Several states tie your deposit obligations to having one.
  • Calculate the deposit-return deadline and write it down. Across US jurisdictions it is commonly somewhere between 14 and 60 days after the tenancy ends. This date, not the move-out date, is what you are actually working to.
  • Confirm what is owed through the end date, including any prorated final month.

Week 1 — buy yourself time

  • Offer a pre-move-out walkthrough. Some states require you to offer one; everywhere else it is simply good practice. Walking the unit two weeks early and telling the tenant what would be deducted gives them a chance to fix it, which usually costs you less than doing the work yourself and produces far fewer disputes.
  • Re-read the move-in inspection. Know what you documented before you are standing in the unit.
  • Line up contractors provisionally. You cannot book work you have not scoped, but you can warn the people you will need.
  • Start marketing if the unit shows well and your lease permits access for showings with proper notice.

Move-out day

  • Collect all keys, fobs, remotes and mail keys. Note anything missing in the inspection — replacement is a legitimate deduction.
  • Do the inspection that day. This is the single highest-leverage item on the list. Walk it with the move-in report open, item by item, in the same order, photographing from the same positions.
  • Read meters and confirm utility transfer dates.
  • Stop the money. Cancel any recurring rent charge or auto-pay and any future scheduled rent. A moved-out tenant still being debited is a bad phone call and, if it is an automated payment, a bank dispute.

Days 1 to 7 after — split the lists

Immediately separate the work into two lists, and never let them merge again:

  • Make-ready — your cost. Routine repainting, professional cleaning between tenants, a carpet at the end of its useful life, filling small nail holes.
  • Damage and unpaid amounts — deductible. Damage beyond ordinary wear, missing items, unpaid rent and fees where your state allows it.

Get written quotes for anything on the second list. You are usually allowed to deduct against a documented, good-faith estimate — you do not have to wait for the work to be completed and invoiced, and waiting is what blows the deadline. Attach the quotes to the statement.

Before the deadline — the statement

Send an itemized statement showing the deposit received, each deduction as a separate specific line with its basis, any unpaid rent, and the balance returned, along with the balance itself. Send it to the forwarding address by a method you can prove. If some work is genuinely unresolved, check whether your state permits an interim estimate with a later reconciliation.

Then close the loop

  • Complete the make-ready work and record it as an expense against the property, categorized properly, so it lands in the year-end numbers.
  • File the signed lease, both inspections, the notice, the statement and the proof of delivery together. Retain them for at least your state's limitations period.
  • Re-list, and treat the new tenant's move-in inspection with the seriousness this one just demonstrated it deserves.

The four failures worth naming

  • Inspecting late. Once a contractor has been through, the evidence is gone and so is the deduction.
  • Conflating make-ready with deductions. One invoice covering both jobs is the single most common reason a deduction gets thrown out.
  • Waiting for finished work. The deadline runs on statute time, not project time.
  • Forgetting recurring charges. Cancel auto-pay the day the tenancy ends.

How this works in PropertyFolio

Tenants can give notice from their portal, which opens a tracked move-out that runs notice given, acknowledged, inspection completed, deposit settled, completed. The deposit-return deadline is calculated from that jurisdiction's rule as soon as the move-out date is recorded. The move-out inspection renders against the move-in inspection as a side-by-side comparison, and items rated poor, damaged or missing become a suggested list you draw deductions from. You set the settlement figures yourself and produce a Security Deposit Disposition statement PDF. Ending the tenancy stops future rent and cancels any auto-pay in the same step, so the money question closes with the tenancy.

This article is general information, not legal advice. Notice, inspection and deposit rules vary by state and city; confirm your own before relying on any timeline here.

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