How Much Notice Does a Tenant Have to Give in NZ? (21 Days, and Why It Is Really 27)

If you are renting in New Zealand and want to move out, the number you need is 21 days. The number that actually decides your last day of rent is usually bigger, because the notice period does not start when you send the notice.

The short answer

Your tenancy	Notice you must give
Periodic (no fixed end date)	At least 21 days' written notice, any day of the week
Fixed-term, ending at the end date	Written notice between 90 and 21 days before the end date
Fixed-term, wanting out early	You cannot end it unilaterally. You need the landlord's agreement, or a Tribunal order

The 21-day figure comes from section 51 of the Residential Tenancies Act 1986, and Tenancy Services sets out the same rule on ending a periodic tenancy.

One thing that trips people up: your notice does not have to line up with your rent day. It can be given on any day and can end the tenancy on any day, whatever day of the week you moved in or pay rent.

What changed on 30 January 2025

Tenant notice on a periodic tenancy dropped from 28 days to 21 days when the termination provisions of the Residential Tenancies Amendment Act 2024 came into force. If you are reading an older blog post, a template, or a tenancy agreement that says 28 days, it is out of date. The current position is on the Tenancy Services tenancy law changes page.

The same change reinstated the landlord's 90-day no-cause notice, which is why you may have heard about "the 90 days" and "the 21 days" in the same conversation. They are two different things pointing in two different directions.

The 21 days do not start when you send the notice

This is the part that costs people money. Under the rules on serving notices, a notice is only treated as received after a delay that depends on how you delivered it:

How you deliver it	Treated as received
Handed over in person	Immediately
Email or text, before 5pm	Same day
Email or text, after 5pm	Next working day
Left in the letterbox or attached to the door	2 working days later
Posted	The 4th working day after posting

The notice period then starts the day after that. Stack the two together and a posted notice runs like this:

Step	Date
You post the notice	Friday 7 August 2026
Treated as received (4 working days later)	Thursday 13 August
Day 1 of the 21 days	Friday 14 August
Tenancy ends, rent stops	Thursday 3 September

That is 27 days after you put the envelope in the box, not 21. Hand the notice over in person, or email it before 5pm, and you get those six days back.

"Working days" are not calendar days

The delivery delays above are counted in working days, and the Residential Tenancies Act has its own definition in section 2. A working day excludes:

• Saturdays and Sundays
• All public holidays
• The whole block from Good Friday to Easter Tuesday
• The whole block from 24 December to 3 January
• The regional anniversary day for the region the property is in

That last one is the sneaky one, because it differs by region and it is easy to forget when you are counting on your fingers. Auckland Anniversary in late January, Canterbury in November, Otago in March: each pushes a posted notice out by another day for properties in that region. The dates are listed on the MBIE employment site under public holidays and anniversary dates.

Post a notice in the third week of December and the Christmas block alone can push receipt into January. We have written up how this counting works in more detail in counting working days for RTA notices.

Fixed-term tenancies work completely differently

On a fixed term you cannot simply give 21 days' notice and leave. What you have instead is a window for telling the landlord you will not be staying on after the end date, and it opens on the 90th day before the end date and closes on the 21st day before it.

Miss that window and the tenancy does not end. It automatically rolls over into a periodic tenancy, and you are then back to giving 21 days' notice from wherever you now stand. Diarise the date the window opens, not the date it closes.

Wanting to leave a fixed term early is a different problem again. You need the landlord to agree, or a Tenancy Tribunal order on grounds like hardship. There is no unilateral tenant exit from a fixed term.

What the notice actually has to say

It has to be in writing, and Tenancy Services says it must include:

• the address of the property
• the date the tenancy is ending
• your signature

That is the minimum. There is no requirement to give a reason, and you do not need to justify the decision. If you want a form rather than writing it yourself, Tenancy Services publishes a notice to terminate a periodic tenancy (tenant to landlord) template.

If you flat with others, one notice ends it for everybody

On a standard joint tenancy, where everyone signed the same agreement, notice from one tenant ends the periodic tenancy for all of them. Your flatmates do not get a vote and are not asked.

This is worth saying out loud in the flat before anyone sends anything, because it surprises people badly. If what you actually want is to leave while the others stay, that is not a notice to end the tenancy: it is a variation of the tenancy agreement, and it needs the landlord's agreement.

If your landlord has already given you 90 days

You do not have to sit there for the full 90 days. You can leave earlier, but you still have to give your own written notice of at least 21 days. Simply moving out on a date that suits you, without notice, leaves you liable for rent until the notice you should have given would have expired.

Keep proof that you gave notice, and when

Almost every dispute about notice is not a dispute about the law. It is one side saying they sent it and the other saying they never got it, months later, with rent riding on the answer. Because the clock starts from when the notice is received, the date is the whole argument.

Whatever else you do, keep three things: a copy of the notice itself, the date and method you sent it, and any reply. If you email it, the sent item does that job for you, which is one more reason email beats post here. If you hand it over, a short message afterwards confirming you did ("dropped the notice off today, ending 3 September as discussed") gives you a dated record of something that otherwise leaves no trace.

If your landlord disagrees with you about any of it, the Tenancy Services disputes process is where it goes, and it turns on the dated record you can produce.

Common questions

How much notice does a tenant have to give in NZ?

At least 21 days' written notice on a periodic tenancy. It was 28 days before 30 January 2025.

Do the 21 days include weekends and public holidays?

Yes. The 21 days are calendar days. Working days only matter for the separate question of when your notice is treated as having been received.

Can I give notice by text or email?

Yes, if you are sending it to an address the landlord has given for that purpose. Sent before 5pm it counts as received the same day, after 5pm the next working day, which makes it the fastest and best-evidenced option.

Does my notice have to end on my rent day?

No. Notice can be given on any day and end the tenancy on any day, regardless of when the tenancy started or when rent falls due.

Do I have to give a reason for leaving?

No. A tenant ending a periodic tenancy does not have to give any reason.

What if I am on a fixed term and want to leave early?

You need the landlord's agreement or a Tenancy Tribunal order. A fixed term cannot be ended early by tenant notice alone.