What is a holdover tenancy?

A holdover tenancy happens when a commercial tenant stays in the space after the lease term ends without signing a renewal or new lease. It's more common than it sounds, especially when a renewal negotiation drags past the original end date and nobody formally extends anything in writing.

What a landlord can actually do about it

Once a tenant holds over, a landlord generally has two options: continue the tenancy by accepting rent, or treat the tenant as a trespasser and move to evict. Those two choices lead to very different places, so it's worth understanding what each one actually does.

Why accepting rent is a bigger decision than it looks

If a landlord accepts a rent payment from a holdover tenant, that can automatically create a new periodic tenancy, commonly month-to-month, even if nobody intended that. Depositing a check without thinking it through can functionally extend a relationship a landlord meant to end. The alternative, evicting instead, usually still requires formal notice and the standard eviction process, not a resolution you can finish the same day the lease technically expires.

Why most leases address this directly instead of relying on default rules

Because the default rule can vary by state and sometimes produces a result nobody actually wanted, many commercial leases include their own holdover clause specifying exactly what happens: a defined holdover rent (often a multiple of the prior rate), whether that converts to a month-to-month tenancy or just accrues as a penalty, and what notice either side needs to give.

None of this is legal advice, and what actually happens depends on your state and your specific lease language. See here for how two very different states, Florida and Texas, actually handle this. RenewSavvy extracts whether your lease has its own holdover clause, and what it says, so you're not relying on a default rule you hadn't planned for.