Summer Sublets and Subletting
Contents
Richard Joseph Spinelli cofounded Sandhills Real Estate in 2020 to lease Bronx homes to Fordham students, and every landlord who rents to students meets the same seasonal question: what becomes of a bedroom on a year long lease between May and August, when its tenant goes home, travels or takes a job elsewhere? The lease keeps running through those months. Subletting for the summer is the common remedy. Someone else moves into the room until fall, and the original tenant remains on the lease.
New York sets out a precise sequence for how a tenant asks to sublet and how a landlord must answer. University housing offices, for their part, add practical advice about planning for the summer before signing at all. This entry covers both, in the order a tenant would meet them.
The summer gap
The problem starts with the term. Guidance from Xavier University urges students to learn, before signing, whether a lease lasts ten months or twelve, and, where it lasts twelve, whether the room may be sublet over the summer.1 The answer depends on the lease and on the landlord, so it belongs in the conversation before any signature.
East Carolina University states the obligation plainly. Studying abroad or spending the summer somewhere else does not release a student from the lease. For that reason, its office says, students often choose housing where they may sublease or hand the lease to someone new, letting a replacement occupy the room during their absence.2 The academic lease cycle entry explains why most student leases run the full year in the first place.
What campuses tell students
The University of South Carolina warns that policies differ from one complex to the next. Some allow a resident to recruit a replacement for the rest of the term, and many charge when a lease changes hands, so the written policy is worth reading early.3 Both South Carolina and East Carolina host online boards where students post rooms and look for people to take them over.32 Xavier’s broader advice applies with extra force to a sublet: put everything in writing and send copies to the landlord.1
Sublet or assignment
New York law distinguishes two ways of handing a home to someone else. The Attorney General’s guide to tenants’ rights explains that to sublet is to leave temporarily and transfer less than the tenant’s entire interest. The tenant becomes the prime tenant, and the person renting temporarily is the subtenant.4 To assign is to transfer the entire interest in the lease and leave for good. A summer arrangement is normally a sublet, since the student plans to come back in the fall.
Assignment is much harder to obtain. A tenant may not assign without the owner’s written consent, and the owner may refuse without giving a reason. If the owner refuses unreasonably, the tenant’s sole remedy is to be released from the lease on thirty days’ notice; if the refusal is reasonable, there is no assignment and no release.5
Small buildings
The size of the building decides whether a right to sublet exists at all. According to the Attorney General, tenants in buildings with three or fewer apartments have no right to sublet. They may ask, but the landlord does not have to agree, and if the landlord unreasonably withholds consent, the tenant’s only remedy is to be let out of the lease after 30 days’ notice.4 In a house of that size, the wording of the lease and the landlord’s willingness count for more than the statute.
Buildings of four or more units
In a building with four or more residential units, section 226 b of the Real Property Law gives a tenant under an existing lease the right to sublet, subject to the landlord’s written consent given in advance. That consent may not be unreasonably withheld.5 The Attorney General adds that any lease clause restricting this right is void as against public policy.4 The statute makes the same point more broadly: any provision of a lease that purports to waive the section is null and void.5
The written request
The tenant begins by mailing a notice of intent to sublet by certified mail, return receipt requested. The request must include the term of the sublease; the name of the proposed subtenant; the subtenant’s business and permanent home addresses; the tenant’s reason for subletting; the tenant’s address during the sublease; the written consent of any cotenant or guarantor; and a copy of the proposed sublease with a copy of the tenant’s own lease attached if available.5
Two of those items matter especially to students. On a shared lease, every other signer is a cotenant whose written consent must travel with the request. A parent who has signed as guarantor must consent in writing too. A household with a roommate agreement that already addresses summer sublets will find those signatures easier to collect.
The landlord’s ten and thirty days
The statute then sets the landlord’s clock. Within ten days after the request is mailed, the landlord may ask for additional information needed to judge whether a refusal would be unreasonable, and that request may not be unduly burdensome.5 Within thirty days after the request, or after the additional information, whichever comes later, the landlord must send the tenant a notice of consent or, if the landlord does not consent, the reasons for refusing.5
For a student hoping to sublet from late May, the arithmetic points to an early start. A request mailed in April leaves room for a ten day question and a thirty day answer before the semester ends.
Consent, refusal and silence
The statute provides for three outcomes. If the landlord consents, the room may be sublet as requested. If the landlord says nothing within the deadline, the silence counts as consent.5 If the landlord refuses for reasonable reasons, there is no sublet, and the tenant is not released from the lease.5
If the landlord refuses unreasonably, the tenant may go ahead and sublet as requested. Should a court later find that the owner withheld consent in bad faith, the statute allows the tenant to recover the expense of the proceeding.5 A sublet or assignment that skips these steps is treated as a substantial breach of the lease or tenancy.5
Stabilized apartments
Additional rules apply in rent stabilized apartments. The Attorney General’s guide explains that the prime tenant must show that the apartment has been kept as a primary residence throughout and that the tenant intends to move back at the end of the sublet. The prime tenant, not the subtenant, keeps the right to a renewal lease, and a tenant may not sublet for more than two years in any four year period.4 The statute itself does not apply to public housing or to cooperative proprietary leases.5
After the sublet
Consent does not end the original tenant’s obligations. Under the statute, a tenant whose sublet is approved remains liable for performing every duty under the lease.5 The Attorney General describes that liability as covering all lease obligations, including all future rent.4 If the subtenant damages the room or leaves without paying, the landlord still looks to the student who signed the lease, and possibly to that student’s cotenants and guarantor as well. A room left empty is no safer. The Daily Gamecock reported in September 2026 that one University of South Carolina student arrived in August to find signs that people had lived in her apartment over the summer without paying.7 Very short stays fall under a different city rule. Gothamist reported in June 2025 that Local Law 18 requires anyone renting space in a home for fewer than 30 days to register with the city, bars handing over an entire apartment for such a stay, and caps guests at two; the city had just sent warning letters to about 500 hosts.6 The end of the tenancy, including the deposit, is covered in security deposits, and the wider market for student rentals under student housing.
