CARES Act 30-Day Notice Requirements for Covered Properties

Under the CARES Act 30-day notice requirements for covered properties, a landlord who owns a rental unit tied to certain federal housing programs or a federally backed mortgage must give the tenant at least 30 days’ written notice before filing an eviction for nonpayment of rent.¹ The rule sits at 15 U.S.C. § 9058(c). The 120-day eviction moratorium in the same statute expired in July 2020, but the notice provision carries no expiration date, and most appellate courts that have looked at it treat the 30-day requirement as still in effect for covered rentals.²

Which Rentals Count as Covered Properties

A “covered dwelling” is a rental unit on a “covered property,” and a property qualifies in one of two ways: it participates in a listed federal housing program, or it has a federally backed mortgage.¹

Federally Assisted Housing

The first category pulls in any property that participates in a housing program listed under the Violence Against Women Act. That covers public housing, Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers, Section 8 project-based rental assistance, and the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program, among others. The USDA rural housing voucher program is covered separately by the statute.¹ Courts have applied this broadly: if even one unit in a multi-building property participates in a federal program, every unit on that property has been treated as a covered dwelling.

Federally Backed Mortgages

The second category catches many landlords who don’t think of themselves as receiving federal help. A property is covered if its mortgage was made, insured, guaranteed, or assisted by any federal agency, or if the loan was purchased or securitized by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.¹ That sweeps in FHA-insured loans, VA-guaranteed loans, USDA rural development loans, and conventional loans that ended up in a Fannie or Freddie pool. Plenty of single-family rentals fall into this last group without the owner ever realizing the loan was securitized.

For one-to-four-unit buildings, any qualifying mortgage triggers coverage. For buildings with five or more units, the statute uses the parallel term “federally backed multifamily mortgage loan,” but the test is essentially the same federal involvement in the financing.¹

How to Verify Coverage

Fannie Mae runs a loan lookup at yourhome.fanniemae.com that takes a property address and the last four digits of the borrower’s Social Security number.³ Freddie Mac has a separate search at myhome.freddiemac.com/renting/lookup that accepts a property name, address, or zip code.⁴ Neither database is guaranteed to be complete. If the lookups are inconclusive, the landlord’s mortgage servicer can confirm federal backing. For subsidized housing, participation is typically a matter of public record through HUD or the local housing authority.

Is the Notice Still Required

Yes, in most places. The 120-day moratorium in subsection (b) expired in late July 2020, but the notice provision in subsection (c) has no sunset. Multiple state appellate courts have read that omission as intentional and treat the 30-day notice as a continuing obligation for covered properties.²

Not every court has agreed. The Virginia Court of Appeals and the Iowa Supreme Court have held that the notice requirement lapsed along with the moratorium or with the federal COVID-19 emergency declaration. Landlord trade groups have argued the same position. The USDA’s Rural Housing Service has gone the other way, treating the notice as permanent and building it into its own regulations. In a jurisdiction without a clear appellate ruling, complying with the 30-day rule is the cautious path. Skipping it saves no meaningful time, and if a court later finds the notice was required, the eviction case is dismissed.

What the Notice Must Say

The statute itself is thin on content. It says a landlord “may not require the tenant to vacate the covered dwelling unit before the date that is 30 days after the date on which the lessor provides the tenant with a notice to vacate.”¹ Courts have added substance. A Washington appeals court held that a notice must “unequivocally inform” tenants that they have 30 days to pay or vacate. Notices that buried the 30-day language among conflicting deadlines or shorter state timelines were struck down as confusing.

A workable notice generally includes:

The full legal name of every adult on the lease.
The complete property address, including unit or apartment number.
The specific unpaid rent balance, drawn from the tenant’s ledger. Overstating the amount by including disputed charges gives the tenant a ground to challenge the notice.
An unambiguous statement that the tenant has 30 days from the date of the notice to pay or vacate, not combined with a shorter state-law deadline in the same document.
The date of the notice, which starts the clock and must be clearly visible.

Many local courts and legal aid organizations publish CARES Act notice templates whose formatting has already been tested in that jurisdiction.

Serving the Notice and Counting the Days

Delivery matters as much as content. Personal service, where someone hands the document to the tenant or another adult at the residence, is the most reliable. Certified mail with a return receipt creates a paper record of when the tenant received it. Some jurisdictions permit posting on the door when personal service fails, but local rules vary on whether posting satisfies the federal timeline. Whoever delivers the notice should record the date, time, method, and the identity of the person who accepted it. An affidavit of service or a certified mail receipt is the evidence a court will look for.

The statute does not spell out how to count the 30 days. Because it has no built-in counting rule, courts typically fall back on the general federal time-computation rule or on state procedural rules, depending on where the case is filed. In most cases, the day the tenant receives the notice is day zero and the clock starts the next day, with calendar days counted, weekends and holidays included. If the math is close, waiting 31 or 32 days costs nothing. Filing on day 29 risks dismissal and forces the landlord to start over with a fresh notice and another full 30 days.

How the Federal Notice Interacts With State Notices

Almost every state has its own nonpayment notice, commonly three to fifteen days. The CARES Act notice does not replace state law. It adds to it. A tenant in a covered property is entitled to both the state notice and the federal 30-day notice.¹

Whether the two notices can run at the same time is unsettled. Some landlords serve them together on the theory that the longer 30-day window covers both. At least one appellate court rejected that approach, finding that a single document with two different deadlines confused tenants about how much time they actually had. Serving the federal 30-day notice first, letting it run, and then serving any state-required notice is slower but avoids the argument. Where the state pay-or-quit period is already 30 days or longer, the federal rule may add no extra time, though the notice should still reference the CARES Act.

What Tenants Can Do After Receiving a Notice

Paying the full balance within 30 days ends the matter for a nonpayment notice, because the landlord has no basis to file. If paying in full isn’t possible, a payment plan is worth asking about. Nothing in the statute forces a landlord to accept one, but eviction is costly on both sides and many landlords will.

Before anything else, verify that the notice is actually valid. Check whether the property is covered by running the Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac lookup or by confirming participation in a federal housing program. If the property is not covered, the 30-day rule doesn’t apply and state law controls the entire timeline. If the property is covered but the notice is defective, wrong amount, missing the 30-day language, or served improperly, that defect becomes a defense when the case is filed.

A tenant who believes a landlord filed without giving the required notice, or filed before 30 days had run, can move to dismiss. Courts have consistently thrown out eviction cases where landlords skipped or shortchanged the notice.² Legal aid organizations in most areas will review a notice for compliance.

Consequences of a Missing or Defective Notice

The 30-day notice is a prerequisite to filing, not a formality. Multiple appellate courts have dismissed cases where the landlord either skipped the notice or filed before the 30 days ran.¹ Dismissal doesn’t just delay the eviction; it forces the landlord to serve a compliant notice and wait out a new 30 days.

Defective notices carry the same consequence. Courts have rejected notices that stated the wrong number of days, listed conflicting deadlines, or failed to identify the CARES Act as the basis for the 30-day period. In the Washington case, the notices were struck down because they did not “unequivocally inform” tenants of the full window. Beyond dismissal, a tenant displaced by an eviction that violated the statute may have a wrongful eviction claim for damages such as moving costs, lost wages, and the price difference of replacement housing. Many state courts also require landlords to certify at filing whether a property is covered, and false certification can draw sanctions.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 9058 – Temporary Moratorium on Eviction Filings
2
Congress.gov. CARES Act Eviction Notice Requirements – Background and Recent Developments
3
Fannie Mae. Fannie Mae Loan Lookup Tool
4
Freddie Mac. Is My Apartment Building Financed by Freddie Mac