By: Tia Politi, ORHA Forms Committee Chair
June 2025
I'm thrilled to announce that the ORHA Forms Manual, Seventh Edition, is now ready for order – thank you for your patience! If you're a member of a Local Association looking to purchase your ORHA Forms Manual VII, please contact your Local Association directly (click here). ORHA will only process bulk orders to our Local Associations and will not process direct printed sales to individual consumers.
The complexities of Eugene's new regulations and recent state law changes delayed our timeline, but the wait is over. I'm grateful to everyone who assisted with the editing – your keen eyes caught details I missed, and I truly appreciate your support.
This updated manual reflects significant changes to existing forms and includes several new ones. It's an essential resource for Owners and Agents, helping determine:
- Which form is appropriate for their situation,
- How to complete it correctly, and
- How to serve it properly.
Mistakes in tenant notices or failure to include required documents at move-in or during termination can lead to serious and costly legal consequences. This guide is designed to help you – and your members – avoid those pitfalls.
Since the last iteration of the ORHA Forms Manual, there have been some significant changes of note:
1. The altered timelines for nonpayment of rent enacted during the pandemic were made permanent.
a. The 144-Hour Notice to Pay or Vacate for Nonpayment of Rent (Form VT1) (discontinued) that can be served as early as the fifth day of the rental period was changed to the 13-day Notice to Pay or Vacate for Nonpayment of Rent (Form VT1a).
b. The 72-Hour Notice to Pay or Vacate for Nonpayment of Rent (Form VT2) (discontinued) that can be served as early as the eighth date of the rental period was changed to the 10-Day Notice to Pay or Vacate for Nonpayment of Rent (Form VT2a).
c. The 72-Hour Notice to Pay or Vacate for Nonpayment of Rent – Week-to-Week Tenancy (Form VT3) remains unchanged except for another requirement that impacts all notices for nonpayment – a state-mandated form letting Tenants know where they can apply for rent assistance.
d. Any notice to the Tenant regarding money owed for anything except for damage to the premises must be accompanied by the rent assistance notification available on the website.
2. Because of the law codified in House Bill 2001, the committee decided to include the required rent assistance notification language within the body of the Notice of Termination with Cause (Form VT5) to ensure that landlords who are using this form to collect money owed other than rent don't forget to include the required notice about rent assistance.
3. We created a new form to facilitate a landlord's change in the type or amount of late fee, and to implement renters' insurance in an existing Tenancy. Both changes require 30-day written notice. The new form is Late Fee/Renters Insurance Notice of Change in Terms (Form O15). Remember that in a Fixed-Term Lease, Landlords may not change anything during the term without the Tenant's written agreement.
4. With the passage of Senate Bill 1069, and effective January 1, 2024, Tenants can agree to accept electronically transferred funds for any payments due from the Landlord. Prior to this law, any refund to the Tenant could only be made with physical payment delivered personally or by First Class Mail. Now, with the Tenant's signed agreement, Landlords may issue refunds electronically. The agreement is voluntary on the Tenant's part and the agreement may only be signed after the Tenancy begins and the Tenant has taken possession of the unit. See ORS 90.147 for the legal description of transfer of possession. To facilitate this option, we created Agreement to Accept Electronically Transferred Funds (Form O16).
5. Another part of Senate Bill 1069 was presented as a good thing for Landlords and Tenants, but has pitfalls, and that is the allowance to Serve Legal Notices by Email-and-Mail. Like service of notice by Post-and-Mail, it saves the three-day waiting period for Mailed Only notices; but comes with similar concerns. Unwary Landlords have often been blindsided in eviction court, lost their cases and been forced to pay attorney fees for not meeting the exact requirements for Service of Notice.
Service by Email-and-Mail has specific criteria. To allow for service of notice by this method, the parties must enter into a written agreement after the tenancy begins, and the tenant has taken possession of the unit. The agreement must specify the email address from which the Landlord will send or receive email notice and from which email addresses the Tenant(s) will send or receive email notice and provide for a change of email address, electronic payment or termination of the agreement by either party with three days’ written notice.
Why is there risk in this method of service? Like the particularities required to be able to serve notice by Post-and-Mail, there are risks. What if you forget to email one of the tenants? What if their power is out? What if they lost their internet and dropped their phone in the toilet? What if you got one letter or digit wrong in the email address, but because that address belongs to someone out there in the world, you’re never notified that it wasn’t delivered?
The biggest reason Landlords lose in eviction court or must re-serve a notice is due to “imperfect service.” Despite all our articles and classes and helplines, folks still mess this up more than anything else and it’s a bad thing to mess up! A tenant attorney would be happy to educate you for an exorbitant fee – this is called Higher Education. We don’t recommend it for the casual landlord, however, if you wish to pursue this method of service, we have created an Agreement to Exchange Notice by Email and Mail (Form O17) for this purpose.
This new method of service created a need to address our service boxes on forms, and the Forms Committee presented the board with three options:
1. Do nothing and discourage email-and-mail service.
2. Add Email-and-Mail as a fourth option.
3. Change the service box to allow for only two options – First Class Mail and Other.
The ORHA Board voted unanimously for option 3 for the reasons iterated above.
First Class Mail (with 4 days added to account for mailing time) is ALWAYS the most secure way to serve a legal notice – ask any landlord-tenant attorney, so why give our members another way to mess up? Instead, we encourage you to serve all notices by First Class Mail, and if you want to do it another way AND you know what you’re doing, you can fill in the “Other” method of service.
There is one exception in the 24-Hour Notice to Enter (Form #O4). Because Actual Notice (outlined in ORS 90.150) is allowed for specific types of notifications such as notice to enter, the service box in that one form contains the allowance to Post on the Main Entrance. Thanks to Cliff Connor-Coash for bringing that to our attention!
New City of Eugene Rules and Forms
Since our Forms Manual was last published the Eugene City Council has enacted Phase 2 of their ill-advised “renter protections.”
Phase 1 became effective on August 13, 2022, and requires that prior to entering a tenancy the landlord provide to the tenant photos (taken no more than 30 days prior to the tenancy beginning) and a written report documenting the condition of the unit and get written acknowledgement that they were received. Additionally, at the time of move in, the landlord must provide the Tenant Education Information handout to all renters.
Phase 2 became effective on August 24, 2023, and added more requirements and restrictions:
- A limit of $10 for screening.
- Limits on allowable security deposits.
- Screening first-come, first-served.
- Special allowances and disclosures in screening for non-English proficient applicants.
- Required payment of relocation assistance of two months’ rent for any termination of tenancy for no-cause or for a qualifying landlord reason, unless exempt.
- Specific and limited timelines for claiming exemptions.
- Specific methods for notifying tenants in original leases of less than one year about their right to renew.
- Limits on rent increases.
- Reporting requirements to the city for any relocation payment, as well as filing of exemptions, termination notices and reporting of evictions.
- Painful penalties for failing to comply.
Phase 3 recommendations include:
- Prohibit denial of applicants for credit defaults related to medical or education debt, and limit screening for minimum credit score.
- Loosen minimum monthly gross income screening standards to no greater than twice the monthly rent.
- Local moratorium on no-cause evictions.
If you are a Eugene landlord subject to the Code, you must proceed with extraordinary caution and educate yourself on the intricacies of the new requirements or you could pay a very high price. You can learn more about the requirements at https://www.eugene-or.gov/845/Rental-Housing-Program.
Also, while some forms are provided by the city, termination forms are not. The Forms Committee has created the following city of Eugene-compliant forms:
Other form changes
- With the City of Eugene’s change regarding rent increases that somewhat aligns with the previously enacted rules in the City of Portland, we decided to add disclosure language for both cities to the state Notice of Rent Increase (Form O1) and remove the Portland Rent Increase Notice (Form O1PD). In both cities, if you do not increase rent to the maximum allowable amount, you are free from having to pay relocation expenses.
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Also, we had not provided city-compliant forms to mirror ORHA’s Notice of Termination Two-Unit, Owner-Occupied Property – form T7. In addition to providing this form to allow Eugene landlords to terminate if they meet the exception, the same form is now available for the city of Portland. Use Notice of Termination – Two-Unit, Owner-Occupied Property - form T7PD. (Landlords with properties inside the urban growth boundary of either Eugene or Portland must provide at least 90 days written notice even though state law allows for less and the form reminds landlords that they must include specific disclosures and pay relocation fees, unless exempt.)
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Thanks to the sharp eye of Legislative Director Jason Miller and attorney Mark Busch, we were notified of some deficiencies in our 24-Hour Notice for Harm or Substantial Damage (Form T2), so that form has been revised to be more exact and compliant with ORS 90.396.
The Forms Committee is always eager to hear your suggestions for new forms and changes to our existing forms. While we can’t guarantee your request will be voted up by the committee or the board, we have received a lot of great feedback over the years from our members. You can continue to send your suggestions to
forms@oregonrentalhousing.com.
DISCLAIMER: The Oregon Rental Housing Association (ORHA) is a non-profit educational landlord association – ORHA Board Members, Mentors, Staff, Contractors, and/or other related ORHA affiliates do not give legal advice. Please be advised that this posting is no substitute for professional legal counsel or legal advice and any advice or guidance does not constitute legal advice. Please consult an attorney for legal advice related to your specific situation.
