What can a landlord do with a tenant’s belongings left behind in Hawaii?

In Hawaii, when a tenant has wrongfully quit, left under a notice to quit or at the end of the term, and abandoned belongings the landlord in good faith determines to be of value, the landlord may store them at the tenant’s expense, or sell or donate them only after mailing notice to the tenant and waiting fifteen days after the mailing, with any sale advertised in a daily paper for at least three consecutive days. Before selling or donating, the landlord must make reasonable efforts to tell the tenant what the belongings are, where they are and that the landlord intends to sell or donate them, by mailing notice to the tenant’s forwarding address, an address the tenant designated for notices, or, if neither is available, the tenant’s previous known address. Any sale must be commercially reasonable, and the proceeds, after deducting accrued rent and the costs of storage, sale and advertising, are held in trust for the tenant for thirty days and then forfeited to the landlord. Belongings left unsold after that procedure, or determined by the landlord to be of no value, may be disposed of at the landlord’s discretion without liability. This is Haw. Rev. Stat. § 521-56.

WhatHawaii
Belongings left behindMail notice, then sell or donate after 15 days
What the statute requires firstNotice, a waiting period or storage before disposal

What the statute says

“… provided that such sale or donation shall not take place until fifteen days after notice is mailed, after which the tenant is deemed to have received notice.”

Quoted word for word from the section’s text.

Source

Haw. Rev. Stat. § 521-56

Read the statute in the Hawaii Revised Statutes (Hawaii State Legislature): capitol.hawaii.gov.

Checked against the statute on November 15, 2026.

This is a summary of a published statute, not legal advice. Rules change, local ordinances can add to them, and the terms of a specific lease may differ. Check the citation and speak to a lawyer before acting.

How Seayora uses this rule

Seayora keeps a lease’s end date and every notice sent through it, with the date it went out, in the lease record — so the dates a rule like this one counts from are on file rather than remembered.

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