quiet enjoyment

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Quiet enjoyment is the right to inhabit or use certain property without disturbance. This term is most frequently used in property law, where the right to quiet enjoyment protects tenants from intrusions and guarantees certain basic necessities of a home. Moreover, in states such as California, quiet enjoyment protects tenants from not only landlords personally, but neighbors under the landlord as well. 

There is an implied covenant of quiet enjoyment in leases and states generally have their own statutes codifying these protections. For example, under the California Civil Code, an agreement to hire property also secures the hirer the quiet possession of the property against all persons lawfully claiming the property.  Furthermore, a landlord may not, for the purposes of forcing a tenant from the premise, engage in conduct that is menacing or significantly interferes with the tenant's purpose of leasing the premise. Significant interference generally encompasses more than denial of access or possession to the premises. For example, in New Hampshire, where partial access to a commercial lessee's property was blocked due to the landlord's construction, it is deemed to be a breach of quiet enjoyment because the denial of access, even partial, was significant enough to deprive the lessee's beneficial use of the premise. 

There is a distinction between quiet enjoyment and warranty of habitability, the latter which protects tenants from defects in a premise that make it unfit for living. 

[Last updated in April of 2022 by the Wex Definitions Team]