Is There a Statute of Limitations on Foreclosure in New York? The 6 Year Rule, Explained for Long Island Homeowners (2026)

Is there a statute of limitations on foreclosure in New York?

Yes. In New York a lender has six years to bring a foreclosure action. The rule is CPLR 213(4), which covers any action on a note secured by a mortgage on real property, or on the mortgage itself. If the lender sues after the six years has expired and the homeowner raises the defense, the court can dismiss the case.

That is the short version, and it is accurate. The longer version is where people get hurt, because almost everyone counts the six years from the wrong date. I hear it constantly: "I have not paid since 2017, so they are out of time." Sometimes that is right. Often it is not, because the missed payment is not what starts the clock on the full balance.

New York is a judicial foreclosure state, so every foreclosure is a lawsuit in the Supreme Court of the county where the house sits. For a Long Island home that means Mineola for Nassau County and Riverhead for Suffolk County. The six year question comes down to one thing: on what date could the lender first have sued for the money it is now suing for? Everything below is about finding that date.

When does the six year clock start on a New York mortgage?

The six year clock starts in one of three ways. Each missed monthly payment starts its own six years for that payment. Acceleration of the loan starts six years on the entire balance. And if the loan was never accelerated, the maturity date starts six years on whatever is still owed.

The New York Court of Appeals laid out the first two rules in Freedom Mortgage Corp. v. Engel in 2021: a cause of action accrues for each installment when it is missed, and a cause of action for the whole debt accrues when the loan is accelerated. Acceleration takes a clear, unequivocal act. Filing a foreclosure complaint that demands the full balance is the usual one. A default letter warning that the lender "will accelerate" if you do not catch up is not acceleration, because it only describes something that may happen later.

Here is why this matters in real numbers. Say a homeowner stopped paying in January 2017 and the lender filed a foreclosure in March 2018. The six years on the full balance runs from March 2018, not January 2017, so it would expire in March 2024, subject to any time that legally does not count. If the lender never accelerated at all, it is not barred from suing today. It has simply lost the right to collect the installments that came due more than six years ago.

Some time is excluded from the count. Under CPLR 204(a), a period when the lender was legally barred from suing, such as a bankruptcy stay, is not part of the six years. The 2020 pandemic executive orders are generally treated the same way by New York courts. So the real expiration date is rarely exactly six years to the day, and it has to be calculated from the actual court file.

Can the bank restart the clock by dropping the foreclosure and filing again?

No. Since December 30, 2022, a lender cannot restart the six year clock by discontinuing its own foreclosure. CPLR 3217(e) says a voluntary discontinuance does not waive, postpone, cancel, toll, extend, revive or reset the limitations period, and CPLR 203(h) bars any party from unilaterally resetting the clock once the claim has accrued.

That was not always the law. In the 2021 Engel decision, the Court of Appeals held that when a lender voluntarily dropped a foreclosure, the withdrawal undid the acceleration. In practice a lender whose case was falling apart could discontinue, wait, and come back years later with a fresh six years. Homeowners were stuck in limbo for a decade or more with a case that never ended.

The Legislature answered with the Foreclosure Abuse Prevention Act, signed on December 30, 2022. Along with the two provisions above, it added CPLR 213(4)(a), which stops a lender from arguing that its own earlier acceleration was invalid unless a court actually ruled that way in the first case. It also added CPLR 205-a, which allows at most one six month extension to refile after a dismissal, and none at all when the first case was voluntarily discontinued or thrown out for neglect.

The result is simple to state. If a lender accelerated your loan by suing you, the clock on the full balance has been running since that filing, no matter what happened to the lawsuit afterward.

What did the Court of Appeals decide about FAPA in November 2025?

On November 25, 2025, the New York Court of Appeals unanimously held that the Foreclosure Abuse Prevention Act applies retroactively and is constitutional. It covers any foreclosure in which a final judgment of foreclosure and sale had not been enforced when the law took effect, including cases filed long before 2022.

There were two decisions that day. In Article 13 LLC v. Ponce De Leon Federal Bank, the court answered questions sent to it by the federal Second Circuit and found no due process violation in applying the law to older cases. In Van Dyke v. U.S. Bank, the facts followed a pattern any Long Island homeowner from that era will recognize. The loan was made in 2007. The borrower defaulted in 2009, and a foreclosure was filed that October. The case then sat for more than 13 years before the lender voluntarily discontinued it in March 2022. The homeowner sued to quiet title. The court held the lender could not disown its 2009 acceleration, more than six years had passed, and the mortgage was cancelled and discharged.

For three years lenders had argued that the 2022 law could not constitutionally reach back to old cases. That argument is over in the New York courts. If your loan was accelerated by a foreclosure filed more than six years ago and the house has not been sold at auction, the statute of limitations deserves a serious look.

Can a lender foreclose on an old second mortgage I have not paid in 10 or 15 years?

Sometimes, yes. A second mortgage follows the same six year rule, but if the lender never accelerated the loan, only the payments that came due more than six years ago are time-barred. The lender can still sue for the more recent installments and for the balance, which is why "zombie" second mortgages keep coming back.

This is the hard truth about the old second mortgage that went quiet after 2008. Silence is not acceleration. Many of these lenders stopped sending statements, never sued, and sold the loan to a debt buyer. Because nobody ever demanded the full balance, the six year clock on the full balance never started. A 30 year second mortgage signed in 2006 runs until 2036, and every month a new installment comes due with its own six years.

There are two situations where the homeowner has a strong position. The first is when the second mortgage lender did accelerate years ago, by filing its own foreclosure or sending a letter that actually demanded the full balance, and then did nothing for more than six years. The second is the balloon loan. Many second mortgages written between 2005 and 2007 were 15 year balloons, which matured between 2020 and 2022. On those, the six years on the final balance runs from the maturity date, which puts the deadline somewhere between 2026 and 2028. If you get a foreclosure threat on one of these, the dates on the note are the first thing to pull.

Either way, the amount a debt buyer claims is often inflated with interest it can no longer collect. That is real leverage in a settlement even when the loan itself is still alive.

What restarts the statute of limitations on a mortgage in New York?

Two things can restart the six years, and both are things the homeowner does. A written and signed acknowledgment of the debt or promise to pay restarts the clock under General Obligations Law 17-105. A payment on the loan can restart it from the date of payment under General Obligations Law 17-107.

Notice what is not on that list. The lender cannot restart the clock on its own, by sending a letter, by "de-accelerating," or by discontinuing a lawsuit. After the 2022 law, the only resets left are the ones that carry your signature or your money.

That is exactly why a debt collector on a very old loan will ask for a small "good faith" payment or send a short agreement to sign before it will "discuss options." I am not telling you never to modify a loan. A modification that keeps you in the house at a payment you can afford is often the right result, and it legitimately restarts the clock as part of the deal. I am telling you not to pay or sign anything on a loan that may already be time-barred until someone has checked the dates. One $200 payment can cost you a complete defense.

How do I use the statute of limitations to fight a foreclosure?

This is a process, and the order matters.

I cannot tell you from an article whether your loan is time-barred. That takes the actual documents and the actual dates. What I can tell you is that this is one of the few foreclosure defenses that can end the case for good instead of delaying it.

How do I get a time-barred mortgage removed from my property?

This is the piece most homeowners never hear about. An expired mortgage does not fall off the land records on its own. It sits there as a lien, and it will come up the day you try to sell or refinance. A quiet title action asks the Supreme Court to order the county clerk to cancel it. Under CPLR 213(4)(b), the lender defending that action cannot claim its own earlier acceleration was invalid unless a court said so in the earlier case. That is the rule that decided Van Dyke.