A couple managed to get away without paying rent for six years, saving a whopping $556,000.

A New York couple have saved over $500,000 by not paying rent on their Chelsea apartment for the past six years, and now, thanks to a legal loophole they may not have to pay a cent back.

Digital content producers Zachary Bennett and Karen Nourse are now using a bizarre law to prove they shouldn’t have to repay the rent to their landlord, the New York Post reports.

According to documents revealed in the lawsuit made against them, the couple stopped making the $6504 ($US4,754.02) monthly payments on the West 26th Street loft in 2010.

Their landlord claims they owe $556,611 ($US410,000) in rent and electric charges.

However, Mr Bennett and Ms Nourse claim that because the building doesn’t have a residential certificate of occupancy they shouldn’t have to pay any rent.

According to their lawyer, Margaret Sandercock, the building does not comply with the ‘Loft Law’.

“The owner is not entitled to collect rent and my clients are not required to pay rent,” she said.

So what is the Loft Law? Well, it’s designed to protect people whose apartments are in mostly commercial or industrial buildings.

It also only applies to buildings with at least three residential tenants — but Bennett and Nourse are the only non-commercial tenants in the nine-story building.

Before the pair ceased paying rent they were month-to-month tenants until June 2010, when the state of New York expanded the Loft Law.

Ms Sandercock said that at the time the law was changed, there were other residential tenants living there, but because they had not remained the landlord should have applied for a new document in order to legally rent the apartment to individuals and families.

“For the building to be safe and legal for them to live in, the law requires the landlord to have a residential certificate of occupancy,” she said.

She said her clients were therefore, “entitled” to live there rent free.

The landlord’s lawyer Harry Shapiro told The Post the landlord did not want to evict the couple, who have two children.

“They can stay if they pay,” he said.

“The unit is legal … We really don’t want to evict them. We just want them to pay the rent.

“They’re getting all the services but the landlord got zippo.”