Appendix A State Landlord-tenant Law Charts

• Library: Every Landlord's Legal Guide (Nolo) (2022 Ed.)

APPENDIX A State Landlord-Tenant Law Charts

State Landlord-Tenant Statutes

State Landlord-Tenant Exemption Statutes

State Rent Rules

State Rent Control Laws

State Laws on Attorneys' Fees and Court Costs Clauses

State Rules on Notice Required to Change or Terminate a Month-to-Month Tenancy

State Security Deposit Rules

Required Landlord Disclosures

State Laws in Domestic Violence Situations

State Laws on Rent Withholding and Repair and Deduct Remedies

State Laws on Landlord's Access to Rental Property

State Laws on Handling Abandoned Property

State Laws Prohibiting Landlord Retaliation

State Laws on Termination for Nonpayment of Rent

State Laws on Termination for Violation of Lease

State Laws on Unconditional Quit Terminations

Small Claims Court Limits

Landlord's Duty to Rerent

Consequences of Self-Help Evictions

How to Use the State Landlord-Tenant Law Charts

The State Landlord-Tenant Law Charts are comprehensive, 50-state charts that give you two kinds of information:

• citations for key statutes and cases, which you can use if you want to read the law yourself or look for more information (see the legal research discussion in Chapter 18), and
• the state rules themselves, such as notice periods and deposit limits—in other words, what the statutes and cases say.

When you're looking for information for your state, simply find your state along the left-hand list on the chart, and read to the right—you'll see the statute or case, and the rule.

COVID-19-Related Emergency Laws and Orders Might Affect These Statutes

Federal, state and local governments have all passed emergency laws and orders in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of these laws affect the landlord-tenant relationship by addressing issues such as evictions, late rent fees, and tenant screening.
Emergency laws passed by the federal government (such as the CARES Act and the now-overturned Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's eviction moratorium) apply to landlords and tenants in all states. Along with federal laws, landlords and tenants must also follow the laws, orders, and regulations that apply in the state (and city or county) where their rental is located. Each state is handling the situation differently. In some states, governors are issuing emergency orders, while in others the state court or the state legislature (or a combination of any of these branches of government) are creating emergency rules.
As this book went to press, these COVID-inspired laws, regulations, and orders were changing daily. Printing in these charts what we know today would be misleading to you when you refer to the chart tomorrow. That's because even when you have a starting point (the first instance of the law or order), it can be very difficult to pin down the most recent version. For example, a governor might have issued an emergency order on April 1, 2020 that laid out details about when landlords can and cannot charge late fees for unpaid rent. However, that April 1, 2020 order might have been amended in October 2021. Most of the time, when you look at the April 1, 2020 order online, there is no indication that it has been amended or repealed.
Because of the rapidly changing nature of these COVID-19-related laws, there's no way we can accurately and fully address how they affect the charts we provide here in Appendix A. However, we can provide you with some tips and hints about how to find COVID-19-related emergency laws that might apply to your situation:

• Start by going to Nolo's article, Emergency Bans on Evictions and Other Protections Related to Coronavirus, for state-by-state information on state responses, particularly in regards to evictions (type the article's name into the search box on the home page, or go directly to www.nolo.com/evictions-ban).
• Go to your state's designated COVID-19 website. Every state has one, and you can find it by searching the internet for your state's name and "official COVID-19 website." From this page, you might be able to access quite a few official COVID-19-related emergency rules and regulations.
• Read your state's emergency declaration. Nearly every state has declared a state of emergency due to the pandemic. As of press time, many—but not all—states have ended their state of emergency, so you'll need to check your state's current status. Even if a declaration doesn't address landlord-tenant matters, it can provide a launching point for additional research. Most states' emergency declarations can be found on the state's official COVID-19 website or on the governor's official website.
• Visit your state governor's official website. Governors' executive orders are the most likely source of regulations that will apply to the landlord-tenant relationship. Look for "emergency orders" or "executive orders." If your state governor's website has a separate category for COVID-19-related orders, look there first for applicable orders. Regardless, to find relevant orders you should also use the website's search function to search for terms such as "rent," "landlord," "tenant," "evict," and "renter." Be creative with the terms you search for; not all states use the same terminology.

Be warned: Many titles of executive orders consist of only a number or date when they were issued—the titles usually do not contain other information about the topic or substance of the order. Also, many executive orders are amended, extended, or repealed by subsequent orders that refer to the original order by nothing more than the original order's number or date—which means that a search of a keyword such as "rent" might not help in finding all the relevant orders. You might have to read through many orders to find any that apply to your situation.
It's helpful to find the very first order that addresses your situation, then read subsequent ones to learn the current status of the original order. If you're still having difficulty, try searching the Internet for your governor's name and the topic you're interested in—many times, this will reveal a press release or news report that will indicate the date when your governor issued the relevant order (and might give you a link to the order itself).

• Visit your state judicial branch's website. If the state's highest court has issued orders relating to COVID-19, the information will likely be linked from the judicial branch's home page. Often, a state's judicial branch will step in with landlord-tenant COVID-19 orders after being directed to do so by the governor. For example, at one point during the pandemic, Virginia's governor encouraged the state's highest court to extend the eviction moratorium, and the court issued an order doing so.
• Visit your state legislature's website. If your state's legislature has passed emergency COVID-19-related laws, you will most likely find them linked from the legislature's homepage. At press time, only a few states' legislatures have passed COVID-19 laws. However, the longer the pandemic drags on, the more likely it is that state legislatures will step in and pass more long-term COVID-19-related statutes.
• Search the Internet for news on the issue. Try searching for your exact question. Most search engines will recognize plain-language queries, and will display relevant results with dates. For example, if you're wondering whether landlords in your state can charge late fees during the pandemic, you could search for "Can landlords charge a late fee in [your state] during COVID-19?" Look for the most recent posts. Attorney blogs, legal aid websites, news outlet articles, landlord organizations' websites, and tenant rights' groups' websites often have the most accurate and up-to-date information. As with any Internet research project, be sure to evaluate whether the source of the information is a reputable one, and try to find a second or third source to confirm the content.

CAUTION

Rental property in Tennessee. In 2021, Tennessee enacted a law that replaces ("preempts") all local landlord-tenant laws with state law. It forbids localities from passing any legislation in the area of landlord-tenant law, even when the subject of the proposed legislation isn't covered by state law. The preemption law applies in all counties with populations of more than 75,000 as measured by the 2010 federal census. If you own rental property in a county where this law applies, any landlord-tenant laws passed by your town, city, or county might now be unenforceable. For more information, contact your town, city, or county government or a local landlord-tenant attorney.

State Landlord-Tenant Exemption Statutes
Your state's general landlord-tenant statutes (listed in the "State Landlord-Tenant Statutes" chart above) might not apply to all types of rentals and landlord-tenant relationships: Most states define what a rental is for purposes of the statutes. Other states might not define what a rental is, but instead exempt certain types of occupancies from the general landlord-tenant statutes. Some states do both. To check whether your state's general landlord-tenant statutes apply to your situation, review the statutes listed in the "State Landlord-Tenant Statutes" chart for any definition of what your state considers a rental. Next, you'll need to find out whether your situation falls within any exemptions from the general landlord-tenant statutes. This chart provides information about the exemptions that are most relevant to readers of this book. If your state does not have an exemption statute, you'll see "No statute" written in the Exemptions column.
State	Exemption Statute	Exemptions
Alabama	Ala. Code §§ 35-9A-122, 35-9A-601	1. Occupancy under a contract of sale of a dwelling unit or the property of which it is a part, if the occupant is the purchaser or a person who succeeds to the interest of the purchaser 2. occupancy by a member of a social organization in the portion of a structure operated for the benefit of the...