The Landlord Atlas Dataset

Everything this site publishes about state landlord-tenant law is generated from one dataset: 50 states × 12 topics, with 56 local rent-regulation records, as versioned JSON. Every substantive claim is traced to a statute citation and stamped with the date it was last verified against the official source.

Current release

Every record carries its own verified date. A full pass over all 50 states runs quarterly, and individual topics are re-verified in between as laws change. Separately, the statute pages the dataset cites are checked each week for changes to their text, apart from a small share published only on sites whose terms do not allow automated checks. That weekly check is a watch, not a re-verification: a verified date moves only after the source is re-read (what "verified" means).

Free state sample

Pick a state and download its full record from the current release: all 12 topics, with the citations, verified dates and notes exactly as licensees receive them. The file is for evaluation use under the Landlord Atlas Data License.

That request did not go through. Check the email address, the organization and the state, and try again. If it keeps failing, email [email protected] with the state you want and we will send the file.

License the full dataset

A license delivers all 50 state records, the local rent-regulation records, the metro lookup and every release as it is published, with the machine-readable changelog.

What each license covers, and the terms, are on the license page.

Delivery

Licensees download the current release from a private address on this site, using the license key that comes with the license. Every release is delivered as JSON files:

• Bulk file (landlord-atlas.json): all 50 state records, the local records and the metro lookup together
• State files (ca.json, tx.json, ny.json and so on): one file per state, named by postal code
• Local records (localities.json): the 56 local rent-regulation records
• Metro lookup (metros.json): the 50 metropolitan areas with the most renter households

Each new release is available the day it is published. Connection details for your engineers come with the key.

Public files

Four files describe the dataset and are open to everyone, always current.

Releases are explicit: the version and publish timestamp are set when a release is cut and verified live, never computed by a build, so /data/version.json always says what is live as of when. A change to any legal figure always means a new version.

What's in a record

Each state record covers the 12 topics (security deposits, rent increase notice, late fees, landlord entry notice, eviction process, mobile home parks, application and screening fees, security-deposit interest, habitability and repairs, lease termination and early termination, lease disclosures and required lease terms, pets and assistance animals) field-by-field: statutory figures as typed values (integers, booleans, or explicit null where the state has no statute — a verified fact, not missing data), rule text in plain language, per-topic citations with official-source flags, plain-language summaries, labeled caveat notes, and verification dates. Each record also states the state's preemption posture for local rent regulation — preempted, not preempted, or no express statute, with a qualifier where the posture is conditioned — cited to statute and carrying its own verification date. Where local regulation operates, the dataset also carries locality records — city and county ordinances, state frameworks such as Connecticut's fair rent commissions and New York's opt-in stabilization system, the District of Columbia's own rent stabilization law, and localities widely but wrongly claimed to regulate rents — each with its rent cap, coverage, vacancy and registration rules, and every current published figure stated with the period it applies to and the official source that published it. Every export wraps the record in a _meta block carrying the dataset version, publish timestamp, license, attribution, disclaimer, and the state's canonical page — so a record separated from its file still names its provenance.

Recent releases

• Version 1.60.0 · October 9, 2026 — The District of Columbia's permanent budget act is law; Maine's total-price sanction confirmed; Oklahoma citations move to the Legislature's section files; four states' federal-notice entries re-read
• Version 1.59.0 · October 8, 2026 — New Hampshire's new eviction timetable is in force; Minnesota's duty to re-rent after abandonment corrected; Santa Barbara adopts permanent rent stabilization; 115 city-record citations added beside code-library links
• Version 1.58.0 · October 5, 2026 — Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi and Tennessee: the statements that rest on text only the code prints are now listed one by one, each with the date it was last verified
• Version 1.57.0 · October 2, 2026 — Oxnard: the fair return process corrected against the City Council's adopted regulations
• Version 1.56.0 · October 2, 2026 — Twelve city and county pages read against the ordinances their councils adopted: corrections in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York City, Culver City, Philadelphia, Albuquerque, Oxnard, Boston and Sacramento, and to California's assistance-animal citations

Field-level detail for every change (which states, which topics, what moved) is in the machine-readable changelog.json. Human-readable change alerts are also the subject of the Law Alerts newsletter.

How the data is verified

Cited sources last checked for changes: October 9, 2026. Cited statute pages are checked weekly for changes to their text, and tracked legislation is monitored on the same schedule. A small share of cited pages (about 200 of 5,700) is published only on sites whose terms do not allow automated checks; those pages are outside the weekly check. A detected change is then verified against the enacted text before any record is updated, and published to the changelog.

Direct reads of official statute text, per-claim citations, explicit treatment of statutory silence, and a logged change history — the full procedure is on the methodology page. The dataset is maintained on a standing cadence; it is not a one-time scrape.

Why maintenance cadence matters in this field: our August 2026 four-state accuracy review of two widely read landlord law reference sites found that neither reflected any of four recent statutory changes. The 50-state rent control preemption map shows what the dataset's preemption layer looks like tabulated.