Arkansas Landlord-Tenant Laws

Verified July 10, 2026

Measure that did not become law. The following recent proposal failed and is not law — noted here because failed bills are sometimes still described as if enacted:

SB 501 (2025 RS) — 'Tenant Possessions Recovery Act' — Would have required a landlord to give a tenant at least 14 days' written notice before the scheduled repossession date after a court issues a writ of possession, and created a process for tenants to recover personal possessions left behind. Adjacent to, rather than within, the deposit, rent-increase, late-fee, entry and eviction topics covered here, but it was the session's principal tenant-side bill.Status: Dead. Filed 2025-03-18, amended and re-referred to Senate Judiciary 2025-03-20, died in committee at the 2025-05-05 sine die adjournment. The 2026 fiscal session was appropriations-only; watch for a refile in the 2027 regular session (Arkansas holds regular sessions in odd years). (checked 2026-07-10).

Arkansas at a glance

Rule	Arkansas	Cited to
Max security deposit	2 months' rent	A.C.A. § 18-16-303 (Exemptions — the applicability trap; unamended since Acts 1979, No. 531) +5 more
Deposit return deadline	60 days	A.C.A. § 18-16-303 (Exemptions — the applicability trap; unamended since Acts 1979, No. 531) +5 more
Rent-increase notice (month-to-month)	No statute — derived from termination notice	A.C.A. § 18-17-704 (Periodic tenancy — Holdover remedies; source of the month-to-month and week-to-week termination derivation; unamended since Acts 2007, No. 1004) +3 more
Statewide rent control / rent cap	No	A.C.A. § 18-17-704 (Periodic tenancy — Holdover remedies; source of the month-to-month and week-to-week termination derivation; unamended since Acts 2007, No. 1004) +3 more
Late-fee cap	No statutory cap	A.C.A. § 18-17-401 (rent payable without demand or notice at the time and place agreed) +2 more
Entry notice	No fixed statutory period	A.C.A. § 18-17-602 (Access; unamended since Acts 2007, No. 1004) +2 more
Eviction notice (nonpayment)	3 days	Ark. Acts 2017, No. 159 (SB25) (enrolled act amending Ark. Code Ann. 18-16-101; approved 02/13/2017) +53 more

Cite this page: "Landlord Atlas, Arkansas Landlord-Tenant Laws (verified July 10, 2026), landlordatlas.com/laws/arkansas/" — free to cite and quote with a link (how these records are verified). Every figure above is cited to the Arkansas statute it comes from on the linked topic page.

Local rent regulation in Arkansas

Cities and counties in Arkansas cannot regulate the amount charged for rent, rental application fees, or rental deposits on private residential or commercial property — state law preempts all three, leaving only the state's own deposit-cap law and housing the local government itself owns (Ark. Code Ann. §§ 14-16-601, 14-54-1409).

Cited to Ark. Code Ann. § 14-16-601, as amended by Act 459 of 2025 (official session law, eff. 2025-08-05) , Ark. Code Ann. § 14-54-1409 (municipal parallel, same act) · Verified August 12, 2026 · Full Arkansas rent-increase rules →

Arkansas Security deposits

Arkansas caps security deposits at two months' rent and requires return — or an itemized written notice of deductions plus the balance — within 60 days of the tenancy ending, but none of it applies to the state's smallest landlords: the entire deposit law exempts an individual owner whose household and rental entities collectively own five or fewer dwelling units, unless a third party manages the units (even just collecting rent) for a fee.

Full rules, fact table & statute citations →

Arkansas Rent increase notice

Arkansas has no statute requiring advance notice of a rent increase, no limit on how large an increase can be, and no limit on how often rent can rise.

Full rules, fact table & statute citations →

Arkansas Late fees

Arkansas sets no cap on residential late fees and mandates no grace period — the fee is whatever the lease provides, policed only by the general contract-law rule against penalty clauses.

Full rules, fact table & statute citations →

Arkansas Entry notice

Arkansas requires no advance notice — not 24 hours, not 'reasonable notice,' nothing — before a landlord enters a rental unit: the state's access statute simply forbids the tenant from unreasonably withholding consent to entry for inspections, repairs, services, showings, or investigations of suspected lease violations or criminal activity.

Full rules, fact table & statute citations →

Arkansas Eviction process

To evict a tenant in Arkansas for unpaid rent, a landlord serves a written three-day notice to quit and demand for possession, then files an unlawful detainer suit in circuit court, where the tenant has five days - excluding Sundays and legal holidays - after service to file a written objection or the clerk issues a writ of possession and the sheriff removes the tenant.

Full rules, fact table & statute citations →

Arkansas mobile home park laws

Arkansas has no manufactured-home community tenancy act, so a resident who owns the home and rents the lot gets no statutory notice before a lot-rent increase, no limit on how much or how often the rent rises, no cause requirement before the tenancy ends, no closure notice and no right to be told the community is for sale.

Lot-rent, closure, park-sale and home-sale rules with statute citations →

Arkansas Fair Market Rents (FY 2026) — HUD's benchmark rents for every Arkansas metro area and county.

How this record was verified: Arkansas's official code is published via a LexisNexis portal without stable deep links (GA/TN-class sourcing), so verification pairs two independent current-code mirrors with official arkleg.state.ar.us session-law PDFs: every section that carries an answer here (A.C.A. 18-16-303, 18-16-304, 18-16-305, 18-16-306, 18-17-201, 18-17-202, 18-17-401, 18-17-602, 18-17-704, 18-17-705, 14-16-601) was read verbatim on FindLaw (current through 2024-03-28) and independently re-read on the Justia 2024 Arkansas Code edition , with all reads matching; chapter 18-17 was additionally read in FULL from a mirrored chapter PDF for negative checks (no late-fee, rent-increase, or entry-notice provision exists). Every amendment was traced to the official act text read from arkleg PDFs: Act 559 of 2009 (deposit return 30->60 days; 18-17-501 rewritten to defer to 18-16-301 et seq.), Act 1052 of 2021 (18-17-502 habitability, context), and Act 459 of 2025 (preemption expanded to application fees and deposits). Corroborated against the Arkansas Attorney General's landlord-tenant page (official state source) and Legal Aid of Arkansas. 2025 regular session swept for landlord-tenant acts (only Act 459 touches a figure shown here; SB 501 died in committee 2025-05-05 per the official arkleg bill page); the 2026 fiscal session was appropriations-only.