Connecticut Landlord-Tenant Laws

Verified July 10, 2026

Check your municipality. Connecticut does not preempt local rent regulation — city or county ordinances may impose rent caps, notice rules, and fee limits that are stricter than the state-level rules on this page and are not covered here. Verify your municipality's ordinances before relying on any figure below.

What the state record says

No statewide rent cap or stabilization formula. Connecticut instead MANDATES local rent oversight: under Conn. Gen. Stat. 7-148b (as amended by Nov. Sp. Sess. P.A. 25-1, eff. 2026-01-01), every municipality with a population of 15,000 or more MUST maintain a fair rent commission (or join a joint or regional one), and any smaller municipality MAY create one. Commissions receive complaints about rents and 'rental charges' (including any fee on top of rent), and may roll a rent back to a fair and equitable level if, weighing the 13 factors in 7-148c (comparable rents, condition, services, repairs, taxes and debt service, code compliance, tenant income, amount and frequency of increases, reinvestment), it is 'so excessive ... as to be harsh and unconscionable' (7-148c, 7-148d). They can also suspend rent into escrow for health/safety violations and order landlords to stop retaliating against complainants; violations of commission orders draw fines of $25-$100 per offense, with each day beyond five a fresh offense (7-148d, 7-148f). Newly covered municipalities (15,000-24,999) have until January 1, 2028 to adopt the ordinance; commissions existing before 2026 cannot be abolished before then. The original mandate (25,000+, deadline July 1, 2023) came from P.A. 22-30. Separately, using rent-setting algorithms that compute on nonpublic competitor data is an unfair trade practice as of January 1, 2026 (47a-4f).

Pending legislation — not yet law. The rules on this page reflect current law only. The following bill would change it if enacted:

SB 218 (2026) — Public Act 26-79, Section 3 — Enacted but NOT yet effective. Amends Conn. Gen. Stat. 47a-21(j)(1) so that the Banking Commissioner, on finding a security-deposit violation within the commissioner's jurisdiction (deposit-amount cap, return/itemization duties, escrow duties, or interest duties), may order the landlord to PAY A CIVIL PENALTY under Conn. Gen. Stat. 36a-50 (up to $100,000 per violation) in addition to the existing cease-and-desist and compliance orders. Adds real administrative teeth to the deposit rules; incorporate into security_deposits penalty_for_violation on the first verification pass after the effective date.Status: Passed Senate 2026-04-15 and House 2026-05-05, signed by the governor 2026-05-27 as Public Act 26-79; Section 3 effective October 1, 2026. (checked 2026-07-10).

Connecticut Security deposits

Connecticut caps residential security deposits at two months' rent — one month's rent if the tenant is 62 or older — and requires the deposit to be returned within 21 days after the tenancy ends or 15 days after the landlord receives the tenant's forwarding address in writing, whichever is later.

Full rules, fact table & statute citations →

Connecticut Rent increase notice

Connecticut has no statute requiring a set number of days' notice before a rent increase — but it is the only state that MANDATES local fair rent commissions, which since January 1, 2026 every municipality of 15,000 or more people must maintain and which can roll back any rent or proposed increase found 'harsh and unconscionable.' For ordinary month-to-month tenants, state law fixes no advance-notice period and no cap; the only statutory notice in the area is the 3-day notice to quit, which is an eviction document, not a rent-increase notice.

Full rules, fact table & statute citations →

Connecticut Late fees

Connecticut gives every residential tenant a statutory 9-day grace period for monthly rent (4 days for week-to-week tenancies) and caps late fees at the lesser of $5 per day up to $50 total, or 5% of the delinquent rent payment.

Full rules, fact table & statute citations →

Connecticut Entry notice

Connecticut landlords must give reasonable written or oral notice before entering a rental unit and may enter only at reasonable times — the statute sets no fixed hour count, so charts claiming a 24- or 48-hour Connecticut rule are wrong.

Full rules, fact table & statute citations →

How this record was verified: Direct read of statute text on the official Connecticut General Assembly site (cga.ct.gov): chapters 830, 831, 832 and 98 downloaded in full from the current-revision pages AND from the 2026 Supplement (revised to January 1, 2026), which carries the 2025-session amendments to Conn. Gen. Stat. 47a-15a, 47a-21, 47a-23 and 7-148b — the supplement text is the operative text used here. Every load-bearing number was read at least twice in independent documents: the 2-month/1-month deposit caps, 21-day/15-day return deadline, double-deposit penalty, deposit-index interest rule, 9-day/4-day grace periods, $5-per-day/$50/5%-of-delinquent-payment late-fee cap, and the reasonable-notice entry standard were each confirmed verbatim on both the official pages and the Justia 2024-edition mirror (fetched raw); the 2025 changes (fair-rent-commission threshold 25,000 to 15,000, +5-day online-payment-outage grace extension, rent-algorithm ban) were confirmed in both the 2026 Supplement and the enrolled November Special Session Public Act 25-1 (HB 8002) PDF on cga.ct.gov; the 30-to-21-day deposit-deadline change and late-fee cap were traced to PA 23-207 sections 8, 38 and 39 (effective 2023-10-01) in the enrolled act PDF. The 2026 security-deposit interest rate (0.49% deposit index) was double-read on two official Department of Banking pages. 2026-session sweep: PA 26-79 section 3 (SB 218) read in the enrolled PDF and flagged as pending (effective 2026-10-01); bill-status pages read for HB 5092, HB 5359, SB 257 and SB 274, all of which died at the 2026-05-06 adjournment.