Connecticut Landlord-Tenant Laws

Verified July 10, 2026 Correction August 13, 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. Verified local pages: Connecticut municipalities , Stamford .

What the state record says

Connecticut has no statewide rent cap or stabilization formula. It instead mandates local rent oversight: every municipality of 15,000 or more must maintain a fair rent commission, and those commissions can roll a rent back to a fair and equitable level when it is harsh and unconscionable. The mandate is 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).

Legislative changes ahead — not yet in force. The rules on this page reflect the law in force today. The following measure would change it:

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. The penalty figures shown for security deposits do not yet reflect it.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 at a glance

Rule	Connecticut	Cited to
Max security deposit	2 months' rent	Conn. Gen. Stat. § 47a-21 +4 more
Deposit return deadline	21 days	Conn. Gen. Stat. § 47a-21 +4 more
Rent-increase notice (month-to-month)	No statute — derived from termination notice	Conn. Gen. Stat. §§ 7-148b to 7-148f (fair rent commissions; 15,000-population mandate) +5 more
Statewide rent control / rent cap	No	Conn. Gen. Stat. §§ 7-148b to 7-148f (fair rent commissions; 15,000-population mandate) +5 more
Late-fee cap	The cap is the lesser of (1) $5 per day up to a maximum of $50, or (2) 5% of the delinquent rent payment. No more than ONE late charge may be imposed per delinquent rent payment. Where a governmental or charitable entity pays part of the rent, the 5% arm is computed on the tenant's share only.	Conn. Gen. Stat. § 47a-15a (2026 Supplement text, as amended by Nov. Sp. Sess. P.A. 25-1 § 38) +3 more
Entry notice	No fixed statutory period	Conn. Gen. Stat. § 47a-16 +3 more
Eviction notice (nonpayment)	3 days	CGS 47a-15 +45 more

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

Local rent regulation in Connecticut

Connecticut has no statute barring local rent regulation; instead it expressly authorizes municipal fair rent commissions — and, since January 1, 2026, requires every municipality of 15,000 or more residents to create or join one — with power to hear complaints and roll back excessive rents. The mandate first applied to municipalities of 25,000 or more in July 2023; municipalities newly covered by the lower threshold have until January 1, 2028 to comply, and the commission may be the municipality's own, joint with neighboring towns, or regional.

Cited to Conn. Gen. Stat. § 7-148b (fair rent commissions — 2026 Supplement, as amended by Nov. Sp. Sess. P.A. 25-1, § 35) · Verified August 13, 2026 · Full Connecticut rent-increase rules →

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 →

Connecticut Eviction process

To evict a tenant in Connecticut a landlord serves a written notice to quit possession giving at least three days, then files a summary process case in Superior Court - but two things come first that catch most people out: for a lease violation a separate 15-day pre-termination notice under CGS 47a-15 must be served and allowed to expire before the notice to quit, and for nonpayment the notice to quit cannot be served until the tenant's nine-day statutory grace period under CGS 47a-15a has run (four days on a week-to-week tenancy, plus five more days if the landlord's own online rent payment system blocked the payment).

Full rules, fact table & statute citations →

Connecticut Application fees

Connecticut bans rental application fees outright and allows only one charge at the application stage: a tenant screening report fee of no more than $50, plus an inflation adjustment the Commissioner of Housing determines each year.

Full rules, fact table & statute citations →

Connecticut mobile home park laws

Connecticut's mobile manufactured home park law, chapter 412 of the General Statutes, covers a resident who owns the home and rents a lot in any park holding two or more homes: leases run at least a year, a lot-rent increase takes thirty days' written notice, an owner may end a tenancy only on five statutory grounds, and residents must be told when the park is offered for sale and may match the offer.

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

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

Changes since last full verification

The Verified date above (July 10, 2026) marks the last time every figure on this page was verified end-to-end against official state sources. The changes below were published since then, each verified against the official source it names (what these dates mean).

Correction, August 13, 2026 — Connecticut's local-rent-regulation posture and the fair-rent-commission references on the eviction page previously gave the 25,000-population threshold for the municipal fair rent commission mandate. November Special Session Public Act 25-1, Section 35, effective January 1, 2026, cut the threshold to 15,000, allowed the mandate to be satisfied by a joint or regional commission, and gave newly covered municipalities until January 1, 2028 to comply. The operative text appears in the 2026 Supplement to the General Statutes; the base revision still prints the prior text, and the record's citations now point to the supplement.
Correction, August 12, 2026 — Connecticut's deposit page said no statute authorizes or bans nonrefundable move-in fees. In fact § 47a-4d(b) (P.A. 23-207, § 6) has banned move-in and move-out fees outright since October 1, 2023, and limits up-front charges to the security deposit, first month's rent, a key or special-equipment deposit, and a capped tenant-screening fee. The page now records the ban with its 2023 provenance, plus the May 26, 2026 extension of the application-fee and screening-fee rules to third parties acting for a landlord or the state and the screening fee's new annual inflation adjustment (P.A. 26-68, § 59).

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 number that decides an answer here 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; 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.