Landlord Atlas

How much notice must a landlord give before entering in South Carolina?

Verified July 9, 2026 All South Carolina topics →

South Carolina landlords must give tenants at least 24 hours' notice before entering a rental for inspections, repairs, services, or showings, and may enter only at reasonable times — but the statute carves out three no-notice situations: emergencies (expressly including approaching weather that threatens the property), regularly scheduled periodic services like filter changes or pest treatment between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. if the lease conspicuously reserves that right and the landlord announces the entry, and tenant-requested services between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. with an announcement at the door.

The 24-hour notice does not have to be in writing under the statute. Tenants may not unreasonably refuse lawful entry or change the locks without the landlord's permission, and the remedies run both ways under 27-40-780: harassing or unlawful entry lets the tenant win an injunction without bond or terminate the lease plus recover actual damages and attorney's fees, and a tenant who refuses lawful access faces the mirror-image remedies.

South Carolina entry notice at a glance

Advance notice required 24 hours
Notice standard SC Code 27-40-530(c): except for the no-consent entries listed in subsection (b), the landlord must give the tenant at least twenty-four hours' notice of intent to enter and may enter only at reasonable times, and must not abuse the right of access or use it to harass the tenant. The statute does not require the notice to be written, and 'reasonable times' is undefined.
Permitted reasons The tenant may not unreasonably withhold consent for the landlord to inspect the premises, make necessary or agreed repairs, decorations, alterations, or improvements, supply necessary or agreed services, or exhibit the unit to prospective or actual purchasers, mortgagees, tenants, workmen, or contractors (27-40-530(a)). Subsection (d) makes the list of other access rights exhaustive: court order, the cross-referenced remedies of 27-40-720 (entry to fix tenant-caused health/safety breaches after 14 days' notice) and 27-40-730 (abandonment), entry accompanied by a law enforcement officer to serve ejectment process, or premises the tenant has abandoned or surrendered.
Emergency exception Yes
Time-of-day restrictions Noticed entry has no clock hours — only 'reasonable times.' The no-notice-consent entries of 27-40-530(b) DO have clock windows: 9:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m. for regularly scheduled periodic services (filter changes, pest treatment and the like) provided the right is conspicuously set forth in writing in the rental agreement AND the landlord announces intent before entering; 8:00 a.m.-8:00 p.m. for services the tenant requested, again with pre-entry announcement; and any time in an emergency — the statute expressly says prospective weather changes posing a likelihood of danger to the property may count as an emergency.

Notes and caveats

notice_hours encoded as 24 — statutory phrase is 'at least twenty-four hours notice' (27-40-530(c)), read twice verbatim. Points a careful page should carry: (1) the notice need not be written — statute is silent on form, and many secondary sources silently add a writing requirement; (2) the two service-entry windows in (b) are the commonly missed exceptions — the 9-6 scheduled-services entry requires BOTH a conspicuous written lease provision and a pre-entry announcement, so it is not a free pass; (3) South Carolina did NOT adopt URLTA boilerplate allowing free entry during the notice-to-vacate period or the tenant's extended absence — instead 27-40-530(d) is an exhaustive list (court order, 27-40-720/730 remedies, officer-accompanied service of ejectment process, abandonment/surrender), and under 27-40-730(a) an unexplained absence of fifteen days AFTER rent default is construed as abandonment; (4) the lock-change ban on tenants (27-40-530(e)) is unusual and worth surfacing; (5) 27-40-780 remedies are actual damages plus attorney's fees with no one-month's-rent floor — do not import Arizona's minimum-recovery figure.

Statute citations

How this record was verified: Direct read of statute text on the official South Carolina Legislature site (scstatehouse.gov), Code of Laws Title 27: sections 27-40-410, 27-40-530, 27-40-770, 27-40-710, 27-40-310, 27-40-120, and 27-39-60 each read twice in independent fetches with all load-bearing figures matching verbatim (30-day deposit deadline and its three-trigger clause, 3x penalty, more-than-four-adjoining-units posting rule, 24-hour entry notice, 9-6 and 8-8 no-notice service windows, 30-day/7-day periodic termination notice, 5-day nonpayment cure). Also read once: 27-40-720 and 27-40-730 (cross-referenced access rights), 27-40-210(11) rent definition, 27-40-10 and 27-40-110 (short title, statewide territorial application). Negative checks run against the full chapter text: no deposit cap, no escrow/trust requirement, no deposit interest, no late-fee amount or grace-period regulation. Pending-bill check 2026-07-09: H. 3346 (Rent Control Act) and H. 3569 (DV early termination) both died at sine die adjournment 2026-05-14 (H. 3346 never left House LCI committee); the post-sine-die special session was limited to redistricting and the budget.