How many hours' notice must a landlord give before entering in West Virginia?

No fixed statutory period (see notice standard). No West Virginia statute requires any advance notice before landlord entry, and none enumerates entry rights. Access is governed by the lease, the tenant's statutory right to occupy 'to the exclusion of others' (37-6A-1(16)), common-law quiet enjoyment, and trespass law.

What reasons allow a landlord to enter a rental in West Virginia?

No statute enumerates permitted entry reasons, so whatever the lease provides governs.

How much notice must a landlord give before entering in West Virginia?

Verified October 2, 2026 All West Virginia topics →

West Virginia has no statute requiring landlords to give any advance notice before entering a rental unit — no notice period, no list of permitted reasons, and no emergency exception exists in state law, so entry rights come entirely from the lease.

Cited to W. Va. Code ch. 37, art. 6 (full-article text, all 31 sections; contains no entry-notice provision and no right of entry for inspection, repair or showing) and 2 more cited sources · Verified October 2, 2026

The statutes that do mention entry are narrow: a landlord may enter after a tenant abandons the property owing rent, but only after posting a written notice giving the tenant one month to pay, and an officer executing a distress warrant may enter in the daytime, or at any hour where the goods were fraudulently or clandestinely removed. A tenant's rental agreement entitles them to occupy 'to the exclusion of others,' so a landlord entering without lease authority or consent risks trespass and breach of quiet enjoyment rather than violation of an entry-notice rule. Guides telling West Virginia landlords to give '24 to 48 hours' notice are stating good practice or typical lease terms, not law — write the entry terms you need into the lease.

West Virginia entry notice at a glance

Advance notice required	No fixed statutory period (see notice standard)
Notice standard	No West Virginia statute requires any advance notice before landlord entry, and none enumerates entry rights. Access is governed by the lease, the tenant's statutory right to occupy 'to the exclusion of others' (37-6A-1(16)), common-law quiet enjoyment, and trespass law. Secondary guides advising '24-48 hours notice' describe custom or lease practice, not any West Virginia legal requirement.
Permitted reasons	No statute enumerates permitted entry reasons, so whatever the lease provides governs. The only statutory entry rights are situational: entry after abandonment with rent in arrears, following a posted one-month written notice to pay (37-6-6(a), with a housing-authority variant in (b)); an officer executing a distress warrant or attachment may forcibly enter in the daytime, or by day or night where the goods were fraudulently or clandestinely removed from the premises (37-6-14); and reentry/forfeiture machinery for breach (37-6-19 et seq.). None covers routine inspections, repairs, or showings.
Emergency exception	Not addressed by statute
Time-of-day restrictions	Not addressed by statute

Cite this page: "Landlord Atlas, West Virginia Landlord Entry Notice Laws (verified October 2, 2026), landlordatlas.com/laws/entry-notice/west-virginia/" — free to cite and quote with a link (how these records are verified). Everything above is cited in the citations section below.

Notes and caveats

No entry-notice statute exists — The full official text of chapter 37, article 6 contains entry language in eight of its 31 sections: 37-6-1 and 37-6-3 (entry and reentry rights passing on a transfer), 37-6-6 (abandonment), 37-6-14 (an officer executing a distress warrant, in the daytime or, for goods fraudulently removed, at any hour) and 37-6-19, 37-6-24, 37-6-26 and 37-6-27 (reentry, forfeiture and ejectment). 37-6-30 (habitability) and all of articles 6A and 15 contain no landlord-access provision; article 15's only access rule gives a tenant's invitee free access to the home site (37-15-5(b)).
No emergency exception either way — No statute creates an emergency-entry right and none denies one, so the answer is left empty; an emergency-entry right is an expected lease term.
The abandonment procedure is the one to know — 37-6-6 sets the procedure: a written notice posted conspicuously on the property requiring the rent within one month, after which the landlord is entitled to possession and may enter (37-6-6(a)); then, to dispose of belongings left behind, a written notice posted on the property and sent by first-class mail with a certificate of mailing, giving at least 30 days from mailing to remove them, or at least 60 days if the tenant has told the landlord he or she is on active duty in the armed forces (37-6-6(c) and (d)). Property worth more than $300 must be stored up to 30 more days if the tenant or a secured party says they intend to remove it and pays the reasonable costs of storage and removal (37-6-6(e)).
The full-article texts are the source, not a site index — The absence of an entry statute rests on the official full-article texts of chapter 37, articles 6, 6A and 15, which state the law in full — not on any search listing or index of the state code site.
A 2026 privacy bill that died — HB 5334 (2026), on 'lease termination and tenant privacy,' would have legislated in this space but died in House Judiciary at sine die on March 14, 2026.

Common questions: West Virginia entry notice

Each answer is the verified value from the table above, restated as a direct answer. Free to quote with a link to this page.

How many hours' notice must a landlord give before entering in West Virginia?: No fixed statutory period (see notice standard). No West Virginia statute requires any advance notice before landlord entry, and none enumerates entry rights. Access is governed by the lease, the tenant's statutory right to occupy 'to the exclusion of others' (37-6A-1(16)), common-law quiet enjoyment, and trespass law.
What reasons allow a landlord to enter a rental in West Virginia?: No statute enumerates permitted entry reasons, so whatever the lease provides governs.
Can a landlord enter without notice in an emergency in West Virginia?: Not addressed by statute.
Are there time-of-day limits on when a landlord can enter in West Virginia?: Not addressed by statute.

Citations

W. Va. Code ch. 37, art. 6 (full-article text, all 31 sections; contains no entry-notice provision and no right of entry for inspection, repair or showing) (verified 2026) Official source
W. Va. Code § 37-6-6 (abandonment entry only) · (a) (verified 2026) Official source
W. Va. Code § 37-6-30 (habitability duties; contains no entry or access language) (verified 2026) Official source

How this record was verified: Direct read of statute text on the official WV Legislature code site (code.wvlegislature.gov): sections 37-6A-1, 37-6A-2, 37-6A-5, and 37-6-5 each read at least three times across two distinct official presentations (individual section pages read twice independently, plus the official whole-article 'email view' pages /email/37-6A/ and /email/37-6/), with all key figures matching verbatim (60-day/45-day whichever-shorter return window, 15-day contractor-itemization extension, 1.5x annoyance/inconvenience damages, one-full-period month-to-month termination notice, 6-month hold and 72-hour delivery rules). All of article 6A additionally reconciled against the enrolled Committee Substitute for HB 3202 (2011) on wvlegislature.gov — approved by the Governor 2011-04-01, Chapter 149, Acts 2011, effective 2011-06-10 — proving the 1.5x penalty is original 2011 text with no later amendment. Verified negatives (no deposit cap, no interest, no separate account, no late-fee or grace-period statute, no entry-notice statute, no rent-increase-notice statute, no rent-control or preemption statute) run against the full official texts of ch. 37 arts. 6 (all 31 sections), 6A, and 15. Bill outcomes verified on official Bill_Status action tables: dead bills SB590 (2022), SB147 (2023, House-rejected Roll No. 638), SB165 (2024), HB4695 (2006), HB4570/HB4432/HB5155/HB5334 (2026), HB2537/HB2648/HB2828/HB2903 (2025). Enacted 2025 acts: HB2434 (Stop Squatters Act, Ch. 219, eff. 2025-07-10) confirmed off-topic for these deposit, rent, fee, and entry topics (it amended the ch. 55 art. 3C squatter-removal scheme that HB4940 of 2024 created, treated as out of scope in the eviction topic's notes); HB3272 (Ch. 1, Acts 2025 — passed 2025-04-12, approved by the Governor 2025-04-28, eff. 2025-07-11) is on-topic, not off: it amended and reenacted W. Va. Code 55-3A-1, the core residential-eviction petition statute (filing-first hearing scheduling plus the tenant's five-day written-defense window), and its changes are carried in the eviction_process topic. The eviction topic is verified on its own track (see its topic_verified date and notes): its build pass reconciled the codified 55-3A-1 against the enrolled HB3272 word for word and ran currency checks on adjacent sections (50-2-1 reflecting HB2761 (2025), 2-2-1 reflecting SB793 (2026), 55-3C reflecting HB2434 (2025)); 55-3A-1 and 37-6-19 were independently re-read 2026-07-25; and on 2026-08-05 the enrolled HB3272 text and the codified 55-3A-1 were each read twice more and matched character-for-character, with the passage (2025-04-12) and gubernatorial-approval (2025-04-28) dates confirmed as distinct events from the official Bill_Status action table. 2026 regular session adjourned sine die 2026-03-14 with no on-topic bill passing. On October 2, 2026 every section the security deposit, rent increase, late fee and entry answers rest on was read again on code.wvlegislature.gov: sections 37-6A-1 to 37-6A-6, the whole of chapter 37, articles 6, 6A and 15, chapter 55, articles 3A, 3B and 3C, section 8-1-5a, and sections 38-14-4 and 46B-3-9, with the Legislature's tables of code sections affected for every regular and special session from 2011 through 2026 (no 2025 or 2026 act amended articles 6, 6A or 15). Article 15, on factory-built home sites, limits a landlord to the fees listed in the written rental agreement (37-15-5(a)(1)) and bars retaliatory rent increases (37-15-7(a)). The codes of ordinances of Charleston, Huntington and Morgantown were read for rent regulation, and Dibella v. Mastermonico, No. 26-ICA-17 (September 25, 2026), on the courts' site.