Does Idaho have an implied warranty of habitability?

Statute — no independent court-created warranty operates alongside it. The duty comes from Idaho Code section 6-320 and nothing else. Idaho has no landlord-tenant code — section 6-320 sits inside the forcible entry and unlawful detainer chapter — and the Idaho Supreme Court has described it as a statutory version of the implied warranty of habitability.

How long does a landlord have to make repairs in Idaho?

3 days. Three days of written notice is a precondition to standing, and the clock runs forward to the filing rather than back from the defect. Before a tenant has standing to sue, the tenant must give the landlord three days' written notice listing each failure or breach the action will be premised on, together with a written demand requiring performance or cure.

Can a tenant repair and deduct in Idaho?

Yes — authorized by statute — Limit: There is no general repair-and-deduct cap because there is no general repair-and-deduct right. The single deduction Idaho law authorizes is for smoke detectors: a tenant who installs them may deduct the cost from the next month's rent, with no dollar figure stated because the ceiling is the cost of the detectors themselves. — The smoke-detector route is the whole of it.

Can a tenant withhold rent for repair problems in Idaho?

No — no statute or decision provides a path — No Idaho statute authorizes a tenant to withhold rent over the condition of the premises, and no court or agency escrow program exists — there is no withholding right, no escrow, no pay-into-court mechanism and no abatement formula anywhere in the chapter. A tenant who stops paying is simply in nonpayment, and the same chapter that contains the repair statute contains Idaho's eviction machinery, so the practical exposure is immediate.

Can a landlord retaliate against a tenant who complains about repairs in Idaho?

Protected by judicial doctrine; no statute — Idaho has no general retaliation statute for ordinary residential tenancies, and Idaho tenants are not unprotected. In Wright v. Brady (1995) the Idaho Court of Appeals held unanimously that retaliatory eviction may be raised by a tenant as an affirmative defense in an unlawful detainer action: a landlord's claim for eviction may be defeated by a showing that the primary motive for the eviction is retaliation against the tenant for reporting violations of housing or safety codes to authorities, and the tenant carries the burden of proving the retaliatory nature of the eviction.

Can a lease make the tenant responsible for repairs in Idaho?

The law says nothing either way. Idaho law says nothing either way. There is no anti-waiver clause in the forcible entry and unlawful detainer chapter or in the two title 55 chapters that carry the rest of Idaho's landlord-tenant law — the only waiver provision anywhere in the chapter concerns waiver of a jury trial — and there is equally no delegation clause of the kind most states use to let a tenant take on repairs under stated conditions.

What does Idaho law require a landlord to repair?

Verified August 30, 2026 All Idaho topics →

Idaho gives a tenant the right to sue a landlord for damages and specific performance over six listed failures — reasonable waterproofing and weather protection, keeping the electrical, plumbing, heating, ventilating, cooling and sanitary facilities the landlord supplied in good working order, maintaining the premises in a manner hazardous to health or safety, returning a security deposit when the law requires, breaching a lease term that materially affects health and safety, and failing to install approved smoke detectors.

Cited to Idaho Code § 6-320 (action for damages and specific performance by tenant) (a)-(e) and 5 more cited sources · Verified August 30, 2026

That statute is the whole of the duty; Idaho's courts have declined to add a common-law warranty on top of it, and the list has no general fit-and-habitable clause and incorporates no housing code. Before filing, the tenant must give three days' written notice listing each failure and demanding performance or cure — the three days run forward to the filing, not back from the defect, and a cure inside them ends the claim for that condition. There is no right to withhold rent and no repair-and-deduct except for smoke detectors, where a certified letter gives the landlord 72 hours. Damages are the contract measure, with treble damages at the court's discretion or prevailing-party attorney fees, never both. Idaho has no general retaliation statute, but its Court of Appeals has made retaliatory eviction an affirmative defense where the landlord's primary motive is the tenant's report of code violations.

Idaho habitability & repairs at a glance

Where the duty comes from	Statute — no independent court-created warranty operates alongside it
Duty source details	The duty comes from Idaho Code section 6-320 and nothing else. Idaho has no landlord-tenant code — section 6-320 sits inside the forcible entry and unlawful detainer chapter — and the Idaho Supreme Court has described it as a statutory version of the implied warranty of habitability. In Worden v. Ordway the court declined to create a common-law warranty alongside it, reasoning that the legislature had already acted in the area; the judgment carried three to two and that part of the opinion is a plurality rather than a majority, though the result has been treated as settled ever since. A separate line of Idaho decisions using the phrase implied warranty of habitability concerns new-home construction running from builders to buyers, which is a different doctrine that does not reach leases. One scope point is easy to get wrong: section 6-320 speaks of a tenant and a landlord without a residential limitation, and the Idaho Supreme Court has decided a section 6-320 claim brought by a commercial tenant.
Who is covered	Statewide — no coverage split
Where the repair standards live	The statute itself lists specific standards
What must be kept in repair	Idaho's standard is a closed list of six failures, with no general fit-and-habitable clause anywhere and no incorporation of any building or housing code. A tenant may sue for: failure to provide reasonable waterproofing and weather protection of the premises; failure to maintain in good working order electrical, plumbing, heating, ventilating, cooling or sanitary facilities supplied by the landlord; maintaining the premises in a manner hazardous to the health or safety of the tenant; failure to return a security deposit as and when required by law; breach of any term of the lease or rental agreement materially affecting the tenant's health and safety, whether written into it or implied; and failure to install approved smoke detectors in each dwelling unit under the landlord's control, including mobile homes, with the landlord required to verify at the start of the tenancy that detectors are installed and working and the tenant required to keep them working during the tenancy. Because there is no general clause, a condition that does not fit one of the six — and does not otherwise make the premises hazardous to health or safety — is outside the statute. The section does not apply to tracts of five acres or more used for agricultural purposes.
Heat standard type	A duty to provide working heating equipment — capability, not a temperature guarantee
Heat standard details	Idaho states no temperature figure, no seasonal window, and no duty to supply heat as such. Heating enters as equipment: the landlord may be sued for failure to maintain in good working order the electrical, plumbing, heating, ventilating, cooling or sanitary facilities supplied by the landlord. Two consequences follow from the wording. The duty attaches to facilities the landlord supplied, so a system the tenant brought is outside it. And cooling is named alongside heating, which makes Idaho one of the states whose repair statute reaches air conditioning the landlord supplied.
Headline repair day count	3 days
Notice and repair-window rules	Three days of written notice is a precondition to standing, and the clock runs forward to the filing rather than back from the defect. Before a tenant has standing to sue, the tenant must give the landlord three days' written notice listing each failure or breach the action will be premised on, together with a written demand requiring performance or cure. The Idaho Supreme Court has corrected a trial court that read the statute the other way: the notice does not have to be given within three days of the failure, it has to be given at least three days before the tenant files suit, and its purpose is to give the landlord those three days to put things right. If the landlord remedies a listed failure inside the three days, the tenant may not sue for that violation at all — so proving the claim includes proving the landlord did not cure within the window. Service is by personal delivery to the landlord or the landlord's agent, by leaving a copy with an employee at their usual place of business if they are absent, or by certified mail with return receipt requested. One condition class has a clock of its own: where the landlord fails to install working smoke detectors, the tenant may send a certified letter with return receipt requested giving 72 hours to install them.
Repair and deduct	Yes — authorized by statute — Limit: There is no general repair-and-deduct cap because there is no general repair-and-deduct right. The single deduction Idaho law authorizes is for smoke detectors: a tenant who installs them may deduct the cost from the next month's rent, with no dollar figure stated because the ceiling is the cost of the detectors themselves. — The smoke-detector route is the whole of it. If the landlord or the landlord's assignee fails to install working smoke detectors, the tenant may send written notice by certified mail, return receipt requested, stating that if working detectors are not installed within 72 hours of receipt of the letter the tenant may install them and deduct the cost from next month's rent; detectors the tenant buys and deducts become the landlord's property and may not be removed from the premises. For every other condition — heating, plumbing, weather protection, anything hazardous to health or safety — Idaho provides no right to arrange a repair and take the cost out of rent. The tenant's designed remedy is a court action for damages and specific performance after the three-day notice.
Rent withholding or escrow	No — no statute or decision provides a path — No Idaho statute authorizes a tenant to withhold rent over the condition of the premises, and no court or agency escrow program exists — there is no withholding right, no escrow, no pay-into-court mechanism and no abatement formula anywhere in the chapter. A tenant who stops paying is simply in nonpayment, and the same chapter that contains the repair statute contains Idaho's eviction machinery, so the practical exposure is immediate. Two corrections travel with this. The three-day notice is a precondition to filing a repair action; it is not a step that makes withholding lawful, and it is not a precondition to raising the condition of the premises in an eviction case. And the judicially recognized retaliation defense described below has no notice precondition of its own.
Termination over habitability failures	No habitability-specific termination right is stated — Idaho states no habitability-specific right for a tenant to end the tenancy. The remedy the statute designs is a court action for damages and specific performance — an order that the landlord perform — with judgment entered for the damages assessed, specific performance for any breach the evidence shows, and costs and disbursements. Ordinary lease and contract law is not restated here.
Essential-service remedies	No distinct treatment beyond the general duty — Idaho gives essential services no distinct treatment. There is no procure-and-deduct route, no substitute-housing right, no reduction-in-value measure and no faster clock for heat, water or electricity. Utilities reach the tenant only through the enumerated failure to maintain in good working order the electrical, plumbing, heating, ventilating, cooling or sanitary facilities the landlord supplied, on the ordinary three-day notice and the ordinary court action. Deliberate shutoffs by a landlord are a different subject and belong with the eviction rules.
Retaliation protection	Protected by judicial doctrine; no statute — Idaho has no general retaliation statute for ordinary residential tenancies, and Idaho tenants are not unprotected. In Wright v. Brady (1995) the Idaho Court of Appeals held unanimously that retaliatory eviction may be raised by a tenant as an affirmative defense in an unlawful detainer action: a landlord's claim for eviction may be defeated by a showing that the primary motive for the eviction is retaliation against the tenant for reporting violations of housing or safety codes to authorities, and the tenant carries the burden of proving the retaliatory nature of the eviction. The court reached that result over the argument that the legislature's decision to write a retaliation bar for manufactured-home communities implied there was none elsewhere, saying there was no rational reason the legislature would further code enforcement for those residents but not for other similarly situated tenants. The shape of the protection is narrower than a statute's: it is a defense to eviction rather than a claim of its own, there is no presumption and no time window, the standard is primary motive, and the burden sits with the tenant. It rests on the Court of Appeals — the Idaho Supreme Court has neither adopted nor rejected it — and a later Court of Appeals decision, Connolly v. Powell (2005), described Wright's holding approvingly and carried its primary-motive and tenant-burden rules into the manufactured-home statute. — As the defense was recognized, the protected act is reporting or complaining to the proper authorities about violations of housing or safety codes — in Wright itself, a repair demand under the statute followed by a complaint to the city, whose inspector found eight housing-code violations. That is narrower than the statutory patterns in neighbouring states: there is no separate limb for complaining to the landlord and none for organizing a tenants' association. Two sector statutes do carry full retaliation bars, and they do not reach ordinary apartments and houses. In a manufactured-home community the landlord may not terminate or refuse to renew a tenancy, raise rent, cut services, or threaten a repossession action because the resident complained in good faith to the enforcing agency about a building, safety or health code violation, complained to the landlord about the community's maintenance or condition, rent or rules, organized or joined a community resident association, or retained counsel or an agent. The Floating Homes Residency Act carries the same protection for a floating-home site.
Damages, penalties, and defenses	Damages under section 6-320 are the contract measure. Because the statute's provisions are part of the lease, the recoverable damages are those recoverable for breach of contract — damages arising naturally from the breach and reasonably foreseeable — with consequential damages recoverable only if within the contemplation of the parties at the time of contracting, and lost profits generally out unless something in the contract shows they were contemplated and they are proved with reasonable certainty. On top of that measure Idaho puts two multipliers a tenant cannot have both of: judgment may be entered for three times the actual damages assessed in an action brought under section 6-320, at the trial court's discretion; and in any action under the chapter the prevailing party is entitled to an award of attorney fees, except in those cases where treble damages are awarded. Fees run both ways. Specific performance is available for any breach the evidence shows, and there is a fast track for it — in an action exclusively for specific performance the court schedules trial within twelve days of the filing, with service at least five days before the trial date, but asking for damages as well forfeits the early trial. Negligence is not an element: the statute nowhere conditions the tenant's right to recover on the landlord's failure to exercise reasonable care, and a jury instruction requiring a tenant to prove negligence adds an element the statute does not have. The landlord's defenses are procedural and they are strong. Standing fails without a complying three-day notice listing each failure and demanding performance or cure, and a cure inside the three days extinguishes the claim for that violation. The complaint must set forth the facts relied on, describe the premises, and set forth the circumstances accompanying the failure or breach. And the section does not apply at all to tracts of five acres or more used for agricultural purposes.
Can the duty be waived or shifted	The law says nothing either way
Waiver and delegation rules	Idaho law says nothing either way. There is no anti-waiver clause in the forcible entry and unlawful detainer chapter or in the two title 55 chapters that carry the rest of Idaho's landlord-tenant law — the only waiver provision anywhere in the chapter concerns waiver of a jury trial — and there is equally no delegation clause of the kind most states use to let a tenant take on repairs under stated conditions. No Idaho decision has been found holding section 6-320 waivable, and none holding it non-waivable. So a lease clause purporting to shift or give up these rights has no statute answering it in either direction, which makes Idaho an outlier among its neighbours: Montana forbids waiver outright, and Utah and Wyoming expressly permit reallocation by signed writing.
Leading court decisions	Worden v. Ordway, 105 Idaho 719, 672 P.2d 1049 (1983) — Idaho common law implied no covenant to repair leased premises, and the court declined to create a judicial implied warranty of habitability, reasoning that the legislature had already acted in the area by enacting a statutory version of the theory in section 6-320 and that the court should refrain from expanding a common law rule where the legislature has acted. The directed verdict against the tenant's implied-warranty count was affirmed. The judgment carried three to two, and the reasoning on this point commanded a plurality rather than a majority — two justices would have held that a common-law right survives where the legislature has not specifically repealed it — though the result has been treated as settled since. • Silver Creek Computers, Inc. v. Petra, Inc., 136 Idaho 879, 42 P.3d 672 (2002) — A unanimous court held that negligence is not an element of a section 6-320 claim: the words negligence and negligent do not appear in the statute and nothing in it conditions the tenant's right to recover on the landlord's failure to exercise reasonable or ordinary care, so a tenant can obtain relief even though the landlord's conduct was not negligent. It corrected the notice clock as well — the statute does not require notice within three days of the failure, it requires written notice at least three days before the tenant files suit, and if the landlord remedies the listed failure inside that period the tenant may not sue for it. On damages, because the statute's provisions are part of the lease the measure is the contract measure: damages arising naturally from the breach and reasonably foreseeable, with consequential damages only if contemplated and lost profits generally unavailable. The claim before the court was brought by a commercial tenant, and the statute was applied without any party contending it is limited to residential tenancies. • Wright v. Brady, 126 Idaho 671, 889 P.2d 105 (Ct. App. 1995) — A unanimous panel held that retaliatory eviction may be asserted by a tenant as an affirmative defense in an unlawful detainer action: a landlord's claim for eviction may be defeated by a showing that the primary motive for the eviction is retaliation against the tenant for reporting violations of housing or safety codes to authorities, with the tenant carrying the burden of proving the retaliatory nature of the eviction. The court rejected the argument that a retaliation bar written for manufactured-home communities implied the absence of protection elsewhere, finding no rational reason the legislature would further code enforcement for those residents but not for other similarly situated tenants. • Connolly v. Powell, 141 Idaho 844, 118 P.3d 1232 (Ct. App. 2005) — Ten years after Wright v. Brady, the Court of Appeals described that decision approvingly as holding retaliatory eviction to be an affirmative defense to an unlawful detainer action, and carried its two operative rules — the primary-motive standard and the tenant's burden of proof — across into the retaliation section of the Manufactured Home Residency Act, whose plain language it held creates a defense that may be raised in an unlawful detainer action.
Local rules	Idaho's repair statute incorporates no building or housing code, so a local code violation is not itself a breach of section 6-320 — though a condition that violates a local code will often also be one of the six listed failures or a condition hazardous to the tenant's health or safety, and city inspection findings have done real work in Idaho cases, including the eight housing-code violations that were the trigger in Wright v. Brady. Cities and counties enforce their own codes through their own machinery; no state remedy here is gated on a local official's finding. Idaho does preempt local regulation in a neighbouring area — a local government may not enact or enforce an ordinance regulating rent, fees or deposits charged for leasing private residential property — but that provision does not by its terms reach local habitability or building-code standards.

Cite this page: "Landlord Atlas, Idaho Habitability & Repair Laws (verified August 30, 2026), landlordatlas.com/laws/habitability/idaho/" — 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

The three days run forward to the filing — The most common misstatement of Idaho law is that the tenant must give notice within three days of the problem. The statute says the opposite: written notice must be given at least three days before the tenant files suit, and its purpose is to give the landlord three days to fix what the notice lists. A district court once instructed a jury the other way and was reversed. The corollary matters just as much — if the landlord remedies a listed failure inside the three days, the tenant may not sue over that violation, so a notice served after the condition was already put right defeats the claim even where the landlord was at fault.
The list is closed — Idaho's statute is six enumerated failures with no general fit-and-habitable clause and no incorporation of any building or housing code, which is unusual. A condition outside the six — and outside the catch-all for premises maintained in a manner hazardous to the tenant's health or safety — is outside the statute, and there is no state code floor behind it. Describing Idaho as recognizing the implied warranty of habitability is half true in a way that misleads: what Idaho has is a statutory version, and its scope is the list.
Repair and deduct exists only for smoke detectors — There is exactly one deduction in Idaho landlord-tenant law. If the landlord fails to install working smoke detectors, a tenant who sends a certified letter with return receipt requested and waits 72 hours may install them and take the cost off next month's rent; the detectors then belong to the landlord and may not be removed. For a broken furnace, a leaking roof or anything else on the list, Idaho provides no way to arrange the work and deduct the cost, and no way to hold rent back while waiting.
Treble damages or fees, never both — Two provisions sit either side of the repair statute and they are alternatives. Judgment may be entered for three times the actual damages assessed in a section 6-320 action, at the trial court's discretion. And in any action under the chapter the prevailing party is entitled to attorney fees — except in those cases where treble damages are awarded. Both run in the landlord's favour too if the landlord prevails. Summaries that report Idaho as having no damages remedy, or that report the fee shift without the treble-damages exception, miss the structure.
The fast trial track is narrower than it looks — Idaho schedules trial within twelve days of the filing, with service at least five days before, but only in an action brought exclusively for specific performance — an order that the landlord do the work. Combining that with a claim for damages, or asking for a dollar of damages alone, forfeits the early trial and puts the case on the ordinary calendar.
The statute is not written only for homes — Section 6-320 sits in the forcible entry and unlawful detainer chapter, speaks of a tenant and a landlord without a residential limitation, and carries one subject-matter exclusion — agricultural tracts of five acres or more. Only the smoke-detector paragraph mentions dwelling units. The Idaho Supreme Court has decided a section 6-320 claim brought by a commercial tenant, with no party contending the statute was residential only, so calling it Idaho's residential habitability statute states more than the text supports.
A citation that went stale in 2025 — Idaho's cap on tenant fees was section 55-314 from 2023 until it was redesignated section 55-305 in 2025 — and section 55-314 is now the unrelated repair duty of a life tenant. Anything built before mid-2025 points at the wrong provision. It is a fees question rather than a habitability one, but it is the citation trap most likely to surface next to this topic.

Common questions: Idaho habitability & repairs

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

Does Idaho have an implied warranty of habitability?: Statute — no independent court-created warranty operates alongside it. The duty comes from Idaho Code section 6-320 and nothing else. Idaho has no landlord-tenant code — section 6-320 sits inside the forcible entry and unlawful detainer chapter — and the Idaho Supreme Court has described it as a statutory version of the implied warranty of habitability.
How long does a landlord have to make repairs in Idaho?: 3 days. Three days of written notice is a precondition to standing, and the clock runs forward to the filing rather than back from the defect. Before a tenant has standing to sue, the tenant must give the landlord three days' written notice listing each failure or breach the action will be premised on, together with a written demand requiring performance or cure.
Can a tenant repair and deduct in Idaho?: Yes — authorized by statute — Limit: There is no general repair-and-deduct cap because there is no general repair-and-deduct right. The single deduction Idaho law authorizes is for smoke detectors: a tenant who installs them may deduct the cost from the next month's rent, with no dollar figure stated because the ceiling is the cost of the detectors themselves. — The smoke-detector route is the whole of it.
Can a tenant withhold rent for repair problems in Idaho?: No — no statute or decision provides a path — No Idaho statute authorizes a tenant to withhold rent over the condition of the premises, and no court or agency escrow program exists — there is no withholding right, no escrow, no pay-into-court mechanism and no abatement formula anywhere in the chapter. A tenant who stops paying is simply in nonpayment, and the same chapter that contains the repair statute contains Idaho's eviction machinery, so the practical exposure is immediate.
Can a landlord retaliate against a tenant who complains about repairs in Idaho?: Protected by judicial doctrine; no statute — Idaho has no general retaliation statute for ordinary residential tenancies, and Idaho tenants are not unprotected. In Wright v. Brady (1995) the Idaho Court of Appeals held unanimously that retaliatory eviction may be raised by a tenant as an affirmative defense in an unlawful detainer action: a landlord's claim for eviction may be defeated by a showing that the primary motive for the eviction is retaliation against the tenant for reporting violations of housing or safety codes to authorities, and the tenant carries the burden of proving the retaliatory nature of the eviction.
Can a lease make the tenant responsible for repairs in Idaho?: The law says nothing either way. Idaho law says nothing either way. There is no anti-waiver clause in the forcible entry and unlawful detainer chapter or in the two title 55 chapters that carry the rest of Idaho's landlord-tenant law — the only waiver provision anywhere in the chapter concerns waiver of a jury trial — and there is equally no delegation clause of the kind most states use to let a tenant take on repairs under stated conditions.

Citations

Idaho Code § 6-320 (action for damages and specific performance by tenant) · (a)-(e) (verified 2026) Official source
Idaho Code § 6-317 (treble damages) (verified 2026) Official source
Idaho Code § 6-323 (service of notice to landlord) · (1)-(3) (verified 2026) Official source
Idaho Code § 6-324 (attorney fees) (verified 2026) Official source
Idaho Code § 55-2015 (retaliatory conduct by landlord prohibited, manufactured home communities) (verified 2026) Official source
Idaho Code § 55-306 (local government; no rent control) (verified 2026) Official source

How this record was verified: Direct reading of Idaho Code title 6, chapter 3 on the Legislature's official statutes site — all twenty-eight sections of the forcible entry and unlawful detainer chapter read end to end, including sections 6-317, 6-320, 6-323 and 6-324 — together with all twelve sections of title 55, chapter 2 and all fifteen sections of title 55, chapter 3, and section 55-2015 of the Manufactured Home Residency Act. Currency was established from the site's own history lines, which already carry a 2026 chapter for a neighbouring section. The Legislature's 2026 session materials, including its subject index for landlords and tenants and its session-law chapter table, were read for pending measures. Worden v. Ordway, 105 Idaho 719, 672 P.2d 1049 (1983), Silver Creek Computers, Inc. v. Petra, Inc., 136 Idaho 879, 42 P.3d 672 (2002), Wright v. Brady, 126 Idaho 671, 889 P.2d 105 (Ct. App. 1995), and Connolly v. Powell, 141 Idaho 844, 118 P.3d 1232 (Ct. App. 2005), were each read end to end in the official reporter text.