What late fees can a landlord charge in South Carolina?

Verified July 9, 2026 All South Carolina topics →

South Carolina sets no cap on residential late fees and mandates no grace period — rent is 'payable without demand or notice at the time and place agreed upon by the parties' (SC Code 27-40-310), so a lease-based late fee can begin accruing the day after rent is due.

The five days that many websites call South Carolina's 'statutory grace period' is actually the eviction cure window in 27-40-710(B): a landlord may terminate for nonpayment only if rent stays unpaid five days past the due date, but nothing in that section delays or limits a late fee. The statute defines rent to include late charges (27-40-210(11)), so unpaid late fees can be pursued as rent. No South Carolina statute requires a late fee to appear in a written lease or sets a reasonableness formula — enforceability is a matter of ordinary contract law, so a clearly written lease clause with a defensible amount is the only real protection on either side.

South Carolina late fees at a glance

Statutory cap	No statutory cap (see reasonableness standard and notes)
Mandatory grace period	None mandated statewide
Must be in the lease	Not addressed by statute
Daily fees	No statute addresses late-fee structure; daily fees are a lease matter bounded only by common-law liquidated-damages reasonableness. Chapter 40's single mention of late charges is the definition of rent (27-40-210(11)), which includes them.
Reasonableness standard	No statutory reasonableness standard exists — chapter 40 regulates neither the amount nor the timing of late fees (negative check run against the full chapter). Enforceability is governed by ordinary contract/liquidated-damages principles; the '5-10% presumptively reasonable' figures circulating on landlord sites have no SC statutory basis and are not encoded here.

Notes and caveats

statutory_cap and grace_period_days are both null — chapter 40 is silent on late-fee amount and timing (negative check run against the full chapter, both reads). must_be_in_lease is null rather than true: unlike Arizona's ARS 33-1368(B), no SC statute conditions late fees on a written lease; the requirement that the fee be agreed to is contract law, and guides asserting a statutory writing requirement are overstating. Primary trap (AZ-style, pervasive): the 27-40-710(B) five-day pay-or-quit cure window recast as a 'statutory 5-day rent grace period' — it delays only termination for nonpayment, not fee accrual, and 27-40-710(B)'s notice duty itself is satisfied for the whole lease term by one prior notice or by conspicuous language in a written rental agreement. Secondary caution: 27-40-210(11)'s inclusion of late charges in 'rent' cuts for landlords in collection/eviction but also means grossly inflated fees infect the rent demand itself — worth a page-copy caveat without overclaiming.

Statute citations

SC Code 27-40-310 Official source
SC Code 27-40-210 (11) Official source
SC Code 27-40-710 (B) Official source

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.