Is there a legal limit on late fees in Tennessee?

10% of the amount of rent past due (T.C.A. § 66-28-201(d)) — URLTA counties (over 75,000 population, 2010 census) only. In URLTA counties the hard 10% cap governs. In the 78 non-URLTA counties there is no statutory cap or grace period at all — only general contract/liquidated-damages principles.

Can a landlord charge a daily late fee in Tennessee?

In Tennessee's URLTA counties, daily late fees are allowed only inside the 10% ceiling. The cap reaches 'any charge or fee, however described' for late payment, so daily or 'administrative' fees count against that same ceiling.

What late fees can a landlord charge in Tennessee?

Verified October 2, 2026 4 statements held All Tennessee topics →

What did not become law. None of the following is law; failed bills are sometimes still described as if enacted:

SB 961 / HB 955 (114th General Assembly) — 'Affordable Housing and Tenant Protection Act' — Would repeal the residential half of the rent-control preemption in T.C.A. § 66-35-102, allowing local rent control adopted by a two-thirds vote with a local rent agency, plus a THDA gap-financing program. Would end the statewide preemption of local residential rent regulation if ever enacted. Status: Not enacted. HB 955 was deferred in the House Cities & Counties Subcommittee to the 'January 2027 calendar' on 2026-03-18, and the Senate companion, SB 961, was assigned to the General Subcommittee of the Senate State and Local Government Committee on 2026-03-24 — with the 114th GA adjourned sine die, this is effectively a soft kill; watch for a 115th GA refile. (checked October 1, 2026).

In Tennessee's 17 large URLTA counties, late fees are capped at 10% of the rent actually past due, and no fee may be charged during a five-day grace period — with a counting rule that trips people up: the DUE DATE itself counts as day one, so for rent due on the 1st a fee may be charged on the 6th, not the 7th.

Cited to T.C.A. § 66-28-201 (d) and 2 more cited sources · Verified October 2, 2026, 4 statements held at an earlier date

If the fifth day falls on a Sunday or legal holiday, no fee may be imposed as long as the tenant pays on the next business day. The cap covers any charge 'however described,' so relabeled administrative or daily fees can't evade it. None of this applies in the other 78 counties, where no statute caps late fees or mandates a grace period — a distinction some summaries miss, with many landlord blogs wrongly presenting the 10%/5-day rule as statewide. The 10% base is the past-due amount, not the full month's rent, so partial payment shrinks the maximum fee.

Tennessee late fees at a glance

Statutory cap	10% of the amount of rent past due (T.C.A. § 66-28-201(d)) — URLTA counties (over 75,000 population, 2010 census) only
Mandatory grace period	5 days
Must be in the lease	Not addressed by statute
Daily fees	In Tennessee's URLTA counties, daily late fees are allowed only inside the 10% ceiling. The cap reaches 'any charge or fee, however described' for late payment, so daily or 'administrative' fees count against that same ceiling. That anti-relabeling language is what folds them in. In the non-URLTA counties nothing caps them: lease terms and common-law penalty doctrine are the only limits.
Reasonableness standard	In URLTA counties the hard 10% cap governs. In the 78 non-URLTA counties there is no statutory cap or grace period at all — only general contract/liquidated-damages principles.

Cite this page: "Landlord Atlas, Tennessee Late Fee Laws (verified October 2, 2026; held statements carry their own dates), landlordatlas.com/laws/late-fees/tennessee/" — free to cite and quote with a link (how these records are verified). Everything above is cited in the citations section below.

Check a late fee against the Tennessee rules — free, no signup, built on the same verified Tennessee law as this page.

Notes and caveats

The five-day grace period counts the due date as day one — 'Five-day grace' is universally misread as a fee on day 7. Because the due date itself counts as day one, rent due on the 1st can carry a late fee on the 6th, not the 7th.
Stale-source trap — the 10%/5-day rule is not statewide — Some sources credit the 2013 amendment (Pub. Ch. 206) with extending the late-fee rule statewide. Read from the official act text, it merely deleted an old public-housing carve-out and expressly applies only where chapter 66-28 applies.
Why the lease-requirement field is blank — § 66-28-201(d) does not condition the fee on a lease provision, unlike the Arizona and Virginia statutes, so nothing is asserted in that field — filling it in would claim a statutory element the text does not contain.
Currency — Subsection (d) of § 66-28-201 has not been amended since 2011 Pub. Ch. 272 set it out; 2013 Pub. Ch. 206 deleted subsection (e) and left (d) unchanged.

Common questions: Tennessee late fees

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

Is there a legal limit on late fees in Tennessee?: 10% of the amount of rent past due (T.C.A. § 66-28-201(d)) — URLTA counties (over 75,000 population, 2010 census) only. In URLTA counties the hard 10% cap governs. In the 78 non-URLTA counties there is no statutory cap or grace period at all — only general contract/liquidated-damages principles.
Is there a grace period before rent is late in Tennessee?: 5 days.
Does a late fee have to be written into the lease in Tennessee?: Not addressed by statute.
Can a landlord charge a daily late fee in Tennessee?: In Tennessee's URLTA counties, daily late fees are allowed only inside the 10% ceiling. The cap reaches 'any charge or fee, however described' for late payment, so daily or 'administrative' fees count against that same ceiling.

Statements held at an earlier date

Tennessee publishes its code only on a site whose terms do not allow automated reading, so this page is verified on the acts the legislature publishes and on court and agency sources. The 4 statements below rest on text only the code prints. Each keeps the date it was last verified; every other statement on this page was confirmed on October 2, 2026 ( how held statements work).

Outside the counties the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act covers, no Tennessee statute sets a deposit rule, caps a late fee, requires notice of a rent increase or governs a landlord's entry, and no provision anywhere restricts the hours of entry. T.C.A. Title 66, chapter 7 (the list of sections) · last verified July 9, 2026
The act applies only in counties with a population of more than 75,000 on the 2010 federal census. T.C.A. § 66-28-102(a) · last verified July 9, 2026
A five-day grace period that counts the due date; a fee due on a Sunday or legal holiday waits for the next business day; the fee may not exceed 10% of the rent past due. No public chapter has amended the subsection since 2011. T.C.A. § 66-28-201(d) · last verified July 9, 2026
Nothing else in the act speaks to late fees, deposit penalties, rent-increase notice or limits, or entry hours or notice. T.C.A. Title 66, chapter 28 (the list of sections) · last verified July 9, 2026

Citations

T.C.A. § 66-28-201 · (d) (verified 2026) Official source
2011 Pub. Ch. 272, § 4 (official session law enacting the grace-period text) (verified 2026) Official source
2013 Pub. Ch. 206 (official session law — confirms the rule was NOT extended statewide) (verified 2026) Official source

How this record was verified: Tennessee's official code is published via LexisNexis without stable deep links (GA-class sourcing situation), so verification pairs current code mirrors with official session-law PDFs from the Tennessee Secretary of State: T.C.A. §§ 66-28-102, 66-28-201, 66-28-301, 66-28-403, 66-28-512, and 66-35-102 read verbatim on the Justia 2024-edition and FindLaw (current through 2024-01-02) mirrors — §§ 66-28-102, 66-28-201, and 66-28-403 each read twice independently, with the reads matching — with every recent amendment traced to the official act text: 2011 Pub. Ch. 272 (inspection scheme, late-fee rule, entry rewrite), 2012 Pub. Chs. 847 and 887, 2013 Pub. Ch. 206, and 2021 Pub. Ch. 182 (census freeze + county preemption), all read from publications.tnsosfiles.com PDFs. Bill statuses (SB 961/HB 955 et al.) checked on official capitol.tn.gov pages 2026-07-09. September 5, 2026 addendum: the decisive figures touched by the 2025-2026 enactments reviewed that day were re-read on the official host — § 66-35-102 as amended by 2024 Public Chapter 1051 and § 66-28-302 as amended by 2024 Public Chapter 907, from the enrolled acts on publications.tnsosfiles.com; the earlier reads stand as recorded. October 2026: the deposit, rent increase, late fee and entry answers were read again on the public chapters the Secretary of State publishes on publications.tnsosfiles.com (2008 Pub. Ch. 1067, 2011 Pub. Ch. 272, 2012 Pub. Chs. 847 and 887, 2013 Pub. Ch. 206, 2016 Pub. Ch. 822, 2018 Pub. Ch. 685, 2019 Pub. Ch. 236, 2021 Pub. Ch. 182, 2024 Pub. Chs. 907 and 1051), with the General Assembly's Legislative Record and act lists through the 114th General Assembly for later amendments, the Census Bureau's 2010 county counts for the counties the act covers (17, not the 19 these four pages had listed), and the Metropolitan Code of Nashville. The code itself was not opened for that reading, and no public chapter sets out subsections (a), (d) and (f) of section 66-28-301, subsection (b) of section 66-28-512 or subsection (a) of section 66-35-102. The statements that rest on text only the code prints are held: each is listed with the date it was last verified. Every other statement on the deposit, rent increase, late fee and entry pages was confirmed on October 2, 2026.