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 76 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?

Daily late fees are allowed only inside the 10% ceiling, and only in Tennessee's URLTA counties. 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 July 9, 2026 All Tennessee topics →

Measure that did not become law. The following recent proposal failed and is not law — noted here because 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 flip local_control_preempted for residential property 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 — with the 114th GA adjourned sine die, this is effectively a soft kill; watch for a 115th GA refile. (checked 2026-07-09).

In Tennessee's 19 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 (current-code mirror) (d) and 2 more Tennessee statutes · Verified July 9, 2026

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 76 counties, where no statute caps late fees or mandates a grace period — a distinction most Tennessee 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	Daily late fees are allowed only inside the 10% ceiling, and only in Tennessee's URLTA counties. 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 76 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 July 9, 2026), landlordatlas.com/laws/late-fees/tennessee/" — free to cite and quote with a link (how these records are verified). Every figure above is cited to the Tennessee statute in the citations section below.

Check a late fee against the Tennessee rules — free, no signup, built on the same verified Tennessee rules 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. The ordinary contract-law baseline still requires some agreed basis to charge.
Currency — No amendments between 2014 and 2026, and no pending bills were found.

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

Statute citations

T.C.A. § 66-28-201 (current-code mirror) (d) (verified 2026) Unofficial mirror
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.