What must a Tennessee landlord disclose to a tenant, and what must the lease say?

No statute requires a residential lease to be in writing beyond the statute of frauds, so an oral tenancy is lawful. No statute requires the landlord to give the tenant a copy of the lease.

No Tennessee statute requires a residential lease to be in writing, and an oral lease of three years or less is valid: the Act defines a rental agreement to include all agreements, written or oral. Where the landlord does not sign a written agreement, acceptance of rent without reservation binds the parties on a month-to-month tenancy, and where there is no agreement at all the tenant owes the reasonable value of the use and occupancy. Someone who takes possession without paying rent and without signing an agreement delivered to them is a trespasser and may be evicted at once. There is no duty anywhere in either chapter to give the tenant a copy of the signed lease, no language or translation rule, no plain-language act and no type-size, typeface or placement rule. The one placement-shaped rule is a condition on a landlord's remedy rather than a format rule: the tenant's waiver of the right to contest move-out damages for missing a scheduled inspection binds only if notice of that waiver is set out in the rental agreement.

Statute of frauds: Leases for more than three years must be in writing, and to be valid against anyone other than the lessor, the lessor's heirs and devisees and persons with actual notice, they must also be proved and registered (section 66-7-101). The three-year figure is unusual; most states use one year. Registration is the condition of validity against third parties, not of validity between the landlord and the tenant. The section binds the whole state.

Electronic leases and signatures: Where the tenant gives an email address in the rental agreement, the landlord may send any notification the Act requires by email to that address, unless the Act requires some other specific form of notification for it, and the landlord may not require the tenant to give an email address as a condition of entering into a rental agreement (section 66-28-108). That channel exists only in the counties the Act reaches. Neither landlord-tenant chapter says anything about signing a lease electronically; Tennessee's general electronic transactions act sits elsewhere in the code and is not set out on this page.

Yes — a statute requires the landlord to disclose the owner's or managing agent's identity to the tenant, in the lease or in a separate writing.

In the counties the Act reaches, the landlord or anyone authorized to enter into a rental agreement on the landlord's behalf must disclose to the tenant in writing, at or before the commencement of the tenancy, three things: the name and address of the agent authorized to manage the premises, which may be a third-party management company; the name and address of an owner of the premises, or of a person or agent authorized to act for the owner in accepting service of process and receiving notices and demands; and a maintenance contact, which may be a telephone number, an email address or an online portal system designed for landlord-tenant communication. The statute says in writing and no more, so the lease itself or a separate writing will do, and there is no posting alternative. No telephone number is required for the identity limbs, and the maintenance limb is satisfied by any one of its three alternatives. The information must be kept current, and the section extends to and is enforceable against any successor landlord, owner or manager. A person who fails to comply becomes an agent of each person who is a landlord for the purpose of service of process and of receiving and receipting for notices and demands, and the Act's definition of landlord says the same thing from the other direction. A court has applied that consequence to a person who disclosed only the name of the apartment complex's owner. Nothing else follows: no damages figure, no rent withholding, no termination right and no bar on an eviction action. Separately, and reaching only a county with a metropolitan form of government and more than 500,000 people, every landlord of one or more dwelling units must file with the local agency that enforces building codes the landlord's or agent's name, telephone number and physical address — no post office box — and the street address and unit number of each dwelling unit, on the agency's form, for a fee the agency may set at no more than $10 a year, with a change of ownership or information filed within 30 days and a fine of $50 a week for a failure. No notice to any tenant flows from that filing.

Threshold: Only in the 17 counties the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act reaches. In the other 78 counties no statute requires a landlord to tell the tenant who owns or manages the property. The three-limb duty in its present form reaches rental agreements entered into, amended or renewed on or after January 1, 2025.

No general statement or document is prescribed, but the statutes or rules fix some of what the lease must say, listed here.

Tennessee requires no tenant-rights statement of any kind. No statute or rule tells a landlord to hand over, attach or reproduce a state summary of the law, a handbook, a pamphlet or an agency form, no agency is directed to publish one, and nothing in the Act even tells the tenant where the Act can be read. There is also no enumerated list of subjects a lease must address. What exists instead are one mandatory written advisory about insurance, which is subject-specific and is set out with the fee and utility rules below, and a set of clauses that are optional in form but decisive in effect, because each is the condition of a landlord's remedy. One duty in the administrative code requires disclosure to a prospective renter, but it binds a licensed rental location agent rather than a landlord: before making a representation that a property is available, the agent must disclose the date of availability, the monthly rent, the existence and amount of any deposit or clean-up fee, the number of bedrooms, whether a lease is required, restrictions such as no pets, the housing type, the location, the utilities paid for and the landlord's telephone number, with only the first two and the location required in advertising. House rules are a separate matter: a rule about the tenant's use of the premises binds the tenant only if the tenant had notice of it when entering into the rental agreement, and a rule adopted later binds only on reasonable notice and only if it does not substantially modify the agreement.

Listed, but not a general duty counted above:

Email address given in the rental agreement — a disclosure the statute prescribes only when the tenant consents to something. If the tenant provides an email address in the rental agreement, the landlord may send any notification the Act requires by email to that address, unless the Act requires a different specific form of notification for that item. The landlord may not require the tenant to provide an email address as a condition of entering into a rental agreement. The content follows from the tenant's own election, so it is listed here and is not something every lease must carry. Given at signing, inside the lease itself. Threshold: Only in the counties the Act reaches. (Tenn. Code Ann. § 66-28-108) Not counted as a general duty.

Lease contents the statutes or rules address, each in the circumstance it names:

• A written statement that the landlord is not responsible for, and will not provide, fire or casualty insurance for the tenant's personal property. The landlord or the landlord's agent must advise the tenant of this in writing; the statute fixes the content, not the words, and the sentence sits in the section about what a rental agreement may contain, so the lease is where it is usually placed (section 66-28-201, subsection a; the counties the Act reaches only).

No.

Tennessee's statutory condition inspection is a move-out inspection, not a move-in one, and it is the tenant's right to attend rather than a landlord's duty to deliver a checklist. The tenant has the right to inspect the premises to determine liability for the physical damages that are the basis of any charge against the security deposit; the landlord may give notice of that right when asking the tenant to vacate or within five days of written notice of the tenant's intent to vacate; and the inspection happens on the day the tenant completely vacates or within four calendar days after. Where the tenant asks for a joint inspection, the parties compile and sign a comprehensive listing of presently ascertainable damage, and their signatures are conclusive evidence of its accuracy. Nothing in either chapter requires a condition statement, inventory or checklist at the start of a tenancy, and no deduction from a deposit depends on one. The move-out mechanics belong to the security-deposits page.

Deposit notice at signing: In the counties the Act reaches, every landlord of residential property must tell tenants, at the time they sign the lease and submit the security deposit, the location of the account where the deposit is held; the account number need not be given (section 66-28-301, subsection h). The deposit rules themselves are on the security-deposits page, and the 78 counties outside the Act have no deposit statute at all.

No in-force state hazard disclosure duty applies at signing beyond the federal lead-paint rule. Also on the books: lead — a notice fired by an event during the tenancy, not a signing disclosure; and methamphetamine — the state bars renting the affected property instead of requiring disclosure; no state duty exists for mold, bed bugs, radon, asbestos, or any other hazard.

Every state duty and every stated absence, hazard by hazard:

Lead (state add-on to the federal rule) — a notice fired by an event during the tenancy, not a signing disclosure, in a separate document (an administrative rule). Tennessee has no lead disclosure at lease signing: no state form, no registration, no inspection certificate and no re-disclosure on renewal. What it has is a renovation notice, and it binds the renovator rather than the landlord as landlord. No more than 60 days before beginning renovation of a dwelling unit in older target housing, the renovator must give the owner the lead hazard information pamphlet and either obtain a written acknowledgment or a certificate of mailing at least seven days before the work, and, where the owner does not occupy the unit, must do the same for an adult occupant. For renovation in the common areas of housing with more than four units, the renovator must give the owner the pamphlet and notify every unit in writing of the general nature and location of the work, its expected start and end dates and how to obtain the pamphlet free of charge. Where the housing is not owner-occupied, the written acknowledgment must be in the same language as the lease or the pamphlet. The trigger is the renovation, never the letting. Threshold: Target housing renovated for compensation. The rule does not reach minor repair and maintenance, emergency renovations, or renovations where an inspector has determined in writing that the components affected are free of paint or coatings containing lead at or above the stated levels. The common-area limb applies to multi-family housing, defined as a property of more than four dwelling units. A signed acknowledgment is taken. In force since June 5, 2024. If the duty is not met: The rule chapter states no penalty of its own for a failure to give the pamphlet. The lead education statute behind the rule carries a penalty section that could not be read on an official source, so no figure is stated here.

Mold — no state duty. No Tennessee statute or rule requires a mold disclosure to a tenant, and no state agency publishes a mold booklet a landlord could be made to hand over. The word appears nowhere in either landlord-tenant chapter, the mold references in the property title belong to a lien chapter about molders, the two references in the health title are to molding, and neither the environment division nor the health division of the administrative code has a mold chapter.

Bed bugs — no state duty. Tennessee has no bed-bug law reaching a residential tenancy: no disclosure before renting, no notice during the tenancy, no inspection duty and no cost-allocation rule. The words do not appear in either landlord-tenant chapter or in the health title, the seller's property condition form carries no bed-bug line, and no chapter of the administrative code deals with bed bugs in rental housing.

Radon — no state duty. No Tennessee statute or rule requires a radon disclosure to a tenant, and there is no state radon awareness act, no prescribed lease warning and no agency pamphlet. The word appears nowhere in either landlord-tenant chapter and nowhere in the health title; radon reaches Tennessee law only as a checkbox line on the seller's residential property condition form, which runs from a seller to a buyer. The radiological health division of the administrative code has no radon chapter.

Methamphetamine — the state bars renting the affected property instead of requiring disclosure (a statute and an administrative rule). Tennessee bars the letting instead of requiring a disclosure. Where a law enforcement agency quarantines a property used to make methamphetamine, it posts signs and notifies everyone with a right, title or interest in the property, including lienholders; it files a notice of the quarantine in the county register's office, indexed against the owner, on a form that has a line for an apartment or unit number; and the state environment department keeps a registry of every property under a quarantine order for at least 60 days, open to public inspection and posted on its site. Offering quarantined property to the public for habitation is a crime, as is inhabiting it or taking down the signs. The one duty that names a landlord runs to the police, not to the tenant: a landlord, owner, manager, caretaker, agent or employee who knows or should know that a controlled substance is being manufactured on the property must tell law enforcement within 24 hours. Cleanup standards and the certificate of fitness that lifts a quarantine are in the administrative code, which sets numerical limits and requires qualified professionals but says nothing about tenants, occupants or disclosure. Knowledge standard: For the reporting offense: a person who knows, or reasonably should know, that a controlled substance has been or is being manufactured on the property. If the property is rented in breach of the bar: It is a Class B misdemeanor to inhabit quarantined property, to offer it to the public for temporary or indefinite habitation, or to remove any sign or notice of the quarantine. It is also a Class B misdemeanor for a landlord, owner, manager, caretaker, agent of the owner or employee who knows or reasonably should know that a controlled substance has been or is being manufactured on the property to fail intentionally to notify the appropriate law enforcement agency within 24 hours of learning it.

Asbestos — no state duty. No Tennessee statute or rule requires an asbestos disclosure to a tenant. The word appears nowhere in either landlord-tenant chapter or in the health title, and asbestos reaches the seller's property condition form only as one example on its environmental hazards line. The state's asbestos chapter in the administrative code is a training and accreditation chapter with no mention of a tenant, a lessee, a landlord, a lessor, a disclosure or a pamphlet anywhere in it.

Pesticide, ordnance, pest-control and detector notices — no state duty. Tennessee requires no pesticide-application notice, no pest-control-contract disclosure, no military-ordnance or noise-zone notice, no utility-shutoff-history disclosure and no smoke or carbon-monoxide detector acknowledgment. None of those words appears in either landlord-tenant chapter, and nothing in the administrative code puts such a notice on a residential landlord.

No.

Tennessee has no flood disclosure to a renter of any kind — not a flood zone, not a flood history, not an elevation, not even an advisory that flood insurance may be needed. The word does not appear anywhere in either landlord-tenant chapter. Flooding reaches Tennessee law through the residential property disclosures part, which runs from a seller to a buyer and is keyed to a contract of sale: the seller's form asks about flooding, drainage or grading problems, about any requirement that flood insurance be maintained, and about structural damage from fire, earthquake, flood or landslide. A 2024 act confirmed the frame of that part by adding a further seller duty owed before entering into a contract with a buyer. No rule in the state's administrative code puts a flood disclosure on a landlord, and an enumerated reading of every enacted public chapter from 2011 through 2026 turned up no flood measure touching leases.

Yes — the statute lists the lease provisions that are void or prohibited.

The roster is unusually short for a state that adopted the uniform act: two enumerated provisions, sitting beside a general anti-waiver rule that is stated twice and a bar on requiring an email address. It reaches clauses that burden the tenant, not either party's clauses. A separate power lets a court strike an unconscionable provision and enforce the rest of the agreement, or limit an unconscionable provision to avoid an unconscionable result, and reaches a settlement in which a party gives up a claim under the Act. Nothing on the roster touches attorney-fee clauses, limitation periods or penalty clauses. In the 78 counties the Act does not reach, no statute lists prohibited provisions and no anti-waiver rule applies, but the common law is not silent: the Supreme Court of Tennessee has held that an exculpatory clause in a residential lease is void as against public policy, in a case that arose in a county then outside the Act. From January 1, 2027 a further class of clause is barred, and it is described in the legislation note.

Using a prohibited clause carries a statutory sanction; the statute's own measure follows.

Sanction as the statute states it: A prohibited provision included in an agreement is unenforceable whatever the landlord's state of mind. Actual damages are added only where the landlord willfully provides a rental agreement containing provisions known by the landlord to be prohibited by the Act — and that damages limb reaches any provision the Act prohibits, not only the two on the roster. No attempt to enforce is required, no multiple of rent is named, no cure window is offered and the rest of the lease stands (section 66-28-203, subsection b).

The listed provisions:

• A clause by which the tenant authorizes any person to confess judgment on a claim arising out of the rental agreement.

• A clause by which the tenant agrees to the exculpation or limitation of any liability of the landlord to the tenant arising under law, or agrees to indemnify the landlord for that liability or for the costs connected with it.

• A clause by which the tenant agrees to waive or forego rights or remedies under the Act, which the Act prohibits twice over: once as something a rental agreement may not provide, and once as something the tenant cannot agree to.

• A requirement that the tenant provide an email address as a condition of entering into the rental agreement.

Expressly permitted: One clause is expressly protected: a provision authorizing the landlord to hold a tenant in breach of the rental agreement for misrepresenting a disability or the need for a service or support animal is declared not unconscionable and fully enforceable (section 66-28-204, subsection c).

No statute addresses attorney-fee clauses in residential leases as such.

Tennessee has no reciprocity statute, no prevailing-party statute and no ban on attorney-fee clauses, so a one-way clause charging the tenant with the landlord's fees stands. What the Act does instead is attach a fee right to particular remedies. The tenant may recover reasonable attorney's fees for any non-compliance by the landlord with the rental agreement or any section of the Act after giving 14 days' written notice, and again for a failure to supply essential services, for an unlawful ouster or a diminution of services, for the landlord's abuse of access, and for a willful bad-faith termination on an allegation of violence or threats. The landlord may recover fees against a trespasser who takes possession without paying rent or signing, on a claim after termination for actual damages, on a holdover — doubled where the holdover is willful and not in good faith — on the tenant's refusal of lawful access, and where the tenant misrepresents a disability or an assistance animal. One landlord fee right depends on the lease: fees for breach of contract and non-payment of rent are recoverable only as provided in the rental agreement. In the counties the Act does not reach there is no fee statute at all.

Partly — state law preempts local rules on some subjects and leaves others to the locality or open.

Three rules pull in different directions. In the counties where the Act applies, the Act occupies and preempts the entire field of legislation concerning the regulation of landlords and tenants, and the governing body of such a county may not enact or enforce regulations that conflict with, or add to, the Act. The prohibition sentence names county governing bodies only, so whether a city ordinance inside such a county survives the field-occupation sentence is not settled by the words themselves. Statewide, and in every county, a local government may not enact, maintain or enforce an ordinance or resolution that would have the effect of controlling the rent charged for private residential or commercial property, may not require that existing or newly built rental units be sold or rented at below-market rates, may not condition a zoning change, variance, building permit or development entitlement on such an allocation, and may not require a person to waive constitutionally protected property rights; purely voluntary incentive programs are preserved, and a person who suffers an ascertainable loss from a prohibited practice may sue for actual damages. That preemption is defined to reach any political subdivision, counties and incorporated municipalities alike. Pulling the other way, the Act itself delegates: in a county with a metropolitan form of government and more than 500,000 people, landlord registration is filed with the local agency that enforces building codes, on that agency's form and at a fee that agency sets within the statutory cap. No Tennessee city carries a lease-packet rule on this page.

Crawford v. Buckner, 839 S.W.2d 754 (Supreme Court of Tennessee; 1992; residential setting; bears on void or prohibited lease clauses): An exculpatory clause in a residential lease, by which the tenant releases the landlord from liability for the landlord's own negligence, is void as against public policy. The case arose from an apartment lease in a county then outside the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, so the holding matters most in the counties the Act does not reach, where no statutory roster of prohibited provisions applies.

Boone v. Gibson, Tenn. Ct. App., February 27, 2004 (residential setting; bears on owner and agent identity): A person who entered into the rental agreement on the landlord's behalf but disclosed only the name of the owner of the apartment complex thereby became the landlord's agent for the purpose of service of process, which is the consequence the identity-disclosure section states. The decision applies the section as it stood before the 2024 rewrite.