Mississippi Landlord-Tenant Laws
Local rent regulation in Mississippi
Mississippi law withholds from municipalities and counties the power to regulate, directly or indirectly, the amount of rent charged for private residential property unless the state legislature first approves, and no local rent control exists in the state.
Cited to Miss. Code Ann. § 21-17-5 (municipalities; official code portal) , Miss. Code Ann. § 19-3-40 (county parallel; official code portal) · Verified August 12, 2026 · Full Mississippi rent-increase rules →
Mississippi Security deposits
Mississippi sets no cap on security deposits and gives landlords 45 days to return the balance — with the clock defined by three events in the statute: the tenancy terminating, the tenant delivering possession, and the tenant demanding the money back.
Mississippi Rent increase notice
Mississippi has no statute requiring advance notice of a rent increase — the 30-day figure quoted for month-to-month tenancies is derived from Miss. Code Ann. 89-8-19(3), which lets either party end a month-to-month tenancy on at least 30 days' written notice (7 days for week-to-week), so a landlord proposing higher rent is effectively offering new terms the tenant can refuse by leaving.
Mississippi Late fees
Mississippi sets no cap on residential late fees and mandates no grace period — no statute regulates the amount, timing, or structure of late fees at all.
Mississippi Entry notice
Mississippi has no statute requiring landlords to give any notice before entering a rental unit — the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act contains no entry provision of any kind, so access rights are governed entirely by the lease.
Mississippi Eviction process
To evict a residential tenant in Mississippi, serve the notice the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act requires - 3 days to pay for nonpayment of rent, 14 days to cure a different lease breach, 3 days after a fixed term expires, or 30 days to end a month-to-month tenancy - then file a sworn affidavit or complaint with a copy of that notice in justice, county or circuit court, attend the show-cause hearing set in the summons, and if the landlord wins the judge orders the tenant out in 7 days, after which the landlord may request a warrant for removal that a sheriff or constable executes.
Mississippi mobile home park laws
Mississippi has no manufactured-home-park tenancy act: a resident who owns the home and rents the lot is covered only by the state's general landlord-tenant law, which sets no rent-increase notice, no limit on increases, no closure or sale notice and no purchase right.
Lot-rent, closure, park-sale and home-sale rules with statute citations →
Mississippi Fair Market Rents (FY 2026) — HUD's benchmark rents for every Mississippi metro area and county.
Changes since last full verification
The Verified date above (July 11, 2026) marks the last time every figure on this page was verified end-to-end against official state sources. The changes below were published since then, each verified against the official source it names (what these dates mean).
- Correction, August 5, 2026 — Mississippi's eviction record no longer contradicts its rent-increase record on rent-control preemption: the local-overlays note now points to the express preemption in the home-rule statutes (21-17-5(2)(h) and 19-3-40(3)(g)). The chapter section count was corrected from 22 to 23 (89-8-1 through 89-8-45, none repealed), and the 2026 fraudulent-utility-conversion act's missing session-law chapter number was filled in as Laws 2026, ch. 416.
How this record was verified: Mississippi's official code compilation is LexisNexis-published without directly readable section pages (lexisnexis.com/hottopics/mscode redirects to advance.lexis.com), so verification ran on directly published official state sources reconciled with mirrors: enrolled session-law texts on the Legislature's billstatus.ls.state.ms.us (SB 2461/Laws 2022 ch. 501 eff. 2022-04-21; SB 2328/Laws 2025 ch. 460 eff. 2025-04-10; HB 1200/Laws 2025 ch. 474 eff. 2025-07-01; SB 2473/Laws 2018 ch. 446 eff. 2018-07-01) plus the MS Attorney General's consumer-guide PDF reproducing the full pre-2022 act text, each figure used here reconciled verbatim against Justia (2025 code edition) and FindLaw (current through 2025-01-01): 45-day deposit return with its three-element trigger and $200 bad-faith penalty (89-8-21, unamended since Laws 1991 ch. 478 — three matching reads), 30-day month-to-month and 7-day week-to-week termination notice (89-8-19, three reads), 3-day nonpayment termination notice and 14-day cure notice (89-8-13, official + mirror), rent-definition late-fee clause (89-8-7(1)(k), official + AG PDF), and the municipal/county rent-regulation preemption clauses (21-17-5(2)(h) and 19-3-40(3)(g), FindLaw + Justia matching verbatim). Negative checks (no deposit cap, no interest/escrow, no entry statute, no late-fee statute, no rent-increase-notice statute) were run against the complete current chapter assembled from the AG PDF (pre-2022 sections) and all amending enrolled acts. Legislature per-section bill indexes swept for every 89-8 section, 2018-2026, and the full 2026 all-measures index searched: no live bills; HB 442, HB 499 and SB 2012 (2026) all died in committee 2026-02-03. A same-day (2026-07-11) read of the official Lexis compilation's search results sight-confirmed the chapter's current compiled span (§§ 89-8-1 — 89-8-45), the verbatim opening text of 89-8-21(1)-(2), and 89-8-13's post-2022 structure including the (5)(a) nonpayment clause; complete Lexis sight-reads of 89-8-21/-13/-19 and the 21-17-5(2)(h) lettering remain pending, with the figures shown here resting on the reconciled official sources above.