How much notice is required to raise the rent in Tennessee?

Verified July 9, 2026 All Tennessee topics →

Pending legislation — not yet law. The rules on this page reflect current law only. The following bill would change it 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).

Tennessee has no statute requiring notice of a rent increase, no limit on how large an increase can be, and no limit on how often rent can rise — the practical floor in the state's 19 large URLTA counties is the month-to-month termination rule, under which either party can end the tenancy on 30 days' written notice before the periodic rental date, so a rent increase works as an offer the tenant can refuse by leaving (week-to-week tenancies: 10 days).

In the other 76 counties even that floor is common law rather than statute. Rent control is off the table everywhere: a statewide statute that applies in all 95 counties bars local governments from controlling residential or commercial rents, a companion provision bans mandatory inclusionary zoning, and since 2021 the state has also preempted the entire field of county landlord-tenant regulation in URLTA counties. A repeal bill allowing local rent control by two-thirds local vote was deferred to a post-adjournment calendar in March 2026 — effectively shelved, though refiling is likely.

Tennessee rent increase notice at a glance

Notice — month-to-month	No rent-increase statute — notice derives from tenancy-termination rules (see summary)
Varies by increase size	Not addressed by statute
Fixed-term leases	No statute addresses rent changes for any lease type. Fixed-term rent is locked by contract unless the lease provides otherwise; at renewal the landlord may propose any rent.
Statewide rent control / stabilization	No
Rent control details	No statewide rent control, no cap on increase size or frequency. Local rent control is preempted STATEWIDE by T.C.A. § 66-35-102(a) — Title 66, Chapter 35 is not part of the URLTA and applies in all 95 counties, barring local ordinances controlling rent for residential or commercial property. Subsection (b) (2018, amended 2024) also bans mandatory inclusionary zoning, with a 2024 carve-out for voluntary attainable-housing incentive programs and a private damages action for violations. In URLTA counties, § 66-28-102(e) (2021) separately preempts the entire field of county landlord-tenant regulation.
Local rent control preempted	Yes
Frequency limits	Not addressed by statute

Notes and caveats

notice_days_month_to_month is null per the TX/GA/NC derivation convention — § 66-28-512(b)'s 30-day m2m termination notice (URLTA counties only) is the derivation source and lives in the summary, not the field. Trap flagged: blog claims that Nashville/Davidson County imposes a 60-day rent-increase notice are inconsistent with both § 66-35-102 and § 66-28-102(e) preemption and cite no ordinance — treat as misinformation. The 2010-census freeze means the URLTA county list is static: Anderson, Blount, Bradley, Davidson, Greene, Hamilton, Knox, Madison, Maury, Montgomery, Putnam, Rutherford, Sevier, Shelby, Sullivan, Sumner, Washington, Williamson, Wilson (19 — corroborated from Westlaw-derived annotations; not an official list, so page copy should describe the rule rather than guarantee the roster).

Statute citations

T.C.A. § 66-28-512 (current-code mirror) (b) Unofficial mirror
T.C.A. § 66-35-102 (current-code mirror) (a)-(b) Unofficial mirror
2021 Pub. Ch. 182 (official session law — census freeze and county field preemption, eff. 2021-07-01) 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 via independent fetches that matched — 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.