Vermont Landlord-Tenant Laws

Verified October 1, 2026 Correction October 23, 2026

Vermont at a glance

Rule	Vermont	Cited to
Max security deposit	No statutory cap	9 V.S.A. § 4461 +3 more
Deposit return deadline	14 days	9 V.S.A. § 4461 +3 more
Rent-increase notice (month-to-month)	60 days	9 V.S.A. § 4455 +5 more
Statewide rent control / rent cap	No	9 V.S.A. § 4455 +5 more
Late-fee cap	No statutory cap	9 V.S.A. § 4455 +3 more
Entry notice	48 hours	9 V.S.A. § 4460 +2 more
Eviction notice (nonpayment)	14 days	9 V.S.A. 4451 +47 more
Application fee cap	Banned: a landlord or a landlord's agent may not charge an application fee to anyone applying to enter into a rental agreement for a residential dwelling unit.	9 V.S.A. § 4456a +17 more
Interest owed on deposits	No — the statute addresses the interest and does not give it to the tenant	9 V.S.A. § 4461 (Security deposits) +2 more
Repair deadline after tenant notice	No statutory count	9 V.S.A. § 4457 (landlord obligations; habitability; waiver; heat and water) +11 more
Repair and deduct	Yes — authorized by statute	9 V.S.A. § 4457 (landlord obligations; habitability; waiver; heat and water) +11 more
Landlord notice to end a month-to-month tenancy	Tiered; no default figure	9 V.S.A. § 4467 +17 more
Owner and agent identity disclosure	Required — by posting	9 V.S.A. § 4451 +25 more
In-force state hazard disclosures beyond the federal lead-paint rule	1	9 V.S.A. § 4451 +25 more
Pet deposit	No statute, no cap	9 V.S.A. § 4461 +14 more
Assistance animals: the state instrument	Fair-housing act only	9 V.S.A. § 4461 +14 more

Cite this page: "Landlord Atlas, Vermont Landlord-Tenant Laws (verified October 1, 2026), landlordatlas.com/laws/vermont/" — free to cite and quote with a link (how these records are verified). Every figure above is cited to the Vermont statute it comes from on the linked topic page.

Local rent regulation in Vermont

No Vermont statute expressly addresses local rent control; state law neither bars nor authorizes municipal rent regulation, and a municipality could act only through a charter change approved by the General Assembly.

Verified October 1, 2026 · Full Vermont rent-increase rules →

Vermont landlord-tenant laws by topic

Vermont security deposits

Vermont sets no limit on how large a residential security deposit can be, but the landlord must return it — with a written statement itemizing any deductions — within 14 days after discovering the tenant has moved out or abandoned the unit.

Vermont rent increase notice

Vermont landlords must give at least 60 days' actual notice of a rent increase, and the increase takes effect only on the first day of the rental period that follows those 60 days (9 V.S.A. 4455(b)) — one of the longer express rent-increase notice periods in the country.

Vermont late fees

Vermont has no statute capping residential late fees and no statutory grace period — but it is not a free-for-all, because the Vermont Supreme Court polices late charges as liquidated damages.

Vermont entry notice

Vermont landlords must give at least 48 hours' notice before entering a rental unit and may enter only between 9:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. — one of the few states with both a fixed notice period and a statutory time-of-day window.

Vermont eviction process

To evict a tenant in Vermont a landlord must first serve a written termination notice - 14 days for nonpayment of rent, 30 days for breach of a material lease term, 14 days for criminal activity, illegal drug activity or violence threatening other residents, and 7 to 90 days for no cause depending on the length of the tenancy, how often rent is due and whether the lease is written - then, only after the notice's termination date has passed and within 60 days of it, file an ejectment action in the Civil Division of the Superior Court in the county where the property is located.

Vermont application & screening fees

Vermont bans residential rental application fees outright: a landlord or a landlord's agent may not charge anyone a fee to apply for a residential dwelling unit, and the state sets no cap, no receipt duty, no refund timetable, and no advance disclosure duty because there is no lawful fee to regulate.

Vermont deposit interest

Vermont law does not require a landlord to pay interest on a security deposit — but it expressly lets a town require it, and Burlington does.

Vermont habitability & repairs

Vermont deems every residential rental agreement to include the landlord's covenant to deliver over and maintain, throughout the tenancy, premises that are safe, clean and fit for human habitation and that comply with applicable building, housing and health regulations.

Vermont lease termination

Vermont has no single notice period, because the answer turns on whether the rental agreement is written.

Vermont lease disclosures

A Vermont landlord must hand the tenant one document at signing and it is not the lease: a separate flood disclosure, on the state's own form, saying whether any part of the premises sits in a federally mapped special flood hazard area, and a negative answer still has to be given.

Vermont pets & assistance animals

Vermont sets no limit on a pet deposit, pet rent or a pet fee, because it caps no security deposit at all and has no pet statute of any kind.

Vermont mobile home park laws

Vermont's Mobile Home Parks chapter covers land laid out for more than two mobile homes and sets three headline rules: lot rent may rise only on 60 days' written notice given on the State's own form to the residents and to the Commissioner of Housing and Community Development, a park may close only on 18 months' notice, and a lot tenancy may be ended only for nonpayment, a substantial lease violation, a change of use, or termination of the park.

Vermont Fair Market Rents (FY 2027) — HUD's benchmark rents for every Vermont metro area and county.

Editable Vermont deposit kit · Editable Vermont disclosure packet — editable documents built on the verified Vermont rules on this page, in Word, fillable PDF and Excel.

Changes since last full verification

The Verified date above (October 1, 2026) marks the last time every figure on this page was verified end-to-end against official sources. The changes below were published since then, each verified against the official source it names (what these dates mean).

Correction, October 23, 2026 — Vermont's lease-disclosures page said the deed assigning a lease of more than one year must be signed, sealed, witnessed, acknowledged and recorded. 2026 Act 165, section 28, effective June 18, 2026, struck the seal and witness requirements from 27 V.S.A. § 304: the deed is signed, acknowledged and recorded as provided for deeds, and the page now says so with the date. Vermont Statutes Online now includes the actions of the 2026 session, so the notes on the eviction, entry-notice, lease-termination, lease-disclosures and habitability pages that said the official site lagged the law (the recovery-residence carve-out kept by Act 103 and the cannabis-clause section 4468b added by Act 176, both in force July 1, 2026 and already stated) are retired. The manufactured-home-parks page reads 'Manufactured Home Parks' for 10 V.S.A. chapter 153, as 2026 Act 155 directed the statutes be revised, without change of meaning. The pets page's description of the animal-control chapters is corrected: 20 V.S.A. § 3583 was repealed effective June 8, 2026 and chapter 194's § 3915 is read.
Correction, October 2, 2026 — Notice periods now print in the unit each statute uses (correction). Entry notice: the statutes of Alabama, Arizona, Hawaii, Kentucky, Rhode Island and Washington say two days and Oklahoma's says one day, and those pages show days; Delaware's and Vermont's say 48 hours, and their pages, which had shown 2 days, now show 48 hours. Eviction notice for unpaid rent: California, Florida and Utah give three days that leave out Saturdays, Sundays and legal holidays, and their pages now show 3 business days, as does California's lease-violation notice; Nevada's shows 7 judicial days; Alabama's two notices show 7 business days. Each statute was read on its official site on October 1, 2026. No period changed.

How this record was verified: Direct read of statute text on the official Vermont General Assembly site (legislature.vermont.gov): the complete text of every section of 9 V.S.A. chapter 137 (4451 through 4475, all four subchapters) read twice via two independent official endpoints — the per-section pages and the full-chapter view — with every key figure (60 days' actual notice for rent increases in 4455(b); the 14-day deposit return clock, its discovery/noticed-vacate-date triggers, the 60-day seasonal clock, and the forfeiture-plus-willful-double penalty in 4461(c)-(e); the 48-hour / 9 AM-9 PM entry rule in 4460(b); the three-day mail-receipt presumption in 4451(1)) matching verbatim across both reads. 10 V.S.A. 6251 and a full sweep of 10 V.S.A. chapter 153 (mobile home parks) read for the note-only lot-rent regime. Session sweep run against the official 2025-2026 biennium data: all 179 regular acts, all 12 municipal (charter) acts, and all 13 vetoed bills enumerated, plus the official Acts-Affecting-VSA-Sections table (2,705 rows on October 1, 2026) filtered to Title 9 chapter 137 — exactly three hits, each verified in the enacted act text (Act 69 of 2025 sec. 10 amending 4456a; Act 103 of 2026 amending 4452(b) and cancelling its scheduled repeal, effective 2026-07-01; Act 176 of 2026 sec. 30 adding new 9 V.S.A. 4468b, effective 2026-07-01). Act 103 and Act 176 read from their official As Enacted PDFs; both postdate the statutes site's current text (the site still shows 4452(b) as repealed effective 2026-07-01 and lacks 4468b — flagged in notes). Verified negatives (no deposit cap, no state deposit-interest or separate-account rule, no late-fee or grace-period statute, no rent-control or preemption provision, no increase-frequency limit) established by the full-chapter double read plus a targeted Title 24 municipal-powers check (24 V.S.A. 2291; chapter 123). Late-fee case law (Highgate Associates, Ltd. v. Merryfield, 157 Vt. 313 (1991)) read in the reproduction of the official report, which prints the parallel citation 597 A.2d 1280. Dead 2025-2026 bills (S.91, H.399, H.440) verified dead on their official bill-status pages; the biennium has adjourned sine die. October 1, 2026: every section of 9 V.S.A. chapter 137 and the cited sections of 12 V.S.A. chapters 169 and 171 were read again on legislature.vermont.gov, which still serves the 2025 session; Acts 103 and 176 of 2026 were read again in their As Enacted texts, and Burlington Code of Ordinances § 18-120 in the city's published code.