Free Tennessee Residential Lease Agreement

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A configurable Tennessee residential lease agreement that generates a signable multi-page PDF — and the only one built on the fact that Tennessee’s landlord-tenant act reaches only seventeen counties. Written to Tenn. Code Ann. 66-28-101 to 66-28-523, and to the title 66 chapter 7 law that governs the other seventy-eight.

Tennessee Title 66 Chapter 28 17 Counties Free PDF 2026 Edition

A Tennessee residential lease agreement has to answer a question that almost no other state forces on a landlord: which body of Tennessee law governs this property? Tennessee enacted the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act at Tenn. Code Ann. 66-28-101 to 66-28-523, but 66-28-102(a) confines it to “counties having a population of more than seventy-five thousand (75,000), according to the 2010 federal census.” That reference is frozen. Seventeen of Tennessee’s ninety-five counties qualify; in the other seventy-eight the Act’s deposit account, grace period, late-fee ceiling, entry provisions, habitability duty, abandonment procedure and retaliation defence are not law at all, and Tenn. Code Ann. 66-7-109 supplies a different set of notice periods instead. Nine of the ten pages ranking for this query state the Act as though it were statewide, and the one that mentions the split uses the wrong test. This form asks the county question first, and the generated lease branches on the answer.

Complete the fields below to generate a Tennessee residential lease agreement as a signable multi-page PDF. Every field you fill is written into the document, and the generated lease cites the controlling Tennessee section at each point — starting with the county question that decides whether those sections bind you at all. Before handing over keys, run proper tenant screening. Pair the signed lease with a Tennessee move-in / move-out checklist, which in this state does double duty: it is your condition record and, used properly, the comprehensive damage listing that Tenn. Code Ann. 66-28-301(b) makes the difference between keeping part of a deposit and keeping none of it.

Only if the county exceeded seventy-five thousand people in the 2010 federal census. Tenn. Code Ann. 66-28-102(a) is one sentence and it is the single most important sentence in Tennessee residential tenancy law: “This chapter applies only in counties having a population of more than seventy-five thousand (75,000), according to the 2010 federal census.” Its history line records that the current form dates from 2021 Tenn. Acts ch. 182, effective 1 July 2021, and a full scan of the Secretary of State’s register of all 1,142 public chapters enacted by the 114th General Assembly in 2025 and 2026 turned up no later amendment.

Three consequences follow, and each of them changes how a lease should be drafted. First, the test is historical, not current. Most Tennessee population classifications in the Code are written as “according to the x federal census or any subsequent federal census“, which lets a county move in or out as it grows. 66-28-102(a) is not written that way: it names the 2010 census and stops. A county cannot grow into the Act and cannot shrink out of it. Second, the classification is not a local choice. Unlike Kentucky, where a city or county adopts the uniform act by ordinance, no Tennessee county can opt in or out. Third, in a covered county the Act is exclusive: 66-28-102(e) provides that “in the counties in which this chapter applies, this chapter occupies and preempts the entire field of legislation concerning the regulation of landlords and tenants”, and the governing body of such a county “shall not enact or enforce regulations that conflict with, or are an addition to, this chapter.”

That preemption clause cuts the other way too, and it is worth noticing. Because 66-28-102(e) is expressed to apply only “in the counties in which this chapter applies”, the field preemption it creates does not reach the seventy-eight counties the Act does not cover. Our Tennessee landlord-tenant laws guide covers the wider framework.

Seventeen of ninety-five. Because 66-28-102(a) fixes the reference to the 2010 federal census, the covered counties are a question of published census data rather than of statutory drafting or local adoption. Working from the Census Bureau’s own 2010 county file for Tennessee, the counties that recorded more than seventy-five thousand people are:

• Shelby (927,644), Davidson (626,681), Knox (432,226) and Hamilton (336,463) — the four metropolitan counties, well clear of the line.
• Rutherford (262,604), Williamson (183,182), Montgomery (172,331), Sumner (160,645) and Sullivan (156,823).
• Blount (123,010), Washington (122,979) and Wilson (113,993).
• Bradley (98,963), Madison (98,294), Sevier (89,889) and Maury (80,956).
• Anderson (75,129) — inside the Act by one hundred and twenty-nine people, and the county most often left off published lists.

Two counties that people expect to see here are not on the list. Putnam County recorded 72,321 in 2010 and Greene County 68,831. Both have grown since, and both appear on at least one widely circulated list of covered counties — but because the statute names the 2010 census, growth after 2010 is irrelevant. Equally, the shorter list that circulates elsewhere names only eleven counties and omits Anderson, Bradley, Madison, Maury, Sevier and Washington. Neither list matches the statute. If you are drafting for a property near the line, the safe course is to look up the county’s 2010 census count rather than its current population, and to note the answer in the lease so that both parties know which rulebook they are under.

One further point about the county, not the city. The classification in 66-28-102(a) is by county, so a rental inside a small municipality in Shelby County is covered, and a rental in an unincorporated part of Coffee County is not. What matters is the county in which the dwelling unit sits.

The lease, title 66 chapter 7, and the forcible entry and detainer chapter. This is the half of Tennessee that no ranking template addresses, and the Code marks it out expressly. Tenn. Code Ann. 66-7-109(g) provides that “nothing in this section shall apply to rental property located in any county governed by the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act” — so the section is written for the other seventy-eight counties, and its notice periods are different from chapter 28’s.

Under 66-7-109(a)(1), fourteen days’ notice by a landlord is sufficient notice of termination for the purpose of evicting a residential tenant where the termination is for the tenant’s neglect or refusal to pay rent that is due and in arrears upon demand; for damage beyond normal wear and tear caused by the tenant, members of the household or guests; or for a willful or intentional violent act, or behaviour constituting or threatening to be a real and present danger to the health, safety or welfare of the life or property of other tenants, the landlord, the landlord’s representatives or other persons on the premises. Where the breach is remediable and the tenant cures it before the date specified, the tenancy continues; where substantially the same act or omission recurs within six months, the landlord may terminate on at least fourteen days’ written notice.

66-7-109(b) is the provision that most surprises landlords who have read only about chapter 28: “For all other defaults in the lease agreement, a thirty-day termination notice from the date such notice is given by the landlord shall be required for the purpose of eviction of a residential tenant.” A lease violation that is not nonpayment, damage or violence therefore takes thirty days outside the covered counties and fourteen inside them. The same section carries three days for a violent act, drug-related criminal activity or a real and present danger by a tenant who is not mentally or physically disabled — a subsection written specifically for non-covered counties — three days for an unauthorized subtenant or occupant who refuses to vacate, and sixty days where a rent-paying tenant aged fifty-five or over is displaced from a federally assisted older-persons facility for new property development. It does not apply at all where the rental period is less than fourteen days.

What is absent outside the seventeen counties matters as much as what is present. There is no statutory security deposit procedure, no dedicated-account requirement, no statutory grace period, no late-fee ceiling, no statutory notice before entry, no statutory habitability duty of the 66-28-304 kind, no essential-services repair-and-deduct, no statutory abandonment procedure and no retaliation defence. That does not leave a tenant with nothing — contract terms, local building and housing codes and general principles of law and equity all still operate, and several statewide statutes discussed below apply in every county — but it does mean the lease is the primary source of rights. That is why this generator, told the county is not covered, does not simply delete the protections: it restates the Act’s standards as express contractual undertakings the tenant can enforce as terms of the agreement.

One thing does not change with the county line. Tennessee’s forcible entry and detainer procedure at Tenn. Code Ann. 29-18-101 to 29-18-135 is not part of the Uniform Act and applies everywhere. Unlawful detainer is defined by 29-18-104 as the case where the defendant entered by contract as tenant, assignee, personal representative or subtenant and willfully, without force, holds over possession from the landlord. Possession is recovered through that proceeding in every county, and never by lockout or utility shut-off. See Tennessee eviction notice laws.

There is no limit anywhere in Tennessee. Tenn. Code Ann. 66-28-301 contains no maximum, and outside the covered counties there is no deposit statute at all, so no cap could exist there either. What the section regulates instead, in a covered county, is procedure — and Tennessee’s procedure is unusual in two respects worth knowing before you take a deposit.

The first is the account. 66-28-301(a) requires all landlords of residential property requiring security deposits prior to occupancy “to deposit all tenants’ security deposits in an account used only for that purpose, in any bank or other lending institution subject to regulation by the state or any agency of the United States government.” It is a dedicated deposit account, not a trust account in the Alaska sense, and the statute does not require per-tenant sub-accounting.

The second is what the tenant is told. 66-28-301(h) requires the landlord to notify the tenant “at the time such persons sign the lease and submit the security deposit, of the location of the account required to be maintained pursuant to this section” — and then says in terms that the landlord “shall not be required to provide the account number.” Tennessee is deliberate about that boundary: the tenant is entitled to know where the money sits, not to the account details. It is the mirror image of Kentucky, where the account number must be disclosed.

66-28-104(14) defines the deposit itself, and the definition does work. A security deposit is “an escrow payment made to the landlord under the rental agreement for the purpose of securing the landlord against financial loss due to damage to the premises occasioned by the tenant’s occupancy other than ordinary wear and tear and any monetary damage due to the tenant’s breach of the rental agreement.” The same paragraph adds a sentence that no template carries: a security deposit “shall in no way infer that the landlord is providing any service for the personal protection or safety of the tenant beyond that prescribed by law.”

Tennessee sets no deadline at all, and this is the single most misreported rule in the state. Section 66-28-301 contains no return period. Every one of the ten pages ranking for this query prints thirty days, and three of them cite 66-28-301(g)(1) as the authority. Open the subsection and it says something else entirely.

66-28-301(g) begins “Nothing in this section precludes the landlord from recovering the costs of any and all contractual damages to which the landlord may be entitled, plus the cost of any additional physical damages to the premises that are discovered after an inspection that has been completed pursuant to subsection (b)” — and then limits that extra recovery to damage discovered before the earlier of thirty days after the tenant vacated or abandoned, or seven days after a new tenant takes possession. It is a cut-off on the landlord’s claim, giving the tenant certainty that a bill will not arrive months later. It is not a clock on the refund, and nothing in it obliges the landlord to pay anything by any date.

The other figure that gets mistaken for a deadline is the sixty days in 66-28-301(f). That subsection deals with the opposite situation: where the tenant leaves owing no rent and a refund is due, the landlord “shall send notification to the last known or reasonably determinable address, of the amount of any refund due the tenant”, and if no response is received within sixty days of sending that notification the landlord “may remove the deposit from the account and retain it free from any claim of the tenant.” That rule runs in the landlord’s favour. It is an abandoned-money provision, not a refund period.

Two practical consequences follow. For a tenant: give the landlord a forwarding address in writing when you vacate, because the 66-28-301(f) notification goes to the last address the landlord can reasonably determine, and a notification you never see starts a sixty-day clock you will lose. For a landlord: the absence of a deadline is not a licence to sit on the money, because 66-28-301(c) forfeits the right to retain any of it where the account and the listing requirements were both missed, and a court asked to decide a deposit dispute will look at how promptly the landlord acted.

A structured mutual inspection with a signed listing, and a written dissent requirement that decides most disputes. Tenn. Code Ann. 66-28-301(b) is the longest subsection in the section and no ranking page prints it. It works like this.

The trigger. On requesting the tenant to vacate, or within five days after receiving written notice of the tenant’s intent to vacate, the landlord may give the tenant notice of the tenant’s right to be present at the inspection, and may advise the tenant to request a time set by the landlord during normal working hours. The word is “may”: the notice is a landlord’s option, and it is the option that unlocks the waiver described below.

The timing. The landlord may require the inspection to take place after the tenant has completely vacated, is ready to surrender possession and has returned all means of access — provided the inspection is either on the day the tenant completely vacates or within four calendar days of the tenant vacating. Four days, and they are calendar days.

The waiver, which only works if the lease says so. If the landlord provides written notice of the right to be present and the tenant schedules an inspection but fails to attend it, “the tenant waives the right to contest any damages found by the landlord as a result of such inspection by the landlord; provided, that notice of the tenant’s waiver upon such circumstances is set out in the rental agreement.” That proviso turns a statutory consequence into a drafting decision, and the builder above makes it an explicit choice rather than burying it.

The listing and the signatures. Where a mutual inspection happens, landlord and tenant “shall then inspect the premises and compile a comprehensive listing of any presently ascertainable damage to the unit that is the basis for any charge against the security deposit and the estimated dollar cost of repairing the damage“, and both shall sign it. Except as subsection (g) provides, the signatures are conclusive evidence of the accuracy of the listing. That is a stronger evidential rule than most states have, and it cuts both ways.

The dissent trap. “If the tenant refuses to sign the listing, the tenant shall state specifically in writing the items on the list to which the tenant dissents.” Under 66-28-301(d) a tenant who disputes the final listing may sue in circuit or general sessions court, but “the tenant’s claim shall be limited to those items from which the tenant specifically dissented in accordance with the listing”; otherwise “the tenant shall not be entitled to recover any damages under this section.” A tenant who signs without dissent, or who ignores the listing, has given away the claim.

When there is no inspection right at all. 66-28-301(b)(2)(B) removes the right where the tenant has vacated without giving written notice, abandoned the premises, been judicially removed, not contacted the landlord after the landlord’s notice of the right to a mutual inspection, failed to appear at the arranged time, or not requested a mutual inspection or is otherwise inaccessible. In those cases the landlord may inspect alone and compile the listing, provided a written copy is sent by certificate of mailing on the tenant’s written request. Our Tennessee security deposit itemization form produces that listing, and the Tennessee security deposit laws guide works through the section in more detail.

Total forfeiture of the right to retain anything. Tenn. Code Ann. 66-28-301(c) is one sentence: “No landlord shall be entitled to retain any portion of a security deposit if the security deposit was not deposited in an account as required by subsection (a) and a listing of damages is not provided as required by subsection (b).”

Read the conjunction carefully, because it matters. The sanction bites where the landlord failed both to hold the money in a dedicated account and to provide the damage listing. A landlord who did one but not the other is not automatically caught by 66-28-301(c), though the missing step will still be evidence in any dispute and the listing requirement is separately load-bearing under (b) and (d). The safe course is obvious: open the account, tell the tenant where it is at signing, and produce the listing.

What Tennessee does not provide is equally worth stating. There is no double-damages provision, no treble-damages provision, no statutory penalty figure and no automatic attorney-fee award tied to the deposit section. A tenant enforcing the deposit rules relies on 66-28-301(c) plus the general remedy in 66-28-501(a), which does carry reasonable attorney’s fees after fourteen days’ written notice. Templates that promise a Tenn