Free Mississippi Residential Lease Agreement

▶ Watch walk-through

A configurable Mississippi residential lease agreement that generates a signable multi-page PDF. Built to Miss. Code Ann. 89-8-1 and following — no deposit cap, the 45-day accounting at 89-8-21, and the double-rent holdover your lease can contradict.

Mississippi Miss. Code 89-8 2026 Session Checked Free PDF 2026 Edition

A Mississippi residential lease agreement is governed by the Mississippi Residential Landlord and Tenant Act at Miss. Code Ann. 89-8-1 through 89-8-45 — one of the thinnest landlord-tenant schemes in the country, and for that reason one of the states where the lease itself does the most work. Mississippi sets no maximum security deposit. It has no landlord-entry statute at all. It requires no lease disclosure of any kind. It caps no late fee and grants no grace period. It has no standalone retaliation statute. On every one of those questions the honest answer is the same: the statute is silent, so the lease governs. That is not a gap in this page — it is the single most important thing a Mississippi landlord or tenant needs to understand, and it is why the elections in the form below are written as deliberate choices rather than boilerplate.

Complete the fields below to generate a Mississippi 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 Mississippi section at each point — including the five places where the statute is silent and the lease has to supply the rule. Before handing over keys, run proper tenant screening. Pair the signed lease with a Mississippi move-in / move-out checklist, which in this state does unusually heavy lifting: because the landlord’s duty under 89-8-23 is measured against the condition of the premises at the inception of the lease, the move-in record is the baseline the whole duty is judged against.

No. Mississippi sets no statutory maximum on a residential security deposit. Miss. Code Ann. 89-8-21 is the deposit section, and it is worth being precise about what it does and does not do. It governs which payments count as a deposit, who holds them, what may be deducted, how deductions must be itemized, when the balance must be returned, and what happens if it is kept in bad faith. It contains no cap of any kind — not a number of months, not a fixed sum, not a formula.

Section 89-8-21(1) draws the boundary of what is caught: any payment or deposit of money whose primary function is to secure the performance of a rental agreement or any part of it, other than a payment or deposit made to secure the execution of the agreement, including an advance payment of rent. So a holding fee taken to reserve a unit before signing sits outside the section; a damage or performance deposit taken under the lease sits inside it.

Two protections in the section are routinely missed. First, 89-8-21(2) provides that the deposit shall be held by the landlord for the tenant, and that the tenant’s claim to it is prior to the claim of any creditor of the landlord. That is a real priority rule, and it matters if a landlord’s portfolio runs into trouble. Second, Mississippi imposes no requirement to hold the deposit in a separate or interest-bearing trust account, which many states do — another silence the lease can fill if the parties want it filled. Our Mississippi security deposit laws guide covers the section in more detail.

No later than forty-five days — but the clock does not start when the tenant hands back the keys. This is the single most misreported figure in Mississippi coverage. Miss. Code Ann. 89-8-21(3) requires that any remaining portion of the deposit be returned to the tenant no later than forty-five days after the termination of his tenancy, the delivery of possession and demand by the tenant. Three events, not one. The statute lists them conjunctively, and the third — demand by the tenant — appears in no ranking Mississippi page we examined.

The practical consequences run in both directions. A tenant who moves out, says nothing, and waits should not assume the 45 days is running; the safe course is a short written demand delivered with the forwarding address on the day of move-out. A landlord who wants a certain, defensible deadline — rather than an argument later about whether a demand was ever made — can simply waive the demand requirement in the lease, which is exactly what the tick-box in section 5 of the form above does. Build the accounting itself with our Mississippi security deposit itemization form and send it with a Mississippi security deposit return letter.

What may be deducted is also defined. Under 89-8-21(3) the landlord may claim, by written notice delivered to the tenant, only such amounts as are reasonably necessary to remedy the tenant’s defaults in the payment of rent, to repair damage to the premises caused by the tenant exclusive of ordinary wear and tear, to clean the premises upon termination of the tenancy, or for other reasonable and necessary expenses incurred as a result of the tenant’s default — and then only if the deposit was made for those specific purposes. The written notice must itemize the amounts claimed. A lump-sum deduction with no breakdown does not comply.

If the deposit is kept improperly, 89-8-21(4) supplies the remedy: retention of a deposit or any portion of it in violation of the section and with absence of good faith may subject the landlord, or the landlord’s transferee, to damages not to exceed two hundred dollars, in addition to any actual damages. Two things follow. The statutory sum is modest, so the real exposure is the actual damages plus the deposit itself. And the trigger is bad faith, not mere lateness — a landlord who itemizes honestly and pays late is in a very different position from one who keeps the money without explanation.

Two things, and they are narrower than a general warranty of habitability. Miss. Code Ann. 89-8-23(1) requires a landlord, at all times during the tenancy, to (a) comply with the requirements of applicable building and housing codes materially affecting health and safety, and (b) maintain the dwelling unit, its plumbing, heating and/or cooling system in substantially the same condition as at the inception of the lease, reasonable wear and tear excluded, unless that unit or system is damaged or impaired as a result of the deliberate or negligent actions of the tenant.

Read limb (b) carefully, because it is the Mississippi structure and it differs from most states. The benchmark is not an abstract standard of fitness — it is the condition of the premises when the tenancy began. A unit that was delivered with a marginal air conditioner must be maintained in substantially that condition; the statute does not by its terms require an upgrade. That single feature is why a dated, photographed move-in inspection is worth more in Mississippi than in almost any other state: it fixes the baseline against which the entire duty is measured. Our Mississippi habitability laws guide goes further into the case law.

The section then carves out three things. No duty arises in connection with a defect caused by the deliberate or negligent act of the tenant or of persons on the premises with the tenant’s permission (89-8-23(2)), or caused by the tenant’s affirmative act or failure to comply with the tenant’s own obligations under 89-8-25 (89-8-23(4)). And — subject to the prohibited provisions at 89-8-5 — the landlord and tenant may agree in writing that the tenant perform some or all of the landlord’s duties under the section, but only if the transaction is entered into in good faith (89-8-23(3)). That is a genuine, statutorily authorised lease election, and the form above records it properly rather than leaving it as an unwritten understanding.

On the other side, 89-8-25 sets out nine tenant duties: keep the occupied part of the premises clean and safe; dispose of ashes, rubbish, garbage and other waste in a clean and safe manner in compliance with community standards; keep plumbing fixtures clean; use the electrical, plumbing, sanitary, heating, ventilating and air conditioning facilities reasonably; not deliberately or negligently destroy, deface, damage, impair or remove any part of the premises; not disturb the neighbours’ peaceful enjoyment; inform the landlord of any condition of which the tenant has actual knowledge which may cause damage; maintain the unit in substantially the same condition to the extent of the tenant’s legal obligation; and not engage in any illegal activity upon the leased premises as documented by a law enforcement agency. That last duty was added with eviction in mind and is worth a tenant reading twice.

Yes — and this is where most Mississippi coverage is wrong in both directions. Some pages tell tenants they may simply withhold rent, which is not what the statute says. Others report that Mississippi gives a tenant no repair remedy at all, which is also untrue. Miss. Code Ann. 89-8-15 provides a real repair-and-deduct right, hedged with five conditions that all have to hold.

The mechanism: if, within thirty days after written notice to the landlord of a specific and material defect which constitutes a breach of the lease or of the landlord’s obligation under 89-8-23, the landlord fails to repair it, the tenant may repair the defect and is entitled to reimbursement of the expenses within forty-five days after submitting receipted bills to the landlord. The five conditions are set out in 89-8-15(1)(b):

• the tenant has fulfilled the obligations required under 89-8-25;
• the expenses incurred do not exceed an amount equal to one month’s rent;
• the tenant has not exercised this remedy in the six months immediately preceding;
• the tenant is current in rental payments; and
• reimbursement is capped at the usual and customary charge for such repairs (89-8-15(2)).

Three further rules complete it. Before correcting a condition affecting facilities shared by more than one dwelling unit, the tenant must notify all other tenants sharing those facilities of the plans and arrange the work to create the least practicable inconvenience (89-8-15(3)). The cost of repairs made under the section may be offset against future rent (89-8-15(4)) — which is the closest Mississippi comes to a withholding right, and it is available only after the whole procedure has been followed. And no provision of the section grants a lien against the real property (89-8-15(5)).

The conditions do the real work. A tenant who is behind in rent has no remedy. A tenant who used it four months ago has no remedy. A repair costing more than a month’s rent is outside it. Note also that the 2026 legislature looked directly at this section: HB 442 of the 2026 regular session would have revised the elements necessary for a tenant to be reimbursed, and it died in committee on 3 February 2026. The conditions above are the law.

None by statute — and that is not an omission in this page. The Mississippi Residential Landlord and Tenant Act runs from 89-8-1 to 89-8-45. We read every section in it. There is no section governing a landlord’s access to the dwelling unit: no notice period, no limit on hours, no permitted-purposes list, and no statutory prohibition on abusing the right of access of the kind most states codify. Mississippi joins a very short list of states — Arkansas and Idaho are the others in this wave — with no dwelling-entry provision whatever.

The drafting consequence is direct. In Mississippi, any notice the tenant receives before entry exists only because the lease created it. A lease that is silent on entry leaves the question to general property principles and to whatever the parties can argue after the fact, which serves neither side. Competitor pages routinely assert a Mississippi twenty-four-hour rule; there is no Mississippi source for it, and one widely syndicated summary sources it to 89-8-19, which is in fact the section on the length and termination of a tenancy. The form above therefore asks you to choose an entry notice period, and the generated lease creates it as an enforceable contractual term with an emergency exception. See Mississippi landlord entry laws, and document each visit with a dated Mississippi notice to enter form.

One statutory hook does reach entry indirectly. Miss. Code Ann. 89-8-9 imposes an obligation of good faith on every duty under the chapter and on every act performed as a condition precedent to a right or remedy under it. A contractual entry right is still exercised against that background, and a landlord using access to harass a tenant is on poor ground even without an entry statute.

Rent is due when the lease says it is due. Mississippi has no statutory grace period, no cap on late fees, and no rent control — and, unlike many states, no separate rent-increase notice statute for a periodic tenancy either. What it has instead is a definition that quietly does a lot of work.

Miss. Code Ann. 89-8-7(1)(k) defines “rent” to mean all payments to be made to the landlord under the rental agreement, including any late fees that are required to be paid under the rental agreement by a defaulting tenant. Two consequences follow, and both are drafting points rather than abstractions. A late fee that is stated in the lease is rent, which means it travels with the rent claim in a nonpayment case under 89-8-13(5)(a) and in the eviction filing under 89-8-33. A late fee that is not stated in the lease does not exist at all, because the definition attaches only to fees “required to be paid under the rental agreement”.

The practical limit on the amount is judicial rather than statutory: a fee out of proportion to the landlord’s actual loss invites challenge as an unenforceable penalty rather than a reasonable estimate of damages. Our Mississippi late fee laws guide covers the drafting, Mississippi rent increase laws covers changing rent on a periodic tenancy, and our Mississippi late rent notice and Mississippi rent increase notice handle the paperwork.

Mississippi runs two notice periods for breach, plus a third for holding over, and ranking pages blur them together — often while citing the wrong chapter entirely.

• Three days — nonpayment of rent, Miss. Code Ann. 89-8-13(5)(a). Where the tenant’s material noncompliance is the nonpayment of rent, the landlord may deliver a notice specifying that the rental agreement will terminate if payment is not made within three days. Section 89-8-13(5)(b) adds a provision landlords should note: any judge presiding over a nonpayment eviction hearing shall abide by the provisions of the rental agreement signed by the parties — another reason the lease has to say what you want it to say.
• Fourteen days with a right to cure — any other material noncompliance, Miss. Code Ann. 89-8-13(3). The nonbreaching party delivers a notice specifying the acts and omissions constituting the breach and stating that the agreement will terminate on a date not less than fourteen days after receipt if the breach is not remedied within a reasonable time not exceeding fourteen days.
• Three days — holding over after a fixed term expires, Miss. Code Ann. 89-8-17(2). After expiration, the landlord may notify the tenant that they are holding over and that eviction proceedings will commence no earlier than three days after that notice.

The cure right can disappear. Under 89-8-13(3)(b), in the absence of a showing of due care by the breaching party, if substantially the same act or omission recurs within six months of a prior noticed noncompliance, the nonbreaching party may terminate on at least fourteen days’ notice specifying the breach and the date of termination — and that second notice carries no right to cure. Conversely, 89-8-13(3)(c) bars a party from terminating for a condition caused by that party’s own deliberate or negligent act, or by a family member or other person on the premises with their consent. And 89-8-13(4) requires that on termination the landlord return all prepaid and unearned rent and all security recoverable under 89-8-21.

Note that 89-8-13 runs both ways. Subsection (2) gives the tenant the same fourteen-day notice-and-terminate route where the landlord materially fails to comply with the lease or with 89-8-23. Mississippi tenants are frequently told they have no exit for a landlord’s breach; they have this one.

Use our Mississippi 3-day notice to pay rent or quit for the nonpayment route, the Mississippi notice to cure or quit for the fourteen-day route, the Mississippi unconditional quit notice where no cure right survives, and see Mississippi eviction notice laws for the sequence.

Only if the party being notified agreed in writing to be notified that way. Miss. Code Ann. 89-8-13 permits the notice of breach, the recurrence notice and the nonpayment notice to be given “in writing, or by email or text message if the breaching party has agreed in writing to be notified by email or text message”. Section 89-8-17 carries the same condition for the holdover notice.

This is a genuinely modern provision and it is almost entirely absent from competitor templates. The condition is the whole point: an email address on a rental application is not agreement, and a course of texting about repairs is not agreement. The written agreement has to exist, and the lease is the obvious place for it. The form above turns it into an explicit election and records both parties’ electronic addresses in the generated document, so a later notice cannot be attacked for want of the underlying consent. Section 89-8-7(2) adds a related rule worth knowing: notice given to the landlord’s agent is equivalent to notice given to the landlord.

Miss. Code Ann. 89-8-19 sets the periods, and 89-8-17 handles the expiry of a fixed term. Where the rental agreement fixes no definite term, the tenancy is week to week for a tenant who pays weekly rent and month to month in all other cases (89-8-19(1)). Either party may terminate a week-to-week tenancy by written notice given at least seven days prior to the termination date (89-8-19(2)), and a month-to-month tenancy by written notice given at least thirty days prior to the termination date (89-8-19(3)).

Then comes the subsection almost nobody covers. Section 89-8-19(4) provides that, notwithstanding that section or any other provision of the chapter to the contrary, notice to terminate a tenancy shall not be required where the landlord or tenant has committed a substantial violation of the rental agreement or the chapter that materially affects health or safety. It is symmetrical — it relieves a tenant of the thirty-day notice as readily as it relieves a landlord — and it is a meaningful exception to every notice period on this page. See Mississippi lease termination laws, our Mississippi breaking-lease guide, and the Mississippi notice of non-renewal where a fixed term is simply not being extended.

A fixed-term lease expires on the date stated in it (89-8-17(1)); no notice is needed to end it. Mississippi sets no separate rent-increase notice period for a periodic tenancy, so a rent change runs through the same thirty-day termination notice and an offer of new terms.

Yes — unless this lease says otherwise, and that conditional is the whole story. Miss. Code Ann. 89-8-45 provides that when a rental agreement with a definite term expires and the tenant fails or refuses to vacate after being notified to do so, the landlord may, “if not contradicted by the rental agreement”, charge the tenant double the rent for the time the tenant continues in possession following the date to vacate specified in the notification.

We could find no competitor Mississippi template that mentions 89-8-45 at all, let alone the conditional. It matters because the statute expressly yields to the lease. A landlord who wants the double-rent charge must make sure the lease does not contradict it — and a great many generic templates contain a holdover clause setting some other figure, which does exactly that and silently gives the remedy away. A tenant negotiating a lease, conversely, can ask for it to be contradicted. The form above makes it an explicit tick-box, and the generated lease states the chosen position in terms, so there is nothing left to argue about.

Note the two preconditions inside the statute: the term must have been a definite one that has expired, and the tenant must have been notified to vacate. Double rent runs only from the date to vacate specified in that notification, which is a further reason to send a dated Mississippi notice to vacate rather than relying on the lease’s end date alone.

Mississippi’s residential eviction procedure lives at 89-8-31 through 89-8-45 and was rewritten in 2022, then amended again by SB 2328 in 2025. The outline matters to both sides because the timetable is short.

A landlord may commence eviction for breach of the agreement or violation of the chapter under 89-8-13, or for failing to vacate after termination or expiration under 89-8-17 and 89-8-19 (89-8-31). The filing must include a sworn affidavit or complaint stating the facts, the address and any rent and fees owed, and must attach a copy of the notice of breach or the notice to terminate (89-8-33). The summons carries a prescribed plain-English warning to the tenant (89-8-35). Judgments granted by the court must be signed and executed on the same business day (89-8-37).

Then the part tenants most need to know. Under 89-8-39(1) the judge shall order the tenant to vacate in seven days from the date of the judgment, unless the court finds a shorter or longer period justified by an emergency or other compelling circumstances — the statute names a substantial violation materially affecting health or safety, and an immediate and significant risk of damage or injury, as examples justifying a shorter period. Under 89-8-39(2), as amended by SB 2328 in 2025, a warrant of removal is not considered executed by law enforcement posting it on the door; officers must remove all occupants and place the landlord in physical possession. Under 89-8-39(3) the landlord must then allow the tenant reasonable access for seventy-two hours to remove personal property, after which remaining property may be moved to the curb, an area designated for garbage or another agreed location.

There is also a pay-and-stay rule. Where the possession judgment rests solely on nonpayment of rent, 89-8-39(4) bars the judge from issuing a warrant for removal if the tenant has paid in full all unpaid rent and other sums awarded by the court-ordered move-out date, or if the landlord accepts payment afterwards — and the landlord has an obligation of good faith to accept full payment tendered on or before that date. Finally, 89-8-41 caps a single adjournment at ten days without consent and forbids any adjournment extending the entire hearing beyond thirty days from the date the action was filed, and 89-8-43 sends appeals to the Mississippi Rules of Court.

Mississippi does have a prohibited-provisions section, and no ranking page we examined names it. It is Miss. Code Ann. 89-8-5, and it is short enough to state in full effect. In any agreement, oral or written, for the rental of real property as a dwelling place, a landlord or tenant may not agree to waive or otherwise forego any of the rights, duties or remedies under the chapter, except as otherwise provided by the chapter. And no rental agreement may provide that the tenant or the landlord:

• authorizes any person to confess judgment on a claim arising out of the rental agreement; or
• agrees to the exculpation or limitation of any liability of the landlord arising as a result of the landlord’s willful misconduct, or the costs connected with it.

Two observations. First, the list is short by URLTA standards — there is no ban on waiving jury trial, no ban on a tenant paying the landlord’s legal costs, no limitation-of-remedy clause, and the chapter attaches no damages multiplier to a prohibited provision of the kind Alabama and Arizona impose. The general anti-waiver rule in the same section does the heavy lifting.

Second, and specifically: Mississippi takes no position on attorney fees. The prohibited list does not mention them, and no section of the Act creates an entitlement to them either. A fee clause is therefore a matter of contract, subject only to the anti-waiver rule. The optional clause in the form above is nonetheless drafted to run to the prevailing party in both directions, because a one-sided clause is the term a court is most likely to scrutinise and the least likely to be worth defending. The exculpation ban is also worth a landlord’s attention: a broad “landlord not liable for any injury howsoever caused” clause — still common in circulated Mississippi templates — runs straight into 89-8-5(b) to the extent it reaches willful misconduct.

Barely, and not in the way the phrase usually implies. Mississippi has no standalone retaliation statute. There is no section creating a retaliatory-eviction defence, no presumption that an adverse action within a set number of days after a complaint is retaliatory, and no damages provision.

The only retaliation language in the entire Act is embedded inside Miss. Code Ann. 89-8-17(2), and it is narrow. That subsection permits a landlord to demand an increase in rent after a fixed rental agreement has expired, provided the landlord’s action did not have the dominant purpose of retaliation against the tenant for the tenant’s actions authorized under the chapter, and provided the landlord received written notice of each condition which was the subject of those actions. So the protection is confined to post-expiration rent demands, it applies a demanding “dominant purpose” test, and it depends on the tenant having complained in writing in the first place.

The practical advice for a Mississippi tenant follows directly from that: put every complaint in writing and keep a copy. Written notice is the trigger for the repair-and-deduct remedy under 89-8-15, the trigger for the fourteen-day termination route under 89-8-13(2), and the precondition for the only retaliation protection the state has. A tenant who complains only by phone has, in Mississippi, effectively not complained at all.

None under state law. The Mississippi Residential Landlord and Tenant Act contains no disclosure section at all. There is no radon notice, no flood-risk disclosure, no bed bug notice, no mold disclosure, no asbestos notice, no methamphetamine-contamination history, no shared-utility disclosure and no landlord identification requirement of the kind Alabama, Alaska and Arizona all impose. Mississippi shares with Arkansas the shortest disclosure list in the country.

Federal law supplies the only requirement: the lead-based paint disclosure under 42 U.S.C. 4852d and 24 C.F.R. Part 35 for any dwelling built before 1978, with the EPA pamphlet and any known records or reports. Our Mississippi lead-based paint disclosure form handles it, and the generator above emits it whenever you tick the box.

If you see a Mississippi template with a state disclosure block on it, it was written for another jurisdiction and never re-checked. The form above offers exactly one voluntary block — mold — and the generated lease labels it not required by Mississippi statute on its face, so nobody reading the document later mistakes a courtesy for a legal obligation.

Mississippi has a provision on this that appears in no competitor template we examined: Miss. Code Ann. 89-8-29, the Derrick Beard Act. Any cosigner of a lease of residential premises may terminate, and is presumed to have terminated, the lease before its expiration date upon the death of the lessee or, where there is more than one lessee, upon the death of all lessees. The presumption runs in the cosigner’s favour: a cosigner who chooses not to terminate must provide notice to the lessor within thirty days of the death.

Termination does not wipe the slate. Under 89-8-29(3) the estate and the cosigner remain liable for rent and other sums owed before the death; for rent for the remainder of the month or other thirty-day period in which the death occurred; and for amounts necessary to restore the premises to their condition at the commencement of the tenancy, ordinary wear and tear excepted. Critically, 89-8-29(4) makes any attempted waiver of this right of termination, by contract or otherwise, void and unenforceable — so a guarantee clause purporting to survive the tenant’s death is ineffective to that extent. The section applies to leases entered into or renewed from and after 1 July 2011.

It is worth collecting the silences in one place, because they are the reason a Mississippi lease deserves more attention than a lease in a heavily regulated state. On each of the following, the Act supplies no rule at all, and whatever the parties end up with is whatever the lease says:

• The maximum security deposit. No cap in 89-8-21 or anywhere else.
• Where the deposit is held. No trust-account or interest requirement.
• Landlord entry. No entry section in 89-8-1 through 89-8-45, so no notice period, no permitted purposes, no hours.
• Late fees and grace periods. No cap, no grace period — but 89-8-7(1)(k) makes a lease-stated fee recoverable as rent.
• Lease disclosures. None required by the state; only the federal lead-based paint rule applies.
• Attorney fees. Neither prohibited by 89-8-5 nor granted by any section.
• Retaliation. No standalone statute; only the dominant-purpose limit inside 89-8-17(2).
• Rent-increase notice on a periodic tenancy. No separate period; it runs through the 89-8-19 termination notice.
• Holdover damages. Section 89-8-45 supplies a default that the lease is expressly permitted to contradict.

Every one of those is an election in the form above, or a figure the form asks you to set. That is the design principle of this page: where the statute speaks, the generated lease quotes it; where the statute is silent, the lease says so on its face and then makes the choice explicit, so neither party discovers the gap for the first time during a dispute.

• Citing 89-7-27 for a residential eviction. That section covers premises not constituting a dwelling unit. The residential nonpayment notice is 89-8-13(5)(a).
• Citing 89-7-45. It was repealed in 2022 together with 89-7-41. Removal is now 89-8-39.
• Treating the 45-day deposit clock as running from move-out. Section 89-8-21(3) also requires delivery of possession and demand by the tenant.
• Not itemizing a deposit deduction. The written notice must itemize the amounts claimed, and bad-faith retention adds damages on top of actual damages.
• Assuming there is a deposit cap. There is not one, so the number in the lease is the number.
• Printing a twenty-four-hour entry notice as Mississippi law. There is no Mississippi entry statute; the lease must create the term.
• Leaving entry out of the lease entirely. With no statutory default, silence means no agreed notice at all.
• Charging a late fee the lease never mentions. Section 89-8-7(1)(k) only makes fees “required to be paid under the rental agreement” recoverable as rent.
• Sending a breach notice by text without written consent. Sections 89-8-13 and 89-8-17 allow it only where the recipient agreed in writing.
• Using a generic holdover clause. It can silently contradict 89-8-45 and give away the double-rent charge.
• Assuming the tenant always gets a cure period. A repeat of substantially the same breach within six months removes it under 89-8-13(3)(b).
• Forgetting that 89-8-13 runs both ways. A tenant can terminate on fourteen days’ notice for the landlord’s material noncompliance with 89-8-23.
• Telling a Mississippi tenant to withhold rent. The remedy is the conditional repair-and-deduct at 89-8-15, and it requires the tenant to be current in rent.
• Including a broad landlord-exculpation clause. Section 89-8-5(b) voids it to the extent it reaches the landlord’s willful misconduct.
• Importing radon, flood, mold or bed bug disclosures. Mississippi requires no state disclosure at all.
• Relying on a codified mirror alone. The freely available Mississippi text is stamped current as of 1 January 2025 and predates two 2025 acts.

A well-drafted lease decides who wins a dispute; screening decides whether there is one. Mississippi puts more weight on the lease than most states, because the statutory floor beneath it is so thin — and the same feature that gives a landlord latitude also means a bad tenancy has fewer statutory off-ramps for either side. Verifiable income, a clean payment history, and no prior eviction filings remain the strongest predictors of a quiet tenancy. Our tenant screening report covers credit, eviction filings, criminal background, and employment verification, and Mississippi tenant screening laws covers what you may and may not ask. Screen first, then paper the tenancy with this lease. If pets are on the table, read Mississippi pet and assistance animal laws before you write the clause.

Published by Tenant Screening Background Check

Established 2004 · 20+ Years · All U.S. States & Territories · Statute-Based · Attorney-Reviewed

A Private Eye Reports™ service trusted by landlords, property managers, and attorneys.