Free Missouri Residential Lease Agreement

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A configurable Missouri residential lease agreement that generates a signable multi-page PDF. Built to Mo. Rev. Stat. 535.300, the repair-and-deduct gate at 441.234, and the self-help prohibition at 441.233.

Missouri Mo. Rev. Stat. 535.300 Two Months’ Rent Cap Free PDF 2026 Edition

A Missouri residential lease agreement is not governed by a landlord-tenant act, because Missouri does not have one. Missouri never adopted the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, and the rules that do exist are scattered across three chapters of the Revised Statutes: chapter 441, headed Landlord and Tenant, which supplies the termination notices at 441.050, 441.060 and 441.070, the self-help prohibition at 441.233, the repair-and-deduct right at 441.234, abandonment at 441.065 and two of the three lease disclosures; chapter 535, headed Landlord-Tenant Actions, which supplies the entire security deposit rule at 535.300, the identification disclosure at 535.185 and the rent and possession procedure at 535.020; and chapter 534, which defines unlawful detainer at 534.030 and doubles the damages at 534.330. Three facts drive this page. Missouri’s deposit statute contains a move-out inspection rule that no competing template mentions. Missouri has no landlord-entry statute at all, so entry is a lease election. And Missouri has no statutory warranty of habitability, which makes the narrow rights it does grant worth stating precisely.

Complete the fields below to generate a Missouri 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 Missouri section at each point — including the two clauses that exist only because Missouri makes the lease create them. Before handing over keys, run proper tenant screening. Pair the signed lease with a Missouri move-in / move-out checklist, which carries unusual weight here: Mo. Rev. Stat. 535.300.4(2) measures a lawful deduction against the unit’s condition at the commencement of the tenancy, and a dated condition record is the only thing that fixes what that condition was.

Three chapters of the Revised Statutes of Missouri, and no landlord-tenant act. Missouri is one of a shrinking group of states that never adopted the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, and the practical consequence is that there is no single place to look. A landlord or tenant trying to answer an ordinary question has to know which of three chapters carries it.

Chapter 441 (Landlord and Tenant) carries the definitions at 441.005, which apply across chapters 441, 534 and 535 and which define “lease” as a written or oral agreement and “premises” to include manufactured homes, mobile trailer homes and vehicles used primarily as a dwelling. It carries the accidental-fire rule at 441.010, the illegal-use forfeiture at 441.020, the no-assignment and no-waste covenant at 441.030, the ten-day notice that follows an illegal-use violation at 441.040, the local preemption rule at 441.043, the three termination rules at 441.050, 441.060 and 441.070, abandonment at 441.065, the two holdover doubles at 441.080 and 441.100, the tenant’s duty to notify on being served at 441.090, the self-help prohibition at 441.233, repair-and-deduct at 441.234, the methamphetamine disclosure at 441.236, the deficient-housing receivership at 441.500 to 441.643 including the anti-waiver rule at 441.610 and the occupant’s duties at 441.630, the act-of-God rule at 441.645, the master-metered utility receivership at 441.650, the expedited drug-eviction track at 441.740 and 441.850, and the domestic violence protections at 441.920.

Chapter 535 (Landlord-Tenant Actions) carries the whole of the security deposit law at 535.300 — there is no deposit provision anywhere in chapter 441 — along with the rent and possession procedure at 535.010 and 535.020, the ban on local eviction moratoria at 535.012, service and the posting route at 535.030, judgment and property removal at 535.040, when a demand for rent is good at 535.060, the appeal bond at 535.110, the tenant’s right to stop the case by tendering arrears at 535.160, and the landlord identification disclosure at 535.185.

Chapter 534 (Forcible Entry and Unlawful Detainer) defines unlawful detainer at 534.030, including the ten-business-day notice a new owner must give a residential occupant after a foreclosure, and doubles the damages and rents at 534.330. Two further sections sit outside all three chapters and matter anyway: the radioactive and hazardous material disclosure at 442.055, and the treble-damages waste rule at 537.420.

What is not in any of them is as important. There is no landlord-entry section, no statutory warranty of habitability, no retaliation section, no late-fee cap, and no statutory rent-increase notice. Read the tables of contents for chapters 441 and 535 on the Missouri Revisor of Statutes and the gaps are visible on their face: chapter 441 runs from 441.005 to 441.920 with nothing on access, and chapter 535 ends at 535.300.

Two months’ rent, and Mo. Rev. Stat. 535.300.1 bars a landlord from demanding or receiving more. The two verbs are doing work. A ceiling framed only as a limit on what may be demanded would leave room for a deposit built up in instalments, or topped up mid-tenancy after a damage incident. Missouri closes both: receipt breaches the section just as a single over-large demand does.

The section then tells the landlord where the money goes. Under 535.300.2 all security deposits shall be held by the landlord for the tenant, who is a party to the rental agreement, in a bank, credit union or depository institution insured by an agency of the federal government. Any interest earned on the deposit is the property of the landlord — Missouri is not one of the states that pays deposit interest to tenants. A housing authority created under section 99.040, and any other government entity acting as a landlord, is exempt from that subsection.

Missouri also fixes only three grounds for withholding, and 535.300.4 permits only such amounts as are reasonably necessary for them: to remedy a default in the payment of rent due under the rental agreement; to restore the dwelling unit to its condition at the commencement of the tenancy, ordinary wear and tear excepted; or to compensate the landlord for actual damages sustained as a result of the tenant’s failure to give adequate notice to terminate, provided the landlord makes reasonable efforts to mitigate. There is no fourth ground, and a lease clause purporting to invent one does not survive the section. That mitigation duty is worth noting because one ranking page states the opposite — that Missouri landlords have no obligation to mitigate — while citing 535.300.

One more limit runs the other way. Under 535.300.7 nothing in the section limits the landlord’s right to recover actual damages in excess of the deposit, and nothing in it permits a tenant to apply or deduct any portion of the deposit in lieu of rent. A Missouri tenant may not live out the last month on the deposit, and a Missouri landlord is not confined to the deposit when the damage exceeds it.

No, and this is the most useful drafting consequence in the whole section. Mo. Rev. Stat. 535.300.8 defines “security deposit” as any deposit of money or property, however denominated, furnished by a tenant to a landlord to secure the performance of any part of the rental agreement, including damages to the dwelling unit — and then says the term does not include any money or property denominated as a deposit for a pet on the premises.

“However denominated” is the phrase that catches most attempts at avoidance: a move-in fee, a redecorating fee, a key deposit or a cleaning deposit is a security deposit in Missouri whatever the lease calls it, and counts toward the two-month ceiling. The pet carve-out is the single express exception. So a landlord charging two months’ rent as a deposit plus a separate pet deposit has not breached 535.300.1.

The corollary is the part landlords miss, and it cuts the other way. Because a pet deposit is not a security deposit for the purposes of the section, it does not carry the section’s protections either — not the thirty-day return duty in 535.300.3, not the three withholding grounds in 535.300.4, and not the double-damages remedy in 535.300.6. That makes a pet deposit a matter of pure contract, which means the lease has to say what it covers and when it comes back. Not one of the eight ranking Missouri pages draws either half of this. If you allow pets, the pet-deposit terms are the paragraph most worth writing carefully.

Thirty days — running from the date of termination of the tenancy, and satisfied by mailing. Mo. Rev. Stat. 535.300.3 requires the landlord, within thirty days after the date of termination of the tenancy, either to return the full amount of the security deposit, or to furnish the tenant a written itemized list of the damages for which the deposit or any portion of it is withheld, together with the balance of the deposit.

Every ranking Missouri page states this as thirty days from “the end of the lease.” Two details make that loose in ways that matter in a dispute.

The first is the trigger. The period runs from termination of the tenancy. Where a tenant vacates before the term ends and the tenancy is not terminated until later, or where possession is delivered days after termination, the two dates diverge — and the statute keys to termination, not to the return of possession or the handover of keys.

The second is what counts as compliance. The subsection provides in terms that the landlord shall have complied with this subsection by mailing such statement and any payment to the last known address of the tenant. Posting, not receipt, is the test. A landlord who mails on day twenty-nine has complied even if the envelope arrives on day thirty-four; a landlord who prepares the itemization on day twenty-five and never posts it has not. The practical instruction on both sides is the same: the tenant should give a forwarding address in writing on vacating, and the landlord should keep proof of the date of posting.

Yes — and the landlord has to give written notice of the date and time so the tenant can be there. This is the most distinctive rule in Missouri’s deposit statute, and it appears on none of the eight pages currently ranking for Missouri lease agreements.

Mo. Rev. Stat. 535.300.5 provides that the landlord shall give the tenant or the tenant’s representative reasonable notice in writing, at the tenant’s last known address or in person, of the date and time when the landlord will inspect the dwelling unit following the termination of the rental agreement to determine the amount of the security deposit to be withheld, and that the inspection shall be held at a reasonable time. It then provides that the tenant shall have the right to be present at the inspection of the dwelling unit at the time and date scheduled by the landlord.

Three things follow. The notice must be in writing; a phone call does not satisfy the subsection. It must state a date and time, not merely that an inspection will happen. And the tenant’s right to attend is unconditional on its face — the tenant does not have to request it and the landlord may not make it contingent on the tenant being current on rent or on anything else.

The subsection sets no number of days, only “reasonable,” which is why this builder makes it a selection. Fixing the period in the lease is in both parties’ interests: it gives the tenant something concrete to hold the landlord to, and it gives the landlord a written standard to point at if the tenant later says the notice came too late to act on.

Why it matters is the link to the money. The inspection is the factual basis for the itemized list that 535.300.3 requires within thirty days. A landlord who inspects without giving the notice, or who excludes the tenant, arrives at the itemization with no contemporaneous record the tenant has agreed to — and under 535.300.6 the price of getting the withholding wrong is double. Pairing the inspection with a Missouri move-in / move-out checklist completed at both ends of the tenancy is the cheapest protection either side can buy.

Only if the lease contains a specific clause — and if it does not, the charge is not available at all. This is a pure lease-drafting condition, which is exactly why it belongs on a page about lease agreements and exactly why no competitor template supplies it.

Mo. Rev. Stat. 535.300.4(2) is the ground permitting a landlord to withhold amounts reasonably necessary to restore the dwelling unit to its condition at the commencement of the tenancy, ordinary wear and tear excepted. It then adds a proviso: the subdivision does not preclude a landlord and tenant from agreeing, in the rental agreement between them, on amounts or fees to be charged for cleaning of the carpet, and such amounts actually expended for carpet cleaning can be withheld from the security deposit — so long as the rental agreement also includes a provision notifying the tenant that he or she may be liable for actual costs for carpet cleaning that exceed ordinary wear and tear, which may also be withheld from the deposit. And within thirty days of the end of the tenancy, the landlord shall provide the tenant a receipt for the actual carpet cleaning costs.

So the statute imposes three requirements in sequence, and a landlord who satisfies two of them has satisfied none. There must be an agreement in the lease on carpet-cleaning amounts or fees. There must additionally be a notification provision in the lease telling the tenant about liability for actual costs exceeding ordinary wear and tear. And there must be a receipt for the actual costs within thirty days of the end of the tenancy — a receipt, not a line on an itemization.

Ticking the carpet-cleaning box in the builder above inserts the notification provision in the statutory terms and prints the receipt obligation into the lease. Leaving it unticked prints the opposite: an express statement that the lease does not contain the required provision and that carpet-cleaning costs will accordingly not be withheld from the deposit. Either way the generated lease is internally consistent with the section, which a lease that charges carpet cleaning without the notification clause is not.

The tenant recovers twice the amount wrongfully withheld. Mo. Rev. Stat. 535.300.6 provides that if the landlord wrongfully withholds all or any portion of the security deposit in violation of the section, the tenant shall recover as damages twice the amount wrongfully withheld.

The measure is worth reading closely because it is routinely paraphrased as “double the deposit.” It is not. It is twice the amount wrongfully withheld, which means the exposure tracks the disputed portion. A landlord holding a deposit of two months’ rent who returns all but a contested cleaning charge is exposed to double that charge, not double the deposit. That is a strong practical argument for returning the undisputed balance promptly and itemizing only what is genuinely in issue — and a strong argument against holding the whole deposit while a dispute is worked out.

There is a reported limit on the reach of the subsection. In 2007 the Missouri Court of Appeals for the Western District held, in a decision noted under the section on the Revisor’s own page, that the provision allowing an award of twice the security deposit for a wrongful failure to return it does not apply to tenants of commercial property. The doubling is a residential remedy.

Missouri does not attach a separate penalty to failing to give the inspection notice, or to failing to provide the carpet-cleaning receipt. Those failures bite through the same route: they make the withholding harder to defend as anything other than wrongful, and the consequence of wrongful withholding is the double.

None by statute — because Missouri has no landlord-entry statute at all. This is a genuine legislative gap rather than an oversight in the research, and it is verifiable from the tables of contents. Mo. Rev. Stat. chapter 441 runs from 441.005 to 441.920 and contains no landlord access, entry or notice-of-entry section anywhere in that range. Chapter 535 ends at 535.300. There is no third place to look.

Rankers handle this in three different ways, and two of them are wrong. One states correctly that there is “no state-mandated minimum notice period.” A second says Missouri does not impose notice requirements outside the lease but that “most landlords honour tenant privacy rights and therefore often give twenty-four hour notice,” which is accurate as a description of custom and is often read as a rule. A third states flatly that a Missouri landlord “must enter at reasonable times with reasonable advance notice (by custom, at least twenty-four hours),” which converts a custom into a duty that no Missouri statute imposes. A fourth cites Mo. Rev. Stat. 441.234 for “emergency entry” — 441.234 is the repair-and-deduct section and says nothing about entry.

The correct statement is narrower and more useful: a Missouri tenant’s protection against entry is whatever the lease says it is. There is no statutory floor to fall back on and no statutory ceiling to argue about. That is why the builder above treats the entry notice as a required election rather than printing a figure. A lease that is silent on entry leaves a Missouri tenant with a common-law claim and very little else to point at.

If you need to serve one, the companion Missouri notice to enter is drafted against the lease term rather than against a statute, for exactly this reason, and the Missouri landlord entry laws guide sets out the position at greater length.

No, and Missouri classifies both as forcible entry and detainer rather than as a lease dispute. What Missouri declines to regulate at the entry end it regulates firmly at the eviction end.

Mo. Rev. Stat. 441.233.1 provides that, except as provided in section 441.065, a landlord or its agent who removes or excludes a tenant or the tenant’s personal property from the premises without judicial process and court order, or causes such removal or exclusion, or causes the removal of the doors or locks to the premises, shall be deemed guilty of forcible entry and detainer as described in chapter