Free South Carolina Residential Lease Agreement

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A configurable South Carolina residential lease agreement that generates a signable multi-page PDF. Built to the South Carolina Residential Landlord and Tenant Act — no deposit cap, a 30-day accounting backed by treble damages, and the conspicuous lease provision that replaces the five-day rent notice.

South Carolina S.C. Code 27-40 No Deposit Cap Free PDF 2026 Edition

A South Carolina residential lease agreement is the written contract governed by the South Carolina Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, codified at S.C. Code Ann. Title 27, Chapter 40 and running from section 27-40-10. South Carolina adopted a uniform-act framework in 1986 and then customised it in ways that repeatedly catch out landlords working from a generic template. It sets no cap at all on the security deposit, but backs its thirty-day accounting deadline with treble damages plus the tenant’s attorney’s fees. It carries a multi-unit deposit-standards rule at 27-40-410(c) that almost every competing template describes incorrectly. It gives the landlord twenty-four hours’ entry notice with three narrow exceptions, one of which exists only if the lease says so. And it contains the single most consequential drafting option in the state: a conspicuous provision in the lease itself that, under 27-40-710(B), removes the need to serve any separate five-day nonpayment notice, for the whole tenancy and into the month-to-month that follows. The generator below builds a lease that reflects each of those rules as the statute actually reads, verified against the codified chapter and the 126th General Assembly’s enrolled acts on 2026-08-06.

Complete the fields below to generate a South Carolina residential lease agreement as a signable multi-page PDF. Every field you fill is written into the document, including the utility allocations, the multi-unit deposit answer, the entry and nonpayment options, and each disclosure you check, and the generated lease cites the controlling South Carolina section at each point. Before you hand keys to anyone, run proper tenant screening — the lease governs the relationship, screening decides whether you want it. Pair the signed lease with a South Carolina move-in / move-out checklist so the thirty-day accounting rests on documented condition rather than memory.

South Carolina recognizes the standard range of residential arrangements, and the type determines how the tenancy ends. A fixed-term lease runs for a stated period and expires on its own terms. A periodic tenancy renews each period until one side gives notice. Under S.C. Code Ann. 27-40-310(d), where a rental agreement does not fix a definite term, the tenancy is week to week in the case of a roomer who pays weekly rent and month to month in all other cases. That default is why an informal arrangement to pay monthly rent creates a month-to-month tenancy by operation of law, with the whole of chapter 40 attached to it, even when nothing was signed.

The Act defines a roomer narrowly at 27-40-210(13): a person occupying a dwelling unit that does not include a toilet and either a bathtub or a shower, and a refrigerator, stove and kitchen sink, all provided by the landlord, where one or more of those facilities are used in common by occupants in the structure. So the week-to-week default is not simply a matter of paying weekly — the unit itself has to be a rooming arrangement in that specific sense.

Beyond those, a room or roommate agreement covers a tenant renting one room in an occupied dwelling; a sublease transfers the tenant’s interest to a subtenant while leaving the original tenant liable to the landlord, and is only available where the lease permits it; and a lease-to-own agreement bolts a purchase option onto a tenancy, which should be drafted with counsel since the purchase terms sit outside chapter 40. A commercial lease is not governed by chapter 40 at all. And South Carolina’s own exclusion list at 27-40-120 is longer than most, running to nine items: institutional residence incidental to detention or medical, geriatric, educational, counseling or religious service; occupancy by a purchaser under a contract of sale; occupancy by a member of a fraternal or social organization in a portion of a structure run for the organization’s benefit; transient occupancy in a hotel, motel or other accommodation subject to the accommodations sales tax under 12-36-920; occupancy by an employee whose right to occupy is conditional on employment about the premises; occupancy by a condominium owner or the holder of a cooperative proprietary lease; occupancy primarily for agricultural purposes; occupancy regulated by the Vacation Time Sharing Plan Act in chapter 32 of title 27; and residence, temporary or not, at a charitable or emergency protective shelter.

One drafting point specific to South Carolina. The Statute of Frauds at S.C. Code Ann. 32-3-10(4) requires a writing for any contract or sale of lands, tenements or hereditaments or any interest in or concerning them, and subsection (5) requires one for any agreement not to be performed within one year of its making. A tenancy of a year or less can therefore rest on an oral agreement, and chapter 40 still governs it — but an oral eighteen-month arrangement is not enforceable for its full term. Landlords sometimes assume a handshake extension carries the original written lease forward; it does not, and the tenancy usually reverts to month to month under 27-40-310(d), which changes the notice needed to end it. There is also a codified fallback for imperfect signing: 27-40-320 provides that where the landlord does not sign and deliver an agreement the tenant has signed and delivered, acceptance of rent without reservation gives it the same effect as if the landlord had signed, and the mirror rule applies to a tenant who takes possession and pays rent; an agreement given effect that way for a term longer than one year is effective for one year only.

There is no limit. South Carolina sets no statutory maximum security deposit. S.C. Code Ann. 27-40-410 is the deposit section, and it governs how a deposit is held and returned without imposing any ceiling on the amount. No other section of the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act imposes one either.

This is worth stating flatly because a ranking South Carolina template page asserts that the state “explicitly limits security deposits to 2 months rent for unfurnished property or 3 months rent for furnished property,” and cites 27-40-410 for it. Open the section: those figures are not there, and nothing resembling them is. They read like a summary of a different state’s law that acquired a South Carolina citation somewhere along the way. If you are relying on a template that repeats them, the rest of its deposit treatment deserves checking too.

What the Act does do is define the thing. Under 27-40-210(18), a security deposit is a monetary deposit from the tenant to the landlord which is held in trust by the landlord to secure the full and faithful performance of the terms and conditions of the lease agreement as provided in 27-40-410. That trust framing matters: it is the reason a deposit is not simply advance rent, and it is why the deduction rules are as tightly specified as they are. The deeper treatment lives in our South Carolina security deposit laws guide.

Within thirty days — but the thirty days runs from the latest of three events, not from termination alone. S.C. Code Ann. 27-40-410(a) provides that on termination of the tenancy, property or money held as security must be returned less amounts withheld for accrued rent and for damages the landlord has suffered by reason of the tenant’s noncompliance with 27-40-510. Any deduction must be itemized by the landlord in a written notice to the tenant, together with the amount due if any, within thirty days after termination of the tenancy and delivery of possession and demand by the tenant, whichever is later.

Every ranking page states this as thirty days from termination or from the end date. It is not. Where a tenant hands back the keys a week after the lease ends, or makes no demand until later, the clock reflects that. The practical consequence runs both ways: a landlord who counts from the wrong event can be early or late, and a tenant who never makes a demand may find the clock has not started. The safest course for a landlord is to treat termination as the trigger and beat every possible deadline, which is what the generated lease advises.

The tenant’s side of the bargain is the forwarding address. The tenant must provide the landlord in writing with a forwarding or new address to which the written notice and any amount due may be sent. If the tenant fails to, the tenant is not entitled to damages under the subsection, provided the landlord had no notice of the tenant’s whereabouts and mailed the written notice and any amount due to the tenant’s last known address. So the landlord’s protection is conditional on actually mailing, not merely on the tenant’s silence.

Then the remedy the rankers omit. Under S.C. Code Ann. 27-40-410(b), if the landlord fails to return any prepaid rent or security deposit together with the notice required by subsection (a), the tenant may recover the property and money in an amount equal to three times the amount wrongfully withheld, plus reasonable attorney’s fees. Subsection (d) preserves any other damages either party is owed, and subsection (e), read with 27-40-450, binds the holder of the landlord’s interest at the time the tenancy terminates — so a purchaser who took the property without taking the deposit can find themselves answering for it unless the deposit was transferred and the tenant notified in writing a reasonable time after the transaction. Use the South Carolina security deposit itemization form to build the itemized statement and the deposit return letter to send it.

This is South Carolina’s most distinctive deposit provision, and it is the one competing templates get wrong most consistently — four different ways, on four different pages. Here is the actual text of S.C. Code Ann. 27-40-410(c), element by element.

It has two triggers, and both must be present. The subsection applies if a landlord (1) rents more than four adjoining dwelling units on the premises, and (2) imposes different standards for calculating security deposits required of different tenants on the premises. A landlord with exactly four adjoining units is outside it. A landlord with twenty adjoining units who applies one standard to everyone is also outside it.

Where it applies, the landlord has a choice of two methods. Prior to the consummation of the rental agreement, the landlord shall either post in a conspicuous place on the premises, or at the place at which rental is paid, a statement clearly indicating the standards by which the deposits are calculated, or provide each prospective tenant with a statement setting forth those standards. Both are on the face of the statute. A page that says the statement must be posted has dropped half the rule.

And the penalty is not a fine. If a landlord fails to comply as to a tenant, the difference between the security deposit required of that tenant and the lowest security deposit required of any other tenant of a comparable dwelling unit on the premises is not subject to deductions for damages by reason of that tenant’s noncompliance with 27-40-510. The landlord does not lose the deposit; the landlord loses the right to deduct damages from a specific slice of it.

Now compare what the ranking pages say. One states that a landlord who owns “four or more adjacent units in the same building” must “collect the same security deposit from all of their tenants” — wrong on the threshold, and backwards on the substance, since the subsection expressly contemplates different standards and merely regulates their disclosure. Another raises the threshold again to “more than five (5) adjoining units.” A third cites the rule to “§ 34-11-410a,” a section that does not exist at all: chapter 11 of title 34 is the bad-check chapter and runs only to 34-11-130. And several describe the statement as a posting requirement with no written alternative. Getting this right is the clearest single signal that a South Carolina lease has actually been checked against the statute, which is why the form above asks the multi-unit question directly and writes the answer into the document.

Rent is payable without demand or notice at the time and place the parties agreed. S.C. Code Ann. 27-40-310(c) supplies the defaults where the lease is silent: unless the tenant is otherwise notified in writing, rent is payable at the dwelling unit; periodic rent is payable at the beginning of any term of one month or less and otherwise in equal monthly installments at the beginning of each month; and unless otherwise agreed, rent is uniformly apportionable from day to day. That last clause is what makes a prorated first or final month lawful. Where the parties reach no agreement on rent at all, 27-40-310(b) makes the tenant liable for the fair-market rental value of the use and occupancy, which 27-40-210(4) defines as the actual periodic rental payment for comparable property to which a willing landlord and a willing tenant would agree, with the court free to consider appraisals and other relevant evidence.

South Carolina sets no statutory grace period and no cap on late fees. There is no residential late-fee statute in chapter 40 at all. What the Act does say, at 27-40-210(11), is that “rent” includes late charges, whether payable in a lump sum or in periodic payments, while excluding security deposits and other charges. That definitional point has teeth, because it means a late charge is part of the rent for the purposes of the nonpayment machinery rather than a separate contractual debt.

One myth to retire here. The deepest ranking page states that returned-check fees in South Carolina are “capped at thirty dollars per check,” citing S.C. Code Ann. 34-11-70(3). Section 34-11-70 has no subsection numbered (3), and it caps nothing. It is a criminal statute in the banking title, titled Prima facie evidence of fraudulent intent in drawing check, draft, or other written order, under which the drawer of a dishonoured instrument must tender the amount due together with a thirty-dollar service charge within ten days of a certified-mail notice, failing which the non-payment is prima facie evidence of fraudulent intent. It is a criminal-evidence provision, not a limit on what a residential lease may charge. Our South Carolina late fee laws guide covers the drafting.

South Carolina also has no rent-control statute and no rent-increase notice statute. A 2025 bill, H.3346, styled the South Carolina Rent Control Act, would have added 27-39-370 with a seven-day notice for weekly tenancies and a ninety-day notice with a seven-percent-plus-inflation cap otherwise. It was referred to the House Labor, Commerce and Industry Committee in January 2025 and has never been reported out, so it is not law — a point worth stating plainly, because its full text sits on the legislature’s own website and reads exactly like an enacted act. On a fixed term, rent cannot change mid-term unless the lease says so. On a periodic tenancy, a rent change is accomplished through the termination notice in 27-40-770 and an offer of new terms, and our South Carolina rent increase notice and rent increase laws guide handle the mechanics.

Twenty-four hours, at reasonable times, with three narrow exceptions. The structure of S.C. Code Ann. 27-40-530 is worth reading in order, because two ranking pages cite the wrong subsection for the twenty-four hours.

Subsection (a) is the tenant’s duty: the tenant shall not unreasonably withhold consent to the landlord entering to inspect, make necessary or agreed repairs, decorations, alterations or improvements, supply necessary or agreed services, or exhibit the unit to prospective or actual purchasers, mortgagees, tenants, workmen or contractors. Subsection (b) lists the three situations in which a landlord may enter without consent. Subsection (c) is where the twenty-four hours lives: except in the cases under (b), the landlord shall give the tenant at least twenty-four hours’ notice of the intent to enter and may enter only at reasonable times — and, in the same subsection, shall not abuse the right of access or use it to harass the tenant.

The three exceptions are specific. First, at any time in case of emergency, and the statute adds that prospective changes in weather conditions which pose a likelihood of danger to the property may be considered an emergency — a genuinely South Carolina provision, and a sensible one in a hurricane state. Second, between 9:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. for the purpose of providing regularly scheduled periodic services such as changing furnace and air-conditioning filters or providing termite, insect or pest treatment, provided that the right to enter for those services is conspicuously set forth in writing in the rental agreement and the landlord announces the intent to enter before entering. Third, between 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. for services requested by the tenant, again announcing the intent to enter before entering.

That second exception is a lease-drafting condition, not a background rule, which is why the form above makes it a checkbox with its own generator branch. A South Carolina landlord who runs quarterly pest treatment and has not conspicuously reserved the right in the lease has no 9:00-to-6:00 window at all and needs twenty-four hours’ notice every visit.

Subsection (d) closes the list: the landlord has no other right of access except pursuant to court order, as permitted by 27-40-720 and 27-40-730, when accompanied by a law enforcement officer at reasonable times for the purpose of service of process in ejectment proceedings, or where the tenant has abandoned or surrendered the premises. And subsection (e) points the other way — the tenant shall not change locks on the dwelling unit without the landlord’s permission, a duty most templates omit entirely.

The remedies for abuse sit in a different section, 27-40-780, which one ranker misattributes to 27-40-530(c). If the tenant refuses lawful access, the landlord may obtain injunctive relief without posting bond to compel access, or terminate the agreement, and recover actual damages and reasonable attorney’s fees. If the landlord knowingly makes an unlawful entry, or a repeated lawful entry in an unreasonable manner, or repeated demands for entry that are otherwise lawful but have the effect of unreasonably harassing the tenant, the tenant may obtain injunctive relief without posting bond, or terminate, and recover actual damages and reasonable attorney’s fees. Our South Carolina notice to enter form produces a dated notice, and the landlord entry laws guide covers the edge cases.

S.C. Code Ann. 27-40-440(a) places five duties on the landlord: comply with applicable building and housing codes materially affecting health and safety; make all repairs and do whatever is reasonably necessary to put and keep the premises in a fit and habitable condition; keep all common areas in a reasonably safe condition and, for premises containing more than four dwelling units, in a reasonably clean condition; make available running water and reasonable amounts of hot water at all times and reasonable heat, except where the building is not required by law to be equipped for that purpose or heat and hot water are generated within the tenant’s exclusive control on a direct utility connection; and maintain in reasonably good and safe working order all electrical, gas, plumbing, sanitary, heating, ventilating, air conditioning and other facilities and appliances, including elevators, supplied or required to be supplied. Two details in that last duty repay attention: appliances present in the unit are presumed to be supplied by the landlord unless specifically excluded by the rental agreement, and no appliance or facility necessary to the provision of essential services may be excluded. Where the code duty is greater than any other listed duty, the code duty controls.

Work can be shifted to the tenant, but only within limits. For a single family residence — defined at 27-40-210(14), and note that a unit sharing a wall still counts if it has direct street access and shares no heating, hot water or other essential facility — the parties may agree in writing that the tenant performs the facilities-and-appliances duty and specified repairs, maintenance, alterations and remodeling, but only in good faith and not to evade the landlord’s obligations. For any other dwelling unit, such an agreement is valid only if entered in good faith, only where the work is not necessary to cure a code violation materially affecting health and safety, and only where it does not diminish the landlord’s obligations to other tenants. And 27-40-340 forbids any rental agreement, assignment, conveyance, trust deed, mortgage or security instrument that permits the receipt of rent absent the obligation to comply with 27-40-440(a).

S.C. Code Ann. 27-40-510 sets the tenant’s eight duties: comply with tenant obligations under codes materially affecting health and safety; keep the dwelling unit and the part of the premises used reasonably safe and reasonably clean; dispose of all ashes, garbage, rubbish and other waste in a reasonably clean and safe manner; keep all plumbing fixtures reasonably clean; use all facilities and appliances reasonably; not deliberately or negligently destroy, deface, damage, impair or remove any part of the premises, nor knowingly permit anyone else to; conduct themselves and their guests so as not to disturb other tenants’ peaceful enjoyment; and comply with the lease and with rules enforceable under 27-40-520.

Those rules deserve their own note, because 27-40-520 gives the tenant a right most templates never mention. A landlord may adopt rules concerning use and occupancy, but they bind the tenant only if six conditions hold: their purpose is to promote convenience, safety or welfare, preserve the property from abusive use, or fairly distribute services; they are reasonably related to that purpose; they apply to all tenants fairly; they are explicit enough to inform the tenant what to do; they are not adopted to evade the landlord’s obligations; and the tenant has notice of them when entering the agreement or when they are adopted. Then subsection (b): a rule adopted after the tenant enters into the agreement is not valid as to that tenant if it substantially modifies the tenant’s bargain and the tenant, after receiving notice of the right to object, objects in writing within thirty days after promulgation.

When the landlord does not repair, the tenant follows 27-40-610: deliver written notice specifying the acts and omissions and stating that the agreement terminates on a date not less than fourteen days after receipt if the breach is not remedied within fourtee