Free Tennessee Notice to Enter

This Tennessee Notice to Enter gives a tenant clear written notice before the landlord enters the rental unit. In URLTA counties (over 75,000), Tenn. Code Ann. 66-28-403 sets no fixed hour count for ordinary entry – the tenant shall not unreasonably withhold consent – and the 24-hour figure applies only to final-30-day showings if the lease provides. See our tenant screening laws by state hub and how to screen tenants guide to keep your Tennessee tenancies documented from the start.

Complete the fields below to generate a Tennessee Notice to Enter. In URLTA counties (population over 75,000), the statute sets no fixed hour count for ordinary entry – the tenant simply may not unreasonably withhold consent – so give reasonable written notice at reasonable hours for a legitimate purpose. The 24-hour figure applies only to final-30-day showings if the lease provides. The form records the date, time window, purpose, the persons entering, and how the notice is delivered.

Watch: Tennessee Notice to Enter explained

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Tennessee is one of the trickiest states for landlord-entry rules because the governing statute does not apply everywhere. The Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act (URLTA) entry rule, Tenn. Code Ann. 66-28-403, applies only in counties with a population over 75,000 by the 2010 federal census – the applicability threshold is set by Tenn. Code Ann. 66-28-102(a). That covers roughly 17 counties, including Davidson, Shelby, Knox, Hamilton, Rutherford, and Williamson. In a county below that threshold, the URLTA does not apply at all, and entry is governed by the lease and the common law. The very first question in any Tennessee entry matter is geographic: which county is the rental in, and is its population above or below 75,000 by the 2010 census.

This geographic split is the single most important feature of Tennessee entry law, and it is the one that carried-over, one-size-fits-all templates get wrong. A landlord who reads a generic “Tennessee requires 24 hours’ notice” summary and applies it to a rental in a rural county is relying on a statute that does not reach that property at all. Conversely, a landlord in Davidson or Shelby County who ignores the URLTA because a generic form did not mention it is missing the framework that actually governs. Before anything else, locate the property on the right side of the 75,000 line, because that choice determines whether the statute or the common law supplies both the duty to give notice and the remedy for getting it wrong.

Inside a URLTA county, then, the standard for ordinary entry is consent-based, not hour-based. The statute asks whether the tenant unreasonably withheld consent to a legitimate entry at a reasonable time, not whether the landlord met a numeric deadline. That framing rewards the landlord who documents a clear, reasonable request and burdens the tenant who refuses one for no good reason. It also means the landlord’s best evidence is a dated written notice stating a legitimate purpose and a reasonable time – exactly what this form produces – because that record is what makes a withheld consent look unreasonable to a court.

The clear exception, which does not depend on the county, is a genuine emergency. Under 66-28-403(b), a landlord may enter without consent in case of a fire, flood, gas leak, or another immediate threat to life or property; document the emergency, the time, and what was done, and notify the tenant promptly afterward. For every routine entry, the durable best practice – even where no hour count is required – is to give clear written notice at a reasonable time for a legitimate purpose. The sections that follow walk through the purposes that justify entry, what reasonable notice means without a fixed deadline, how the emergency and final-30-day showing rules work, what the lease can and cannot do, and – most important for a landlord managing risk – exactly what remedies a Tennessee tenant has if entry goes wrong, in both URLTA and non-URLTA counties.

Tennessee did not adopt a single statewide landlord-tenant entry rule. Instead, Tenn. Code Ann. 66-28-102(a) makes the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act apply only in counties having a population of more than 75,000 according to the 2010 federal census or any later census. The deliberate effect is that the URLTA – including its entry provision, 66-28-403, and its entry remedy, 66-28-513(b) – is the law of the more populous counties, while the smaller counties remain under the older common-law rules that governed landlords and tenants before the Act.

The covered counties are the populous ones a landlord would expect: Davidson (Nashville), Shelby (Memphis), Knox (Knoxville), Hamilton (Chattanooga), Rutherford, Williamson, Montgomery, Sumner, Wilson, and a handful of others, roughly 17 in all under the 2010 figures. A property in metropolitan and suburban Tennessee is therefore almost always inside the URLTA. A property in a rural county is very often outside it. Because the threshold keys to a specific census, a landlord who manages property near the line should confirm the county’s figure rather than guess, and should re-check after each decennial census, since a county that crosses 75,000 comes under the Act going forward.

Why does the line matter so much in practice? Because it changes both the duty and the remedy. In a URLTA county, the tenant’s no-unreasonable-withholding duty, the emergency rule, the harassment bar in 66-28-403(d), and the tenant’s injunction-or-terminate-plus-damages remedy in 66-28-513(b) all apply by statute. In a non-URLTA county, none of those statutory provisions reach the entry; the landlord’s right to enter and the tenant’s remedy for an abusive entry are whatever the lease says and whatever the common law of trespass, quiet enjoyment, constructive eviction, and privacy provides. The same set of facts can therefore produce a statutory analysis in Memphis and a purely common-law analysis two counties away.

For the landlord, the practical takeaway is to treat the county determination as step zero of any entry. This form is built to serve both tracks: it documents a clear, reasonable, legitimate-purpose entry that satisfies the URLTA’s reasonableness standard where the Act applies, and that simultaneously builds the good-faith, lease-compliant record a landlord wants if the only governing law is the common law. The notice does not change with the county; what changes is which body of law judges it, and a well-documented notice is defensible under either.

Section 66-28-403 frames entry around legitimate purpose and the tenant’s duty not to unreasonably withhold consent, and the kinds of purposes it contemplates are the ordinary tasks of managing a rental. The unifying test is simple: the landlord must have a real, property-management reason to be inside the unit, not a pretext for checking up on or pressuring the tenant. When the reason is genuine and the request is reasonable, a tenant’s refusal is hard to justify, and entry is rarely controversial.

Repairs and maintenance are the most common reason a landlord needs access – responding to a tenant’s repair request, performing scheduled upkeep, and addressing problems the landlord is obligated to fix. Inspections – annual condition checks, move-out walkthroughs, and pre-renewal assessments – are equally routine, and a clear notice describing the inspection keeps it from feeling intrusive. The statute lists inspecting the premises, making necessary or agreed repairs, and supplying services among the recognized reasons for access.

Showings are a frequent flashpoint, and Tennessee singles one of them out. A landlord may need to show the unit to a prospective tenant near the end of a lease, to a prospective buyer if the property is on the market, or to a lender or appraiser during a refinance. Each is a legitimate purpose, but showing the unit to a prospective tenant in the final 30 days of the lease is the specific situation the statute ties to the 24-hour figure – and only if the lease provides for that access. For every other showing, the ordinary reasonableness standard applies, and generous notice matters most because showings bring strangers into the tenant’s home.

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