Tennessee Late Fee Laws: The Landlord and Tenant Guide

Tennessee is one of the few states where the answer to “how much can a landlord charge as a late fee?” depends on which county the rental sits in. In the larger counties covered by the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, a residential late fee is capped at ten percent of the past-due rent and cannot be charged until a five-day grace period has run. In the smaller counties the Act does not reach, there is no statutory cap at all, and a late fee is enforceable only if it is in the written lease and reasonable rather than a penalty. That population split — drawn at more than seventy-five thousand people under the 2010 federal census — is the fact that drives this entire page, and getting the county wrong is the most common Tennessee late-fee mistake.

This guide walks the full framework in plain English: the ten percent cap and the five-day grace period under Tennessee Code section 66-28-201, exactly when a fee may first be charged and the Sunday-or-holiday extension, why the fee must be in the written lease, the separate bad-check rule under Tennessee Code sections 47-29-101 and 47-29-102, and the critical point that a late fee is not the rent a tenant must pay to cure a fourteen-day nonpayment notice. It also covers special cases such as subsidized housing, the role of local rules, how a tenant contests an unlawful fee, a practical playbook for both sides, real scenarios, and a Tennessee-specific FAQ.

Because Tennessee’s rules turn on a county-population line, the safest posture for a landlord is to confirm which side of the split the property falls on before charging anything, and the strongest position for a tenant is to know that in a covered county a fee above ten percent of the past-due rent, or one charged inside the grace period, is unlawful no matter what the lease says. Treat every figure here as a starting point and verify the current statute before you charge, pay, or dispute a fee.

Before diving into numbers, it helps to see exactly what Tennessee law does and does not control. A late fee is not rent. It is a contractual charge the landlord seeks to add when rent arrives late, and Tennessee treats it as a term of the rental agreement that, in covered counties, is bounded by a specific statute. That is what makes Tennessee different from a pure reasonableness state: for most of the state’s renters, who live in the populous counties, there is a hard number in the code — ten percent of the past-due rent — and a hard timing rule — a five-day grace period.

So the narrow legal question in Tennessee is really two questions asked in order. First: is this rental in a URLTA county or not? That single fact decides whether the ten percent cap and the five-day grace period apply at all. Second, once the county is settled: does this fee fit within the applicable rule — the statutory cap and grace period in a covered county, or the lease-plus-reasonableness standard in a county the Act does not reach? Everything else on this page — the written-lease requirement, the bad-check rule, the nonpayment interplay — sits on top of that two-step framing.

This structure is unusual. Many states pick one rule for the whole state; Tennessee draws a line through its map and applies a firmer, capped regime on one side and a looser, reasonableness regime on the other. That is why a landlord who owns property in both a big county and a small one cannot use a single late-fee clause blindly, and why the very first thing a tenant should establish is which regime governs their unit.

In a URLTA county, the answer is a clear yes. Tennessee Code section 66-28-201 requires a five-day grace period before any late fee may be charged. The period is measured from the day the rent is due, and the statute directs that the due date itself is counted as the first of the five days. In practical terms, if rent is due on the first, the landlord may not impose a late fee until the rent is still unpaid after the fifth — the grace period has to run out before a fee can attach.

The statute adds a protective wrinkle for weekends and holidays. If the last day of the five-day grace period falls on a Sunday or a legal holiday as defined in Tennessee’s general holiday statute, the landlord may not charge a late fee as long as the tenant pays the rent on the next business day. So a tenant whose grace period ends on a Sunday effectively gets until Monday to pay without a fee. This extension is a small but real piece of tenant protection built into the statute.

Non-URLTA Counties

In the smaller counties the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act does not cover, there is no statutory grace period at all. Rent is due on the date the lease specifies, and any cushion the tenant enjoys comes only from the written lease. A landlord in a non-URLTA county who writes a five-day cushion into the lease has created a grace period by contract, but the state did not require it, and a lease that is silent on the point gives the tenant none. Tenants in these counties should read the lease closely rather than assume the five-day statutory rule reaches them, because it does not.

This is the heart of Tennessee late-fee law, and it has two moving parts that must be read together. The first is the cap itself. Under Tennessee Code section 66-28-201, in a covered county a charge or fee for the late payment of rent, however it is described, may not exceed ten percent of the amount of rent past due. The “however it is described” language matters: a landlord cannot escape the cap by relabeling the charge as an administrative fee, a processing fee, or additional rent. If it functions as a penalty for paying late, it counts against the ten percent ceiling. And the cap is measured against the past-due rent, so if only part of the rent is late, the ten percent is figured on that unpaid portion, not on the full monthly rent.

The second part is the reach of the rule. The cap lives inside the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, and Tennessee Code section 66-28-102 defines exactly where that Act applies: only in counties having a population of more than seventy-five thousand according to the 2010 federal census or any subsequent federal census. That population figure is a fixed statutory benchmark, not a number that shifts with every local estimate. The larger, more urban counties — the ones containing cities such as Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville, and Chattanooga — sit above the line, so the ten percent cap and the five-day grace period bind there. The smaller, more rural counties fall below the line, the Act does not apply, and there is no statutory cap.

What Happens in a Non-URLTA County

In a county the Act does not reach, Tennessee does not hand landlords a blank check, but it does remove the statutory ceiling. There, a late fee is enforceable if two ordinary contract principles are met: it is provided for in the written lease, and the amount is a reasonable estimate of the landlord’s actual loss from late payment rather than a punitive penalty. A grossly excessive fee in a non-URLTA county can still be challenged as an unenforceable penalty under general contract law, but there is no bright-line ten percent number to point to. This is why the same lease clause can be perfectly lawful in one Tennessee county and capped down in another.

A late fee cannot appear out of thin air anywhere in Tennessee. To be enforceable at all, the fee must be provided for in the written rental agreement. The lease has to say a late fee applies, when it applies, and how much it is. A landlord cannot add a late fee the lease never mentions, cannot spring one on the tenant mid-tenancy without a proper new agreement, and cannot charge more than the lease provides. If the lease is silent on late fees, there is simply no late fee to collect, and neither the statutory cap analysis nor the reasonableness analysis ever begins, because there is no contractual fee to test.

Assuming the lease does provide for a fee, the timing depends on the county. In a URLTA county, the fee may not attach until the five-day grace period under Tennessee Code section 66-28-201 has run, and even then it may not exceed ten percent of the past-due rent. Writing a bigger number or an earlier trigger into the lease does not help the landlord: the statute overrides a lease term that conflicts with it, so a lease clause authorizing a fifteen percent fee or a fee on the second day is unenforceable to the extent it exceeds the statutory limits. In a non-URLTA county, the fee may attach once the rent is actually late under the lease, subject only to the requirement that the amount be reasonable.

A bounced rent check is governed by its own statute, separate from the late-fee rule. Under Tennessee Code sections 47-29-101 and 47-29-102, when a tenant’s check is dishonored, the holder — here, the landlord — may recover the face amount of the check, interest at ten percent per year on the amount of the check under section 47-29-101, and reasonable court costs and attorney fees in a civil action, plus a handling charge of up to thirty dollars under section 47-29-102. These figures are set by statute, so the returned-check charge has a clear ceiling that does not depend on the county-population split that governs late fees.

Section 47-29-101 also carries a sharper remedy. If the holder follows the statute’s written-demand procedure, is still not paid within thirty days, and can show the check was passed with fraudulent intent, the court may award treble damages — but the statute caps the extra amount above the face value of the check at five hundred dollars. So on a small bounced check the punitive add-on is limited, and a tenant who bounced a check by honest mistake rather than fraud is not exposed to the treble remedy at all. The ten percent interest under section 47-29-101 and the thirty-dollar handling charge under section 47-29-102 remain available even without fraud.

This is where late-fee mistakes become eviction mistakes. In a URLTA county, a Tennessee landlord who wants to evict for nonpayment serves a fourteen-day notice under Tennessee Code section 66-28-505: the notice tells the tenant that the rental agreement will terminate unless the tenant pays what is owed within fourteen days. The tenant can stop the termination by paying the rent owed within that window. The key point is that a late fee is a separate contract charge, not the rent, so it generally is not part of the amount the tenant must pay to cure and keep the home.

That distinction has practical bite. A landlord who inflates the fourteen-day cure figure by folding in late fees, and then refuses to accept a tenant’s payment of the actual rent because the late fees are unpaid, is on weak footing — the tenant who pays the past-due rent within the fourteen days has generally done what the statute requires to avoid termination. Overstating what the tenant must pay can hand the tenant a defense in the detainer action, much as overstating a demand does under our Tennessee eviction notice laws guide. The cleaner practice is to base the cure amount squarely on the past-due rent.

That does not mean a valid late fee is uncollectible. It means the collection path is different. A landlord may pursue an unpaid, lease-authorized late fee as an ordinary contract debt — in general sessions court, for example, or by deducting it from the security deposit at move-out if the lease allows and the fee is valid — a step governed by the Tennessee security deposit laws. What a landlord should not do is treat unpaid late fees as the rent that decides a nonpayment eviction. A tenant, in turn, does not lose the home merely for declining to pay a disputed late fee.

The county-split rule is the baseline for ordinary residential tenancies, but several categories of housing carry their own layered rules, and the ordinary analysis is not the whole story for them.

Subsidized Housing (Section 8 and Similar)

In the Housing Choice Voucher program and similar subsidized tenancies, a late fee generally applies only to the tenant’s own share of the rent, not to the portion the housing authority pays, and the program contract or lease rider may cap or bar the fee entirely. A landlord who accepts a voucher agrees to the program’s terms for the term of the contract, so the program rules ride on top of state law. In a URLTA county, the ten percent cap still sets a ceiling within the tenant’s share; in a non-URLTA county, the reasonableness limit still applies. Either way, the program band is often narrower than the state rule, and the narrower rule controls.

Mobile-Home and Manufactured-Home Lots

Tennessee regulates manufactured-home and mobile-home communities under a separate part of the code from the general Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act. A lot-rental or community tenancy may therefore be governed by that manufactured-home framework and by the specific written agreement rather than by the ordinary apartment analysis. A community operator cannot simply import an apartment-style late fee; the terms are read against the applicable manufactured-home rules, so confirm which framework covers the tenancy before charging a fee.

Commercial Units

The whole analysis on this page is about residential leases. Commercial tenancies are not covered by the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act at all, so the ten percent cap and the five-day grace period do not apply to a commercial late fee. A commercial late fee is judged under ordinary contract law, where the question is whether the charge is a reasonable liquidated-damages estimate rather than a penalty — a more permissive standard than the residential cap.

Tennessee’s late-fee framework is set almost entirely at the state level, and the decisive local variable is not a city ordinance but the county population line that decides whether the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act applies. Unlike states where individual cities layer their own rent regulations on top of state law, Tennessee’s practical “local” rule is simply which county the rental sits in — above or below the seventy-five thousand threshold under the 2010 census. That is the variable a landlord or tenant must check first.

Because the state law is so specific in covered counties, the most reliable step is to confirm the county for the exact property and then apply the matching regime: the ten percent cap and five-day grace period in a URLTA county, or the lease-plus-reasonableness standard in a non-URLTA county. A landlord who operates across county lines should not assume a single late-fee clause is lawful everywhere in the state, and a tenant should confirm which regime governs their unit before treating any fee as fixed. Where a specific municipality has adopted its own tenant-protection measure, that measure is read on top of the state rule, but the county split remains the primary sorting question.

A Tennessee tenant challenging a late fee has strong tools, especially in a URLTA county where the statute supplies a bright line. If the fee exceeds ten percent of the past-due rent or was charged inside the five-day grace period, it is unlawful regardless of what the lease says, and the tenant can point to Tennessee Code section 66-28-201 directly. In a non-URLTA county the argument is different — that the fee is not in the lease or is an unreasonable penalty — but the practical steps below work in either setting.

Tennessee’s split framework rewards discipline on both sides. For landlords, knowing the county and staying inside the statutory limits keeps a fee enforceable; for tenants, knowing the cap and the grace period keeps you from paying money you do not owe.

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