Arkansas landlord entry laws
How much notice your landlord owes you before coming in, when they may enter without it, and what Arkansas law lets you do about it.
Notice required
No landlord duty — and the broadest entry rights in the country
Arkansas has a section titled 'Access', and it is a TENANT obligation. A tenant shall not unreasonably withhold consent to entry to inspect, repair, decorate, alter, improve, supply services, INVESTIGATE POSSIBLE RULE OR LEASE VIOLATIONS, INVESTIGATE POSSIBLE CRIMINAL ACTIVITY, or show the unit. A tenant also may not change the locks without the landlord's permission.
Ark. Code § 18-17-602
Why we won't write you a demand letter for Arkansas
There is no notice period, no permitted-hours limit, no abuse-of-access clause, and no tenant remedy. The failure is structural: the chapter's subchapters include Landlord Remedies and no counterpart running the other way — Arkansas has no tenant-remedies subchapter at all.
What to do right now
Read your lease, since it is the only place a notice right could come from. Object in writing if entries are disruptive. Be aware that Arkansas expressly permits entry to investigate suspected lease violations, and that changing your locks would itself breach the statute.
We don't write an entry letter for Arkansas. The reason is above, and it is not a limitation of ours — it is what the law here does and does not give you. If your landlord is also withholding a deposit, charging a late fee the law doesn't allow, or refusing repairs, those are areas where we can send a certified demand on your behalf.
Other Arkansas tenant rights
Landlords who get one of these wrong often get another wrong too.
Entry laws in other states
These rules change at the state line. Every page is checked against that state's own published statute.
About this source: Arkansas licenses its code to LexisNexis and publishes no free official version itself, so there is no page on the State's own server to send you to. This link is the one the Arkansas General Assembly gives on its own homepage, under "Arkansas Code and Constitution of 1874" — and clicking it there raises the Legislature's own warning that you are leaving its site and the Bureau of Legislative Research is not responsible for what you find. That is the honest status: your state's code of record, on a commercial host, as designated by your legislature. It opens the Code browser rather than this section, so search 18-17-602. Our reading is described above.
How this page was checked
- Read from the source. Every deadline, cap and penalty here was taken from Arkansas's published text — the statute, session law or administrative code itself.
- No legal-information websites. Commercial summaries were used only to find a provision, never as authority for it. An automated check fails our build if any state we serve cites a secondary source.
- Locked against drift. The verified figures are pinned by regression tests, so a later edit cannot quietly change a deadline or a penalty.
- Last verified August 26, 2026. Laws change — confirm the current text before relying on it.
General information, not legal advice. We are not a law firm.
Compare all 51 jurisdictions — notice periods range from 12 hours to 72, and thirteen states have no rule at all.