Massachusetts landlord entry laws
How much notice your landlord owes you before coming in, when they may enter without it, and what Massachusetts law lets you do about it.
Notice required
No notice period — but a closed list of reasons
Massachusetts sets no notice period at all. Instead, a lease may not even CONTAIN a provision letting a landlord enter except to inspect, make repairs, or show the unit — plus entry by court order, on apparent abandonment, or to inspect for deposit damage in the last 30 days of the tenancy. The question here is not how much warning the tenant got; it is whether the landlord had any business being there.
G.L. c. 186, § 15B(1)(a)
Worth knowing: Massachusetts sets no notice period. The question is whether your landlord had a legally permitted reason to be there at all.
What you can do about a violation
Interfering with a tenant's quiet enjoyment is both a crime and a civil wrong. Civil liability is actual and consequential damages OR three months' rent, whichever is greater, plus costs and reasonable attorney's fees, which may be set off against rent owed. Any waiver in a lease is void.
G.L. c. 186, § 14
Before you rely on this
Massachusetts law depends on facts only you can confirm. Check these first.
Was the entry for something other than inspection, repairs, or showing the unit — or did it happen repeatedly?
Massachusetts sets no notice requirement, so a single properly-purposed entry violates nothing. The claim runs on purpose or on repetition amounting to interference with quiet enjoyment.
What to do right now
Write down the reason your landlord gave each time. In Massachusetts the reason is the case, and a pattern is far stronger than a single incident.
Put it in writing
We'll write a letter citing G.L. c. 186, § 15B(1)(a), listing each entry with its date and time, and stating what the statute provides. Free to generate and download.
Write my Massachusetts entry letterOther Massachusetts tenant rights
Landlords who get one of these wrong often get another wrong too.
How this page was checked
- Read from the source. Every deadline, cap and penalty here was taken from Massachusetts'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 21, 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.