Tennessee landlord entry laws
How much notice your landlord owes you before coming in, when they may enter without it, and what Tennessee law lets you do about it.
Notice required
Consent required; no general notice period
Tennessee appears to be a consent state: the tenant shall not unreasonably withhold consent for the listed purposes, the landlord may not abuse the right of access, and § 66-28-403(e) states the landlord 'has no right of access to the premises except' by court order, as permitted by the section, on abandonment, where the tenant is deceased, incapacitated or incarcerated, or in the final 30 days of the tenancy to show the premises — and that last one only if the rental agreement provides for it and at least 24 hours' notice is given.
T.C.A. § 66-28-403
Worth knowing: Tennessee is a consent state. The question is not how much warning you were given — it is whether you agreed.
Why we haven't finished Tennessee
Tennessee does not publish its official code on a free public site. We have now read § 66-28-403 in the enacted text — Public Chapter 272 of 2011 deleted the section in its entirety and substituted the version quoted here — so the entry rule itself no longer rests on a commercial summary. What is still missing is the remedy: nothing in Tennessee's Act gives a tenant a specific penalty for improper entry, and the general noncompliance provisions at § 66-28-501 and following have not been read in a primary source. We will not tell you what you can recover until they have been.
What to do right now
Object in writing. If your landlord is showing the unit to prospective tenants near the end of your tenancy, check whether your lease actually provides for that — under § 66-28-403(e)(5) the right depends on it.
We don't write an entry letter for Tennessee. 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 Tennessee tenant rights
Landlords who get one of these wrong often get another wrong too.
About this source: Tennessee publishes no free official version of its code — the Secretary of State posts session laws (Public Chapters), not the compiled statutes. This link is a mirror, not the State's own text, which is exactly why Tennessee is still marked unverified here rather than launched.
How this page was checked
- Read from the source. Every deadline, cap and penalty here was taken from Tennessee'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.