Missouri Landlord-Tenant Laws
Local rent regulation in Missouri
Missouri law prohibits counties and cities, including charter jurisdictions, from adopting any ordinance regulating the amount of rent charged for privately owned residential or commercial rental property, with narrow exceptions for government-owned, subsidized, and CDBG-assisted properties.
Cited to Mo. Rev. Stat. § 441.043 (as amended eff. 8/28/2025) · Verified August 12, 2026 · Full Missouri rent-increase rules →
Missouri landlord-tenant laws by topic
Missouri security deposits
Missouri caps security deposits at two months' rent and gives landlords thirty days after the tenancy ends to return the deposit or send a written itemized list of damages with any balance.
Missouri rent increase notice
Missouri has no statute requiring advance notice of a rent increase — the one-month figure everyone cites is derived from RSMo 441.060.4, which lets either party end a month-to-month tenancy by written notice taking effect on a periodic rent-paying date not less than one month after the notice is RECEIVED, so a landlord who raises rent is effectively offering new terms the tenant can refuse by leaving on a month's notice.
Missouri late fees
Missouri sets no cap on residential late fees and mandates no grace period — no statute in the landlord-tenant chapters (RSMo 441 and 535) mentions late fees at all, so the fee is whatever the lease says, subject only to the court-enforced rule that a late fee must be a reasonable pre-estimate of the landlord's loss rather than a penalty.
Missouri entry notice
Missouri has no statute requiring landlords to give any advance notice before entering a rental — no notice period, no list of permitted reasons, and no time-of-day limits — so entry rights are governed entirely by the lease.
Missouri eviction process
Missouri has no fixed-day pay-or-quit notice for nonpayment: the landlord need only demand the rent, and once it goes unpaid may immediately file a 'rent and possession' action — the statute expressly says no termination notice is required first.
Missouri application & screening fees
Missouri does not regulate rental application or tenant-screening fees at all: no cap, no limit to what screening actually costs, no receipt, no refund, and nothing that must be disclosed before the money is taken.
Missouri deposit interest
Missouri expressly gives any interest a security deposit earns to the landlord: "Any interest earned on a security deposit shall be the property of the landlord."
Missouri habitability & repairs
Missouri's habitability duty comes from its courts, not its statutes: the Supreme Court of Missouri held in 1984 that a landlord impliedly warrants that leased residential property is habitable and fit for living at the start of the lease and will remain so, measured by community standards reflected in local housing and property-maintenance codes.
Missouri lease termination
Either side ends a Missouri month-to-month tenancy by written notice stating that the tenancy will end on a rent-paying date at least one calendar month after the notice is received, so the answer is not thirty days and a notice expiring mid-period does not work.
Missouri mobile home park laws
Missouri has no manufactured-home tenancy act: a single section, RSMo section 700.600, requires a community owner to give residents who own their homes at least 120 days' written notice before making them vacate for a change in use of the land, and freezes lot rent, except for an increase based solely on higher property taxes, in the sixty days before that notice and at any time after it.
Missouri Fair Market Rents (FY 2027) — HUD's benchmark rents for every Missouri metro area and county.
Changes since last full verification
The Verified date above (July 9, 2026) marks the last time every figure on this page was verified end-to-end against official state sources. The changes below were published since then, each verified against the official source it names (what these dates mean).
- Correction, September 5, 2026 — Corrections from official reads: Tennessee's Jones v. VCPHCS I premises were office space, not a clinic; South Dakota's 2024 SB 90 was signed March 26, 2024 (three places said March 14) and § 16-2-58.2 was amended, not added, by 2026 ch. 93; Massachusetts' fee-in-lieu-of-deposit proviso came from St. 2024, c. 150, § 50, not St. 2025, c. 9 (which extended the move-in limit to the landlord's agent); Georgia's Alexander v. Steining holds that a rent-increase notice is itself the 60-day termination notice, so the higher rent cannot begin until the period has run; Missouri's § 441.043(2) preemption list is now stated in full.
- Correction, August 29, 2026 — Deposit-interest prose corrections from a primary-source re-read of every state's law: IA unsupported after-five-years inference removed (Iowa Code 562A.12 stops at the five-year landlord allocation) and the anti-commingling rule narrowed to the landlord's personal funds; FL commingling bar scoped to the two account options in 83.49(1)(a)-(b); IL local line names Chicago only and the Department announces the qualifying bank's rate; NJ 46:8-19's ten-unit tier stated as a mandatory vehicle rule (money-market fund or variable-rate account); MN unverified pre-2003 5.5% figure removed and 504B.178 subd. 7's bad-faith presumption with its two-week-after-suit cure window added; NM 47-8-18's rate reference records the 1986 federal ceiling expiry alongside the 1989 agency abolition; VA repeal pinned to July 1, 2014 (accrual duty) and January 1, 2015 (rate schedule) under 2014 Acts c. 651 enactment clause 4; MO 99.040 carve-out stated in the statute's own scope words; AZ mobile-home-park deposit cell gains A.R.S. 33-1431(B)'s five-percent-minimum annual interest duty (paid or compounded annually) with the 33-1431(D) doubling remedy.
- Correction, August 5, 2026 — Aligned Missouri's treatment of the mobile-home-lot rule: the sixty-day landlord termination notice of RSMo 441.060.4(2) is now clearly labeled under rent increase — with the statutory clock running from the next rent due date and its override of contrary lease clauses — while the eviction topic's scope note no longer denies the figure and instead points to where it lives.
How this record was verified: Direct read of statute text on the official Missouri Revisor of Statutes site (revisor.mo.gov): RSMo 535.300 read in full THREE times via independent reads (every figure it supplies — two months' cap, thirty-day return, written-notice inspection right, twice-the-amount-wrongfully-withheld penalty, subsection 8 definition — matched verbatim across reads), RSMo 441.060 and RSMo 441.043 each read twice (matched verbatim), plus single trap-check reads of RSMo 535.060 (demand of rent — confirmed it says nothing about late fees), RSMo 415.400 and 415.417 (confirmed the $20/20% late-fee figure belongs to the Self-Service Storage Facilities Act, not residential rentals), RSMo 441.233 (unlawful ouster), RSMo 441.065 (abandonment entry procedure), and the full chapter 441 section index (confirmed no entry-notice, late-fee, or rent-increase-notice section exists). 2026 regular session Truly Agreed To and Finally Passed list (102 bills) checked on senate.mo.gov 2026-07-09 and DEFINITIVELY re-swept 2026-07-16 after the Governor's ~July 15 action deadline (full list re-read directly; zero landlord-tenant bills; nearest property-adjacent bills eyeballed and confirmed out of scope — SB 973 is real-estate taxes/land banks/wholesaler disclosures plus a new ch. 442 sale-leaseback disclosure act, HB 2636 is the Uniform Mortgage Modification Act, both signed, eff. 2026-08-28); the 2025 amendments to 441.043 (H.B. 595 & 343, effective 2025-08-28) are already law and are incorporated, not flagged. The 2026 TAFP gate is CLOSED as a confirmed negative.