North Carolina Landlord-Tenant Laws

Verified July 8, 2026 Updated September 5, 2026

Legislative changes ahead — not yet in force. This page reflects the law in force today. The following measure would change North Carolina's landlord-tenant law:

H990 (2025-2026 session) — Would rewrite G.S. 42-46 to require landlords to give tenants written notice (hand delivery, mail, or electronic per the lease) before collecting a late fee, stating the amount and date imposed, no earlier than five days after the due date. Caps unchanged. Status: Introduced 2025-04-10; referred to House Rules, Calendar, and Operations 2025-04-14; no further action — not enacted. CAUTION: at least one landlord-facing website reports this notice requirement as effective 2025-10-01; that is wrong (the 2025-10-01 effective date belongs to SL 2025-52's separate amendment of 42-46(i)). (checked July 8, 2026).

What did not become law. None of the following is law; failed bills are sometimes still described as if enacted:

House Bill 377 (2025-2026), 2026 Court Changes — Would rewrite N.C.G.S. § 42-34.1, on rent owed while a possession judgment is executed and on the bond required to stay execution pending appeal. A tenant who already filed an undertaking on appeal from the magistrate, and who keeps making the periodic rent payments that undertaking requires after the district court judgment, would satisfy the bond requirement by those continued payments and keep the stay, both during the thirty days for taking an appeal and during the appeal itself. It would apply to actions pending on and filed after the date it became law. No notice period, court deadline or writ figure on this page would change. Status: Ratified August 6, 2026; presented to the Governor August 7, 2026; vetoed August 17, 2026. The House placed the veto message on its calendar for September 2, 2026, and as of September 5, 2026 the bill's official history records no override vote in either chamber. It is not law. (checked September 5, 2026).

North Carolina at a glance

Rule	North Carolina	Cited to
Max security deposit	2 months' rent	G.S. 42-51 +2 more
Deposit return deadline	30 days	G.S. 42-51 +2 more
Rent-increase notice (month-to-month)	No statute — derived from termination notice	G.S. 42-14 +1 more
Statewide rent control / rent cap	No	G.S. 42-14 +1 more
Late-fee cap	$15 or 5% of the monthly rent, whichever is greater (monthly rent); $4 or 5% of the weekly rent, whichever is greater (weekly rent)	G.S. 42-46
Entry notice	No fixed statutory period	G.S. Chapter 42 (no entry-notice statute exists; official chapter section index confirms absence)
Eviction notice (nonpayment)	10 days	G.S. 42-3 +13 more
Application fee cap	No statutory cap	N.C. Gen. Stat. § 42-46 +17 more
Interest owed on deposits	No — no statute addresses it	N.C. Gen. Stat. § 42-50 (deposits from the tenant — trust account or bond; 30-day notice) +2 more
Repair deadline after tenant notice	No statutory count	N.C. Gen. Stat. § 42-38 (application of the Residential Rental Agreements Act) +10 more
Repair and deduct	No — no statute or decision authorizes it	N.C. Gen. Stat. § 42-38 (application of the Residential Rental Agreements Act) +10 more
Landlord notice to end a month-to-month tenancy	7 days (2 counting rules)	N.C. Gen. Stat. § 42-14 +11 more

Cite this page: "Landlord Atlas, North Carolina Landlord-Tenant Laws (verified July 8, 2026), landlordatlas.com/laws/north-carolina/" — free to cite and quote with a link (how these records are verified). Every figure above is cited to the North Carolina statute it comes from on the linked topic page.

Local rent regulation in North Carolina

North Carolina law prohibits counties and cities from regulating the rent charged for privately owned residential or commercial rental property, with exceptions for government-owned housing, subsidized-rental agreements, CDBG-assisted properties, and properties receiving local funding or incentives.

Cited to N.C.G.S. § 42-14.1 · Verified August 12, 2026 · Full North Carolina rent-increase rules →

North Carolina landlord-tenant laws by topic

North Carolina security deposits

North Carolina caps security deposits at two months' rent for leases longer than month-to-month (one and a half months for month-to-month, two weeks for week-to-week), and the landlord must return the deposit with a written itemization within 30 days of the tenancy ending and the unit being surrendered.

North Carolina rent increase notice

North Carolina has no statute directly regulating rent increases or requiring rent-increase notice; the practical floor is G.S. 42-14's termination notice, which for a month-to-month tenancy is just seven days — among the shortest in the country — so a landlord can effectively impose a new rent on seven days' notice by making it the price of continuing the tenancy.

North Carolina late fees

North Carolina caps residential late fees at the greater of $15 or 5% of the monthly rent (for weekly rentals, the greater of $4 or 5% of weekly rent), and no fee may be charged unless the payment is five or more days late — a statutory grace period.

North Carolina entry notice

North Carolina has no statute requiring any particular advance notice before a landlord enters a rental unit — no fixed hours and no codified 'reasonable notice' standard.

North Carolina eviction process

North Carolina's eviction — 'summary ejectment' — starts, for nonpayment, with a demand for all past-due rent and a 10-day wait, but that famous 10-day rule is only a default: it is an implied forfeiture that applies when the lease has no forfeiture clause of its own, the demand does not have to be in writing, and a lease can shorten or waive it.

North Carolina application & screening fees

North Carolina puts no cap on residential rental application or tenant-screening fees and requires no receipt, no refund, and no disclosure of screening standards before an applicant pays.

North Carolina deposit interest

North Carolina does not require landlords to pay tenants interest on a security deposit, and the Tenant Security Deposit Act never uses the word in a money sense.

North Carolina habitability & repairs

North Carolina requires a landlord to keep a rented dwelling fit and habitable, comply with applicable building and housing codes, keep common areas safe, maintain and promptly repair the facilities and appliances supplied, keep smoke and carbon monoxide alarms working, and repair a list of twelve imminently dangerous conditions within a reasonable time scaled to how severe the condition is.

North Carolina lease termination

In North Carolina either the landlord or the tenant may end a month-to-month tenancy with seven days' notice, one of the two shortest periods in the country, and no reason is required.

North Carolina mobile home park laws

North Carolina has no manufactured home community tenancy act, so lot tenancies run on the general landlord-tenant law in Chapter 42 of the General Statutes, which carries three rules written specifically for manufactured homes: sixty days' notice to end a tenancy that is only the rental of a space for a manufactured home, 180 days' notice before a community of five or more homes is converted to another use, and twenty-one days after an eviction in which the community owner must release the home to its owner.

North Carolina Fair Market Rents (FY 2027) — HUD's benchmark rents for every North Carolina metro area and county.

Changes since last full verification

The Verified date above (July 8, 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).

Updated, September 5, 2026 — North Carolina: Session Law 2026-59, s. 52 (approved and effective August 11, 2026) is now stated on the manufactured-home record: a mobile home in a park sited before 1989 may be billed for water and sewer by allocation on individually submetered hot water use, and the express prohibition on ratio utility billing is removed; the published code still prints the earlier text. House Bill 377 (vetoed August 17, 2026, override calendared but not voted) is typed on the eviction page.

How this record was verified: Direct read of statute text on the official North Carolina General Assembly site (ncleg.gov / ncleg.net): Tenant Security Deposit Act Article 6 (G.S. 42-50 through 42-56) full article text, G.S. 42-46 (full current text including the SL 2025-52 rewrite of subsection (i)), G.S. 42-14, and G.S. 42-14.1 (operative sentence confirmed in the official Article 1 text). H990 (2025) status verified via LegiScan against the ncleg bill record.