Arkansas Landlord-Tenant Law 2026: The Plain-English Guide
Arkansas is the most unusual landlord-tenant state in America. It is the only state with no implied warranty of habitability, the only state where nonpayment of rent is still a crime on the books, and — until 2025 — it never bothered preempting rent control because nobody had tried it. The governing scheme is a 2007 residential code (Ark. Code §§ 18-17-101 et seq.) layered over older statutes, with security deposits in a separate chapter (§§ 18-16-303 et seq.). The headline numbers: a two-month deposit cap that applies only to landlords renting six or more dwellings, a 60-day return, a 14-day cure period for lease violations, and no statutory entry-notice period at all.
Security deposits
- Capped at two months' periodic rent (§ 18-16-304) — pet deposits and additional fees count toward the aggregate cap, so don't stack them on top of a full two-month deposit.
- The six-dwelling threshold: the deposit statutes apply only to landlords who rent six or more dwellings (§ 18-16-303). If you rent five or fewer, the statute's cap, deadline, and penalty provisions don't bind you — though following them anyway is the safest practice.
- Return within 60 days after the tenant vacates, with a written itemized list of any deductions (§ 18-16-305). Deductions are limited to unpaid rent and damage from tenant noncompliance beyond normal wear and tear.
- Penalty: a tenant who sues for a wrongfully withheld deposit can recover the amount due plus up to twice the amount wrongfully withheld, plus costs and attorney's fees (§ 18-16-306). Safe harbor: liability drops to just the amount owed plus costs if you prove the error happened despite reasonable procedures, or the dispute over the amount was in good faith.
- Unclaimed funds: if you mail the itemized notice and payment first-class, it's returned, and the tenant can't be located through reasonable effort, the funds become your property after 180 days.
- Practical habit: 60 days is generous, but attorney's fees make any dispute expensive. Photo-document every unit at move-in and move-out, generate the itemization from those photos within the first month, and mail it certified. See our move-in/move-out inspection checklist.
Use our Security Deposit Deadline Finder and deductions guide.
Rent rules
- No rent control — now affirmatively preempted. Until recently Arkansas simply had no rent control. In 2025 that became statutory: Act 459 of 2025 (SB91) amended § 14-16-601 so that no local governmental unit may regulate the amount of rent, rental application fees, or rental deposits on private residential or commercial property (except within the § 18-16-304 deposit framework). The 2025 short-term-rental bills (HB1445, HB1790) that might have touched this space did not pass — do not treat them as law.
- Rent-increase notice: the statute sets no dedicated period, but courts enforce a one-rental-period rule strictly on month-to-month tenancies: give at least 30 days' written notice before the increase takes effect. In Robinette v. French (1987), a 16-day notice was held insufficient — courts here mean it. See how to raise rent legally.
- No mandatory grace period: Arkansas sets no required grace period for rent payments. Late is whatever your lease says it is — write it explicitly.
- No verified late-fee cap: one secondary source claims a $30-or-20%-of-rent cap, but current 2025–26 landlord-tenant guides say no statute limits late fees and lease terms govern. I could not verify any late-fee statute in the code — treat the cap claim as unreliable and keep fees lease-driven and defensible.
- Rent is due on time, in full: Arkansas gives tenants no general statutory right to withhold rent. See how to handle late rent.
Eviction in Arkansas
Self-help evictions are illegal in Arkansas — no changing locks, no shutting off utilities, no removing belongings. The civil route is unlawful detainer in circuit court (§ 18-60-304): the sheriff serves a writ and may remove the tenant after service. But Arkansas also has a criminal track that exists nowhere else in the country — still on the books, but with genuinely uncertain 2026 enforcement:
- The criminal failure-to-vacate statute (§ 18-16-101) is still on the books: after 10 days' written notice to vacate, a tenant who willfully refuses to vacate commits a misdemeanor punishable by $1–$25 per day, each day a separate offense (a citation may issue instead of an arrest). The critical quirk: the statute gives judges no power to remove anyone — it only fines. And its constitutional footing is shaky: State v. Artoria Smith (Pulaski County Circuit Court, 2015) declared it unconstitutional; the state didn't appeal, so that ruling binds only Pulaski County. Act 159 of 2017 removed the court-registry payment requirement at the center of Smith, and the Arkansas Supreme Court has never ruled. Treat it as live law but potentially unenforced and challengeable — build your practice around the civil route, which no judge disputes.
- Nonpayment (civil): rent is not "in arrears" until 5 days late (§ 18-17-701(b)); after day 5 you may terminate and begin unlawful detainer, which the Attorney General describes as a 3-day written notice to quit.
- Curable lease violations: 14-day written notice to remedy or vacate — the lease terminates if not cured within 14 days (§ 18-17-701).
- Irreparable violations or illegal activity (gambling, prostitution, unlawful alcohol sale): you may file unlawful detainer immediately, with no notice (§ 18-17-901 / § 18-60-304(5)).
- Month-to-month termination: 30 days' written notice, by either party, for any reason (§ 18-17-704(b)). Week-to-week: 7 days. Draft your notices with our lease agreement guide.
- Practical note: because the criminal statute's 2026 enforcement status is genuinely uncertain, serve the civil notices, file the civil action, and let the sheriff do the removing.
Full process: how to evict a tenant.
Repairs and habitability
This is where Arkansas is truly alone: it is the only state with no implied warranty of habitability.
- The 2007 code (§ 18-17-502) requires the landlord to comply with applicable building and housing codes — and that's essentially the floor. Leases are otherwise taken "as is." The 2024–26 legislature made no change to this.
- Tenants must notify you in writing of problems; if you fail to comply with the code-duty after notice, the tenant has statutory remedies including termination — but no repair-and-deduct right and no right to withhold rent over conditions.
- That doesn't mean you should defer maintenance as a business strategy: code violations, personal-injury exposure, and tenant churn all cost more than the repair. Build a fast response workflow anyway. See how to handle maintenance requests.- Retaliation is prohibited — you cannot punish a tenant for complaining about code violations or exercising statutory rights (§ 18-17-504).
- Business-honest framing for your leases: because tenants can't count on an implied warranty, put your maintenance commitments in the lease explicitly — it reduces disputes and makes your units more attractive than the "as is" competition.
Entry rights
Arkansas is the outlier of outliers here:
- No statute sets any advance-notice period. The only rule is that the tenant may not "unreasonably withhold consent" to entry for repairs, inspections, or showings (§ 18-17-602). There is no emergency-entry statute and no move-out-inspection-notice statute.
- That makes the lease clause everything. Best practice: write a 24-hour written-notice rule into every lease — 24 hours' written notice for non-emergency entries, at reasonable times, with defined exceptions for emergencies, abandonment, and repairs the tenant requested. You get the protection a statute would give, in writing, and the "unreasonably withhold consent" standard is much easier to litigate with a documented notice procedure.
- Document every entry: notice date, reason, time in, time out. Without a statutory backstop, your paper trail is the entire argument.
- Self-help lockouts remain illegal even though entry notice is unregulated — the two doctrines are separate.
Discrimination
The federal Fair Housing Act applies in full, and the Arkansas Fair Housing Act mirrors the federal protected classes: race, color, religion, sex, national origin, familial status, and disability. Screen every applicant with the same written criteria and document your decisions. Our fair housing guide covers what you can and can't ask.
The bottom line
Arkansas is landlord-friendly to a fault: a two-month deposit cap (with a six-dwelling threshold that exempts small operators entirely), no implied warranty of habitability, a 14-day cure notice for violations, immediate unlawful detainer for illegal activity, no-cause 30-day month-to-month termination, and no statutory entry-notice period — plus, as of 2025, affirmative preemption of local rent regulation. The headline trap is the criminal failure-to-vacate statute: it's on the books, its enforcement is uncertain, and leaning on it instead of the clean civil route buys litigation risk for no gain.
Write the lease precisely — explicit late-fee and grace-period terms, a 24-hour entry-notice clause the statute doesn't give you, and clear maintenance commitments that beat the "as is" baseline — then serve civil notices by the right clock: 5 days to arrears and the 3-day quit for nonpayment, 14 days to cure for violations, 30 days for any-reason month-to-month termination. Mail the deposit itemization certified within weeks of vacancy, and never touch self-help.
One more Arkansas-specific note for out-of-state investors: the lack of an implied warranty cuts both ways — it lowers your statutory duty, but a tenant-injury case built on a code violation is still very real. Have an Arkansas landlord-tenant attorney review your lease before you deploy it across a portfolio, and don't import another state's habitability-driven clauses without checking what they mean in a jurisdiction that never adopted them.
This is general information, not legal advice. Consult an Arkansas landlord-tenant attorney for specific situations.