How we research our guides
Landlord-tenant law is mostly state law, and it changes often: many states changed their deposit, notice and eviction rules in 2024, 2025 and 2026. This page explains where our information comes from and how the tools work.
Sources
Each state page is built from official sources: the statutes on the state legislature's website, the state attorney general's tenant guide, state housing or consumer agencies and the courts' self-help centers. We don't use law-firm, landlord-service, real-estate or blog sites as sources of facts. Each page lists its sources and the month they were checked.
How we check
- Every state page is researched and then checked by a second reviewer against the official text, with special care for deadlines, day counts, deposit limits, penalties and notice periods.
- Where cities have their own rules (for example rent control or stronger notice rules), we say so; we do not cover every local ordinance.
- Where we could not confirm something, we leave it out or say so on the page instead of guessing.
The tools
The deposit calculator adds your state's number of days to your move-out date. It skips weekends only where the rule counts business days, and it never skips holidays. It shows a penalty figure only where the rule states a clear multiple and plainly says what it multiplies; it names conditions such as bad faith or willful withholding when the rule does. Otherwise it shows the rule's own words. Where a state's rule has no fixed number of days, the calculator says so and shows the rule.
The letters are written in English for US landlords and courts. They cite the state statute from our data and are made on your device as PDF, Word or text.
The eviction timeline computes a notice end date only when the rule names one clear number of days; otherwise it shows the rule. It is not legal advice.
Report an error
Email us at [email protected] with a link to the official source and we'll check it.