Aiexpress – In 2025, certain Tennessee counties will grant renters more power.
This is due to a new legislation requiring landlords to provide tenants with the contact information for the property manager, who is in charge of maintaining a rental property, as well as an online communication platform between landlord and tenant.
The restriction is important because people commonly rent from people who do not live in the area where the property is located, according to Darrell Winfree, a staff attorney at Legal Aid of East Tennessee in Maryville.
“It will require landlords to provide information about how they can be contacted as far as needed repairs or service of process,” Winfree told reporters. “Basically making sure there is that connection between the landlord and tenant, that information can flow both ways.”
Winfree added that residents in East Tennessee do not often know how to contact property owners who are from out of state or live in West Tennessee.
“We end up having people that come to us regularly who are unable to get in touch with their landlord, who have these needs,” according to him. “I really do believe that people want to be able to help others, to be able to get these needs addressed and to be able to offer their tenant the best customer experience, but sometimes the people who need to be made aware of those things just don’t have the opportunity to be made away of those things.”
Because a clear service of process address must now be included in a lease agreement between a landlord and a tenant, Winfree claims that the law makes it easier for a tenant to serve process on a landlord and, if necessary, have them brought into court to have a judge review a leasing dispute.
“This helps level the playing field a little bit more, to make sure if there is something happening that’s wrong the tenant has to ability to get into court and make it right,” Winfree told me.
During the previous legislative session, Tennessee State Representative Dwayne Thompson, who represents Cordova, indicated support for the bill.
Tennessee landlords must provide renters with contact information for property management and repairs under a new 2025 law.
“The reason for this is to help ensure that tenants have access to necessary contact information to request maintenance services,” Thompson told me. “This won’t affect the majority of landlords, but those absentee landlords, and out-of-state landlords who’ve not furnished this information, or who have not arranged for maintenance services, those are who we’re looking at.”
According to Winfree, landlords are responsible for providing their tenants with a safe and habitable environment.
“There’s a lot of things that aren’t included in that, replacement for appliances, or keeping things in a state that might be tasteful, or calm, or pleasing or whatnot, that might not be the same as habitable or safe,” Winfree told me. It’s a lesser standard.
The law applies only to citizens of counties with a population of 75,000 or more. Tennessee’s Uniform Residential Landlord Act applies to these counties.
“It will cover Blount County, but it may not cover Loudon County or some of the more outlying areas,” Winfree told me.
Because many people come to Winfree’s office to settle issues that could have been resolved directly between the landlord and the tenant, the new law should benefit both.
“A lot of times it’s things I’m able to talk to them about that might have been able to be resolved if they had that open line of communication with that landlord,” he told me. “If there was that ability to ask them questions, then we don’t necessarily need to be involved.”
