Rent laws vary widely: some states set a fixed dollar cap, others a percentage, and a few use only “reasonable” language that’s open to interpretation. Many renters and landlords have no easy way to check what’s actually allowed without reading the statutes themselves.
This project compiles those laws into an instant calculator. Enter rent amount, due date, payment date, and state — it shows the lawful late fee limit, grace period rules, and citation.
It started as a curiosity after seeing conflicting answers online. The goal is transparency, not advocacy; all data is drawn from current state statutes.
The app is lightweight, built in Replit, and runs entirely client-side. I’d be interested in feedback on legal interpretation consistency, data sourcing, or UI clarity.
Needs a higher-powered AI, I'd say.
[1] Replit bills itself as "an AI-powered platform for building professional web apps and websites."
tl;dr: they pivoted from offering services adjacent to "learn to code" (among other things) to vibecoding
- It's still wrong
- The website now has a "get premium for $6 first 100 customers only!" banner
Vibe coded trash
Every now and then, some municipality claims that it will be "fighting illegal apartments," but they die quick deaths. If they got serious about it, the homeless population would explode, and a lot of folks would leave the state.
Also, I believe that most of the rules that apply to apartments, come from municipalities, not states.
They do that enough times, and all of a sudden now speeding is legal because no one was charged with speeding, but with "driving with an invalid instrument".
This would basically get rid of the "easy plea downs" and basically make fighting against the book the norm.
IRL example:
I once pulled out of my driveway and passed a stopped school bus (with lights on, but no stop signs extended) on a divided highway (barrier between my side of the road and theirs), a cop saw me do that, went around the barrier and pulled me over a couple minutes later. I was charged with something that was going to instantly take my license away.
I went to my local courthouse on the designated day, the prosecuter brought me in and told me he would drop the charges to failure to stop at a stop sign. I said I didn't pass a stop sign, and that the bus didn't have them extended, just stopped with lights on, across a highway from me.
Prosecutor said, that I'm allowed to argue that in front of a judge along with paying some large sum, and potentially lose my license, or take a point, and pay $150 today and be done with it.
I chose the latter.
What does this mean in practice? Courts won't enforce late fees or unpaid rents? Landlords can't evict bad tenants? Renters can terminate leases without any penalty?
Landlords get in a lot of trouble, for renting illegal apartments.
I have friends that rented apartments, and had Pacific Heights-type[0] problem tenants.
The COVID era was a horror. Many tenants just stopped paying rent entirely.
Do you have a source for this because I’m not convinced. Maybe a small portion do but the majority face no penalties. When I was in college the number of questionably legal homes for rent was insane, but I didn’t have time to go after them. A friend of mine did and won, but it required a lot of time. Most of the time the landlord does what they want and the renters don’t have the resources to go after them.
You make it sound like it’s the renters who take advantage of the landlords but most of the time it’s the landlords who do whatever they want. The ones who stopped paying rent probably were doing so legally because a lot of them were forced to not work.
Landlords naturally (e.g., by the nature) have the upper hand because they have the desired thing - the rental.
Tenants often have the legal upper hand, but the whole job of the landlord (even good ones!) is to work out which tenants know how to play the game and not rent to them.
But isn’t that the risk? You’re doing illegal stuff so you’ll attract sketchy folks.
> whole job of the landlord (even good ones!) is to work out which tenants know how to play the game and not rent to them.
Sounds like discrimination to me, tbh. But you can’t prove it so that makes it “fair” I guess
As for squatters, yeah they’re taking advantage of lax enforcement but they’re few and far between despite what you’d read on the internet.
> Tenants can get away with murder.
Sounds like hyperbole
I guess my rant is just that renters get shit on because of a few squatters but landlords barely ever get criticized because there’s a contract involved. Some of the stuff I’ve read on the contracts isn’t even legal but a lot of tenants aren’t savvy to cross check laws or they’re owned by huge conglomerates who use stuff like RealPage.
This is completely irrelevant to anything. It's none of the business of the tenant how much the landlord is profiting, and it's the obligation of the landlord to return the deposit fairly even if he is losing money on the property. Your experience is the opposite of mine in terms of small vs large landlords. Where I'm from the corporate landlords don't even charge deposits when you have good credit and income.
It certainly feels relevant when they start making excuses about why they have to charge you for things they cannot charge you for, claiming how expensive things are now. Operating costs have gone up for everyone, that doesn’t mean you get make things up to pass down the cost. But I do understand your point.
> Where I'm from the corporate landlords don't even charge deposits when you have good credit and income.
True, that has been my experience as well and I wasn’t explicit about that. The last couple of places we rented were from corporate ones and have had 0 issues compared to the mom and pop ones.
Around here, most of the landlords are people just like you. They own a house, and want to get a bigger one, so they either rent the old house (those are often legal rentals), or they divide the house they live in (or their old house), and rent the apartments (those are the ones that are usually illegal).
They aren't land barons or slumlords, and they get pretty screwed, when tenants abuse them. They can lose everything. One family I knew, had to let the house go into foreclosure, because the tenant refused to move, and refused to pay rent. I don't know what happened, after that, but I know that it's nearly impossible to sell a house that's occupied, and the tenants will often abuse the house before they are evicted (which can take months).
The laws are quite harsh, but enforcement, not so much.
Most folks don't want to saw off the branch they are sitting on, though, so they play nice.
Everyone also wants to pay as little as he can, too.
Fortunately, as long as there are many buyers and many sellers, the market tends to find efficient prices. When there is a monopoly or a monopsony, though, prices get out of wack.
If you don't increase your prices with inflation, your business will not be sustainable in the long term.
Not everybody everybody. Some people want to charge/pay/receive the maximum reasonable amount. Where "reasonable" is informed by social norms. The existence of so many amoral corporations, and sociopathic individuals running them, has absolutely skewed social expectations though.
Such people are certainly less common, but they do exist (anecdata of one, me)
Homo economicus does not actually exist.
Tons of kids aren’t taught that, some of them start businesses, and they may struggle to make ends meet (or at least to thrive like they could be) because raising prices to market rates feels so unfair to them that they won’t do it unless prodded to and told it’s ok by someone else (and they still might not)
I definitely am not convinced market-rate-is-ethical-and-fair is natural thinking for most people, or the kind of thing they want to do.
(I’ve been the one telling people they should raise prices and I still can’t shake the feeling that it’s kinda wrong…)
Because it seems like the normal default for humans is that "fair" means when I sell something I take the highest offer I can get, but when I buy things the seller should give me the lowest offer he can while meeting his expenses or he is being "greedy." If you don't believe me just read the HN comments on any financial topic.
I'd love to see some kind of 50 state tenant resource center, geared towards providing tenants with advice and legal resources.