Can Your Landlord Enter Your Tuscaloosa Apartment? Alabama’s Two-Day Notice Rule (2026)

Can Your Landlord Enter Your Tuscaloosa Apartment? Alabama’s Two-Day Notice Rule

You come back from class and the maintenance ticket you never filed has been closed, the bathroom light is fixed, and someone has clearly been in your bedroom. Or the leasing office is showing your unit to next year’s tenants in March and nobody told you. Both of those situations are governed by a single section of Alabama law — § 35-9A-303 — and it is shorter and more specific than most students assume.

What follows is the text, what it actually permits, and the two places where the rule is narrower than the version you will hear repeated around campus.

Start With What You Owe Them

The section opens with a duty on the tenant, not the landlord. Subsection (a):

“A tenant shall not unreasonably withhold consent to the landlord to enter into the dwelling unit in order to inspect the premises, make necessary or agreed repairs, decorations, alterations, or improvements, supply necessary or agreed services, or exhibit the dwelling unit to prospective or actual purchasers, mortgagees, tenants, workmen, or contractors.”

So the baseline is not “they can never come in.” The baseline is that entry for those listed purposes is normal, and you are not allowed to unreasonably refuse it. The fight is almost never about whether they can enter at all — it is about notice, timing and manner.

The Five Times They Can Enter Without Your Consent

Subsection (b) is a closed list, and the word “only” is in the statute:

“A landlord may enter the dwelling unit without consent of the tenant only in the following circumstances: (1) In case of emergency. (2) Pursuant to court order. (3) As permitted by Sections 35-9A-422 and 35-9A-423(b). (4) At reasonable times and with prior notice as provided in subsection (c), to show the premises to a prospective tenant or purchaser, if a landlord provides the tenant separate from the rental agreement a general notice signed by the tenant for the right to access for such a purpose within four months of the expiration of the rental agreement, and only in the company of a prospective tenant or purchaser. (5) When the landlord has reasonable cause to believe the tenant has abandoned or surrendered the premises.”

Item (4) is the one that matters most to students, because Tuscaloosa’s leasing calendar runs so far ahead of move-out. Read its conditions: the access notice has to be separate from the rental agreement, it has to be signed by you, it only covers the window within four months of the expiration of your lease, and the landlord may enter only in the company of the prospective tenant or purchaser. A leasing agent letting themselves in alone in October to photograph the unit is not doing what item (4) describes.

Item (5) is the other one worth knowing, because it is where long absences get dangerous. If you go home for a month over winter break and stop answering the office, “reasonable cause to believe the tenant has abandoned” becomes a live question. Tell them you are away.

The Two-Day Notice — and Exactly What It Says

Subsection (c) is the sentence everyone half-remembers:

“A landlord shall not abuse the right of access or use it to harass the tenant. Except as provided in this section or unless it is impracticable to do so, the landlord may show the premises at any reasonable time by giving the tenant at least two days’ notice of the landlord’s intent to enter and may enter only at reasonable times. Posting of a note on the primary door of entry to the residence of the tenant stating the intended time and purpose of the entry shall be a permitted method of notice for the purpose of the landlord’s right of access to the premises.”

Three things come out of that, and the third is where campus folklore is wrong.

1. Two days, not twenty-four hours

Alabama’s number is two days’ notice, not the 24 hours you will hear quoted from other states’ statutes. If your lease promises more than two days, the lease is more generous than the floor and you can hold them to it.

2. A note on the door is valid notice

The statute says so explicitly, as long as the note states the intended time and the purpose. A blank “maintenance was here” slip left behind after the fact is not notice of anything. A dated note taped to your door two days out saying when and why is.

3. The sentence is framed around showing the premises

Here is the nuance we are not going to smooth over. The two-day sentence is written as “the landlord may show the premises… by giving the tenant at least two days’ notice,” and it is bracketed by “except as provided in this section” and “unless it is impracticable to do so.” Routine maintenance entry is dealt with separately in subsection (d), below. Anyone who tells you Alabama flatly requires two days’ notice for every entry of any kind is stating the rule more simply than the text does. Two days is the anchor; the exceptions are real and they are written down.

Maintenance, Pest Control and the Standing-Schedule Exception

Subsection (d) is why the exterminator shows up without a fresh notice every month:

“If a landlord provides separate from the lease in a general notice or an advance schedule in excess of two days for repairs, maintenance, pest control, or for service relating to health or safety, whether such notice is for a specific time or within a designated time period, then no additional day’s notice is required to access the premises. A tenant may consent to provide a landlord with access to the premises with less than two days’ notice.”

Note the conditions again: the schedule has to be separate from the lease, and it has to run in excess of two days ahead. A complex that hands you a semester pest-control calendar at move-in has satisfied this. A text message at 8am saying someone is coming at 10am has not — unless you say yes, which the last sentence expressly allows you to do.

Subsection (e) closes the obvious loop: when you are the one who asked for the repair, that request is treated as your consent to let them in to make it. If you file a ticket about a leaking sink and then get annoyed that someone came to fix the sink, the statute is not on your side. That is worth remembering alongside the practical question of who is responsible for what in your unit.

The Section at a Glance

What You Can Actually Do About a Landlord Who Ignores It

The remedy is not in § 35-9A-303. It is one section over, in § 35-9A-442(b):

“If a landlord makes an unlawful entry or a lawful entry in an unreasonable manner or makes excessive demands for entry otherwise lawful but which have the effect of unreasonably harassing the tenant, the tenant may obtain injunctive relief to prevent the recurrence of the conduct, or terminate the rental agreement pursuant to Section 35-9A-401,” and may recover actual damages.

Three distinct triggers there, and the third is the one students rarely spot: entries that are individually lawful but collectively harassing. A pattern counts. That is an argument you can only make if you wrote the pattern down — dates, times, who, what notice was or was not given.

Note also what § 35-9A-442(a) does to you in the other direction: if a tenant refuses to allow lawful access, the landlord may obtain injunctive relief to compel access, or terminate the rental agreement under § 35-9A-421. Refusing entry outright is not a safe move.

Locks, and the line into a different statute

If a landlord goes past entry and changes the locks or shuts off services, you are no longer in § 35-9A-303 at all — you are in § 35-9A-407, which lets a tenant who has been unlawfully removed or excluded, or whose heat, water, hot water, electricity, gas or other essential service was willfully interrupted, recover possession or terminate the agreement and recover not more than three months’ periodic rent or actual damages, whichever is greater, plus reasonable attorney’s fees. That is a much larger remedy than the access rules carry, and it is the reason a lockout and an unannounced entry are not the same conversation.

One Thing to Check Before You Sign

Alabama’s anti-waiver clause, § 35-9A-163(a)(1), bars a rental agreement from making the tenant “waive or forego rights or remedies established under Section 35-9A-204, 35-9A-401, or 35-9A-404, or requirements of security deposits established by this chapter.” Read that list carefully: § 35-9A-303 is not on it.

We are not going to tell you what a court would do with a lease clause that broadens entry rights, because that is exactly the kind of question a licensed attorney answers and a website should not. What we will say is that it makes the access paragraph of your lease worth reading more closely than the deposit paragraph, because the deposit rules are protected by statute and the entry terms visibly are not. Our Tuscaloosa student lease guide walks through the rest of the document, and if you are comparing properties, the one-star reviews on our guide to apartments near UA are where entry complaints surface first.

Practical Habits That Make This a Non-Issue

• 01Keep every notice. Photograph the note on your door with the date visible before you take it down. Screenshot texts and emails from the office. A pattern argument under § 35-9A-442(b) is only as good as your record of it.
• 02Put your absences in writing. Before you leave for a long break, email the office your dates. It removes any “reasonable cause to believe the tenant has abandoned” question under subsection (b)(5).
• 03Read the access paragraph at signing, not at move-in. Check whether the lease expands entry rights, and whether a separate access notice for showings was slipped into the signing packet — item (b)(4) requires that document to be separate and signed.
• 04Tell roommates the rule. On a joint lease, one roommate waving maintenance in at 7am affects everyone. Settle house rules on entry the same time you settle who you are living with.
• 05Do not answer the door for strangers claiming to be with the office. Unannounced “inspections” are a known rental scam script. Our guide on avoiding rental scams in Tuscaloosa covers the rest, and the off-campus safety basics are worth a read alongside it.

Frequently Asked Questions

The Rest of the Alabama Tenant-Law Series

This guide is one part of our plain-language series on the Alabama Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act (Alabama Code Title 35, Chapter 9A) for University of Alabama students. The rest of the series:

• 01Lease clauses that can’t be enforced — The rights § 35-9A-163 says a lease may not sign away, however the paperwork is worded.
• 02Security deposit limits and the 60-day rule — What a landlord may charge, what may be deducted, and the deadline for returning the balance.
• 03What your landlord must repair — The duty to maintain the premises under § 35-9A-204, and what to do when a ticket goes unanswered.
• 04Retaliation for complaining — Which complaints § 35-9A-501 protects, and the four exceptions that end most claims.
• 05Late rent and the seven-day notice — How Alabama’s seven-day notice to pay or quit works, and where the eviction timeline actually starts.
• 06Lockouts and seized belongings — Why self-help eviction is unlawful in Alabama, and what § 35-9A-407 lets a tenant recover.
• 07Leaving the apartment empty for a semester or summer — The 14-day absence notice in § 35-9A-423, and the seven-day electric rule that makes a unit “abandoned.”