Arkansas Application Fee and Deposit Law: Local Limits Barred

Act 459 states that a local governmental unit has no authority to enact, maintain, or enforce an ordinance or resolution that would have the effect of controlling the amount charged for a rental application fee or a rental deposit. This is a preemption statute, not a new cap. It stops cities and counties from setting or limiting these amounts; it doesn't put any statewide dollar limit in their place.

[Cite: Act 459 of 2025 (SB 91), amending Ark. Code 14-16-601 and 14-54-1409]

It's worth being precise about what this changes in practice. Most Arkansas landlords weren't operating under a local fee or deposit cap before this act, since local rent-control ordinances were already broadly preempted under the prior version of these same statute sections. What Act 459 adds is an explicit extension of that existing preemption to specifically name application fees and deposits, closing off any argument that those charges fell outside the older rent-control preemption language.

[Cite: Act 459 of 2025 (SB 91)]

The act amends Arkansas Code 14-16-601 and 14-54-1409. Both carry the same heading, rent, rental application fee, and rental deposit control preemption, and both receive identical language extending the preemption. Having the same amendment appear in two separate code sections reflects that Arkansas's preemption framework applies through more than one statutory pathway depending on the type of local government structure involved.

[Cite: Ark. Code 14-16-601 and 14-54-1409, as amended by Act 459 of 2025]

For a landlord or property manager checking Arkansas law, either section confirms the same rule: local regulation of these charges isn't permitted.

The preemption's scope is broad by design. The act names landlords, property owners, property managers, tenants, prospective tenants, and real estate companies doing business in Arkansas as within its coverage. This means the rule isn't limited to a narrow category of rental housing; it applies across residential and commercial rental property statewide.

[Cite: Act 459 of 2025 (SB 91)]

There's one specific exception. A local governmental unit retains authority to regulate application fees and deposits for residential property in which that unit itself holds a property interest. In other words, a city or county acting as a landlord on its own property isn't stripped of the ability to set its own terms for that specific property; the preemption targets a local government's regulatory power over private landlords, not its authority as a property owner in its own right.

[Cite: Act 459 of 2025 (SB 91)]

It's easy to misread a preemption statute as creating a new protection or a new limit, so it's worth stating plainly what Act 459 doesn't do. It doesn't cap how much a landlord can charge for an application fee or a security deposit anywhere in Arkansas. It doesn't require landlords to disclose or itemize these charges in any new way. It simply removes the tool a city or county would otherwise have used to impose its own cap or restriction.

[Cite: Act 459 of 2025 (SB 91)]

For landlords, the practical effect is continuity rather than change in most cases; any local ordinance that might have existed or been proposed to cap these charges is now foreclosed at the state level. For a landlord who happens to operate in a jurisdiction that had already attempted such an ordinance, this act would override it going forward.

The act was approved by the Governor on April 3, 2025. The enacted text as reviewed contains no explicit effective-date clause and no emergency clause, which is significant because it means the act didn't take effect immediately on approval. Under Arkansas's general constitutional rule, an act without an emergency clause takes effect 91 days after the legislature adjourns sine die for that session, which places this act's effective date at August 5, 2025.

[Cite: Ark. Const. art. 5, section 1; Act 459 of 2025, approved 4/3/2025]

Anything a local government attempted to enforce regarding these charges between the act's approval and its actual effective date would need to be evaluated against whatever law applied during that specific window, since the preemption itself wasn't operative until August 5, 2025.