Massachusetts Rental Ad Pricing Law 2025: All-In Price Required

Massachusetts landlords advertising a rental price now have to disclose the total price, defined as the maximum amount a consumer must pay, inclusive of all fees, charges, and other expenses.

[Cite: 940 CMR 38.00]

That's a direct requirement on the advertisement itself, not just on the final lease document. An ad that quotes a base rent figure without folding in mandatory fees doesn't satisfy this rule, even if those fees are disclosed somewhere later in the leasing process.

The Attorney General's office announced and promulgated this regulation on March 3, 2025, but it didn't become enforceable until September 2, 2025, nearly six months later.

[Cite: Massachusetts Attorney General's Office, "AG Campbell Releases 'Junk Fee' Regulations To Help Consumers Avoid Unnecessary Costs"]

A landlord researching this rule should use September 2, 2025 as the operative compliance date, not the earlier March announcement date, which only reflects when the regulation was finalized on paper.

A landlord can still advertise a periodic price, a monthly rent figure, rather than a lump sum covering the entire lease term.

[Cite: 940 CMR 38.00]

But when a landlord does that, the ad also has to clearly and conspicuously state the full period that price actually covers. A monthly figure presented without any indication of the lease length it applies to falls short of this specific disclosure requirement, even if the monthly number itself is accurate.

The regulation's total-price definition sweeps in the charges a tenant must pay to complete the rental transaction, not just the base rent figure. Secondary guidance names specific examples landlords have used that now have to be folded into the advertised price: utility surcharges, lockout fees, sanitary-facility-misuse fines, and after-hours service call charges.

[Cite: MassLandlords.net, "New 'Junk Fee' Regulations Prohibit Undisclosed Fees in Rental Housing"]

A landlord with a fee schedule that charges any of these as a matter of course, rather than only in response to an actual triggering event, should treat that fee as part of the advertised total price rather than a separate, later disclosure.

Two categories are excluded from the total-price calculation: government charges, such as taxes or fees imposed by a government agency, and shipping charges, which typically don't apply to a rental transaction in the first place.

[Cite: 940 CMR 38.00]

Beyond those two categories, a genuinely optional or waivable fee, like a fee for an amenity a tenant can decline, can be listed separately from the total price, but only if it's clearly identified as optional and the ad explains how a tenant can avoid it.

[Cite: 940 CMR 38.00]

Massachusetts law already restricts what a landlord can collect before a tenant moves in to four items: a security deposit, first month's rent, last month's rent, and a fee for changing the locks.

[Cite: MassLandlords.net, "New 'Junk Fee' Regulations Prohibit Undisclosed Fees in Rental Housing"]

That existing rule, under G.L. c.186 §15B, hasn't changed. Application fees, hold fees, and similar charges collected before move-in were already illegal under that separate statute, independent of this year's junk fee regulation.

[Cite: MassLandlords.net, "New 'Junk Fee' Regulations Prohibit Undisclosed Fees in Rental Housing"]

Where §15B addresses what can be collected before a tenant moves in, 940 CMR 38.00 addresses something §15B never covered: fee transparency in advertising, and fee transparency across the full duration of a tenancy, not just at signing.

[Cite: MassLandlords.net, "New 'Junk Fee' Regulations Prohibit Undisclosed Fees in Rental Housing"]

A landlord who was already fully compliant with §15B's narrow move-in list could still be in violation of this regulation if a rental ad understated the real monthly cost, or if a recurring fee charged later in the tenancy, like a utility surcharge, wasn't disclosed as part of the total price upfront.

Guidance aimed at landlords describes three practical adjustments: advertising the comprehensive total in rental listings before a lease is signed, building recurring costs like amenities and services into the base rent price rather than billing them separately, and clearly disclosing any required charges, such as pet rent or a payment processing fee, upfront.

[Cite: MassLandlords.net, "New 'Junk Fee' Regulations Prohibit Undisclosed Fees in Rental Housing"]

That third option, folding a recurring charge into the advertised base rent, sidesteps the separate-disclosure question entirely, since a cost already reflected in the advertised total doesn't need its own carve-out explanation.

A lease with an auto-renewal clause now requires a tenant reminder notice sent between 5 and 30 days before the renewal deadline, along with an easily accessible mechanism for the tenant to actually terminate the lease rather than let it auto-renew.

[Cite: Choate Hall & Stewart LLP, "MA Attorney General's 'Unfair and Deceptive Fee' Regulations Impact Real Estate"]

That's a meaningful departure from a lease structure that simply rolls over automatically without a defined tenant notification window. A landlord using standard auto-renewal lease language should confirm that language, and the actual notice practice behind it, both meet this specific 5-to-30-day window.

A violation of 940 CMR 38.00 is treated as an unfair or deceptive act under G.L. c.93A, the Massachusetts Consumer Protection Act, which exposes the landlord and its agents to treble damages and attorney's fees.

[Cite: Choate Hall & Stewart LLP, "MA Attorney General's 'Unfair and Deceptive Fee' Regulations Impact Real Estate"]

That's the same consumer-protection statute referenced elsewhere in Massachusetts landlord-tenant law, applied here to advertising and fee-disclosure practices specifically, rather than to the underlying legality of any individual fee.

Legal commentary on this regulation notes that a fee charged in violation of the disclosure requirement could become uncollectible, and that this exposure could complicate an otherwise valid eviction proceeding, for instance where unpaid fees factor into a nonpayment claim.

[Cite: Choate Hall & Stewart LLP, "MA Attorney General's 'Unfair and Deceptive Fee' Regulations Impact Real Estate"]

That specific interaction between a fee-disclosure violation and an eviction case comes from legal commentary rather than the regulation's own text or established case law, so it's presented here as a risk worth understanding rather than a settled outcome. A landlord with a pending or anticipated nonpayment case involving disputed fee charges should treat this as a reason to review those specific charges against the disclosure requirement, not assume the eviction claim is automatically unaffected.

The specific fee categories named in guidance on this rule, utility surcharges, lockout fees, sanitary-facility-misuse fines, and after-hours service charges, are common enough in standard Massachusetts lease templates that a landlord may not have flagged them as advertising-relevant before this regulation took effect.

[Cite: MassLandlords.net, "New 'Junk Fee' Regulations Prohibit Undisclosed Fees in Rental Housing"]

A lease clause charging a flat lockout fee, for example, is the kind of routine, near-certain charge that this regulation treats as part of the real cost of the unit, rather than a rare, situational fee that can reasonably stay out of the advertised price.

This state regulation followed closely behind a federal rule on unfair or deceptive fees that took effect earlier the same year, reflecting a broader regulatory trend toward requiring upfront total-price disclosure across consumer transactions, not a Massachusetts-specific invention.

[Cite: MassLandlords.net, "New 'Junk Fee' Regulations Prohibit Undisclosed Fees in Rental Housing"]

That context is useful for a landlord managing properties across multiple states, since similar total-price disclosure expectations may apply elsewhere even where the specific regulatory citation differs.

The practical starting point is auditing every current rental listing template against the total-price definition: does the advertised figure already include every fee a tenant will actually have to pay, or does it reflect only the base rent with fees disclosed separately later in the process.

For any recurring fee that isn't clearly optional, folding it into the advertised base rent, rather than continuing to list it as a separate line item, closes the most direct compliance gap this regulation creates, and reviewing auto-renewal lease language against the 5-to-30-day notice window closes a second, easily overlooked requirement from the same regulation.