Prohibition on local rent control
Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 40P, § 4State law
Cities and towns may not enact, maintain, or enforce rent control, except as allowed for a city or town that accepts the chapter.
Answers the question “How much can my rent go up?”
The source
… 22:36 UTC General Law - Part I, Title VII, Chapter 40P, Section 4 Skip to Content Section 4 Search the Legislature Search the Legislature Search General Laws Go Directly to a General Law Chapter Section Go to General Law Skip to Content Print Page Prev ious Next Section 4: General prohibition; exception Section 4. No city or town may enact, maintain or enforce rent control of any kind, except that any city or town that accepts this chapter may adopt rent control regulation that provides: (a) after six months from the date of the initial adoption of rent control regulation by a particular city or town, compliance on the part of property owners as to the rent control regulation or any subsequently adopted rent control regulation shall be entirely voluntary and uncoerced, and the property of a person or…
- Official law
- Open the official source
- Document
- D048, retrieved Oct 1, 2026
- Dates
- In force
- Status on Oct 1, 2026
- In force
What it depends on
- Covers
- Conditions not extracted yet.
- Exemptions
- A city or town that accepts the chapter may adopt rent control regulation subject to the stated restrictions.
- Other levels
- State law may limit local rules on this topic. HomeRule flags this for review and does not decide it.
- What you can do next
- Read the law at its official source
Audit trail
The model reads the law; code decides who it covers. The line between them stays visible.
Extracted by the model
What the model read from the source text, checked by code (the quote must appear word for word).
- Category
- Rent increases
- Requirement
- Cities and towns may not enact, maintain, or enforce rent control, except as allowed for a city or town that accepts the chapter.
- Key value
- none
- Effect
- bars_or_limits_local_rules
- Quote found in source
- yes
- Confidence
- 90%
reasoning boundary
Decided by code
Deterministic: same rules, facts and date give the same answer.
- Jurisdiction: listed only for addresses whose state or legal city is MA.
- Dates: no effective date in the text; treated as in force.
- Coverage: no building condition the data can test; conditions in words stay with the text.
- Conflict: flagged on both levels when a local rule on the same topic exists; never decided.
No city or town may enact, maintain or enforce rent control of any kind
As of Oct 1, 2026Engine run
Sources retrieved Oct 1, 2026.
Which buildings it reaches
All 110 sample addresses in Massachusetts on Oct 1, 2026.
- 110 not covered
Every dot is the rule engine’s result for that address. The larger dots are the example addresses listed below. 6 addresses have no coordinates and are counted but not drawn.