⏱ 9 Minute Read
Last Updated: October 26, 2026
General information for Idaho rental owners, not legal advice. Current as of September 2026. Statutes change; confirm the text with the Idaho Legislature or your own attorney before acting on a specific dispute.
If you own a rental in Boise, Meridian, Nampa, Eagle or Kuna and want the plain answer: Idaho Code section 6-320 makes you responsible for reasonable waterproofing and weather protection, for keeping electrical, plumbing, heating, ventilating, cooling and sanitary facilities you supplied in good working order, for not maintaining the property in a manner hazardous to health or safety, for approved smoke detectors, for returning a security deposit when the law requires it, and for any lease term that materially affects your tenant's health and safety. That is the whole statutory list. Everything else you think you owe a tenant almost certainly comes from the lease you signed, not from Idaho law.
That distinction is the single most useful thing an Idaho owner can understand, and it cuts both ways.
The statute is short, and that is the story
Most states run their rental relationships through a comprehensive landlord-tenant act. Idaho does not. There is no Idaho equivalent of a sixty-page habitability code, and Title 55, Chapter 2 — which owners sometimes go looking through — is about estates in real property, not repairs.
The operative provision sits in the forcible entry and unlawful detainer chapter, at Idaho Code section 6-320. It is framed as a tenant remedy rather than as a list of owner duties, which is why it reads oddly the first time. The six grounds a tenant may sue on are:
- Failure to provide reasonable waterproofing and weather protection of the premises.
- Failure to maintain in good working order electrical, plumbing, heating, ventilating, cooling or sanitary facilities supplied by the landlord.
- Maintaining the premises in a manner hazardous to the health or safety of the tenant.
- Failure to return a security deposit as and when required by law.
- Breach of any term or provision of the lease or rental agreement materially affecting the health and safety of the tenant.
- Failure to install approved smoke detectors in each dwelling unit under the landlord's control.
Items four and six are their own topics and are outside the scope of this guide. Items one, two, three and five are the repair core, and item five is the trapdoor: your own lease language can become a statutory cause of action if the clause you wrote touches health and safety.
Ground five converts lease promises into grounds for a section 6-320 suit whenever they materially affect health and safety. A well-meant clause promising "prompt repair of all issues within 24 hours" is not a customer-service flourish in Idaho. It is a standard a court can hold you to.
Why Idaho's law is this thin
The reason is judicial restraint, and it is on the record. In Worden v. Ordway, a 1983 Idaho Supreme Court decision, a Lewiston tenant sued over a sink that would not drain, a toilet that backed up into the shower and four months without hot water. She pleaded both a common-law implied warranty of habitability and a violation of section 6-320.
The court described section 6-320 as the statutory version of the implied warranty of habitability and refused to recognise a separate common-law warranty on top of it, reasoning that it should not expand common law where the legislature had already acted. The opinion also stated the background rule bluntly: Idaho common law did not imply a covenant to repair leased premises, and a landlord could be forced to repair only if the lease agreement required it.
Read that sentence twice. Outside the section 6-320 list, your repair obligation in Idaho is whatever your lease says it is. Owners who inherit a one-page lease from a previous manager, or who downloaded a generic template written for a state with a full landlord-tenant act, are usually carrying obligations they never priced — or, just as often, have no enforceable standard at all when a tenant's expectations run past the contract.
The tenant's three-day written notice is the trigger
Nothing in section 6-320 happens until the tenant serves notice. Subsection (d) requires that, before a tenant has standing to file, the tenant must give the landlord three days' written notice listing each failure or breach the action will be premised on, together with a written demand requiring performance or cure. If any listed item has not been performed or cured within three days after service of that notice, the tenant may commence the action.
Service is not casual. Under section 6-323, the notice may be delivered personally to the landlord or the landlord's agent, left with an employee at the usual place of business when the landlord or agent is absent, or sent by United States Postal Service certified mail with return receipt requested.
Idaho does not set a statutory timeframe for completing a repair. The three days in section 6-320(d) govern when a tenant may sue, not when a furnace must be running. In practice that makes three days the number that matters — but only once written notice has been served. Before notice, the statute is silent, and your lease is the only clock.
This is the point most owners get wrong in both directions. Some believe they have three days from the moment a tenant texts about a problem, which is not what the statute says. Others assume that because Idaho sets no deadline they can take their time, which ignores that a properly served notice starts a very short fuse toward a courtroom.
What happens when repairs are not made
The exposure is larger than most Idaho owners expect from a statute this brief.
A tenant who has served notice and waited out the three days may file for damages, specific performance, or both. When the action is exclusively for specific performance, section 6-320 directs the court to schedule trial within twelve days of the complaint being filed, with service of the summons, complaint and trial setting no less than five days before trial. A repair dispute in Ada or Canyon County can therefore be in front of a judge inside two weeks.
Then the multipliers. Section 6-317 provides that in an action brought under section 6-320, judgment may be entered for three times the amount at which actual damages are assessed. Section 6-324 provides that in any action brought under the chapter — except where treble damages are awarded — the prevailing party is entitled to an award of attorney fees. A $900 plumbing failure that is documented, noticed and ignored is not a $900 problem.
Three days of written notice before a tenant can sue. Twelve days from filing to trial in a specific-performance action. Five days minimum service before that trial. Treble damages available under section 6-317. Attorney fees to the prevailing party under section 6-324. Five acres, the agricultural threshold where section 6-320 stops applying.
What the statute does not give tenants
Owners are entitled to know the other half. Reading Title 6, Chapter 3 of the Idaho Code end to end, there is no general rent-withholding right and no general repair-and-deduct right in Idaho. The only deduct remedy in the chapter is the narrow smoke-detector provision inside section 6-320 itself, which runs on a 72-hour certified-mail clock and applies to nothing else.
There is also a boundary written into subsection (e): the provisions of section 6-320 do not apply to tracts of land of five acres or more used for agricultural purposes. That matters around Kuna and the edges of Eagle, though the exception turns on agricultural use as well as acreage, so a house on a big lot is not automatically outside the statute.
Where the lease has to do the work
Because Idaho's statute covers so little, the lease is not paperwork. It is the operating system of the property. The clauses that carry the most weight for a Treasure Valley owner are the ones that define the things section 6-320 never mentions:
- Which appliances are supplied, and which are conveniences. The statute protects facilities supplied by the landlord. An appliance list attached to the lease settles the argument before it starts.
- How a repair request must be submitted. A single written channel with a timestamp is worth more than any response-time promise. It establishes when you knew.
- Who pays for tenant-caused damage. Idaho's statute says nothing about causation. Your lease must.
- What counts as an emergency, and what does not. Define it narrowly and specifically rather than promising universal speed.
- Filters, batteries and routine upkeep. Allocate the small recurring items explicitly, or they become yours by default.
Avoid the temptation to write aspirational service promises into a legal document. Ground five of section 6-320 means a health-and-safety promise you cannot keep every time is worse than no promise at all. Professional Boise property management leases tend to read conservatively for exactly this reason — the goal is a standard you can meet at 9pm on a Sunday in February, not one that sounds generous in a listing.
Screening sits upstream of all of this too, because a tenant who reports problems early and in writing is a tenant who lets you fix a $200 issue before it becomes a $2,000 one. Our application requirements are built around finding those residents.
A repair protocol that holds up
The owners who never see a section 6-320 notice tend to run the same four habits.
Put every request in writing, including the ones that arrive by phone. If a tenant calls, log it and send a written confirmation back. You are building the record of what you knew and when.
Acknowledge within one business day, always. Acknowledgement is not repair. It is the cheapest de-escalation available, and it moves a frustrated tenant off the path toward a certified-mail notice.
Triage against the statutory list first. Water intrusion, electrical, plumbing, heating, ventilation, cooling and sanitary facilities go to the top, because those are the items a court has a named standard for. Cosmetic and convenience items get scheduled honestly rather than promised optimistically.
Keep invoices and dates together. In a treble-damages statute with fee-shifting, a clean maintenance file is the difference between a defensible response and a bad afternoon in court.
Owners who would rather not run that record themselves can see how we handle it in our owner services.
SmartMove PM manages single-family rentals across Boise, Meridian, Nampa, Eagle and Kuna, with documented repair intake, vendor scheduling and a maintenance record built to be read by someone other than you. Get in touch for a straight answer about your property.
The takeaway
Idaho asks less of rental owners in writing than almost any state you could name, and that is precisely why Idaho owners get caught out. There is no long statute to hide behind and no long statute to lean on. Section 6-320 sets a short floor with a fast trigger, real multipliers and a three-day fuse. Everything above that floor is the lease — which means the quality of your lease, and the discipline of your repair record, is the whole of your risk management.
Write the lease you can actually perform. Then perform it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are landlords responsible for fixing in Idaho?
Idaho Code section 6-320 gives tenants a right to sue over a short, specific list: reasonable waterproofing and weather protection, electrical, plumbing, heating, ventilating, cooling and sanitary facilities supplied by the landlord kept in good working order, premises not maintained in a manner hazardous to health or safety, approved smoke detectors, return of a security deposit when required by law, and any lease term that materially affects the tenant's health and safety. Anything outside that list is governed by the lease you wrote, not by Idaho statute.
How long does a landlord have to fix something in Idaho?
Idaho has no statutory repair deadline. The three days that appear in section 6-320 are a standing requirement for the tenant, not a repair clock for the owner. A tenant must serve three days' written notice listing each failure and demanding performance; if the item is not cured within three days of that service, the tenant gains standing to file suit. That is the practical deadline, and it is short.
Does Idaho have an implied warranty of habitability?
Effectively yes, but by statute rather than by common law. In Worden v. Ordway the Idaho Supreme Court described section 6-320 as the statutory version of the implied warranty of habitability and declined to create a separate common-law warranty, noting that Idaho common law did not imply a covenant to repair leased premises at all.
Can an Idaho tenant withhold rent or repair and deduct?
Title 6, Chapter 3 contains no general rent-withholding or repair-and-deduct right. The single deduct remedy in the chapter is narrow: if working approved smoke detectors are not installed, a tenant may send certified-mail notice and, if they are still not installed within 72 hours of receipt, install them and deduct the cost from the next month's rent. Nothing in the statute authorises withholding rent over a broken dishwasher.
What happens if an Idaho owner does not make the repairs?
After the three-day notice expires uncured, the tenant may file for damages and specific performance. If the action is exclusively for specific performance, the court is directed to set trial within twelve days of filing, with service no less than five days before trial. Section 6-317 permits judgment for three times the assessed actual damages in an action brought under section 6-320, and section 6-324 awards attorney fees to the prevailing party except where treble damages are awarded.
Are appliances, landscaping and cosmetic items covered by Idaho law?
Not by section 6-320 unless the failure rises to a health or safety hazard or the lease makes it a term materially affecting health and safety. A refrigerator, a dishwasher, an interior paint touch-up and similar items are contract matters. If your lease is silent, you have no clear obligation and no clear standard, which is exactly where disputes start.
Does the repair statute apply to acreage properties in Kuna or Eagle?
Section 6-320 states that its provisions do not apply to tracts of land of five acres or more used for agricultural purposes. Treasure Valley owners with larger parcels should not assume the exception applies automatically; the acreage threshold and the agricultural use both matter, and a residence on a large lot is not the same thing as agricultural use.
How must a tenant deliver the three-day repair notice?
Section 6-323 sets out three methods: personal delivery to the landlord or the landlord's agent, leaving a copy with an employee at the landlord's or agent's usual place of business when that person is absent, or United States Postal Service certified mail with return receipt requested. Owners who use a property manager should expect notices to arrive at the manager's office, which is one reason a single documented intake channel matters.
