Rock Hill, SC Rental Property Rules: Repairs & Habitability (2026)

City Code § 10-201 adopts the 2021 International Property Maintenance Code as Rock Hill's baseline habitability and property-upkeep standard, but § 10-202 rewrites several of its open-ended provisions with local dates and numbers. Subsection (a)(8) inserts 'October 31 to May 31' into the IPMC's heat-supply requirement, fixing the season during which an owner or operator must keep an occupied dwelling heated; subsection (a)(9) applies the identical date range to the IPMC's rule for occupiable workspaces. The same amendment package tightens the insect-screen requirement to the warmer months, April 1 to October 31, under § 10-202(a)(7), and rewrites the weed-height reference under (a)(6).

Section 10-202(a)(5) also shortens the IPMC's default compliance window from two years and one year down to six months, meaning a cited owner has far less time to bring a rental into compliance than the model code assumes. Enforcement runs through the code official the city appoints under the adopted code's administrative sections, using the stop-work and correction process as amended by § 10-202(a)(4), and § 10-202(c) sets a flat penalty schedule by code chapter rather than leaving fines to court discretion: violations tied to Mechanical and Electrical Requirements, which covers the heat-supply and workspace provisions, draw $250 for a first offense and $500 for every offense after that.