Charlotte, NC Rental Property Rules: Rental Registration (2026)

The Residential Rental Registration and Remedial Action Program, adopted by Ordinance No. 4890 in 2012 and amended by Ordinance No. 9536 in 2019, targets rental housing generating high levels of police-reported disorder rather than regulating every landlord. Property is sorted into nine categories by unit count, from single units up to 300-plus-unit complexes, and a CMPD police official calculates each property's quarterly disorder activity count against the disorder risk threshold, defined in Section 6-581 as the count at the 96th percentile for that category. A domestic violence call for service never counts toward the total.

Once a property crosses the threshold, Section 6-584 requires the police official to mail the owner a certified notice within 15 days listing the disorder activity and setting a mandatory initial meeting, which Section 6-585 requires to occur within 15 days of that notice. At the meeting the owner and police official review the data and, if the property is designated "in need of remedial action" (INRA), sign a remedial action plan drawn from the CMPD Remedial Action Plan Manual. The property then goes through first, second and third quarterly reviews under Section 6-586; if disorder activity keeps clearing the threshold after the third review, the police official weighs the owner's good-faith compliance before referring the file to the city attorney for a possible public nuisance action.

Under Section 6-582, registration itself requires the property address, the owner's (or registered agent's) business and personal contact information, and the unit count, filed separately for each parcel, and the owner must report a change of ownership within 30 days. The INRA designation and its obligations bind any subsequent buyer of the property under Section 6-587.