Start with the one that carries treble damages. If your building was built before 1978, the federal lead-based paint disclosure has to reach the tenant before they are obligated under the lease, and a knowing violation makes you liable to the tenant for three times the damages they incurred, plus costs and attorney fees (42 U.S.C. § 4852d).
That is the outlier in severity. The rest of what follows is state law, and it is where a lease written from a generic template usually comes up short.
Deliver the federal lead-based paint disclosure correctly
Four obligations, all of them before the tenant is obligated under the lease:
- Disclose the presence of any known lead-based paint or lead-based paint hazards in the housing.
- Provide any available records or reports on lead-based paint and hazards in the unit.
- Give the tenant the EPA lead hazard information pamphlet.
- Attach the disclosure to the lease and keep the signed acknowledgment.
The rule covers target housing, which is most residential housing built before 1978, with narrow exclusions. Knowing nothing is not a defense against the disclosure obligation, because what you are disclosing is what you know. Having no records is fine. Failing to say so is not.
Keep the signed form for the life of the tenancy and beyond. It is the only proof you delivered it, and the penalty for a knowing violation is why this one is worth doing carefully.
Recognize the four kinds of state disclosure
State disclosures fall into four shapes, and knowing which shape you are dealing with tells you what “delivered” means.
A prescribed notice with statutory wording. Florida’s radon disclosure is the clean example: the statute writes the paragraph and requires it to appear on at least one document, form, or application given at or before execution of the rental agreement (Fla. Stat. § 404.056(5)). Reword it and you have not given it.
An information delivery duty. Washington requires the landlord to provide tenants with information provided or approved by the state Department of Health about the health hazards of indoor mold, and it must be given to new tenants at the time the lease is signed (Wash. Rev. Code § 59.18.060). You may hand it to each tenant or post it in a visible common location.
A condition plus an instruction. Oregon pairs a carbon monoxide alarm requirement with a duty to give the tenant instructions for testing the alarm, and to supply working batteries at the start of a new tenancy (Or. Rev. Stat. § 90.316). The disclosure and the physical obligation arrive together.
A named-party disclosure. Most states require the lease to name the owner or the person authorized to receive notices and demands, with an address. It is the least dramatic item on any disclosure list and the one most often left blank.
California carries one of the longest disclosure lists in the country, from the Megan’s Law notice to bed bug information to demolition notices. It has its own page: required lease disclosures in California.
This is general information, not legal advice. Rules change and local ordinances vary. Confirm current requirements with your city, county, or an attorney before you act.
Find every disclosure your own state requires
Four steps. Budget thirty minutes once, then re-check annually.
- Open your state’s residential landlord tenant act on the legislature’s own site. Search the chapter for “disclose” and for “notice.”
- Check the state’s real estate or consumer agency, which often publishes a landlord guide listing disclosures that live outside the landlord tenant act, such as radon, mold, or methamphetamine remediation.
- Check the city. Rent control jurisdictions frequently add their own required notice at tenancy start, and some require it in specified type size.
- Check the property’s own facts. Building age drives lead paint. A shared meter, a septic system, a flood zone, or a recent insurance claim can each trigger their own disclosure.
Write the result down as a list attached to your lease template, not as knowledge in your head. A disclosure you remember at signing four times out of five is a disclosure you have failed to give.
Attach disclosures to the lease so they are delivered every time
The reliable pattern is to make the disclosure part of the document rather than an errand alongside it.
- Bundle them as attachments to the lease so they are signed in the same sitting.
- Get a separate acknowledgment where the statute contemplates one, lead paint especially.
- Store them with the lease, not in a separate folder, so a request years later is one lookup.
- Re-check at renewal. A new disclosure requirement passed since the original signing applies to the new term, and a renewal is the natural moment to catch it. Lease renewal letter template covers the rest of that document.
LeaseRooster’s lease builder currently generates California leases only, with the clause and attachment library scoped to CA; it does not yet generate leases for other states. What it does not do, and no software does, is know a fact about your building that you have never recorded, so building age and known hazards belong in the property record before the first lease goes out.
Two failure modes worth naming
The template from another state. A lease downloaded for one state and used in another is usually missing disclosures and occasionally contains a clause that is void where you are. Start from your own state: state lease templates is the starting point, and key clauses every lease agreement needs covers the body of the document.
The verbal disclosure. Telling a tenant about the shared water meter at the walkthrough is not delivery. If it matters enough to say out loud, it goes in writing, in the lease, signed. Signature and delivery are a single step when the lease goes out for electronic signature, which is the easiest way to stop losing one of them.