Free Maine Lead Paint Disclosure

A Maine lead paint disclosure is the federally mandated form a landlord delivers to a prospective tenant before any lease of residential property built before 1978. It carries the fixed federal lead warning statement, states the lessor’s actual knowledge of lead-based paint and hazards, lists the records being handed over, documents the tenant’s receipt of the EPA pamphlet Protect Your Family From Lead in Your Home, captures any agent’s acknowledgment, and is signed and dated by every party. Authority is 42 U.S.C. 4852d (Section 1018 of Title X, the Residential Lead-Based Paint Hazard Reduction Act of 1992), implemented at 40 CFR Part 745 Subpart F (EPA) and 24 CFR Part 35 Subpart A (HUD). Maine once had its own lead disclosure form, and repealed it in 2011 — so the lease disclosure duty here is now purely federal. What Maine still adds is a genuine and distinctly stricter set of duties around that disclosure: a 30-day pre-renovation notice under 14 M.R.S. 6030-B(3), essential maintenance practices under 22 M.R.S. 1327, a voluntary lead-safe registry, and an aggressive Department of Environmental Protection enforcement chain, all covered below alongside our Maine habitability laws guide. Generate the form below, then read on for exactly what the rules require.

▶ Watch overview

Maine lead paint disclosure overview

The lead paint disclosure — often called the Section 1018 disclosure, after the 1992 statute that created it — is the formal federal notice a Maine landlord delivers to a prospective tenant for any residential property built before 1978. It does four things in one document.

First, it puts the tenant on notice of potential lead exposure through the federally mandated lead warning statement, the fixed language at 40 CFR 745.113(b)(1) that must be attached to or included within the lease.

Second, it transmits the lessor’s actual knowledge of lead-based paint or hazards in the dwelling. The lessor picks one of exactly two positions: known lead-based paint or hazards are present, with a description of what is known; or the lessor has no knowledge of lead-based paint or hazards in the housing. There is no third box, and there is no “maybe”.

Third, it transmits any reports the lessor holds from prior inspections, risk assessments, or hazard-reduction work. The lessor either provides copies of all available records and lists them, or affirmatively states that no reports or records exist.

Fourth, it documents the tenant’s receipt of the disclosure and of the EPA pamphlet. The signed acknowledgment is the landlord’s primary defence in any later EPA, HUD, or Maine DEP inquiry or private civil action.

The disclosure is not optional and the duty is not waivable by agreement. A pre-1978 Maine rental leased without one exposes the landlord to federal civil penalties and to a tenant’s private action for triple damages plus fees. Compliance takes fifteen minutes; non-compliance is the most expensive paperwork failure in pre-1978 rental practice.

Maine used to require its own lead disclosure form, and repealed it in 2011. This is the single most important — and most widely mis-stated — fact on the topic. For years Maine layered a state disclosure statement on top of the federal form: 22 M.R.S. 1328 (“Residential real property disclosure statement forms”) directed the state to prepare a landlord disclosure form, and 14 M.R.S. 6030-B(1) (“Environmental lead hazard disclosure”) imposed the matching duty. One act — PL 2011, c. 96 — repealed both: section 4 repealed 22 M.R.S. 1328, and sections 1 and 2 repealed subsections (1) and (2) of 14 M.R.S. 6030-B. Since 2011, Maine has had no state-specific lead disclosure form. The lease disclosure duty in Maine is now entirely federal: 42 U.S.C. 4852d, 40 CFR Part 745 Subpart F, and 24 CFR Part 35 Subpart A.

That said, Maine is emphatically not a state that adds nothing. Once you are past the disclosure form, Maine layers a substantial lead regime on top of the federal floor — more than most states. Here is the honest map, each item verified against the Maine Legislature’s own published statutes:

• A 30-day pre-renovation notice — 14 M.R.S. 6030-B(3). The one part of 6030-B that survived the 2011 repeal. Before renovating pre-1978 painted surfaces, a Maine landlord must post notice and mail every unit 30 days out. It is stricter than the federal renovation rule and carries its own fine. Full mechanics below.
• Essential maintenance practices — 22 M.R.S. 1327. Ties pre-1978 residential rentals to the DEP’s Chapter 424 “Lead Management Regulations,” the framework for keeping paint intact and working lead-safe.
• A DEP inspection-and-abatement chain — 22 M.R.S. 1320 to 1322. Once a hazard is confirmed, the department can post the unit, order abatement within 30 days, bar re-rental, and require you to relocate a tenant family at your expense.
• A voluntary lead-safe registry — 22 M.R.S. 1331. Added in 2023, it lets an owner list a tested, lead-safe pre-1978 rental on a state registry. Voluntary, but a genuine diligence tool.
• Real penalties — 22 M.R.S. 1325. A violation of the Lead Poisoning Control Act is a Class E crime with an administrative penalty of up to $500, and each day and each unit is a separate violation.
• Habitability — 14 M.R.S. 6021. Maine’s implied warranty and covenant of habitability applies independently to deteriorated paint, whether or not it was ever disclosed.
• Local ordinances — 22 M.R.S. 1324. Maine municipalities may enact lead ordinances that meet or exceed the state standard, so a city rule can add obligations this page does not cover.

Because the disclosure obligation itself is federal rather than Maine-specific, the same core form applies to a rental in any state — our federal lead-based paint disclosure form is the generic version of the Maine form on this page. What changes in Maine is everything wrapped around it.

Most guides list “three things” a landlord must do. The regulation is more precise than that. 40 CFR 745.113(b) requires six distinct elements in the lease or an attachment to it. A disclosure missing any one of them is defective, regardless of how professional the form looks. This is the checklist to audit your own paperwork against.

Note what is not in that list: no inspection window, no testing requirement, no filing with any agency, and no obligation to remediate. The federal disclosure rule is an information-transfer rule. It makes you tell the truth about what you know and hand over what you hold; it does not make you go looking. Maine’s separate maintenance and inspection duties, covered further down, are what can require action on the paint itself.

“Target housing” is the federal term for property subject to the rule. The definition at 40 CFR 745.103 is residential dwellings constructed before 1 January 1978, subject to the narrow exclusions in the next section.

Why 1978 — and which 1978 date actually governs. The operative cutoff comes from the definition itself: 40 CFR 745.103 defines target housing as housing constructed prior to 1978, meaning construction before 1 January 1978. The historical reason that year was chosen is the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s ban on lead-containing paint at 16 CFR 1303.1 — but that ban applies to paint manufactured after 27 February 1978, which is not the same date. Competing pages routinely merge the two and report the CPSC ban as effective 1 January 1978. It was not. The distinction has no practical effect on your compliance answer, because the construction cutoff in 745.103 is what decides coverage, but it does tell you which cite to trust: for whether your unit is covered, read 745.103, not the CPSC rule. Housing constructed from 1 January 1978 onward sits outside the disclosure regime entirely.

How to verify the build year in Maine. The municipal assessor’s record is the fastest authoritative source, and Maine towns and cities maintain it. The original certificate of occupancy, the building permit file, and title records also establish it. The lessor carries the burden of correctly identifying target housing — “I think it was around 1980” is not a defence, and a guess that turns out wrong is a knowing violation waiting to happen. Maine’s housing stock skews old — much of Portland, Lewiston, Bangor, Biddeford, and Augusta predates 1978 — so in Maine the pre-1978 answer is “yes” far more often than not.

Renovation does not reset the clock. A 1900 triple-decker stripped to the studs and rebuilt in 2005 is still target housing. The original construction date controls, not the date of the most recent renovation. This trips up owners of heavily rehabbed older stock constantly, and Maine has a great deal of it.