Free California Mold Disclosure — overview

A California Mold Disclosure documents the landlord’s knowledge of any prior mold growth, water damage, or remediation at the rental property at the time of lease signing. Health & Safety Code Section 26148 requires every residential landlord to hand prospective tenants the Department of Public Health booklet before the lease is signed, and Health & Safety Code Section 17920.3(a)(13) together with Civil Code Section 1941.1(a) make visible mold a repair obligation. The form on this page produces a signed disclosure that becomes part of the lease record.

Complete the Disclosure Form

Complete the form below to generate a comprehensive California Mold Disclosure. The form produces a multi-page PDF in legal-document format with all sections, signature lines, and tenant acknowledgment. Both parties should sign the printed copy.

About California Mold Disclosure

California enacted the Toxic Mold Protection Act in 2001 (Health & Safety Code Section 26100 et seq.), and one point about it is routinely got wrong. Section 26147 – the provision that would require a landlord to disclose mold exceeding permissible exposure limits – is not yet operative: subdivision (e) suspends it until the Department of Public Health adopts standards under Sections 26103 and 26105 and guidelines under Section 26130, and CDPH has never done so. CDPH’s own Mold and Dampness page records that it reported in 2005 that the evidence did not support science-based permissible exposure limits for indoor molds and that this “remains the CDPH position to date.”

What is in force is Section 26148, the booklet duty: since 1 January 2022 every California residential landlord must give prospective tenants the CDPH booklet Information on Dampness and Mold for Renters in California before the rental or lease agreement is entered into. Separately, Health & Safety Code Section 17920.3(a)(13) makes visible mold growth – as determined by a health officer or a code enforcement officer, excluding minor mold on surfaces that accumulate moisture in normal use – a substandard condition, and Civil Code Section 1941.1(a) makes a unit described in that section untenantable, which routes it into the landlord’s Civil Code Section 1941 repair duty. Civil Code Section 1941.7 does not create that duty; it provides that no obligation to repair mold arises under Section 1941 or 1942 until the landlord has notice, and permits entry to repair under Section 1954. Failure to comply can give rise to habitability violations, repair-and-deduct remedies, and tenant lawsuits.

California’s Mold Framework

• Operative disclosure duty: Health & Safety Code Section 26148 – give prospective tenants the CDPH booklet Information on Dampness and Mold for Renters in California before the lease is signed (required since 1 January 2022)
• Not yet operative: Health & Safety Code Section 26147 – the permissible-exposure-limit disclosure, suspended by subdivision (e) because CDPH has never adopted the underlying standards
• Repair duty: Health & Safety Code Section 17920.3(a)(13) (visible mold is substandard) via Civil Code Section 1941.1(a) and Section 1941; Civil Code Section 1941.7 provides that the duty does not arise until the landlord has notice
• Lookback (best practice): 1 year of prior mold or water damage history
• Implied warranty of habitability: Civil Code Section 1941 and Green v. Superior Court (1974)
• Tenant remedies: repair-and-deduct, rent withholding, lease termination, damages

What the Disclosure Covers

• Whether the property has had visible mold growth or water damage within the lookback period
• Date, cause and remediation status of any prior mold or water-damage event
• Remediation company used and whether the area was confirmed cleared
• Tenant acknowledgment of receipt

Tenant Reporting Responsibilities

California tenants should report any visible mold, water leaks, or excessive moisture to the landlord in writing. Once notified, the landlord has a reasonable time to inspect and remediate. If the landlord fails to act, tenants can use repair-and-deduct remedies under Civil Code Section 1942, withhold rent until the condition is fixed, or pursue damages for breach of the implied warranty of habitability.

Related Resources

• California habitability laws
• California landlord tenant laws
• California tenant screening laws
• California security deposit laws
• California eviction notice laws
• Habitability laws by state

Where California’s Mold Rules Actually Come From — the Toxic Mold Protection Act

California’s mold-disclosure duty traces back to a single statute, the Toxic Mold Protection Act of 2001, codified at Health & Safety Code § 26100 and enacted through Senate Bill 732 (2001) — added by Stats. 2001, Ch. 584, Sec. 2, effective January 1, 2002. This is worth being precise about: SB 732 is not a recent bill. It is the original 2001 act that created the entire Chapter 18 “Toxic Mold” framework (Health & Safety Code §§ 26100–26157), including the permissible-exposure-limits process, the disclosure duty at § 26147, and the remediation-guidelines process at § 26130. The mold booklet requirement at § 26148 was added slightly later, by a 2002 amendment (Stats. 2002, Ch. 664, Sec. 134, effective January 1, 2003) that folded the booklet-distribution duty into the same chapter. Anything describing SB 732 as a “new” or “2024” law is describing the wrong bill — the framework is over two decades old; what has changed since is downstream implementation (when the state’s booklet was approved) and related habitability law, not the Act’s core text.

The Two-Track Duty: Reasonable-Cause Disclosure vs. the Booklet

California actually layers two distinct mold duties onto residential landlords, and conflating them is a common source of confusion:

• § 26147 — condition-triggered disclosure. A landlord must give written disclosure to prospective and current tenants when the landlord knows, or has reasonable cause to believe, that mold (visible or hidden) is present that affects the unit or building and either exceeds the department’s permissible exposure limits or poses a health threat under the department’s guidelines. This duty is triggered by actual knowledge or reasonable cause — not a blanket requirement to test. § 26147(b) expressly states the landlord is not required to conduct air or surface tests to determine whether mold exceeds permissible limits. § 26147(d) also provides an exemption: no disclosure is required if the mold was already remediated according to the department’s remediation guidelines under § 26130.
• § 26148 — the booklet, given to everyone. Separately, § 26148(a) requires residential landlords to give every prospective tenant — regardless of whether mold is known to be present — a consumer-oriented booklet on the potential health risks of mold exposure, developed by the California Department of Public Health, before the lease or rental agreement is signed.

In short: the booklet is universal and unconditional; the written disclosure under § 26147 is conditional on the landlord’s actual knowledge or reasonable cause to believe a mold condition exists and meets the exposure/health-threat standard.

Timing: When Disclosure Must Happen

Health & Safety Code § 26147(c) sets separate timing rules depending on who is being told:

• Prospective tenants: disclosure must be provided prior to entering into the rental or lease agreement.
• Current tenants in affected units: disclosure must be provided as soon as is reasonably practical after the landlord’s knowledge or reasonable cause arises — there is no fixed day-count deadline in the statute for existing tenants, only the “reasonably practical” standard.

Visible Mold as a Habitability Defect — the Statutory Chain

Separately from the disclosure statute, California treats mold as a substandard-housing and habitability issue through a different chain of code sections, and the exact wording matters:

That last clause is not cosmetic — it means the statute does not treat every trace of surface mold (for example, minor mildew on a shower surround or window sill that is doing what those surfaces are designed to do) as a substandard condition. The determination that visible mold growth rises to a substandard condition must be made by a health officer or a qualified code enforcement officer, not simply asserted by a tenant or landlord.

Civil Code § 1941.1(a) then ties habitability directly to that standard: a dwelling is deemed untenantable under Civil Code § 1941 if it “is a residential unit described in Section 17920.3… of the Health and Safety Code” — meaning a unit with a qualifying substandard mold condition under § 17920.3(a)(13) can independently support an untenantability claim, separate from and in addition to the disclosure duties in §§ 26147–26148.

What Happens If a Landlord Ignores a Reported Mold Problem

Once a landlord has notice of a habitability-affecting mold condition, Civil Code § 1941.7 and § 1942 govern what follows. Civil Code § 1941 imposes the landlord’s basic duty to maintain the premises in a condition fit for human occupation. Civil Code § 1942 gives a tenant remedies — including repair-and-deduct and other statutory remedies — when a landlord fails to make repairs after being given reasonable notice of a habitability-affecting defect. Because visible mold that rises to the § 17920.3(a)(13) substandard-condition threshold falls within this framework via § 1941.1(a), a landlord’s failure to act on a properly reported mold condition can expose the landlord to the same habitability remedies as any other substandard condition — separate from, and in addition to, any liability specific to the disclosure statutes.

California Mold Disclosure Duties at a Glance

Duty	Who it applies to	Trigger	Statute
Mold information booklet	Every prospective residential tenant	Unconditional — before lease signing	H&S Code § 26148(a)
Written mold-condition disclosure	Prospective tenants	Landlord knows or has reasonable cause to believe qualifying mold is present	H&S Code § 26147(a), (c)(1)
Written mold-condition disclosure	Current tenants in affected units	Same knowledge/reasonable-cause standard	H&S Code § 26147(a), (c)(2)
Remediation exemption	Landlords who already remediated	Remediation followed department guidelines under § 26130	H&S Code § 26147(d)
Habitability / repair duty	Landlords on notice of a qualifying substandard mold condition	Tenant gives notice; condition meets § 17920.3(a)(13)	Civ. Code §§ 1941, 1941.1(a), 1942

What Counts as “Reasonable Cause to Believe” Mold Is Present

The statute’s disclosure trigger under § 26147(a) is deliberately broader than a landlord’s certain knowledge — it also captures situations where the landlord has “reasonable cause to believe” a qualifying mold condition exists. The statute does not require lab confirmation or a specific test result before the disclosure duty attaches; it only requires that the mold be visible or hidden and, in the landlord’s reasonable assessment, either exceed the department’s permissible exposure limits under § 26103 or pose a health threat under the department’s guidelines developed under § 26105. Because § 26147(b) simultaneously relieves the landlord of any duty to test the air or surfaces to reach that determination, a landlord who has received a credible tenant report of a recurring leak, standing water, or visible growth is squarely inside the “reasonable cause” standard even without a lab report in hand — testing is not required, but neither is it a shield against the disclosure duty once reasonable cause exists on the facts already known.

What Does a California Landlord Actually Risk by Skipping the Mold Disclosure?

The real exposure does not come from the mold statutes alone. A landlord who knew about a qualifying mold condition and said nothing is exposed under ordinary California civil law — most directly the deceit provisions of Civil Code § 1710 — on top of the habitability remedies described above.

Two of the four kinds of deceit defined in Civil Code § 1710 fit a missed mold disclosure almost exactly. Section 1710(2) covers “the assertion, as a fact, of that which is not true, by one who has no reasonable ground for believing it to be true” — the landlord who assures an applicant there is no moisture history without any basis for the claim. Section 1710(3) covers “the suppression of a fact, by one who is bound to disclose it, or who gives information of other facts which are likely to mislead for want of communication of that fact.” That second branch is the one that matters most here: a landlord carrying a Health & Safety Code § 26147 duty is a person bound to disclose, which is what can turn silence from a compliance failure into an actionable one.

A failed disclosure can therefore surface as more than one claim at once — a deceit claim under § 1710, a breach of the lease itself, and the habitability remedies under Civil Code §§ 1941, 1941.1(a) and 1942 already covered on this page. They are cumulative, not alternatives.

Punitive damages are available only on the tort side. Civil Code § 3294(a) permits them “in an action for the breach of an obligation not arising from contract,” where the plaintiff proves “by clear and convincing evidence that the defendant has been guilty of oppression, fraud, or malice.” The wording cuts both ways. A plain breach-of-lease claim will not carry punitive damages. A concealment claim can — because § 3294(c) defines fraud to include the concealment of a material fact known to the defendant, made with the intention of depriving a person of property or legal rights or otherwise causing injury.

How Long Can a Mold Claim Be Brought in California?

There is no single deadline. The period depends on what is being claimed — and the fraud clock is the one that catches landlords out, because it does not start when the lease is signed.

What is claimed	Period	Statute
Personal injury or death from exposure	2 years	Code Civ. Proc. § 335.1
Injury to real property	3 years	Code Civ. Proc. § 338(b)
Fraud or mistake — running from discovery	3 years	Code Civ. Proc. § 338(d)
Breach of a written lease	4 years	Code Civ. Proc. § 337

The fraud period deserves a closer look. Section 338(d) provides that the cause of action “is not deemed to have accrued until the discovery, by the aggrieved party, of the facts constituting the fraud or mistake.” A concealed mold condition is, almost by definition, one the tenant did not discover at move-in. So a landlord who assumes a file is closed three years after a tenancy ended may be wrong: on a concealment theory the three years can begin when the tenant found out, not when they moved in.

These are the ordinary limitation periods, not advice about a particular dispute. Accrual, tolling and which theory actually fits a given set of facts are all contested questions in real cases, and a landlord facing a claim should take advice on the specific timeline rather than reading a period off a table.

How Do You Prove You Made the Mold Disclosure?

Keep the signed disclosure, a separate booklet acknowledgment, and a dated record of how each was delivered. In a dispute the practical burden of showing the disclosure happened falls on the person asserting it did, and an unsigned template in a folder proves very little.

Four records do most of the work. First, a copy of the written § 26147 disclosure signed and dated by the tenant before the agreement was signed. Second, a separate acknowledgment for the § 26148(a) booklet — that duty is unconditional and independent of any known mold condition, so it should not be buried inside the condition-specific disclosure or evidenced by the same signature line. Third, a record of delivery: the date, the method, and who handed or sent it. Fourth, where the § 26147(d) remediation exemption is being relied on, the remediation records showing the work followed the department’s guidelines — the exemption depends on that, so the paperwork proving it is the exemption.

Retain all of it for at least four years after the tenancy ends, which covers the longest ordinary period in the table above. Where a concealment theory is plausible, the discovery rule in § 338(d) means a longer retention period is the safer choice.

Is This the Same as the Mold Disclosure on a Home Sale?

No — and the distinction is worth stating plainly, because several pages ranking for “California mold disclosure” blend the two. This page covers the rental duty: Health & Safety Code §§ 26147 and 26148, owed by a landlord to prospective and current tenants.

Selling a home runs through a different statutory scheme entirely. The transfer-disclosure article beginning at Civil Code § 1102 applies, in the statute’s own words, to “any transfer by sale, exchange, real property sales contract… lease with an option to purchase, any other option to purchase, or ground lease coupled with improvements of any single-family residential property.” A seller’s obligations under that article, and the Transfer Disclosure Statement it requires, are not the same as a landlord’s under the Health and Safety Code. If you are renting a unit out rather than selling it, the duties described on this page are the ones that apply to you.

California Mold Disclosure — Frequently Asked Questions

Is SB 732 a new law?
No. SB 732 is the 2001 bill that created the Toxic Mold Protection Act (Health & Safety Code § 26100 et seq.), effective January 1, 2002. The disclosure duty at § 26147 and the booklet duty at § 26148 both originate from this same 2001–2002 legislative framework, not from recent legislation.

Does a landlord have to test for mold before renting a unit?
No. Health & Safety Code § 26147(b) expressly states a residential landlord is not required to conduct air or surface tests to determine whether mold exceeds the department’s permissible exposure limits.

Does every tenant get the mold booklet, or only tenants in units with a known mold problem?
Every prospective tenant. Health & Safety Code § 26148(a) requires the consumer-oriented mold booklet be distributed to prospective tenants generally, before the lease or rental agreement is signed — it is not conditioned on a known or suspected mold condition. The condition-specific written disclosure under § 26147 is the one that depends on the landlord’s knowledge or reasonable cause.

Is minor mildew on a bathroom tile or window seal automatically a legal violation?
Not necessarily. Health & Safety Code § 17920.3(a)(13) excludes “mold that is minor and found on surfaces that can accumulate moisture as part of their properly functioning and intended use” from the substandard-building definition, and a health officer or qualified code enforcement officer must make the determination that visible mold growth rises to a substandard condition.

Can a tenant treat unaddressed mold as a habitability issue, separate from the disclosure statutes?
Yes. Civil Code § 1941.1(a) ties untenantability directly to the substandard-building conditions defined in Health & Safety Code § 17920.3, which includes qualifying visible mold growth under § 17920.3(a)(13). Civil Code §§ 1941 and 1942 then govern the landlord’s repair duty and the tenant’s remedies once the landlord has notice.

Does a landlord who already remediated a past mold problem still have to disclose it?
Not necessarily. Health & Safety Code § 26147(d) exempts a residential landlord from the written-disclosure requirement of subdivision (a) if the mold in question was remediated according to the mold remediation guidelines developed by the department under § 26130 — proper remediation under the department’s own guidelines is what triggers the exemption, not simply a landlord’s own belief that a problem was fixed.