Free Vermont Residential Lease Agreement

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A configurable Vermont residential lease agreement that generates a signable multi-page PDF. Built to 9 V.S.A. chapter 137 — no deposit cap but a closed list of four deductions, the 14-day return, 48 hours to enter inside a 9-to-9 window, and the cannabis clause that became unlawful on July 1, 2026.

Vermont 9 V.S.A. ch. 137 14-Day Deposit Return Free PDF 2026 Edition

A Vermont residential lease agreement is the rental agreement governed by the Vermont Residential Rental Agreements Act at 9 V.S.A. chapter 137, sections 4451 through 4475. Vermont looks permissive on the surface — no deposit cap, no late-fee rule, no grace period, no written-lease requirement — and that surface is exactly what misleads. Underneath it, section 4461(b) gives a closed list of four things a deposit may be used for, section 4460 confines entry to a 9:00 A.M. to 9:00 P.M. window on 48 hours’ notice, section 4467 sets seven different termination notice periods rather than the flat sixty days every ranking page prints, and the numbers that decide whether the unit is habitable at all live in a Division of Fire Safety rule, not in the statute. Two things on this page are newer than any template in circulation: since 1 July 2026, section 4468b makes a cannabis-possession clause unlawful in a Vermont lease, and since 17 June 2024, section 4466 has required a FEMA flood hazard notice as its own separate document.

What Is a Vermont Residential Lease Agreement?

A Vermont residential lease agreement is a rental agreement as defined by 9 V.S.A. 4451(8): all agreements, written or oral, embodying terms and conditions concerning the use and occupancy of a dwelling unit and premises. Vermont does not require a residential lease to be in writing, notarized or witnessed. It nonetheless matters enormously whether one exists, because chapter 137 repeatedly treats written and unwritten tenancies differently.

Two structural sections shape everything else. Section 4453 provides that the obligations chapter 137 imposes on landlords and tenants shall be implied in all rental agreements — so a Vermont lease that says nothing still carries the whole Act. Section 4454 then provides that no rental agreement shall contain any provision that attempts to circumvent or circumvents the obligations and remedies the chapter establishes, and that any such provision is unenforceable and void. Vermont does not enumerate prohibited clauses the way many states do; it states one functional test and applies it to whatever the drafter wrote.

Section 4452 lists ten exclusions from the chapter, each subject to the opening words “unless created to avoid the application of this chapter”: institutional occupancy providing medical, geriatric, educational, counselling or religious service; occupancy by a purchaser under a contract of sale; occupancy by a member of a fraternal, social or religious organization in a part of the building operated for it; taxed transient hotel, motel or lodging occupancy; occupancy by a condominium unit owner or a cooperative proprietary lease holder; a mobile home lot governed by a separate title; transient campground residence; transient lodging while receiving General or Emergency Assistance housing help; occupancy without right or permission by a person who is not a tenant; and transient occupancy connected with health care treatment paid for by a hospital or designated agency. Housing provided as a benefit of farm employment has its own termination regime at 9 V.S.A. 4469a.

Finally, 9 V.S.A. 4451(1) is the section a drafter most often overlooks. Every notice period in the chapter runs on actual notice, which means receipt of written notice hand-delivered or mailed to the last known address, with a rebuttable presumption of receipt three days after mailing where the sender proves first-class or certified mailing. That three-day presumption effectively lengthens every deadline on this page.

Build Your Vermont Residential Lease Agreement

Fill in the fields below and the generator produces a multi-page Vermont lease that carries the correct deposit clock for your unit type, the correct termination periods for a written agreement, the entry rule with its statutory hours, the three required disclosures, and a cannabis clause narrowed to what 4468b still permits. Nothing is uploaded — the PDF is produced in your browser.

Can a Vermont Lease Prohibit Cannabis?

Only the lighted kind, and only since 1 July 2026. This is the newest provision in Vermont landlord-tenant law and it appears on no competing template, in no commercial mirror, and not yet in the codified statutes themselves.

9 V.S.A. 4468b, added by 2026 Acts and Resolves No. 176, section 30 — the omnibus cannabis act, signed 18 June 2026 — provides that a rental agreement shall not contain a provision that prohibits a tenant from possessing cannabis or cannabis products within the rental premises or using cannabis or cannabis products within a dwelling unit. The section preserves exactly one restriction: a rental agreement may prohibit the use of lighted cannabis or cannabis products intended for inhalation within the rental premises. It also carves out any rental agreement that federal law requires to prohibit possession or use, which preserves the position in federally assisted housing. The same act amended the possession statute in Title 18 to match, confirming that a landlord may ban lighted or inhaled cannabis in a lease and nothing more.

Three practical consequences follow. First, the ordinary “no drugs of any kind” or “no marijuana” clause carried by most templates is now a prohibited provision in Vermont, void under 4454 as well as under 4468b itself. Second, edibles and other non-inhaled products cannot be restricted inside the dwelling unit at all. Third, because the section is a possession-and-use rule rather than a nuisance rule, a landlord who wants to control smoke has to say so in those terms — which is what the option in the builder above generates.

Is There a Maximum Security Deposit in Vermont?

No. Nothing in 9 V.S.A. 4461, or anywhere in chapter 137, caps a Vermont residential security deposit. That is a genuine absence, established by reading all ten subsections rather than by inference.

What matters far more than the missing cap is 4461(a), which defines a security deposit as any advance, deposit or prepaid rent, however named, which is refundable to the tenant at the termination or expiration of the tenancy, whose function is to secure performance of the tenant’s obligations to pay rent and to maintain the dwelling unit. The words “however named” do the work: a refundable pet deposit, cleaning deposit, key deposit or last month’s rent held refundably is a security deposit and is governed by the whole of 4461. A charge that is not refundable is not a deposit — it is rent, because 4451(7) defines rent as all consideration to be made to or for the benefit of the landlord, not including security deposits.

Two limits do exist, and neither appears on any ranking page:

• Municipal ordinances (4461(g)). A town or municipality may adopt an ordinance governing security deposits that is supplemental to and not inconsistent with the minimum protections of 4461. It may not limit how a deposit is held, but it may authorise the payment of interest, and it may provide that a local housing board of review hears deposit disputes on request by either party, with its actions reviewable in the usual way. So “Vermont has no deposit rules beyond the statute” is wrong at town level, and a landlord should check the ordinance where the unit sits.
• Disability modifications (9 V.S.A. 4503(a)(9)). A landlord must permit reasonable modifications of the premises at the expense of a person with a disability where necessary to afford full enjoyment, may if reasonable require restoration on departure with reasonable wear and tear excepted, and may not require an additional security deposit for that purpose.

What may a Vermont landlord deduct from the deposit?

Four things, and no others. Section 4461(b) permits retention only for:

1. Nonpayment of rent.
2. Damage to the landlord’s property — but not where the damage is the result of normal wear and tear, and not where it is the result of actions or events beyond the tenant’s control. That second exclusion is unusually broad and is omitted by every ranking page.
3. Nonpayment of utility or other charges that the tenant was required to pay directly to the landlord or to a utility.
4. Expenses required to remove articles the tenant abandoned in the rental unit.

Routine cleaning, repainting, carpet replacement on a normal cycle, re-letting costs and advertising are not on that list. “Normal wear and tear” is defined at 4451(5) as the deterioration that occurs, based on the reasonable use for which the unit is intended, without negligence, carelessness, accident or abuse of the premises, equipment or chattels by the tenant, members of the tenant’s household, or their invitees or guests.

How Long Does a Vermont Landlord Have to Return the Deposit?

Fourteen days — unless the unit is a seasonal rental that is not a primary residence, in which case it is sixty. The seasonal exception sits in the second sentence of 4461(c) and is missing from every competing Vermont template.

Two features of the Vermont clock are worth naming because they differ from most states. First, 4461(d) makes the landlord’s obligation run to the tenant’s last known address. Vermont places no duty on the tenant to supply a forwarding address and contains no provision suspending the deadline until one arrives, so the fourteen days run whether or not the tenant writes in. Second, the two sanctions in 4461(e) are sequential rather than alternative: the forfeiture of the right to withhold is automatic on lateness, and double damages plus fees are added only on wilfulness. Summaries that mention only the doubling understate the risk considerably.

If you need to produce the statement itself, the Vermont security deposit itemization form and the Vermont deposit return letter are built to the same section.

What Disclosures Does a Vermont Lease Require?

Three — and only one of them is the familiar federal lead disclosure. The ranking Vermont template pages list the federal lead rule alone, or the federal lead rule plus an invented second item. Here is the real set.

The flood hazard notice must be its own document

Section 4466 requires the landlord to disclose, in advance of entering a rental agreement, whether any portion of the premises offered for rent is located in a Federal Emergency Management Agency mapped special flood hazard area. The notice must be provided at or before execution in a separate written document substantially in the form the Department of Housing and Community Development prescribes under 4466(b). A lease paragraph does not satisfy it. Vermont’s flooding history since 2023 makes this the most practically important disclosure on the list, and no ranking page names it.

There is a second trap in the citation itself. The section number was reused. The official statute page prints “4466. Repealed. 1987, No. 74” immediately above the current section, so an older secondary source citing 9 V.S.A. 4466 may be citing a dead provision on an entirely different subject. Always read the section’s own title.

Why the Vermont Lead Statement Is Not an “EMP” Statement Any More

Vermont’s state lead duty is separate from the federal one and is missed by every competing page. Under 18 V.S.A. 1759(c), an owner of rental target housing or a child care facility must file an RRPM compliance statement with the Department of Health and abide by the Commissioner’s rules on maintaining lead-based paint and giving notice to tenants. Under 1759(d)(1), prior to entering into a lease agreement the owner must provide approved tenants with written materials approved by the Department regarding lead hazards and a copy of the owner’s most recent RRPM compliance statement — materials that must state that lead is highly toxic to humans, particularly young children, and may cause permanent neurological damage even at low exposure levels. Under 1759(d)(2) the owner must fully inform a tenant who intends to operate a child care facility of the section’s requirements.

The name changed and the secondary sources did not. What Vermont landlords and older templates still call an EMP or Essential Maintenance Practices statement was renamed RRPM — lead-safe Renovation, Repair, Painting and Maintenance — by 2017 Acts and Resolves No. 149, section 2, effective 21 October 2022, which rewrote the definitions section and sections 1759 and 1760 together. The phrase “essential maintenance practices” no longer appears in the definitions at 18 V.S.A. 1751. A Vermont lead addendum naming an EMP statement is naming a form that no longer exists under that name.

Two further points a Vermont landlord needs. Target housing is defined at 1751 as any dwelling constructed before 1978, except a studio dwelling or one in a building or project reserved for the exclusive use of elders or persons with disabilities, unless a child six or younger resides or is expected to reside there. And under 18 V.S.A. 1760 all paint in target housing is presumed lead-based unless a component is exempted by a licensed inspector’s written report, with a list of prohibited unsafe work practices that binds ordinary maintenance and not just renovation: open-flame burning or torching, heat guns above eleven hundred degrees Fahrenheit, dry scraping or dry sanding, powered tools, hydro-blasting or high-pressure washing, abrasive blasting or sandblasting, and chemical stripping. The Vermont lead-based paint disclosure form covers the federal side.

How Much Notice Must a Vermont Landlord Give Before Entering?

At least forty-eight hours, and only between 9:00 A.M. and 9:00 P.M. Rankers report the forty-eight hours and omit the window, which is half the rule.

Section 4460 sets three routes and no others:

• 4460(a) — with consent. The landlord may enter with the tenant’s consent, which shall not be unreasonably withheld. No notice period attaches to a consented entry, and the reasonableness limit means a tenant cannot simply refuse a proper request.
• 4460(b) — without consent, four purposes only. When necessary to inspect the premises; to make necessary or agreed repairs, alterations or improvements; to supply agreed services; or to exhibit the unit to prospective or actual purchasers, mortgagees, tenants, workers or contractors. The entry requires no less than 48 hours’ notice and must fall between 9:00 A.M. and 9:00 P.M. An entry on proper notice at 8:00 A.M. is not authorised, and neither is an entry inside the window for a purpose outside the four.
• 4460(c) — neither consent nor notice. Only where the landlord has a reasonable belief of imminent danger to any person or to property.

Where the Division of Fire Safety has ordered repairs, 20 V.S.A. 2677 requires the inspection report to give notice in plain language that the landlord or the landlord’s agents must have access to make those repairs consistent with the access provisions in 9 V.S.A. 4460. The order does not displace the notice and the hours; it makes withholding consent to a compliant request unreasonable. One further carve-out arrived in 2026: under 4452(b)(3), as rewritten by that year’s recovery-residence act, a recovery residence employee may enter at reasonable times as necessary to carry out functions related to the operation of the residence, notwithstanding 4460.

Denying access in the other direction is unlawful. Section 4463 bars a landlord from wilfully causing, directly or indirectly, the interruption or termination of any utility service supplied to the tenant except for temporary interruptions for emergency repairs; from denying the tenant access to and possession of the premises except through proper judicial process; and — a third limb most summaries drop — from denying the tenant access to and possession of the tenant’s property. Under 4464(a) a tenant injured by an illegal eviction may bring an action for injunctive relief, damages, costs and reasonable attorney fees; under 4464(b) the court may award the landlord fees where the action was not brought in good faith and was frivolous or intended for harassment only. The Vermont notice to enter form is built to the same section.

What Makes a Vermont Rental Habitable?

Section 4457(a) implies into every residential rental agreement a covenant and warranty by the landlord to deliver over and maintain, throughout the period of the tenancy, premises that are safe, clean and fit for human habitation and that comply with the requirements of applicable building, housing and health regulations. Under 4457(b) no rental agreement may contain any provision by which the tenant waives that warranty, and any such waiver is contrary to public policy, unenforceable and void. Section 4457(c) adds heat and water sp