Free Washington, D.C. Residential Lease Agreement

▶ Watch walk-through

A configurable Washington, D.C. residential lease agreement that generates a signable multi-page PDF. Built to the Rental Housing Act of 1985 and to Title 14 of the Municipal Regulations — the one-month deposit cap, the 45 + 30 day return clocks, and the clauses 14 DCMR 304 makes void.

Washington, D.C. Rental Housing Act of 1985 14 DCMR ch. 3 Free PDF 2026 Edition

A Washington, D.C. residential lease agreement is governed by two bodies of law that both bind, and most free templates read only one of them. The first is the Rental Housing Act of 1985, D.C. Official Code 42-3501.01 and following, which supplies rent stabilization, the just-cause eviction rules in 42-3505.01, the access rule in 42-3505.51, the late-fee rule in 42-3505.31 and the disclosure package in 42-3502.22. The second is Title 14 of the District of Columbia Municipal Regulations — the Housing Regulations — whose chapter 3 carries the security deposit rules at 14 DCMR 308 to 311, the implied warranty of habitability at 301, the duty to give the tenant a signed copy at 303, the compulsory written receipts at 306, and the entire prohibited-provisions list at 304. A page that cites only Title 42 has no deposit cap, no escrow rule, no return deadline and no list of clauses the District will not enforce. Three things then define a District lease. The deposit is capped at the first full month’s rent and may be charged only once. The return runs on two clocks — forty-five days to tender or to give notice of withholding, then a further thirty days to itemize and pay. And the District is a just-cause jurisdiction: under 42-3505.01(a)(1) the expiry of the lease is not a reason to evict anyone.

Start with coverage, because coverage decides which rules apply at all. Everything else in a District lease — whether the rent can be raised, by how much, on what notice — hangs off whether the unit is inside the rent stabilization program or outside it, and whether the exemption was actually filed.

Complete the fields below to generate a District of Columbia residential lease agreement as a signable multi-page PDF. Every field you fill is written into the document, including the rent stabilization coverage that changes what the lease says about rent adjustments, the utility allocations, the access notice period and each disclosure you check, and the generated lease cites the controlling section or regulation at every point. Before handing over keys, run proper tenant screening — but read Washington DC tenant screening laws first, because 42-3541.02 restricts what a District housing provider may ask and when. Pair the signed lease with a Washington DC move-in / move-out checklist, which is how a housing provider proves the difference between damage and the ordinary wear and tear that 42-3502.17(c)(1) forbids withholding for.

Because a large share of the landlord’s duties live in the regulations, not the statute. This is the single most consequential fact about drafting in the District, and it is why so many free templates are thin here. The D.C. Official Code gives you the Rental Housing Act of 1985 at 42-3501.01 and following: rent stabilization, just-cause eviction, access, late fees, retaliation, disclosure. But if you look in the Code for the security deposit cap, you will not find one. 42-3502.17(a) simply says that “Security deposits shall be collected pursuant to the Security Deposit Act, effective February 20, 1976 (D.C. Law 1-48; 14 DCMR 308 et seq.)”, and 42-3502.17(b) gives the Office of Administrative Hearings jurisdiction over deposit complaints “pursuant to section 2908 of the Housing Regulations of the District of Columbia (14 DCMR 308 through 311)”. The Code points at the regulations and stops.

Title 14 of the District of Columbia Municipal Regulations is the Housing Regulations of the District of Columbia, originally issued as Commissioners’ Order 55-1503 in August 1955 and amended many times since. Its chapter 3, “Landlord and Tenant”, is a compact but dense set of rules that reads much more like a landlord-tenant act than like a regulation. It contains the implied warranty of habitability (301), the rule that voids a lease of an unsafe habitation (302), the duty to give the tenant a signed copy (303), the prohibited-provisions list (304), the re-letting certificate (305), compulsory written receipts (306), a regulatory retaliation ban (307), and the whole security deposit regime (308 to 311). Three of those — the deposit rules, the prohibited-provisions rule and the implied warranty — are load-bearing for every District lease, and none of them is in the Code.

The practical consequence is a checking discipline. When you read a claim about District landlord-tenant law, ask which body of law it comes from. A remarkable number of secondary summaries cite the deposit rules as “DC Code 14-308.2” and the return deadline as “DC Code 14-309.1”. Those are not Code sections. D.C. Official Code Title 14 is Proof — the District’s evidence title; 14-310 is the domestic violence counselor privilege, which is why the early-termination statute at 42-3505.07 cites it for the definition of a counselor. The deposit rules are 14 DCMR 308 and 309, sections of the Municipal Regulations. The section number is real and the body of law is wrong, which is the commonest citation error in this whole family of pages.

Only if it is not exempt under 42-3502.05(a), and an exemption you have not filed is not an exemption. Coverage is the first question in a District lease because it changes what the lease can say about money. 42-3502.05(a) applies subsection (f) through 42-3502.19 to each rental unit in the District, then exempts certain units from subsections (g) and (h)(2) and from 42-3502.06 through 42-3502.16, 42-3502.18 and 42-3502.19. That block of sections is what people mean by rent control.

The route most small housing providers rely on is 42-3502.05(a)(3), and it is routinely reported as a simple unit count. It is not. The subsection reaches “any rental unit in any housing accommodation of 4 or fewer rental units, including any aggregate of 4 rental units whether within the same structure or not” — and then imposes three conditions, all of which must hold:

• the housing accommodation is owned by not more than four natural persons, so an ordinary limited liability company does not qualify, subject to the decedent’s-estate and testamentary-trust carve-out in (a)(3)(D);
• none of the housing providers has an interest, “either directly or indirectly, in any other rental unit in the District of Columbia” — one other rented condominium anywhere in the city defeats the exemption for all of them; and
• a claim of exemption statement is filed with the Rent Administrator, signed by each person with a direct or indirect interest, with any invalidating change of ownership or interest reported in writing within thirty days.

The other exemptions have their own precision. 42-3502.05(a)(2) is widely described as covering buildings “built after 1975”. What it actually turns on is the date the building permit was issued — after 31 December 1975 — or, for a newly created unit added to an existing structure, a certificate of occupancy for housing use issued after 1 January 1980. And it is disapplied where the construction required demolishing a housing accommodation that was itself subject to the chapter, unless the number of new units exceeds the number demolished. (a)(1) covers federally or District owned or subsidised units including those receiving Low-Income Housing Tax Credit; (a)(4) covers accommodations continuously vacant since 1 January 1985; (a)(5) mirrors (a)(3) for cooperatives; (a)(7) covers units under an executed building improvement plan.

Separately, 42-3502.05(e) removes four categories from the chapter altogether rather than merely from rent stabilization: a unit operated by a foreign government as a residence for diplomatic personnel; a unit in an establishment whose primary purpose is diagnostic care and treatment of diseases; any dormitory; and, on a determination by the Rent Administrator, certain non-profit long-term temporary family housing meeting three tests.

Being exempt does not mean being unregulated. An exempt unit is still inside the Rental Housing Act. The just-cause eviction rules in 42-3505.01, the forty-eight-hour access rule in 42-3505.51, the five-percent late-fee rule in 42-3505.31, the retaliation presumption in 42-3505.02 and the whole of the Housing Regulations continue to apply. And under 42-3502.05(d), an exempt unit carries its own disclosure: “Prior to the execution of a lease or other rental agreement after July 17, 1985, a prospective tenant of any unit exempted under subsection (a) of this section shall receive a notice in writing advising the prospective tenant that rent increases for the accommodation are not regulated by the rent stabilization program.” No ranking page carries that duty, and it falls on exactly the small housing providers most likely to be using a free template.

Registration is a separate obligation from coverage. Under 42-3502.05(f) every housing provider must file a registration statement and, where applicable, a claim of exemption through the online housing provider portal, with a new provider filing within thirty days. Under (f)(4)(B)(i) failure carries a penalty of one hundred dollars per unit, and under (f)(4)(B)(ii) a non-exempt provider that has not timely registered may not institute a rent increase until it registers and pays. Under (h)(2) a duplicate of the registration statement must be posted in a public place on the premises, or mailed to the tenant where the accommodation is a single rental unit. One currency note: 42-3502.05 currently carries amendments made by temporary legislation that expires on 22 January 2027, so the registration mechanics should be re-read against the permanent version after that date.

One month’s rent, and only once. 14 DCMR 308.2 provides that “any security deposit or other payment required by an owner as security for performance of the tenant’s obligations in a lease or rental of a dwelling unit shall not exceed an amount equivalent to the first full month’s rent charged that tenant for the dwelling unit, and shall be charged only once by the owner to the tenant.”

The second limb is the one templates lose. “Charged only once” means the deposit cannot be topped up part-way through a tenancy after a deduction, and cannot be charged again when the lease renews. A District housing provider who takes a fresh deposit on a renewal has breached 308.2 even though the total never exceeded a month’s rent at any one moment.

The definition in 308.1 is what makes the cap hard to work around: the term means “all monies paid to the owner by the tenant as a deposit or other payment made as security for performance of the tenant’s obligations in a lease or rental of the property.” A move-in payment, a refundable key payment, a decorating payment or a refundable pet payment is part of the deposit and counts toward the one-month ceiling whatever the lease calls it. 14 DCMR 308.8 disapplies the section only to Federal or District agency units and to units for which rents are federally subsidised.

On pets specifically, there is a widely circulated claim that the District now caps pet fees and deposits. It rests on D.C. Law 25-308, the Pets in Housing Amendment Act of 2024, which added a new 42-3502.17(d). That act was passed, signed and cleared congressional review — and it is still not law. The Code prints subsection (d) as the two words “Not Funded.” and carries an applicability note recording that section 4 of the act made the amendment subject to the inclusion of its fiscal effect in an approved budget and financial plan, “therefore that amendment has not been implemented.” What binds a pet charge today is 14 DCMR 308.1 and 308.2: money taken as security for a pet is part of the deposit and counts against the one-month cap.

In an interest-bearing escrow account, held in trust, at a financial institution inside the District of Columbia. 14 DCMR 308.3 sets five requirements in a single sentence: all deposit monies “shall be deposited by the owner in an interest bearing escrow account established and held in trust in a financial institution in the District of Columbia insured by a federal or state agency for the sole purposes of holding such deposits or payments.”

Two of those requirements are unusual. The account must be in the District — a Maryland or Virginia bank does not satisfy it, which matters in a metropolitan area where most housing providers bank across the line. And it must exist for the sole purpose of holding deposits, so a general operating account with the deposits notionally set aside is not compliance. 308.5 permits an owner of more than one residential building to use a single escrow account across all of them, and 14 DCMR 311.3 forbids assigning the account or using it as security for loans.

The lease itself does work here. 14 DCMR 308.6 requires that “for each security deposit or other payment covered by this section, the owner shall clearly state in the lease or agreement or on the receipt for the deposit or other payment the terms and conditions under which the payment was made.” The builder above states them in the lease, which is the more durable of the two places. Separately, 42-3502.22(b)(1)(H)(ii) requires the amount of the initial deposit, the interest rate on it, and the means by which it is returned, to be disclosed at application stage.

There is also a public-posting duty almost nobody performs. 14 DCMR 308.7 requires the housing provider to post in the lobby of the building and in the rental office, at the end of each calendar year, where the tenants’ security deposits are held and what the prevailing rate was for each six-month period over the past year; and, at the end of a tenancy, to list for that tenant the interest rate for each six-month period during the tenancy.

There are two clocks, and every summary that gives a flat forty-five days has dropped the second one.

Clock one, 14 DCMR 309.1: within forty-five days after the termination of the tenancy the owner shall do one of two things — either “tender payment to the tenant, without demand, any security deposit and any similar payment paid by the tenant as a condition of tenancy in addition to the stipulated rent, and any interest due”, or “notify the tenant in writing, to be delivered to the tenant personally or by certified mail at the tenant’s last known address, of the owner’s intention to withhold and apply the monies toward defraying the cost of expenses properly incurred under the terms and conditions of the security deposit agreement.”

Clock two, 14 DCMR 309.2: where the withholding notice was given, the owner “within 30 days after notification to the tenant” shall tender a refund of the balance of the deposit including interest not used to defray those expenses, “and at the same time give the tenant an itemized statement of the repairs and other uses to which the monies were applied and the cost of each repair or other use.”

So a District housing provider who intends to withhold has forty-five days to say so and a further thirty to itemize and pay. The two are not alternatives and the second cannot be folded into the first. 14 DCMR 309.4 adds that a good-faith failure to serve personally or by certified mail is not itself a failure to comply.

What happens if the clocks are missed is unusually severe. 14 DCMR 309.3 makes a failure to comply with 309.1 and 309.2 “prima facie evidence that the tenant is entitled to full return, including interest as provided in 311, of any deposit or other payment made by the tenant” — a burden-shifting rule rather than merely a damages rule, so the housing provider arrives in the hearing already losing. 14 DCMR 309.5(1) then adds that a provider “violating the provisions of this section by failing to return a security deposit rightfully owed to a tenant… shall be liable for the amount of the deposit withheld or, in the event of bad faith, for treble damages.” 309.5(2) defines bad faith as “any frivolous or unfounded refusal to return a security deposit, as required by law, that is motivated by a fraudulent, deceptive, misleading, dishonest, or unreasonably self-serving purpose and not by simple negligence, bad judgment, or an honest belief in the course of action taken.” Complaints go to the Office of Administrative Hearings under 42-3502.17(b).

Yes, at the statement savings rate, and only on tenancies of twelve months or more. 14 DCMR 311.1 provides that interest on all money paid as a security deposit, decorating fee or similar deposit “shall commence on the date the money is actually paid by the tenant” and “shall accrue at not less than the statement savings rate then prevailing on January 1st and on July 1st for each 6-month period (or part thereof) of the tenancy which follows those dates”, using the rate at the District financial institution where the escrow account is held.

That is a mechanism, not a figure, which is why this page and the generated lease state the mechanism. A rate written into a signed lease is stale within six months. 14 DCMR 311.2 makes the interest “due and payable by the owner to the tenant upon termination of any tenancy of a duration of twelve (12) months or more”, unless an amount is deducted under 309.1 and 309.2. A failure to pay interest rightfully owed makes the provider liable for the interest, “or in the event of bad faith, for treble that amount”, and a wilful failure carries a civil fine of not more than five thousand dollars for each violation.

One provision runs the housing provider’s way, and it is rarely reported. Under 14 DCMR 311.2(1), where the provider invests the deposit in an account paying more than the statement savings rate, it “may apply up to 30% of the excess interest for administrative costs or other purposes.” The tenant gets the statement savings rate; the provider may keep up to 30% of anything above it.

No — not since 10 October 2025, and this is the newest rule on the page. 14 DCMR 301 was amended by a Final Rulemaking published at 72 DCR 011094, effective that date, adding two subsections that no ranking template carries.

14 DCMR 301.3: “A landlord, its agent, or other person entitled to receive rent for a habitation shall not charge a fee to a prospective tenant before move-in, a tenant during a tenancy, or a former tenant after move-out for services required of the landlord to maintain the habitation in a condition consistent with the implied warranty provided by 301.1, including Title 12 of the District of Columbia Municipal Regulations, or any substantially similar subsequent regulations.”

14 DCMR 301.4: “A landlord… shall not charge a tenant or former tenant a fee, or withhold monies from a security deposit in accordance with 309.1(2), for professional cleaning or for other expenses incurred due to damage to the habitation resulting from ordinary wear and tear, as defined in D.C. Official Code 42-3502.17(c)(3).”

The flat-rate “professional cleaning” charge is probably the single most common move-out deduction in American residential leasing. In the District it has been unlawful since October 2025, both as a fee and as a deposit deduction. And 301.3 reaches further: any fee for work the housing provider was obliged to do anyway to keep the unit habitable is prohibited, whether it is charged before move-in, during the tenancy, or after move-out.

Two other fee bans sit alongside it. 42-3502.11a, “Mandatory fees prohibited”, provides that a housing provider “shall not impose on a tenant a mandatory fee for any service or facility that has not been approved pursuant to 42-3502.11 or 42-3502.15”, and that a violator “shall be liable to the tenant for treble damages pursuant to section 901(a)” — that is, 42-3509.01(a). And 42-3502.17(c)(1) forbids withholding a deposit “for the replacement value of apartment items that are damaged due to ordinary wear and tear”, with 42-3502.17(c)(2) adding that a tenant’s covenant to leave the premises in good repair “does not obligate the tenant to make substantial repairs, replace obsolete materials, or fix other defects without negligence or fault on the tenant’s part.”

Ordinary wear and tear has a statutory definition in 42-3502.17(c)(3): “deterioration that results from the intended use of a dwelling unit, including breakage or malfunction due to age or deteriorated condition.” That inclusion is doing real work — a twelve-year-old blind mechanism that fails is age, not damage. The definition excludes deterioration resulting from negligence, carelessness, accident or abuse by the tenant, an immediate family member or a guest.

5% of the full amount of rent due — but only if this lease says so. 42-3505.31(a) sets the ceiling. 42-3505.31(b) sets two conditions, and the first is a pure drafting condition that most District leases fail: a housing provider may charge a late fee only “(1) if the written lease agreement between the housing provider and the tenant informs the tenant of the maximum amount of the late fee that may be charged pursuant to this section; and (2) if the tenant has not paid the full amount of rent within 5 days, or any longer grace period that may be provided in the lease, after the day the rent payment is due.”

A District lease that is silent about the maximum generates no lawful late fee at all, however modest the amount charged. That is why the builder above puts the maximum in the lease text rather than leaving it to a schedule.

42-3505.31(c) then forbids five things outright. A housing provider shall not charge interest on a late fee; shall not deduct any amount of a late fee from a subsequent rent payment; shall not impose a late fee more than one time on each late payment; shall not evict a tenant on the basis of the nonpayment of a late fee; and shall not impose a late fee on the portion of the rent for which a rent subsidy provider, rather than the tenant, is responsible. The eviction bar is doubled up in 42-3505.01(a)(1), whose proviso says in terms that “the nonpayment of a late fee shall not be the basis for an eviction.”

Collection has its own route. Under 42-3505.31(d), after the grace period the provider “may issue a tenant an invoice to be paid within 30 days after the date of issuance for any lawfully imposed late fees”, and if the tenant does not pay within that period the provider “may deduct from a tenant’s security deposit, at the end of the tenancy, any unpaid, lawfully imposed late fees, along with any other amounts lawfully due.”

The penalty is in 42-3509.01(a-1): a housing provider who knowingly or wilfully violates 42-3505.31, or evicts for the nonpayment of a late fee contrary to 42-3505.01(a), is liable for the amount by which the fee exceeds the allowable fee, or treble that amount in bad faith, and is subject to a civil fine of at least one hundred dollars and not more than five thousand dollars for each violation. For the neighbouring rules see our Washington DC late fee laws guide.

Forty-eight hours, in writing — and that is only the first of three limbs. Unlike many jurisdictions in this family of pages, the District does have a real access statute, 42-3505.51, added by D.C. Law 21-210 in 2017. Templates reproduce the hours and drop everything else.

Reasonable notice means “written notice provided to the tenant at least 48 hours before the time the housing provider wishes to enter the unit or a shorter period of time as agreed to by the tenant in writing. Written notice may include electronic communication, including email and mobile text messaging; provided, that if the tenant fails to furnish a written acknowledgement, the housing provider will provide a paper notice.” A text message is a lawful notice only if the tenant acknowledges it; otherwise paper must follow.

Reasonable time means “a time between the hours of 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., and not on a Sunday or federal holiday, or at another time agreed upon by the tenant.” A notice for a Sunday showing, or for seven in the evening, is not a lawful notice however much warning it gives.

Reasonable purpose is a closed list of six: the duty to keep the entire property safe from damage; the duty to inspect the premises; the duty to make necessary or agreed repairs, decorations, alterations, renovations or improvements; the duty to supply necessary or agreed services and maintenance; the need to exhibit the dwelling unit to prospective or actual purchasers, mortgagees, tenants, workmen or contractors; and the need to gain entry for work ordered by a governmental entity.

42-3505.51(b)(1) permits entry only where all three are satisfied, “except in the event of an emergency for the protection or preservation of the premises, or for the protection and safety of the tenants or other persons”. The remedy in (b)(2) is broader than most: “upon a showing by the tenant that the housing provider has entered a unit in violation of this section, or has repeatedly made unreasonable demands for entry, any court of competent jurisdiction may enjoin the housing provider from that behavior and may assess appropriate damages against the housing provider for breach of the tenant’s right to quiet enjoyment of the premises.” A pattern of unreasonable requests is actionable even where every entry was consented to.

One provision runs the other way. Under 42-3505.51(b)(3), where a tenant has alleged a housing code violation, the tenant “may not unreasonably prevent the housing provider from accessing the unit for assessment and abatement of the alleged violation and must provide access to the unit within 48 hours of the written request by the housing provider for access.” For the served-notice form, see our Washington DC notice to enter, and for the surrounding rules our Washington DC landlord entry laws guide.

More than sixty calendar days, and it lands on a rent day. 42-3509.04(b), as amended by D.C. Law 25-65 on 28 November 2023, provides that no rent increase “shall be effective until the first day on which rent is normally paid occurring more than 60 calendar days after the notice of the increase is given to the tenant; provided, that the requirements of 42-3505.54(b) are met.”

Two things follow. The period is sixty, not the thirty that most secondary pages print. And the increase does not take effect on the sixtieth day: it takes effect on the next normal rent day after that period expires, so in practice a notice given in mid-month buys the tenant most of an extra month. The proviso ties it to the tenant’s own notice obligations: if the lease requires the tenant to give more than thirty days’ notice of an intention to vacate, 42-3505.54(b) requires the housing provider’s rent-increase notice to be at least thirty days longer than that period.

For a covered unit there are further limits. Under 42-3502.06(b) the Rental Housing Commission sets an annual adjustment of general applicability equal to the change in the Washington, D.C. Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, and “no adjustment of general applicability shall exceed 10%”. Under 42-3502.08(h)(2)(A) an increase for an occupied covered unit may not exceed that adjustment plus 2%, with a total ceiling of 10%. Under (h)(2)(C) a unit leased or co-leased by a home and community-based services waiver provider is capped at the lesser of 5% or the adjustment of general applicability. Under 42-3502.08(g) no increase may take effect until a full twelve months have elapsed since the last one. The annual figure changes, so this page gives the mechanism and the statutory ceiling rather than a number that would go stale — and our Washington DC rent increase laws guide carries the current-year detail.

Elderly tenants and tenants with a disability get a lower ceiling. Under 42-3502.24(a), and without regard to income, an adjustment while such a tenant occupies the unit may not exceed the rent charged plus the least of the listed amounts, of which the operative limb is 5%. Under 42-3502.08(a)(1)(F) the housing provider must first have given the tenant written notice of that maximum and of how to establish the status, and under 42-3502.24(d)(9) must supply a current copy of the Rent Administrator’s registration form on request. Under 42-3509.01(h) a frivolous or bad-faith challenge to a registered status is deemed an unlawful demand for rent carrying between 2% and the whole of the total annual current rent charged, plus treble damages on those amounts.

And there are seven preconditions to any increase above base rent for a covered unit, set out in 42-3502.08(a)(1): substantial compliance with the housing regulations; registration under 42-3502.05; proper licensing of the housing provider; proper registration of the manager where there is one; a notice complying with 42-3509.04; the elderly and disability notice; and, where the housing provider is a nonresident of the District, an appointed and maintained registered agent under 14 DCMR 203. One quiet protection runs the tenant’s way and the housing provider’s too: under 42-3502.08(e), “no rent shall be adjusted under this chapter for any rental unit with respect to which there is a valid written lease or rental agreement establishing the rent for the rental unit for the term of the written lease or rental agreement.” A fixed-term written District lease locks the rent for its term.

Not by the lease expiring. This is the point at which District law departs most sharply from the rest of the country, and it is the first thing a housing provider arriving from Maryland or Virginia gets wrong. 42-3505.01(a)(1) provides that “no tenant shall be evicted from a rental unit, notwithstanding the expiration of the tenant’s lease or rental agreement, so long as the tenant continues to pay the rent to which the housing provider is entitled for the rental unit”. The tenancy simply continues from month to month on the same terms, and possession may be recovered only on one of the statutory grounds.

The thirty-day notice runs one way only, and the subsection letter is the tell. 42-3202(a) — “A commercial tenancy from month-to-month, or from quarter-to-quarter, may be terminated by a 30-day notice in writing from the housing provider to the tenant to quit, or by such a notice from the tenant” — is expressly commercial. 42-3202(b) is the residential rule: “A residential tenancy may be terminated by a 30-day notice in writing only from the tenant to the housing provider of the tenant’s intention to quit.” 42-3505.54(a) says the same inside the Rental Housing Act. In both, “the notice shall expire on the first day of the first month at least 30 days after the date of the notice”, so a notice given on the tenth of a month does not expire on the tenth of the next one. Several ranking pages state a two-way thirty-day rule and cite 42-3202 for it; they are reading the commercial subsection. For the tenant’s form, see our Washington DC tenant notice to vacate, and our Washington DC lease termination laws guide for the full sequence.

Two sections limit what the lease can demand of the tenant here. 42-3505.53 makes void and unenforceable any provision requiring a tenant to give more than thirty days’ notice of an intention to vacate at the expiry of an initial term, “unless the lease explicitly states that the provision expires upon the expiration of the initial lease term, and that, unless the tenant agrees to sign a renewal lease of other than month-to-month, the tenant thereafter has the right to vacate the premises upon a 30-day notice for so long as the tenant remains a tenant from month-to-month.” 42-3505.54(b) forbids requiring more than thirty days at all “unless the lease or agreement also requires the housing provider to provide the tenant with a written notice of any rent increase that is at least 30 days more than that time period”. Both are enforced by 42-3509.01(a-2), which attaches treble damages in bad faith.

Early termination for a victim of an intrafamily offence is at 42-3505.07. A tenant who is a victim, or the parent or guardian of a minor victim, is released from the lease on providing either a protective order under 16-1005 obtained on the tenant’s petition, or documentation signed by a qualified third party — a law enforcement officer, a sworn D.C. Housing Authority Office of Public Safety officer, a health professional as defined in 3-1201.01(8), or a domestic violence counselor as defined in 14-310(a)(2). The release takes effect on the earlier of fourteen days after the provider receives both the notice and the documentation, or the commencement of a new tenancy. The request must be made within ninety days of the reported act. Notwithstanding any penalty in the lease, the tenant is then liable only for rent pro-rated to the earlier of re-letting or fourteen days after the request. 42-3505.08 requires locks to be changed within five business days of a written request by such a tenant, at the provider’s expense with reimbursement within forty-five days, and where the perpetrator is not a tenant of the same unit no documentation may be required at all. For the wider picture see our Washington DC breaking lease laws guide.

The housing provider must mitigate. 42-3505.52: “If a tenant refuses to take possession of a rental unit in bad faith, or vacates a rental unit before the end of a lease term, any actual damages the housing provider may be entitled to shall be subject to the duty of the housing provider to mitigate actual damages for breach of the rental agreement.” A District lease cannot make a departing tenant liable for the whole remaining term regardless of re-letting.

Holding over is narrower than most templates assume. 42-3207 imposes double rent only where the tenant “after having given notice of his intention to quit as aforesaid, shall refuse, without reasonable excuse, to surrender possession according to such notice”. It is not a general penalty for staying past a term, because a tenant who stays and pays is protected by 42-3505.01(a)(1) rather than exposed by 42-3207.

For nonpayment: ten days, and none at all below six hundred dollars. This changed on 31 December 2025 and no ranking page has caught up. Section 101(b) of the Rebalancing Expectations for Neighbors, Tenants, and Landlords (RENTAL) Amendment Act of 2025, D.C. Law 26-80, amended 42-3505.01(a-1)(1) by “striking the phrase ‘at least 30 days’ and inserting the phrase ‘at least 10 days’ in its place.” The subsection now reads: a housing provider shall give notice of an intent to file a claim to recover possession for nonpayment “at least 10 days before filing the claim; except, that the housing provider shall not issue such notice if the amount of rent that the tenant has failed to pay is less than six hundred dollars.”

The notice’s contents are prescribed by 42-3505.01(a-1)(2): the total amount of rent owed; an attached ledger showing the dates of rent charges and payments for the period of delinquency; a statement of the tenant’s right to remain if the balance is paid in full; a statement that a case may be filed if the amount owed is at least six hundred dollars and the balance is not paid within thirty days of the notice, and that below that figure no case may be filed; a statement that only a court can order an eviction; and the telephone numbers of the Office of the Tenant Advocate and the Landlord Tenant Legal Assistance Network.

Service must go by both routes, not either. 42-3505.01(a-1)(3), also added by the RENTAL Act, requires the notice to be provided “(A) by certified mail or delivery service providing delivery tracking confirmation, return receipt requested; and (B) by hand delivery to the rental unit or by posting on the front door of the rental unit.” Where any notice is served by posting, 42-3505.01(a)(2) requires a photograph of the posted notice with a readable timestamp to be submitted to the court. Where the housing provider knows the tenant’s primary language is other than English or Spanish and is covered under 2-1933, 42-3505.01(a)(3) requires the notice in that language. And under 42-3505.01(a)(1) every notice for a reason other than nonpayment must be served on both the tenant and the Rent Administrator. Our Washington DC notice to pay rent or quit and DC eviction notice laws guide carry the service detail.

For a violation of an obligation of the tenancy other than nonpayment: thirty days to cure. 42-3505.01(b) allows recovery of possession where the tenant “is violating an obligation of the tenancy, other than nonpayment of rent, and fails to correct the violation within 30 days after receiving notice from the housing provider.” The thirty days is a cure period, not a countdown to removal. See our Washington DC notice to cure or quit.

The other grounds carry their own periods: a thirty-day notice to vacate for an illegal act determined by a court under 42-3505.01(c)(1); a ten-day notice under (c)(2)(A), for cases filed after 31 December 2025, where the act would constitute a dangerous crime under 23-1331(3) or a crime of violence under 23-1331(4) and was not committed in self-defence — and then only after the provider has “considered in good faith all reasonable available means to preserve the housing of non-offending occupants”, with an expedited hearing within twenty days; a ninety-day notice where a natural person with a freehold interest seeks the unit in good faith for immediate and personal use, 42-3505.01(d); a ninety-day notice where the provider has contracted in writing to sell for a purchaser’s immediate and personal use, (e); a one hundred and twenty-day notice for alterations and renovations that cannot safely be done while occupied, (f); and a one hundred and eighty-day notice to discontinue the housing use, (i). Under (d) and (e) no rent may be demanded for the unit for twelve months after possession is recovered, and (e-1) gives the displaced tenant reasonable relocation costs plus additional damages if the unit is re-let inside that window.

And there are days on which no eviction may be carried out at all. 42-3505.01(k): no housing provider shall evict a tenant on any day when the National Weather Service predicts at eight in the morning that the temperature at the National Airport weather station will fall below thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit; when precipitation is falling at the location of the rental unit; or on any day when the Service predicts at eight in the morning that the temperature will rise above ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit. The third limb is new: it was added by D.C. Law 26-108, the Extreme Heat Eviction Protection Amendment Act of 2026, which took effect on 16 April 2026 after a thirty-day period of congressional review. Under (k-1) the bar lifts only where a court has determined that the tenant performed an illegal act, has specifically found that the tenant’s actions or presence cause undue hardship on the health, welfare and safety of other tenants or immediate neighbours, or has specifically found that the tenant abandoned the premises.

Finally, 42-3505.01(q) bars an eviction unless the housing provider gives the court documentation of a current rental-housing business licence at the time it files the writ of restitution — a filing condition rather than a notice condition, and a common point of failure.

They stay in the unit for seven days, and the housing provider must give access without charge. 42-3505.01a opens flatly: “A housing provider shall not remove an evicted tenant’s personal property from a rental unit except as provided in this section.”

The sequence is prescriptive. In addition to any notification from the United States Marshals Service, the provider must deliver a notice confirming the eviction date not fewer than twenty-one days beforehand, by all three of (A) telephone or electronic communication including email or mobile text, (B) first-class mail to the rental unit, and (C) conspicuous posting at the unit. The notice must prominently warn that property left behind will be deemed abandoned seven days after the eviction, excluding Sundays and federal holidays; must carry the telephone numbers of the Marshals, the Office of the Tenant Advocate and the Landlord and Tenant Branch of the Superior Court; and must state that it is the final notice even if the date is postponed.

At the eviction the provider changes the locks in the presence of the Marshals at its own expense. For the following seven days the property remains in the unit, the provider “shall maintain and exercise reasonable care in the storage” of it, and must grant the evicted tenant access for no fewer than sixteen total hours between eight in the morning and six in the evening over not more than two days, on a Saturday if the tenant requests it, and “without requiring the tenant to pay rent or service fees for the 7-day storage period”. A failure to grant access gives the tenant injunctive relief; a failure to give the required notices gives the tenant injunctive relief “including a stay on the execution of the eviction”.

There is a second, much thinner abandoned-property regime at 42-3210.01, and it is the one some summaries quote. It does not apply here. By its own first words it governs “an ejectment not subject to Chapter 35 of this title”, so a residential rental unit under the Rental Housing Act falls outside it entirely.

A six-month presumption that the housing provider must rebut by clear and convincing evidence — and judgment goes to the tenant if it cannot. 42-3505.02(a) forbids retaliatory action against a tenant who exercises any right conferred by the Rental Housing Act, by a rule or order under it, “or by any other provision of law”, and the enumeration is broad: an action to recover possession, an unlawful rent increase, a decrease in services, an increase in the tenant’s obligations, undue or unavoidable inconvenience, violating the tenant’s privacy, harassment, reducing the quality or quantity of service, “any refusal to honor a lease or rental agreement or any provision of a lease or rental agreement, refusal to renew a lease or rental agreement, termination of a tenancy without cause, or any other form of threat or coercion.”

42-3505.02(b) is the operative machinery: “the trier of fact shall presume retaliatory action has been taken, and shall enter judgment in the tenant’s favor unless the housing provider comes forward with clear and convincing evidence to rebut this presumption”, where within the six months preceding the provider’s action the tenant (1) made a witnessed oral or written repair request; (2) contacted District officials about existing or suspected housing regulation violations; (3) legally withheld all or part of the rent after reasonable notice of a violation; (4) organised, joined or took part in a tenant organisation; (5) made an effort to secure or enforce rights under the lease; or (6) brought legal action against the provider.

14 DCMR 307 adds a parallel regulatory ban, covering possession actions, rent increases, service decreases and increases in the tenant’s obligations, keyed to a good-faith complaint about housing deficiencies, tenant organising, or the good-faith assertion of rights under the subtitle.

Tenant organising has its own protection at 42-3505.06, with unusually specific rules: the housing provider may not interfere with distributing literature in common areas including lobbies, placing literature at or under doors, posting on all building bulletin boards, or convening meetings in any appropriate space — and “shall not attend or make audio recordings of such meetings” without permission. A knowing violation carries a civil penalty of up to ten thousand dollars per violation, indexed annually to the Consumer Price Index since 2008, plus injunctive relief, damages, suspension or revocation of the business licence — during which “the rent for any rental unit in the housing accommodation shall not be increased” — and attorney’s fees under 42-3509.02.

The warranty is implied into the lease by regulation, and the remedy is unusual: the lease itself can become void. 14 DCMR 301.1: “There shall be deemed to be included in the terms of any lease or rental agreement covering a habitation an implied warranty that the owner will maintain the premises in compliance with this subtitle.” It cannot be drafted out, because 14 DCMR 304.1 voids any lease provision contrary to or waiving the chapter. 301.2 preserves the courts’ power to find that “practices, acts, lease provisions and other matters not specifically dealt with in this chapter are contrary to public policy or unconscionable or otherwise unlawful.”

Then comes 14 DCMR 302, which has no equivalent in most jurisdictions. Under 302.1, leasing a habitation that is at the beginning of the tenancy unsafe or unsanitary due to violations of the subtitle in the habitation or the common space — “whether or not those violations are the subject of a notice” — of which the owner has or reasonably should have knowledge, “shall render void the lease or rental agreement for the habitation”. Under 302.2 the same result follows for violations arising after the tenancy begins where two conditions are met: the violations did not result from the intentional acts or negligence of the tenant or the tenant’s invitees, and they are not corrected within the time allowed under a notice or, absent a notice, within a reasonable time after the owner has or should have knowledge.

14 DCMR 305.1 completes the sequence: following a judicial determination that the owner has breached the implied warranty, or that a lease is void, “the owner shall obtain a certificate from the Director that the habitation is in compliance with this subtitle prior to the next reletting of the habitation.” The unit cannot simply be re-rented. Our Washington DC habitability laws guide carries the housing-code detail.

Compliance also gates the rent. Under 42-3502.08(a)(1)(A) rent may not be increased above base rent unless the unit and the common elements are in substantial compliance with the housing regulations, evidenced by violation notices from the Department of Buildings; and under 42-3502.08(a)(2), where the Rent Administrator finds “excessive and prolonged violations… affecting the health, safety, and security of the tenants” that the provider has failed to correct, it may roll rents back.

One of the longest sets in the country, and the penalty for the main one is that the rent may not be increased. 42-3502.22(b)(1) requires the housing provider, at the time a prospective tenant files an application, to provide on a form published by the Rent Administrator, together with the corresponding documents:

• (A) the applicable rent for the rental unit;
• (B) any pending tenant or housing provider petition that could affect the unit, including petitions for further rent increases during the following twelve months;
• (C) any surcharges on rent, including capital improvement surcharges and their expiration dates;
• (D) the frequency with which rent increases may be implemented;
• (E) the rent-controlled or exempt status of the housing accommodation, its business licence, and a copy of the registration or claim of exemption with the most recent notice filed under 42-3502.05(g)(1)(C);
• (F) all copies of housing code and property maintenance code violation reports issued by the Department of Buildings within the last twelve months, and earlier reports for violations not abated;
• (G) the Rent Administrator’s pamphlet explaining the laws governing rent increases and petitions in lay terminology;
• (H) the amount of any nonrefundable application fee, and the amount of any initial security deposit with the interest rate on it and the means by which it is returned;
• (I) whether the accommodation is registered as, or converting to, a condominium or cooperative, or to a use that is not a housing accommodation;
• (J) the ownership information in the registration form;
• (K) information known, or that should have been known, about indoor mold contamination as defined in 8-241.01(5) in the unit or common areas in the previous three years, unless remediated by a District-certified professional; and
• (L) the Tenant Bill of Rights published by the Office of the Tenant Advocate under 42-3531.07(8).

Under 42-3502.22(1B) the form must also include the voter registration packet developed by the District of Columbia Board of Elections under 1-1001.05(a)(20) — a requirement unique to the District among the jurisdictions in this family. Under (b)(2) the provider must additionally maintain a compilation of the disclosures in a publicly accessible area, update it within thirty days of any change, tell each tenant in writing where it is with a table of contents, make it available for inspection, and supply a free copy within ten business days of a written request once a year. Under (a), on a tenant’s written request not more than once a calendar year, it must within ten business days give the amount of each rent increase over the preceding three years and the basis for each.

Four more duties sit outside 42-3502.22 entirely, and this is where competitor lists fall short:

• 42-3502.05(d) — where the unit is exempt, a separate written notice before signing that rent increases for the accommodation are not regulated by the rent stabilization program.
• 42-3502.13(d) — “as part of a lease agreement for a new tenancy”, the rent charged at commencement and the amount of the increases during the preceding three years, including the basis for each adjustment, on a form published by the Rent Administrator.
• 42-3271 — the Mayor’s lead plumbing disclosure form, provided “before the tenant is obligated under any contract to lease or renew the lease“, covering water test results, lead-bearing plumbing and lead service lines, whether the private-property and public-property portions have been replaced and when, sanctions imposed on the owner, and listing on the DC Water website. If the owner later learns of lead plumbing it must notify the tenant within forty-eight hours.
• 8-231.04 — the District’s own lead-based paint regime, which is stricter than the federal rule. Under (a) the owner of a pre-1978 unit discloses known lead-based paint, hazards and pending Mayor’s actions on the District form before the tenant is obligated. Under (b), where the unit will be occupied or regularly visited by a person at risk, the owner must also provide a clearance report issued within the previous twelve months. Under (c) a tenant’s written notice that a person at risk resides or visits triggers a clearance report within thirty days. Under (d) the owner may substitute a lead-free certification, or three clearance reports twelve months apart within the previous seven years. Under (e) the owner must give notice of tenant rights on the Mayor’s form “whenever the tenant executes or renews a lease and whenever the owner provides notice of a rent increase” — a recurring duty, not a one-off. Under (f) it must notify within ten days if it learns of lead-based paint, providing the Lead Warning Statement described in 40 C.F.R. 745.113 and the federal pamphlet. Our Washington DC lead-based paint disclosure form covers the federal layer.

And 14 DCMR 300.1 adds a delivery duty at move-in that appears on no ranking page: “The owner of each habitation shall provide to each existing tenant, and shall at the commencement of any tenancy provide to the tenant, a copy of the provisions of this chapter and a copy of… Chapter 1, 101 (Civil Enforcement Policy); and Chapter 1, 106 (Notification of Tenants Concerning Violations).” 14 DCMR 303.1 separately requires an “exact, legible, completed copy of any agreement or application which the tenant has signed” to be given on execution or within seven days — which reaches the rental application, not just the lease.

The penalty for the main package is unusual. 42-3502.22(c): “The rent for any rental unit shall not be increased if the housing provider (1) willfully violates the provisions of this section; or (2) fails to comply within 10 business days of written notice of any failure to comply.” It is not a fine. It freezes the rent.

Stated plainly, so that neither party imports a duty from somewhere else. The District imposes no residential lease disclosure duty for insect infestation history, for radioactive soil gas, for asbestos, for former drug-manufacturing use, for ordnance-proximity notices of the kind some western jurisdictions require, for special flood hazard areas, for shared-meter arrangements, for sex-offender registry information, or for demolition plans.

The bed bug claim deserves its own paragraph, because it appears on almost every District template page. Chapter 35C of Title 42, the District’s insect-control chapter, was created by D.C. Law 24-238 in February 2023. Section 9 of that act made it subject to the inclusion of its fiscal effect in an approved budget and financial plan, which never happened, so it was never implemented. Section 7206 of D.C. Law 26-55, the Fiscal Year 2026 Budget Support Act of 2025, then repealed the entire chapter on 6 December 2025, along with the corresponding items that had been added to the 42-3502.22 disclosure list. The Code today shows all five sections of chapter 35C marked “[Repealed]”. There is no District statute and no District lease disclosure on the subject.

Two other “not required” findings are worth stating. Chapter 13 of Title 42, the residential real property disclosure chapter, is cited by several sources as a source of District lease disclosure duties. 42-1301(a) confines it to “the transfer or sale of real estate located in the District of Columbia consisting of not less than one nor more than 4 residential dwelling units”, and only “where the purchaser expresses, in writing, an intent to reside in the property to be transferred” — and 42-1311 is titled, in terms, “Duty imposed on transferor only.” It has no application to a lease. And 42-3509.09, which addressed restrictions on tobacco smoking, was never implemented for want of appropriations and has since been repealed, so there is no statutory smoking-policy disclosure either.

The prohibited-provisions rule is 14 DCMR 304, and it is in the regulations rather than the Code, which is why no ranking template carries it.

304.1: “Any provision of any lease or agreement contrary to, or providing for a waiver of, the terms of this chapter, or 101 or 106 of chapter 1, shall be void and unenforceable.”

304.2: “No person shall cause any of the provisions prohibited by this section to be included in a lease or agreement respecting the use of the property in the District of Columbia, or demand that any person sign a lease or agreement containing any such provision.” The demand is itself the violation, which is a meaningfully earlier trigger than enforcement.

304.3 voids exculpatory clauses: “No owner shall cause to be placed in a lease or rental agreement any provision exempting the owner or premises from liability or limiting the liability of the owner or the residential premises from damages for injuries to persons or property caused by or resulting from the negligence of the owner (or the owner’s agents, servants, or employees) in the operation, care, or maintenance of the leased premises, or any facility upon or portion of the property of which the leased premises are a part.”

304.4 voids three more: “No owner shall place (or cause to be placed) in a lease or rental agreement a provision waiving the right of a tenant of residential premises to a jury trial, or requiring that the tenant pay the owner’s court costs or legal fees, or authorizing a person other than the tenant to confess judgment against a tenant. This subsection shall not preclude a court from assessing court or legal fees against a tenant in appropriate circumstances.”

The bridge that gives all of this a damages remedy is 42-3509.01(a-2): “A housing provider found to have violated any provision of section 533, section 534, or section 535, or section 304 of Title 14 of the Housing Regulations of the District of Columbia… shall be liable to the tenant for treble damages if the housing provider is found to have acted in bad faith.” Sections 533, 534 and 535 are 42-3505.53, 42-3505.54 and 42-3505.55. Under 42-3509.01(b) a wilful act in violation of any other provision of the chapter, or a failure to meet obligations under it, carries a civil fine of not more than five thousand dollars for each violation.

Adding the other bans scattered through the Act and the regulations, the full list of what a District lease may not do is: waive or contradict chapter 3 of the Housing Regulations; limit the owner’s liability for its own negligence; waive the tenant’s jury trial; shift the owner’s court costs or legal fees to the tenant; authorise a confession of judgment; require more than thirty days’ notice of an intention to vacate without the two express conditions in 42-3505.53 and 42-3505.54(b); impose a mandatory fee for an unapproved service or facility under 42-3502.11a; charge a fee for maintenance work the owner owed anyway under 14 DCMR 301.3; charge a professional-cleaning fee or take a deposit deduction for cleaning or ordinary wear and tear under 14 DCMR 301.4; waive the implied warranty of habitability; make a departing tenant liable for the whole term regardless of re-letting under 42-3505.52; or purport to waive the just-cause protection in 42-3505.01.

No — and the trap is that fee-shifting genuinely exists in the District, just not from the lease. This is the subtlest drafting question on the page and the one a careful lawyer is most likely to get wrong.

Two provisions point in opposite directions. 14 DCMR 304.4 forbids an owner to place in a lease any provision “requiring that the tenant pay the owner’s court costs or legal fees”, closing with the qualifier that the subsection “shall not preclude a court from assessing court or legal fees against a tenant in appropriate circumstances.” Separately, 42-3509.02 provides that “The Rent Administrator, Rental Housing Commission, or a court of competent jurisdiction may award reasonable attorney’s fees to the prevailing party in any action under this chapter, except actions for eviction authorized under 42-3505.01.”

Read together: fee-shifting exists, it runs to whichever party prevails, it arises by operation of law rather than by agreement — and it is switched off in the one proceeding a housing provider is most likely to bring. A drafter who reasons “the District has prevailing-party fees, so a reciprocal clause is safe” has written the very clause 14 DCMR 304.4 prohibits, and 42-3509.01(a-2) makes a bad-faith violation of 14 DCMR 304 sound in treble damages. The reciprocity that rescues an equivalent clause in some western states is beside the point here, because the District’s prohibition attaches to the clause itself and not to its one-sidedness.

That is why the builder above offers no attorney-fee option at all and the generated lease contains no fee-shifting clause. It states the statutory position instead, which is both accurate and more useful: the tenant keeps a statutory fee entitlement the lease could not have given, and the housing provider avoids a void term with a treble-damages exposure attached.

• Citing the deposit rules as “DC Code 14-308.2”. There is no such Code section. D.C. Official Code Title 14 is Proof, the evidence title. The deposit rules are 14 DCMR 308, in the Municipal Regulations. A real number in the wrong body of law is the commonest citation error on District pages.
• Charging the deposit twice. 14 DCMR 308.2 says “shall be charged only once by the owner to the tenant”. A second deposit on renewal, or a top-up after a deduction, breaches the rule even where no single figure exceeds a month’s rent.
• Banking the deposit outside the District. 14 DCMR 308.3 requires a financial institution in the District of Columbia. In this metropolitan area that catches a great many otherwise careful housing providers.
• Treating forty-five days as the whole deposit rule. It is the first of two clocks; 14 DCMR 309.2 gives a further thirty days for the itemized statement, and 309.3 shifts the burden if either is missed.
• Charging a move-out cleaning fee. Prohibited since 10 October 2025 by 14 DCMR 301.4, both as a fee and as a deposit deduction.
• Omitting the maximum late fee from the lease. 42-3505.31(b)(1) makes the fee lawful only if the written lease states the maximum, so a silent lease produces no lawful late fee at all.
• Serving a thirty-day nonpayment notice. The RENTAL Amendment Act cut it to ten days effective 31 December 2025, added a dual service requirement, and forbade the notice entirely below six hundred dollars.
• Giving thirty days’ notice of a rent increase. 42-3509.04(b) requires more than sixty calendar days, running to the next normal rent day.
• Assuming a lease expiry ends the tenancy. 42-3505.01(a)(1) says otherwise. The District is a just-cause jurisdiction and a housing provider needs a statutory ground.
• Using a two-way thirty-day notice for a month-to-month. 42-3202(a) is commercial; the residential rule in (b) runs only from the tenant.
• Relying on an unfiled exemption. 42-3502.05(a)(3)(C) requires a claim of exemption statement filed with the Rent Administrator, signed by every interest holder.
• Putting an attorney-fee clause in the lease. Prohibited by 14 DCMR 304.4 with treble damages in bad faith under 42-3509.01(a-2), even though 42-3509.02 gives statutory prevailing-party fees outside evictions.
• Including a jury-trial waiver or a confession of judgment. Both are prohibited by 14 DCMR 304.4, and 304.2 makes demanding a signature on such a lease its own violation.
• Adding a pet-fee clause on the strength of the Pets in Housing Act. 42-3502.17(d) reads “Not Funded.” That amendment has not been implemented.
• Adding an insect-infestation disclosure. Chapter 35C was never implemented and was repealed by D.C. Law 26-55 on 6 December 2025.
• Skipping the voter registration packet. 42-3502.22(1B) requires it in the disclosure form, and the penalty in (c) is that the rent may not be increased.
• Forgetting the exempt-unit notice. 42-3502.05(d) requires it in writing before the lease is executed, and it falls on the smallest housing providers.
• Missing the ten-day notice window for a move-out inspection. 14 DCMR 310 gives a three-business-day inspection window but a ten-day notice period, so the notice has to be diarised before the tenancy ends.

A well-drafted lease decides who wins a dispute; screening decides whether there is one. The District puts unusual constraints on the screening itself, so read them before you build a process. Under 42-3541.02 a housing provider may not consider an arrest that did not result in a conviction, may not inquire about a pending accusation or conviction before making a conditional offer, and must disclose its eligibility criteria in writing before accepting an application fee, together with a statement that the applicant may supply evidence of inaccuracies or of rehabilitation. After a conditional offer it may consider only convictions and pending accusations from the past seven years, and only for the forty-eight offences the section enumerates. A withdrawal must be justified as achieving a substantial, legitimate, nondiscriminatory interest against six listed factors, must be notified in writing with specificity, and the applicant may demand every document relied on within twenty days and receive it free within ten. A provider that owns and occupies an accommodation of three or fewer rental units is outside the chapter under 42-3541.03.

Eviction history is also narrower here than elsewhere: 42-3505.09 seals eviction records thirty days after a case that did not end in a judgment for possession, and three years after one that did. Verifiable income, a clean payment history and consistent references matter correspondingly more. Our tenant screening report covers credit, eviction filings, criminal background and employment verification. Screen first, then paper the tenancy with this lease — and see Washington DC tenant screening laws for the sequence the District requires.

Published by Tenant Screening Background Check

Established 2004 · 20+ Years · All U.S. States & Territories · Statute-Based · Attorney-Reviewed

A Private Eye Reports™ service trusted by landlords, property managers, and attorneys.