Free West Virginia Residential Lease Agreement

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A configurable West Virginia residential lease agreement that generates a signable multi-page PDF. Built to W. Va. Code 37-6 and 37-6A and to the case law that supplies the rest — no deposit cap, a return clock that is the shorter of sixty or forty-five days, and no entry statute at all.

West Virginia W. Va. Code 37-6 & 37-6A Case Law Verified Free PDF 2026 Edition

A West Virginia residential lease agreement is governed by something most states do not have: no uniform act at all. West Virginia never adopted the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act. What it has instead is four sources that have to be read together — W. Va. Code chapter 37 article 6, a nineteenth-century Landlord and Tenant article of thirty-one sections into which a single modern habitability section was inserted in 1978; chapter 37 article 6A, a six-section security deposit article; chapter 55 article 3A, the summary possession procedure; and decided case law, which is where the tenant’s two most important rights actually live. The implied warranty of habitability comes from Teller v. McCoy and the retaliatory-eviction defence comes from Imperial Colliery Co. v. Fout. A page that recites only chapter 37 article 6 is not just thin — it is wrong about what a West Virginia tenant can do and wrong about what a West Virginia landlord owes. This page labels every rule below as STATUTE or CASE LAW on its face, because in West Virginia the distinction changes the answer.

Complete the fields below to generate a West Virginia residential lease agreement as a signable multi-page PDF. Every field you fill is written into the document, and the generated lease cites the controlling West Virginia section or case at each point — including the seven places where the statute is silent and the lease has to supply the rule. Before handing over keys, run proper tenant screening. Pair the signed lease with a West Virginia move-in / move-out checklist, which does unusually heavy lifting in this state: the statutory duty in 37-6-30(a)(1) is to deliver the unit in a fit and habitable condition at the commencement of the tenancy and thereafter maintain it, and the damages measure the Supreme Court of Appeals adopted in Teller v. McCoy compares the value of the premises as warranted against their value as they actually were — so a dated move-in record is evidence on both duties at once.

No. West Virginia sets no statutory maximum on a residential security deposit. W. Va. Code 37-6A-1 through 37-6A-6 are the entire Residential Rental Security Deposits article — six sections — and not one of them limits the amount. There is no number of months, no fixed sum and no formula anywhere in the article. The figure in the lease is the figure.

This matters because a cap of one month’s rent is repeated on ranking West Virginia pages as though it were settled law. It is not in 37-6A-1, it is not in 37-6A-2, and it is not anywhere else. To be sure the negative was exhaustive rather than assumed, all six sections were fetched and read individually, and the Legislature’s own full-text search was run across all sixty-four chapters of the Code for the phrase “security deposit”. Eleven sections come back. Three of them are the article 6A sections above. The rest are about utility deposits for water and sewer customers, a local board of health, unclaimed property definitions, banking definitions and the Uniform Principal and Income Act. There is no cap because there is no section that could contain one.

Two consequences follow that are worth stating plainly. For a landlord, the absence of a cap is not an invitation — the deposit is still fully refundable money held subject to a closed list of permitted uses, and a wilful failure to account for it carries a penalty described below. For a tenant, the absence of a cap means the negotiation over the amount happens before signing or not at all, because nothing in West Virginia law will reduce it afterwards.

Not a flat sixty days. W. Va. Code 37-6A-2(a) requires that, upon termination of the tenancy and within the applicable notice period, the deposit less any deductions be delivered to the tenant together with a written itemization of those damages or other charges. The whole question is what “the applicable notice period” means, and the answer is in the definitions section.

W. Va. Code 37-6A-1(7) defines “notice period” as: (A) within sixty days of the termination of the tenancy; or (B) within forty-five days of the occupation of the premise by a subsequent tenant, whichever time period is shorter. So the deadline is a moving target that depends on how fast the unit is re-let. A landlord who leaves a unit empty for three months has sixty days from termination. A landlord who has a new tenant in the unit two weeks after move-out has forty-five days from that new tenant’s occupancy, which lands well before the sixty-day date. Every ranking page examined for this build states the deadline as sixty days and stops there.

There is one extension, and it has a condition most sources omit. W. Va. Code 37-6A-2(c) provides that where damages to the premises exceed the amount of the security deposit and require the services of a third party contractor, the landlord shall give written notice to the tenant advising of that fact within the applicable notice period. Only if that notice is given as the subsection prescribes does the landlord get an additional fifteen day period to provide an itemization of the damages and the cost of repair. Miss the written notice inside the notice period and the extension is simply unavailable — the fifteen days is not a general grace period, it is the reward for a specific written step.

How delivery works, and the six-month hold. Under 37-6A-2(g) delivery of the deposit or of any notice the section prescribes may be accomplished by personal delivery, or by mailing to the tenant’s last known address or the forwarding address the tenant provides. The statute puts the burden squarely on the tenant: “It shall be the responsibility of the tenant to provide an accurate address to the landlord.” If personal delivery is not reasonably possible and a mailed deposit or notice comes back non-deliverable, the landlord must hold it for six months, to be personally delivered to the tenant or the tenant’s authorized agent or attorney at the landlord’s place of business during normal business hours within seventy-two hours after a written request.

Two further rules in the same section are worth knowing. 37-6A-2(d) makes clear that nothing in the section entitles a tenant, on termination, to an immediate credit against a delinquent rent account in the amount of the deposit — a tenant cannot simply stop paying the last month and call it even. And 37-6A-2(e) binds the holder of the landlord’s interest at the time of termination regardless of how the interest is acquired or transferred, and regardless of any contract between the original landlord and the successor. A buyer of a West Virginia rental property inherits the deposit obligation whether or not the money came with the building. Where the tenant has an assignee or sublessee, 37-6A-2(f) entitles the landlord to hold a deposit from only one party.

W. Va. Code 37-6A-2(b) is a closed list of five permitted applications — and the fifth one lets the lease widen it. On termination the deposit may be applied only to:

• (1) Rent due, including the reasonable charges for late payment of rent specified in the rental agreement.
• (2) Damages the landlord has suffered by reason of the tenant’s noncompliance with the rental agreement, less reasonable wear and tear.
• (3) Unpaid utilities that were billed to and paid by the landlord, are the tenant’s obligation under the rental agreement, and are unpaid by the tenant.
• (4) Reasonable costs for the removal and storage of the tenant’s personal property, which the landlord may then dispose of under the procedure in 55-3A-3(h).
• (5) Other damages or charges as provided in the rental agreement, including but not limited to paying for the services of a third party contractor to repair damage caused by the tenant.

Subdivision (5) is the one to notice. West Virginia is one of a small number of states whose permitted-deduction list the lease itself can widen. That cuts both ways: a landlord who wants to charge for something outside items (1) to (4) must write it into the lease before the tenancy begins, and a tenant signing a West Virginia lease should read the damages clause knowing that it is not merely descriptive — it is doing statutory work. The generator asks for those additional charges explicitly and prints them, or prints an express statement that none were agreed and the deposit is limited to items (1) to (4).

The wear-and-tear carve-out in subdivision (2) is statutory, not a courtesy. A deduction for the ordinary deterioration of paint, carpet or fixtures over the life of a tenancy is outside the permission however the invoice describes it, and cannot be rescued by subdivision (5), which reaches “damages or charges” and not the passage of time.

Records, and the seventy-two hour rule. W. Va. Code 37-6A-3 requires the landlord to maintain and itemize records for each tenant of all deductions made by reason of a tenant’s noncompliance for one year after termination of the tenancy, and either to permit the tenant or the tenant’s authorized agent or attorney to inspect those records during normal business hours within seventy-two hours of a written request, or at the landlord’s option to provide a copy in the same seventy-two hours. It is a short, hard deadline that almost no West Virginia lease mentions, and the generated lease names the address where inspection happens.

It is not double damages, and it is not automatic. W. Va. Code 37-6A-5(a) applies only where the landlord fails to comply with a provision of article 6A and such noncompliance is wilful or not in good faith. Where that threshold is met the tenant is entitled to a judgment for two things: the amount of any unreturned security deposit, and — for annoyance or inconvenience resulting from the landlord’s nonconformance — an amount equal to one and one-half times the amount wrongfully withheld.

There is a set-off built into the same subdivision that competitor summaries omit: where the tenant owes rent to the landlord, the court shall order an amount equal to any award made to the tenant to be credited against the rent due. So a tenant who is behind in rent does not walk away with cash; the award reduces the debt.

37-6A-5(b) puts jurisdiction in the magistrate court or the circuit court of the county where the residential rental premises are located — magistrate court being the practical forum for most deposit disputes. And 37-6A-5(c) provides that the section does not limit rights or remedies available to a landlord or tenant under any other law, which is the doorway through which an ordinary contract claim, or a habitability claim under Teller v. McCoy, still runs.

Yes — unless the parties expressly agree in writing that it is nonrefundable. This is the sharpest drafting trap in West Virginia landlord-tenant law and it sits in a definitions section, which is exactly why it is missed. W. Va. Code 37-6A-1(14) defines “security deposit” to mean any refundable deposit of money furnished by a tenant to a landlord to secure performance of the terms and conditions of a rental agreement, or as security for damages to the leased premises. It then says the term does not include rent, a pet fee or an application fee — “Provided, That the parties expressly agree, in writing, that a pet fee or application fee is nonrefundable.”

Read the proviso carefully. The exclusion is conditional on the writing. A West Virginia landlord who collects a pet fee without an express written statement that it is nonrefundable has not collected a fee at all — he has collected a security deposit, and every duty in article 6A attaches to it: the closed permitted-use list in 37-6A-2(b), the written itemization, the notice period, the one-year record-keeping duty in 37-6A-3, and the wilful-withholding remedy in 37-6A-5. The form above turns that written designation into a tick-box, and the generated lease prints either the express designation or an express statement that none was made and the fee is therefore a deposit.

The same definition contains a second surprise that runs the other way. Security deposit does not include prepaid rent. Several neighbouring states sweep prepaid rent or last month’s rent into the deposit and count it against a cap; West Virginia does the opposite and excludes it outright. Since there is no cap in the first place, the practical effect is on the accounting rather than on the ceiling — prepaid rent is rent, and the article 6A itemization and notice-period duties do not attach to it. The form keeps prepaid rent in its own field so the two sums are never conflated.

Finally, 37-6A-1(2) defines an “application fee” as any deposit of money, however denominated, paid by a tenant to a landlord, lessor or agent for the purpose of being considered as a tenant for a dwelling unit. West Virginia sets no ceiling on it and imposes no refund duty. The only constraint on an application fee in this state is the written-nonrefundability rule above — which means an undesignated application fee is a security deposit that has to be accounted for at the end of a tenancy that may never have begun.

STATUTE. W. Va. Code 37-6-30(a) imposes seven duties on a residential landlord, and it is worth setting them out because two of them are conditional and no ranking page separates them:

• (1) At the commencement of a tenancy, deliver the dwelling unit and surrounding premises in a fit and habitable condition, and thereafter maintain the leased property in such condition.
• (2) Maintain the property to the requirements of applicable health, safety, fire and housing codes, unless the failure is the fault of the tenant, a member of the tenant’s family, or another person on the premises with the tenant’s consent.
• (3) In multiple housing units, keep clean, safe and in repair all common areas remaining under the landlord’s control that are maintained for the use and benefit of tenants.
• (4) Make all repairs necessary to keep the premises fit and habitable, unless necessitated primarily by a lack of reasonable care by the tenant or the tenant’s household or guests.
• (5) Maintain in good and safe working order all electrical, plumbing, sanitary, heating, ventilating, air-conditioning and other facilities and appliances, including elevators, supplied or required to be supplied by written or oral agreement or by law.
• (6) In multiple housing units, provide and maintain appropriate conveniences for the removal of ashes, garbage, rubbish and other waste.
• (7) With respect to dwelling units s