Free Delaware Lead Paint Disclosure

A Delaware lead paint disclosure is the federally mandated form a landlord delivers to a prospective tenant before any lease of residential property built before 1978. It carries the fixed federal lead warning statement, states the lessor’s actual knowledge of lead-based paint and hazards, lists the records being handed over, documents the tenant’s receipt of the EPA pamphlet Protect Your Family From Lead in Your Home, captures any agent’s acknowledgment, and is signed and dated by every party. Authority is 42 U.S.C. 4852d (Section 1018 of Title X, the Residential Lead-Based Paint Hazard Reduction Act of 1992), implemented at 40 CFR Part 745 Subpart F (EPA) and 24 CFR Part 35 Subpart A (HUD). Delaware is unusual: it has enacted a genuine state lead regime of its own at 25 Del. C. Chapter 54, requiring every pre-1978 rental to be certified lead safe or lead free — but that chapter is not yet implemented, and the dates published elsewhere are drawn from superseded drafts. This page separates what you owe today from what is coming, and cites the enacted text for both. See our Delaware landlord-tenant laws overview for the surrounding code. Generate the form below, then read on.

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Delaware lead paint disclosure overview

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes — and getting this right is the whole reason this page exists. Delaware is not one of the many states whose lead answer is simply “the duty is federal”. The General Assembly enacted 25 Del. C. Chapter 54, Lead-Based Paint Hazard Reduction, by 85 Del. Laws c. 98, approved 21 July 2025. It is codified. You can read Sections 5401 through 5413 in the Delaware Code today. It requires every rental unit constructed before 1 January 1978 to be certified lead free or lead safe by an approved lead inspector, with the certificate filed with the Department of Health and Social Services.

And yet it does not bind you today. Both halves of that sentence are true at once, and that is precisely what every other source on this topic fumbles. The chapter is enacted law that has not been implemented. If you read the chapter on the state’s own website, every operative section carries a bracketed editorial note — “[For implementation of this section, see 85 Del. Laws, c. 98, Section 5(2)]” — and the dates inside the sections are not dates at all. Section 5402 literally reads “Starting after the [implementation date under 85 Del. Laws, c. 98, Section 5(2)]”. The statute is a form with the date left blank.

To find the date, you have to leave the code entirely and read the uncodified session law. That is where the answer lives, and it is why so few pages have it right.

Section 5 of 85 Del. Laws c. 98 is the provision that controls everything. Here is what it actually says, from the enacted session law published by the state:

Read carefully, that provision decides four things.

The Act itself is already effective. “Effective immediately” as of 21 July 2025. What is deferred is implementation of the listed sections. This distinction is why you can read the chapter in the code and still owe nothing under it.

Only two things started immediately. Section 5410 — the feasibility committee — and Section 2612(d)(6) of Title 16. Everything a landlord would recognise as a duty is in the deferred bucket: the certification requirements at Sections 5402 and 5403, the certification disclosure at Section 5406, the educational-material duty at Section 5407, the new landlord obligation at Section 5305(a)(6), and the summary-possession documentation at Section 5704A.

The trigger is whichever comes first. Either the Delaware State Housing Authority’s Director publishes a notice in the Register of Regulations confirming that funding and final regulations are in place — and then you get twelve months’ grace — or the calendar simply reaches 1 March 2028, whichever happens sooner. Note what the notice route requires: not just regulations, but “all necessary legislation and appropriations”. The legislature built in an acknowledgment that the chapter needs money before it can bite.

The date is not carved in stone. Section 5(2) carries the words “unless otherwise provided by a subsequent act of the General Assembly”, and Section 5410 tasks a standing committee with reporting on feasibility and, if it thinks the deadlines are not achievable, proposing replacements — annually, on 1 January of each year through 1 January 2030. The 2028 backstop is a planning date, not a promise.

What we could not verify, stated plainly. We could not confirm whether the Housing Authority’s Register notice has been published, because the Delaware Register’s search interface is rendered client-side and returns no content to a direct request, and the health department’s landlord lead pages did not resolve when we checked. Absent a verified notice, 1 March 2028 is the statutory backstop and the earlier trigger remains open. If the notice has published, your date is twelve months from that publication and could be considerably sooner. Confirm the current position with the Department of Health and Social Services or the Housing Authority before you plan around either date — and treat any page that states a single confident date without showing you Section 5(2) as unreliable.

The chapter is worth understanding now, because the compliance runway is measured in years and the inspection capacity it depends on does not yet exist. Here is the shape of it, from the enacted text.

Certification: the core duty

Every rental unit constructed before 1 January 1978 must be certified by an approved lead inspector as either lead free or lead safe, with the certificate filed with the Department. The certificate must name the landlord and any property manager, the unit address, the inspector, the issue date, the inspection date, and which status was found. The deadline has two layers: the certificate must be obtained and filed before the commencement of a rental agreement with a new tenant, and in any event no more than four years after the implementation date.

Delaware splits owners by portfolio size, not building age. A small property owner owns or controls 19 or fewer rental units (25 Del. C. 5401(16)); a large property owner owns or controls 20 or more (25 Del. C. 5401(6)). The certification duty for each is then set out separately — small owners at 25 Del. C. 5402, large owners at 25 Del. C. 5403. The core duty is the same; the penalties and the relief differ sharply.

Lead free versus lead safe — not interchangeable

These are defined separately at 25 Del. C. 5401 and the gap between them is the most practically important thing in the chapter. Lead free means lead is not present in any form anywhere in the rental unit or premises — an absolute, permanent finding. Lead safe means only that a lead inspector determined the unit and premises had no lead-based paint hazard at the time of the inspection. It is a snapshot.

That is why 25 Del. C. 5405 treats them differently. A lead safe unit must be recertified before any rental agreement beginning more than four years after its last certification, whenever an elevated blood lead level is found in someone residing in the unit, and whenever a lead-based paint hazard is discovered. A lead free unit needs recertification only in the latter two circumstances. Lead safe is a subscription; lead free is a purchase.

The build-date definition is Delaware’s own — and it differs from the federal one

This is a genuine trap for owners who assume the state simply copied the federal trigger. The federal rule at 40 CFR 745.103 defines target housing by when the housing was “constructed prior to 1978”. Delaware defines it differently: under 25 Del. C. 5401(2), “constructed” means the date on which a construction permit was obtained, and if no permit was obtained, the date construction started. Section 5401(14) then defines a “rental unit constructed before” a given date by reference to that permit date.

The practical consequence: a building permitted in December 1977 and completed in 1979 is, for Chapter 54 purposes, constructed before 1 January 1978. Your permit file, not your certificate of occupancy, is the document that decides. Owners of late-1970s stock should pull permits now rather than assume the completion date governs.

Penalties — fixed in the statute, and steeply tiered

Unlike the federal civil penalties, Delaware’s figures are written into the statute text itself rather than adjusted annually, so they can be quoted safely. Note the drafting difference: the certification penalties are capped (“up to”), while the 5406(b) and 5407(b) figures are fixed daily amounts. In every case the Department retains discretion over whether to assess.

The 30-day warning is mandatory. Both 25 Del. C. 5402(c)(4) and 5403(h) require the Department to notify the landlord at least 30 days before it begins assessing any civil penalty, and that notice must offer the opportunity to fix the violation, seek a deferment, or apply for a grant or loan. You are not going to be ambushed by a penalty; you will be warned, and the statutory penalty starts only if you sit on the warning.

Deferments: the pressure valve

No civil penalty may be imposed if the Department issued a certificate deferment before the certification date arrived. Small and large owners have the same three grounds, at 25 Del. C. 5402(c)(2) and 5403(d)(1) respectively: no approved inspectors are available (you must show you contacted at least three), no certified abatement contractors are available (again, at least three), or that compliance is a significant economic burden. That last term is itself defined at 25 Del. C. 5401(15), weighing total compliance cost, the owner’s overall financial resources, and the risk to tenant health if the work is delayed. Small owners have a fourth ground — 5402(c)(2)d, the multi-unit sampling route at 5402(g), described below.

A note on a widely repeated error. The published synopsis of HS 1 for HB 70 states that “only a small property owner may request a certificate deferral for economic reasons”, and pages that summarise the bill repeat it. The enacted text does not say that. 25 Del. C. 5403(d)(1)b gives a large property owner the significant-economic-burden ground in terms materially identical to the small-owner provision. Read the statute, not the synopsis.

One provision deserves emphasis, and it appears in both sections: if the grant and loan program has no funds and compliance is a significant economic burden, the statute says the landlord must receive a deferment (25 Del. C. 5402(c)(2)b; 5403(d)(1)b). That is mandatory language, not discretionary.

Where the two sections genuinely diverge is renewal. A deferment may not exceed six months either way. But 25 Del. C. 5402(c)(3) lets the Department issue a further deferment to a small owner while the circumstances persist and the landlord acts in good faith. The large-owner provision, 5403(d)(2), carries no renewal limb at all — it caps the deferment at six months and limits it to the time actually needed to get the inspection or the work done. A large owner should not plan on rolling deferments.

The small-owner sampling option

Where a small property owner’s property is a multi-unit building, 25 Del. C. 5402(g) lets the inspector select five units at random instead of inspecting all of them. If all five come back lead safe, only those five are certified and the remainder may receive a deferral of up to four years — and the landlord must tell every tenant in a deferred unit that their unit was not inspected. If any of the five shows a lead-based paint hazard, the sampling option collapses and every unit in the building must be inspected and certified.

Money: grants, loans, and a rent freeze that follows the building

25 Del. C. 5408 creates a lead-based paint hazard control grant and loan program covering certification, remediation or abatement, and alternative housing. The tiers are steep: an owner of 5 or fewer units may be awarded up to 100% of compliance costs; an owner of 6 to 19 units up to 50%; a large owner may receive no grant at all and at most a loan of up to 10% of costs, and only on a showing of significant economic burden. Preference goes to units that are the primary residence of children under six, pregnant individuals, or tenants regularly visited by a child under six — and “regularly visited” is defined at 25 Del. C. 5401(12) as at least twice a week for three or more hours, at least ten weeks a year.

There is a deadline on the generosity. Small owners receive grants only until 1 January 2029; after that, small owners receive loans only. Given the implementation date may be as late as March 2028, the grant window could be under a year wide. Owners who wait are likely to be borrowing rather than receiving.

And the money has a string attached that survives a sale. Take a grant or loan and 25 Del. C. 5408(c) bars you from raising the rent on that property for three years from the date of the inspection that showed the need for the work. Under 5408(g), if you sell within that window, the transferee and any subsequent transferee are equally barred until the three years expire. A Delaware buyer’s diligence will need to ask whether the seller took lead money, because the freeze rides with the building.

Alternative housing, access, and eviction

Where an inspection shows the unit is uninhabitable because of a lead-based paint hazard, the landlord must provide alternative housing before or during the work, with at least 10 days advance notice before the tenant must move in or out. Tenants owe a corresponding duty: 25 Del. C. 5402(e) and 5403(f) require a tenant to permit reasonable access for inspection, consistent with the entry rules at 25 Del. C. 5509 — see our Delaware landlord entry laws guide for how that notice works in practice.

The sharpest downstream provision is 25 Del. C. 5704A: once implemented, a landlord filing a complaint for possession must give the court documentation showing the property complies with Chapter 54. The exception is narrow and sensible — if the reason for the complaint is that the tenant would not give access to let you comply, you do not need the documentation. Delaware is wiring lead compliance into the summary-possession process itself; an uncertified pre-1978 unit will become an awkward place to file an eviction from. Our Delaware eviction notice laws guide covers the rest of that process.

Antidiscrimination and the anti-loophole rule

25 Del. C. 5409 makes it unlawful to discriminate against someone for complaining or participating in a lead proceeding, and — importantly — unlawful to discriminate against a person because they or someone living with them has, or is perceived to have, an elevated blood lead level. That reaches applicants, not just sitting tenants. A violation is a discriminatory housing practice under Chapter 46 of Title 6. Landlords tempted to screen out families with a lead history should read our Delaware tenant screening laws guide first; this is a fast route to a fair-housing complaint.

Finally, 25 Del. C. 5413 anticipates the obvious dodge. Owners must disclose their beneficial owner and any affiliation with other property owners, any attempt to partition or transfer ownership to avoid large-owner classification is itself a violation, and units transferred to a spouse, child, or parent still count toward the transferor’s total. Splitting a 24-unit portfolio into two LLCs will not make you a small owner.

Chapter 54 is the future. 16 Del. C. Chapter 26, the Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Act, is the present. Sources that blur “Delaware lead law” into a single thing miss that these are two different regimes with different triggers, and only one of them can reach you right now.

The distinction is this: Chapter 26 is not triggered by leasing at all. It is triggered by a child’s elevated blood lead level. Under 16 Del. C. 2601(b)(2), that means a blood lead level at or above 3.5 micrograms per deciliter, or the CDC’s reference value, whichever is lower. Health-care providers must screen children at around 12 and 24 months, and results flow into a universal reporting system. When a case surfaces, the Delaware State Lead-Based Paint Program works backwards to the lead-exposure site — the place the child was most likely exposed. If that is your rental, Chapter 26 arrives at your door regardless of how flawless your leasing paperwork was.

What it then requires of an owner, from the enacted text:

• Access is mandatory (16 Del. C. 2612(a)(3)). Where a risk assessment shows a lead-based paint hazard, the Program informs the owner that abatement or remediation may be undertaken — funded by the State — and the owner “is required to take all steps necessary to make the property accessible and available” to the people doing the work.
• Ignoring the Program is a crime, not a fee (16 Del. C. 2612(b)). An owner’s failure to comply with the Program’s deadlines “constitutes a criminal nuisance which adversely impacts the community” under 10 Del. C. 7111. A court finding to that effect also forfeits the owner’s right to state-funded abatement and shifts the whole cost onto the owner. This is the single most severe lead provision currently in force in Delaware, and almost nobody writes about it.
• A three-year rent freeze (16 Del. C. 2612(f)). An owner of a multi-unit property, or a property rented to a third party in the year before notification, whose property received abatement at State expense, cannot increase any tenant’s rent for three years from notification. There is an escape: pay the Program’s estimated cost within 30 days of being told what it is, and the freeze does not apply. Our Delaware rent increase laws guide covers the ordinary notice rules this overrides.

Note the age asymmetry worth catching: 16 Del. C. 2612(a)(2) has the Program assess a lead-exposure site “constructed before January 1, 1979” — a year later than the federal 1978 trigger and a year later than Chapter 54’s own cutoff. Delaware’s three lead provisions use three subtly different build-date tests. Do not assume one answer covers all of them.

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

Note what is not in that list: no inspection window, no testing requirement, no filing with any agency, and no obligation to remediate. The federal rule is an information-transfer rule. It makes you tell the truth about what you know and hand over what you hold; it does not make you go looking. Delaware’s Chapter 54 is the opposite kind of rule — it makes you go looking — which is exactly why it is such a significant change for the state, and why the two must not be muddled.

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

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

How to verify the build year in Delaware. The county assessment record — New Castle, Kent, or Sussex — is the fastest starting point, and the original certificate of occupancy, the building permit file, and title records also establish it. Remember the wrinkle covered above: for federal purposes the question is when the housing was constructed, but for Chapter 54 purposes 25 Del. C. 5401(2) makes the permit date the test. Keep both facts in the file. The lessor carries the burden of correctly identifying target housing — “I think it was around 1980” is not a defence, and a guess that turns out wrong is a knowing violation waiting to happen.

Renovation does not reset the clock. A 1962 building stripped to the studs and rebuilt in 2001 is still target housing. The original construction date controls, not the date of the most recent renovation. This trips up owners of heavily rehabbed older stock constantly.

Common areas in multi-unit buildings. If the building predates 1978, the disclosure scope reaches the common areas as well as the leased unit — hallways, stairwells, porches, laundry rooms, and shared storage. This has a practical consequence for records, covered below: a building-wide evaluation is disclosable to every tenant in the building, not just the one whose unit it sampled.

Delaware context. Delaware’s pre-1978 stock is heavily concentrated in Wilmington and the older river and rail towns — substantial parts of New Castle County, plus Dover, Newark, Milford, Seaford, and the older cores of the coastal towns. Wilmington in particular carries a large share of the state’s oldest housing, which is why the certification chapter exists at all. Portfolio landlords with mixed-vintage holdings are the ones who get caught, because the compliance answer differs unit by unit, and because Chapter 54’s small-versus-large split turns on a portfolio count that many owners have never formally made.

Even pre-1978 property can fall outside the federal rule. The carve-outs are narrow, and they come from two different places in the regulation — which is why competing lists of “the lead paint exemptions” disagree with one another. Some are exclusions written into the definition of target housing at 40 CFR 745.103: a unit that meets one of those was never target housing in the first place. The others are transaction-level exemptions listed at 40 CFR 745.101: the housing is target housing, but this particular deal is outside the subpart. The compliance answer is often the same either way, but knowing which provision governs tells you which text to read and which facts matter.

• Housing built in 1978 or later (40 CFR 745.103). Not target housing at all.
• Zero-bedroom dwellings (40 CFR 745.103, definitional). A dwelling in which the living area is not separated from the sleeping area — the regulation names efficiencies, studio apartments, dormitory housing, military barracks, and rentals of individual rooms in residential dwellings. This exclusion became conditional when 745.103 was amended effective January 13, 2025 (89 FR 89416): the child-under-six condition now attaches to this limb too, so a 0-bedroom dwelling is target housing where a child under six resides or is expected. It sat outside target housing whether or not a young child lived there only under the pre-2025 rule, which stale charts still repeat.
• Housing for the elderly or persons with disabilities (40 CFR 745.103, definitional) — unless any child who is less than 6 years of age resides or is expected to reside in such housing. This is the only exclusion in the definition that carries a child condition.
• Short-term leases of 100 days or less (40 CFR 745.101(c)), where no lease renewal or extension can occur. Delaware’s beach rental market lives here — a genuine one-week Rehoboth or Bethany summer let with no renewal right typically qualifies. A month-to-month tenancy does not, because it renews.
• Certified lead-free housing (40 CFR 745.101(b)). Property inspected by a certified inspector and found free of lead-based paint. Retain the certification; it is the only proof of the exemption. Note the pleasing overlap ahead: a Chapter 54 lead free certificate will, in substance, also be the artefact that supports this federal exemption.
• Qualifying lease renewals (40 CFR 745.101(d)). A renewal of an existing lease where the lessor has previously disclosed all information required under 745.107 and where no new information described in 745.107 has come into the lessor’s possession. Watch the cross-reference: 745.101(d) points at 745.107, not at 745.113(b); pages that cite 745.113(b) here have followed the wrong thread. If anything new reached you, the exemption is gone.
• Foreclosure sales (40 CFR 745.101(a)). Exempt — but note this is a sales exemption, and it is the one most often misread on rental pages. A purchaser at foreclosure who then leases the pre-1978 property owes the tenant the full disclosure.

This is the most widespread error on the lead-disclosure internet, and it is worth being precise about, because form vendors routinely bolt a “10-day inspection opportunity” checkbox onto rental disclosures — and some pre-tick it on the landlord’s behalf, which manufactures a tenant acknowledgment of a right that does not exist.

Read the regulation. 40 CFR 745.110(a) provides that before a purchaser is obligated under any contract to purchase target housing, the seller shall permit the purchaser a 10-day period (unless the parties mutually agree, in writing, upon a different period of time) to conduct a risk assessment or inspection for the presence of lead-based paint and/or lead-based paint hazards. Purchaser. Seller. Purchase. Every operative noun is a sales noun. The statute behind it, 42 U.S.C. 4852d(a)(1)(C), is scoped the same way.

Now read the lessor rules. 40 CFR 745.113(b) — the six elements listed earlier — contains no inspection-opportunity item. Neither does the EPA lessor disclosure form. The sales counterpart at 745.113(a)(5) does carry a received-or-waived statement; the lease provision has no equivalent, and that asymmetry is deliberate rather than an oversight.

What this means for you. A Delaware landlord owes a prospective tenant no statutory inspection window. You may offer one voluntarily, and doing so is a reasonable gesture for a tenant who asks — but do not describe it as a federal right, and do not put a line on your disclosure asserting the tenant received or waived a right the rule never gave them. A form that documents a fictitious waiver is worse than one that stays silent: it is an inaccurate statement on a document every party signs certifying accuracy.

Complete the fields below to generate a federally compliant Delaware lead paint disclosure. The generated PDF reproduces the lead warning statement, the lessor’s disclosure items, the lessee’s acknowledgment items, the agent’s acknowledgment, and the certification of accuracy with signature and date lines for each party.

40 CFR 745.113(c) requires the lessor to retain a copy of the completed disclosure for no less than three years from the commencement date of the leasing period. That is the entire federal retention requirement, and it is also the single highest-leverage thing in this whole guide, because the signed disclosure is the only artefact that proves you complied.

Think about how a lead dispute actually unfolds. A tenant alleges no disclosure. There is no agency database to consult; nothing gets filed anywhere. The dispute reduces to whether you can produce a signed document. If you can, the claim usually ends. If you cannot, you are defending a knowing-violation allegation with your word against theirs, and the statute puts treble damages and fee-shifting on the other side of that argument.

What belongs in the file:

• The executed disclosure with every party’s initials, signatures, and dates.
• A note identifying which pamphlet edition was delivered, and how.
• Copies of every record and report you handed to the lessee.
• The lease itself, if the disclosure was inserted rather than attached.
• For electronic delivery: the consent record and the delivery/access log.
• For Delaware specifically: the construction permit date, and your portfolio unit count as of the implementation date.

The rule itself says the three years is not the measure of your exposure. 40 CFR 745.113(c)(2) provides that the recordkeeping requirement “is not intended to place any limitations on civil suits under the Act, or to otherwise affect a lessee’s or purchaser’s rights under the civil penalty provisions of 42 U.S.C. 4852d(b)(3).” Read that carefully, because it is the sentence that should govern your retention policy: three years is how long you are required to keep the file, not how long you can be sued. The tenant’s treble-damages right is expressly unaffected by the retention clock running out. A landlord who shreds the file on the three-year anniversary has discharged the duty to retain while keeping every bit of the liability that file would have defended.

Practical retention advice. Three years is a floor, not a target. A lead-poisoning claim brought on behalf of a minor can surface many years after the tenancy ends. Retention is nearly free; destroy the file on the three-year anniversary and you have optimised for the wrong risk. Keep it for the life of ownership and hand the file over at sale — which, in Delaware, a buyer is going to start asking for in any event once certification becomes a condition of leasing.

Federal law requires the lessor to give the prospective lessee the EPA pamphlet Protect Your Family From Lead in Your Home before any lease obligation attaches. This is a separate duty from the disclosure form, and failing it is a separate violation supporting independent damages. Handing over a beautifully executed disclosure without the pamphlet is a violation.

Where to get it. The pamphlet is published jointly by EPA, HUD, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission and is free at epa.gov/lead. It is available in English, Spanish, and additional languages. EPA refreshed the pamphlet in recent years; deliver the current edition rather than a decade-old PDF sitting in your templates folder.

Language. The disclosure must be provided in the language of the contract. An English lease takes the English pamphlet; a Spanish lease takes the Spanish edition. Landlords marketing to non-English-speaking tenants should match the pamphlet to the lease language, not to the conversation.

Delivery. Hand delivery with the lessee initialing receipt is the gold standard. Electronic delivery is permitted subject to the E-SIGN conditions covered below. What does not satisfy the rule is pointing at a website: posting a link is not delivery. The pamphlet must be transmitted as a complete document, on paper or electronically.

A Delaware note. When Chapter 54 is implemented, 25 Del. C. 5407 will layer a second educational-material duty on top of this one: the landlord must provide whatever material the Department’s regulations and EPA require, before the tenant occupies the unit, and every pre-1978 rental agreement must require the tenant to acknowledge receiving it. In other words the federal pamphlet duty does not go away — it acquires a Delaware companion with its own civil penalty of $20 per day under 25 Del. C. 5407(b). Build the acknowledgment into your lease template now and you will not have to revisit it.

The federal rule does not require you to test for lead, and it does not require you to remove it. EPA states this plainly: the disclosure rule does not require sellers or landlords to test or remove lead-based paint or lead-based paint hazards, and it does not cancel leasing or sales contracts. It is a disclosure rule, not an abatement rule.

The standard is actual knowledge, not constructive knowledge and not a duty to investigate. If the unit has never been tested and you hold no reports, “no knowledge” is the honest, lawful answer, and checking it exposes you to nothing.

The trap is the opposite direction. “No knowledge” becomes fraud when you actually know something:

• You hold a risk assessment, inspection report, or abatement record for the unit or the building.
• A previous tenant’s child had an elevated blood-lead result traced to the unit — which in Delaware also means the Lead-Based Paint Program has a file on your property.
• A code-enforcement notice, insurance report, or contractor flagged deteriorated paint.
• You know the property was tested and the report is inconvenient, so you never collected it.

Note the asymmetry the federal rule creates. Testing is optional; disclosing is not. A landlord who tests and finds lead must disclose it, and many owners conclude — rationally — that they would rather not know. That is lawful today. What is not lawful is knowing and papering over it, because 42 U.S.C. 4852d(b)(3) attaches its treble-damages remedy to knowing violations, and a fact-finder deciding what you knew will look at every document in your file.

Delaware is about to close this door, and that is the strategic point. The “I would rather not know” posture is a rational response to a rule that only punishes knowledge. Chapter 54 inverts the incentive: once implemented, a pre-1978 Delaware rental cannot be leased to a new tenant without a certificate from an inspector, so the knowledge arrives whether you wanted it or not — and once it arrives, the federal disclosure duty attaches to it permanently. Owners planning to ride out the deadline should understand that the first inspection converts every future “no knowledge” answer into a false statement.

Electronic disclosure and e-signature are permitted. The signed electronic disclosure is the same legally binding document as a paper one, under the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act, 15 U.S.C. 7001. Almost no competing guide states the conditions EPA attaches, so here they are.

If you provide the required disclosure information electronically, EPA expects you to give the tenant:

• A clear statement of the right to receive paper documents. Electronic delivery is the tenant’s option, not your default imposition.
• The procedure to withdraw consent, and the consequences of withdrawing. Spelled out, not implied.
• How to access and retain the electronic records. A file the tenant cannot open or keep has not been delivered.
• Consent demonstrating they can actually access the materials. You need affirmative consent showing the tenant can receive the forms in the format you are using.

The underlying principle: the use of electronic technology must give the tenant complete access to all disclosure materials. A portal link buried in a welcome email, a PDF the tenant cannot download, or an e-sign flow that shows the signature page without the pamphlet all fail that test even though a signature comes back.

Retention is identical. Three years, same as paper — but electronic records need a real home. An e-signature vendor account you stop paying for is not a retention plan. Export the executed PDF and the audit trail into storage you control.

The disclosure rule governs leasing. A different rule governs work on the building, and Delaware landlords routinely comply with the first while breaching the second.

The RRP rule. The EPA Renovation, Repair and Painting rule at 40 CFR Part 745 Subpart E applies to renovation, repair, or painting that disturbs painted surfaces in pre-1978 target housing. Above the de minimis threshold, the work must be performed by an EPA-certified firm using certified renovators and lead-safe work practices — containment, prohibited practices such as open-flame burning and uncontained power sanding, and cleaning verification. This is not a paperwork rule; it dictates how the work is physically done, and it applies to a landlord’s own maintenance staff, not just outside contractors.

The 60-day information duty. Where the renovation affects an occupied pre-1978 unit, the occupants must receive lead hazard information no more than 60 days before work begins. This duty runs to sitting tenants who already have a lease and already received their leasing disclosure years ago.

Common areas trigger building-wide notice. If the work affects common areas of a pre-1978 multi-unit building, notice must go to every unit in the building describing the nature and location of the work and the dates it is expected to begin and end. Every unit — not merely the ones adjacent to the work.

Note also that entering an occupied unit to carry out that work is its own compliance question under the Delaware Residential Landlord-Tenant Code — see our Delaware landlord entry laws guide for the notice a landlord owes before entering to renovate.

Why it matters in Delaware, twice over. Repainting between tenancies is the most routine task in the business, and scraping a 1958 Wilmington rowhouse’s window trim with in-house staff and no certification is an RRP violation with its own penalty exposure, entirely independent of a flawless leasing disclosure. There is also a second-order effect that Delaware sharpens: work that disturbs paint can create the very hazard you then have to disclose to the next tenant, it can generate the records that make “no knowledge” unavailable to you going forward, and — once Chapter 54 is live — discovering a lead-based paint hazard is itself an event that forces recertification of a lead safe unit under 25 Del. C. 5405(a)(3). A careless repaint can cost you your certificate.

Search this topic and you will be told the federal penalty is a specific number per violation. You will see several different numbers, none dated, most copied from an old page. Here is the accurate structure, which has two entirely separate limbs.

Limb one: the tenant’s private action, 42 U.S.C. 4852d(b)(3). Any person who knowingly violates the section is jointly and severally liable to the purchaser or lessee for three times the amount of damages that person incurred. This multiplier is written into the statute; it does not move with inflation. Section 4852d(b)(4) adds that a court may award court costs together with reasonable attorney fees and expert witness fees to a prevailing plaintiff. The fee-shifting is what makes small disclosure violations economically worth suing over.

Limb two: government civil money penalties. These are assessed by EPA and HUD, and they are inflation-adjusted — annually, under the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act, with the operative amounts published in the table at 40 CFR 19.4 for EPA-assessed penalties. Knowing violations can also carry criminal exposure.

The asymmetry is what should drive behaviour. Completing this form correctly costs fifteen minutes. The downside is a treble-damages judgment with the tenant’s legal fees attached, plus an agency penalty, plus — if a child was actually poisoned — a tort claim in which the disclosure violation supplies a ready-made negligence theory, and in Delaware a Lead-Based Paint Program file with your name on it.

EPA and HUD share enforcement of the federal disclosure rule. EPA’s Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics and HUD’s Office of Lead Hazard Control and Healthy Homes run the programme jointly, and enforcement has historically concentrated on larger landlords and property managers, where a single practice failure replicates across hundreds of tenancies and produces a large per-violation multiplier.

How a case starts. Rarely with an inspector at the door. Usually one of four ways: a tenant reports a missing disclosure; a child’s elevated blood-lead result triggers a health-department investigation that works backwards to the paperwork; a private lawsuit’s discovery exposes a systemic gap; or an agency initiative targets a market and requests files from a portfolio owner.

The second route is the one Delaware has industrialised. Because 16 Del. C. Chapter 26 requires screening at around 12 and 24 months and routes every result into a universal reporting system, an elevated result reliably produces a Program investigation that identifies the lead-exposure site. That investigation is looking for a hazard, not for your paperwork — but it produces a documented finding about your property, and that finding is precisely the “actual knowledge” that makes any future “no knowledge” disclosure a false statement. In Delaware, the health system is an efficient discovery mechanism for disclosure violations, and it will get more efficient once certificates are filed with the Department under Chapter 54 and the annual reporting under 25 Del. C. 5412 begins.

Where violations get reported. Tenants can report a federal disclosure violation to EPA or to HUD through the enforcement contacts published on their lead pages. The National Lead Information Center, 1-800-424-LEAD, fields questions from both landlords and tenants. Nothing about the process requires the tenant to hire a lawyer first, which is precisely why a clean file matters more than a good argument.

What an inquiry asks for. Signed disclosures for the tenancies in scope, proof of pamphlet delivery, and the records you disclosed or certified you did not have. That is it. An owner who can produce the file usually ends the matter at the document-request stage; an owner who cannot is negotiating over the size of the penalty, not whether there is one.

Federal disclosure is the compliance floor, not the whole picture. Delaware habitability law applies independently to the underlying condition of the paint.

25 Del. C. 5305 sets the landlord’s obligations relating to the rental unit: comply with applicable state and local codes governing maintenance and use, provide a unit that does not endanger the health, welfare or safety of tenants and is fit for the purpose expressly rented, keep common areas clean and sanitary, and make repairs to keep the unit in the condition it ought by law or agreement to have been. Deteriorated lead-based paint — peeling, chipping, chalking, cracking, or damaged — can rise to a habitability defect under those provisions on its own. Our Delaware habitability laws guide covers the tenant remedies that follow.

And here is where the two threads finally converge. Chapter 54 did not just create a standalone chapter; 85 Del. Laws c. 98 also inserted a new subsection into that habitability provision. Once implemented, 25 Del. C. 5305(a)(6) will require the landlord to “provide a rental unit that is free of lead-based paint hazards and certified as lead safe or lead free as required by Chapter 54 of this title” — at all times during the tenancy. That is a significant piece of drafting. It converts lead certification from a freestanding regulatory box-tick into a habitability obligation, which means it plugs directly into the ordinary tenant remedies in Chapter 53 rather than depending solely on the Department to enforce it. Notice too that 5305(a)(6) sits in the deferred bucket under Section 5(2), so it arrives on the same date as the rest.

The distinction landlords miss today: disclosure and habitability are independent. Disclosing a hazard does not licence you to leave it in place. A perfectly executed disclosure that says “known lead-based paint present, peeling in the second bedroom” is a complete defence to a disclosure claim and simultaneously a written admission in a habitability claim. Deteriorated paint in a pre-1978 Delaware unit should be remediated by a certified firm before re-rental — both to comply with the RRP rule and to remove the habitability exposure that disclosure does nothing to cure.

The federal Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. 3601 et seq., adds one more edge. It prohibits familial-status discrimination, and a landlord who steers families with young children away from pre-1978 units to dodge lead obligations has swapped a disclosure problem for a fair-housing complaint — a considerably worse trade. Delaware sharpens that further through 25 Del. C. 5409’s elevated-blood-lead-level protection, which reaches prospective tenants directly.

Assuming Delaware has no lead law

The most Delaware-specific error on this page. Chapter 54 is enacted, codified, and substantial. An owner who concludes “the duty is federal” and stops reading will not have a certificate, an inspector booked, or a grant application in when the implementation date arrives — and the grant money for small owners stops flowing on 1 January 2029 regardless.

Assuming Delaware’s lead law binds you today

The opposite error, and just as costly in wasted effort. The chapter is not implemented. There is no certificate to file yet, no inspector list to consult, and no penalty to incur. Vendors selling “Delaware lead compliance” services for a duty that does not yet exist are selling you next year’s problem at this year’s prices.

Trusting a published Chapter 54 date

The dates circulating — 1 July 2028, and the 1950/1960 vintage tiers — are genuine text from HB 70 and HS 1 for HB 70, both of which were superseded before passage. Even the substitute bill’s own Section 5 was replaced before enactment. If a source gives you a date without showing you 85 Del. Laws c. 98 Section 5(2), it has not read the controlling provision.

Skipping disclosure on a pre-1978 unit

The most common violation, and the one with the worst risk-to-effort ratio. There is no penalty for over-disclosing and a severe one for guessing wrong. When the build year is uncertain, deliver the form.

Delivering it at signing instead of before

The disclosure must be delivered before the lessee is obligated under the lease. A disclosure produced with the lease packet at the signing table, signed in the same motion as the lease, does not give the tenant the pre-obligation information the rule exists to provide. Send it in advance and let the tenant read it.

Wrong build-year assumption — and the wrong build-year test

“Around 1980” is not a defence. Worse in Delaware: the federal rule asks when the housing was constructed, while 25 Del. C. 5401(2) asks when the construction permit was obtained, and 16 Del. C. 2612(a)(2) uses a 1979 cutoff for Program risk assessments. Three provisions, three tests. Get the permit into the file.

Miscounting your portfolio

Nineteen units versus twenty is the difference between a $100-per-day civil penalty ceiling and a $1000-per-day one, and between a possible 100% grant and no grant at all. The count is of units you own or control, and 25 Del. C. 5413 counts units you transfer to a spouse, child, or parent as still yours. Do the count properly and document it.

Failing to provide the EPA pamphlet

The form alone is not compliance. The pamphlet is a distinct requirement and a distinct violation, and substituting your own lead handout does not satisfy it.

Verbal or implied disclosure

Disclosure must be written, signed, and retained. Conversations, text messages, and oral assurances do not satisfy 40 CFR 745.113 — and cannot be produced three years later when an inquiry asks for the file.

Rewriting the lead warning statement

The language at 40 CFR 745.113(b)(1) is prescribed. Tightening it, modernising it, or folding it into your lease’s own warranty language can defeat the disclosure. Reproduce it as written.

Pre-ticking the tenant’s acknowledgments

A landlord cannot acknowledge, on the tenant’s behalf, that the tenant received the pamphlet. Forms that invite you to do this create a false statement on a document certified for accuracy by every signatory. The acknowledgment items belong to the lessee and are completed by the lessee.

Treating “no knowledge” as a place to hide

Honest when nothing is known; fraud when something is. A landlord aware of prior peeling paint, a prior report, or a child’s elevated blood-lead result cannot check “no knowledge” and expect it to hold — and in Delaware, a Lead-Based Paint Program investigation leaves a documented trail of exactly that knowledge.

Failing to disclose to every lessee

If multiple tenants sign the lease, each must receive the disclosure and pamphlet and each must sign the acknowledgment. One signature on a four-tenant lease leaves three undisclosed tenancies.

Forgetting the records for the rest of the building

A building-wide evaluation covering common areas or other units is disclosable to this tenant. Owners routinely disclose the unit-specific file and sit on the building report.

Renovating without the RRP rule

Compliance with the leasing disclosure says nothing about compliance when your maintenance crew sands pre-1978 window trim. Separate rule, separate certification, separate penalty — and, once Chapter 54 lands, a possible trigger for recertification.

Tenants of Delaware pre-1978 rentals hold meaningful rights under federal and state law. Landlords benefit from understanding them, because they define the consequences of a defective form.

The right to the disclosure before being obligated

Delivery must precede the lessee’s obligation under the lease. A disclosure produced afterwards does not satisfy 40 CFR 745.113, and the timing violation stands on its own even where the substance was accurate.

The right to the EPA pamphlet

Independent of the form. Non-delivery is a separate violation supporting separate damages.

The right to triple damages plus fees

Under 42 U.S.C. 4852d(b)(3) a tenant injured by a knowing violation recovers three times actual damages, and under (b)(4) the court may add costs, reasonable attorney fees, and expert witness fees. The knowing standard is broad enough to reach reckless disregard.

The right to report to EPA or HUD

Tenants may report violations to either agency without filing suit. Agency action can bring civil penalties, consent decrees, injunctive relief, and ongoing compliance monitoring across a portfolio.

The right to a habitable unit

Independent of disclosure, 25 Del. C. 5305 entitles Delaware tenants to a unit that does not endanger health, welfare or safety and is fit for its purpose. Deteriorated lead paint can support a habitability claim and the Chapter 53 remedies that follow from it.

The coming right to a certified unit

Once implemented, 25 Del. C. 5305(a)(6) will entitle a Delaware tenant to a rental unit free of lead-based paint hazards and certified lead safe or lead free — as a habitability obligation running throughout the tenancy, not merely a regulatory filing. Tenants will also gain the right under 25 Del. C. 5406(b) to demand a copy of the certificate and receive it within 7 days, backed by a $50-per-day civil penalty, and the right under 25 Del. C. 5402(f) to alternative housing where a lead hazard makes the unit uninhabitable during abatement.

The right to be free of lead-based discrimination

Under 25 Del. C. 5409 it is unlawful to discriminate against a person because they, or someone who would live with them, has or is perceived to have an elevated blood lead level, or because they participated in a lead proceeding. This reaches applicants as well as sitting tenants, and a violation is a discriminatory housing practice under Chapter 46 of Title 6.

The right to tort damages for actual exposure

Where a child or pregnant tenant suffers lead exposure, ordinary tort remedies apply — medical costs, pain and suffering, future treatment, and lost earning capacity. A disclosure violation supplies a ready foundation for a negligence theory, which is why the paperwork failure and the injury claim tend to arrive together.

The right to fair-housing protection

The Fair Housing Act prohibits familial-status discrimination. Avoiding families with young children to sidestep lead obligations is itself actionable.

The bottom line for landlords. Compliance is cheap and mechanical. The failure mode is a treble-damages judgment with the tenant’s fees attached, an agency penalty that rises every January, and — in the worst case — a poisoned child and a tort claim your own file helps prove. The form above handles the mechanics; the rest of this page is what the form cannot do for you.

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