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lead safe or lead free — but that chapter is not yet implemented, and the dates published elsewhere are drawn from superseded drafts.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.