Free Iowa Lead Paint Disclosure

An Iowa 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). Iowa imposes no separate lead paint disclosure statute on landlords — the duty here is purely federal. What Iowa does add sits alongside it: an independent habitability duty under Iowa Code 562A.15, covered in our Iowa habitability laws guide, and a lead certification regime in Iowa Code chapter 10A that catches landlords who renovate an occupied unit. Generate the form below, then read on for exactly what the rule requires.

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Iowa lead paint disclosure overview

The disclosure exists because of a single congressional finding: low-level lead exposure damages developing brains, and the largest remaining reservoir of lead in American housing is the paint applied before the 1978 ban. Congress did not respond by ordering landlords to remove it. It responded by ordering them to tell the truth about what they know before a tenant commits, so the tenant can make an informed decision about where their family lives.

That framing explains almost every quirk of the rule. It is a disclosure statute, not an abatement statute. It compels honesty, not testing. It attaches to the moment of decision — before obligation — rather than to move-in day. And it is enforced primarily through the tenant’s own private right of action, not through routine inspections. Once you understand the rule as an information rule, the details stop looking arbitrary.

An Iowa landlord’s compliance therefore has three moving parts, and only the first is a piece of paper. You deliver the disclosure with the EPA pamphlet before the tenant is obligated. You keep the signed original for three years. And you avoid the two adjacent Iowa duties — habitability under Iowa Code 562A.15, and lead-work certification under Iowa Code 10A.902 — that are triggered by the condition of the paint and by who disturbs it, not by the disclosure at all. Landlords who treat this form as the whole of their lead obligation are the ones who get caught.

No. Iowa imposes no lead paint disclosure duty on residential landlords. The obligation in Iowa is entirely federal. This is worth stating plainly because much of the material ranking for Iowa lead queries either implies a state duty exists or is too vague to tell, and because a page that invents a state statute number is more dangerous than a page that says nothing at all.

The claim is verifiable rather than assumed. Iowa Code 562A.13 is the section of the Iowa Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Law titled simply “Disclosure.” It is the exhaustive list of what an Iowa landlord must tell a tenant in writing at or before the tenancy begins, and it contains six subsections:

• 562A.13(1) — the name and address of the person authorized to manage the premises, and of an owner or a person authorized to act for the owner for service of process and for receiving notices and demands.
• 562A.13(2) — that information must be kept current, and the duty runs against a successor landlord, owner, or manager.
• 562A.13(3) — a person who fails to comply becomes the landlord’s agent for service of process and for performing the landlord’s obligations.
• 562A.13(4) — the landlord must fully explain utility rates, charges, and services before the rental agreement is signed, unless the tenant pays the utility directly.
• 562A.13(5) — each tenant must be notified in writing of any rent increase at least thirty days before its effective date, a rule covered in our Iowa rent increase laws guide.
• 562A.13(6) — the landlord must disclose in writing, before the tenancy commences, if the property is listed in the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Information System maintained by the federal EPA.

Read that list again. Iowa’s legislature plainly turned its mind to environmental hazards when it wrote this section — subsection (6) is a Superfund-listing disclosure, added in 2004 — and it did not add lead paint. The words “lead” and “paint” do not appear anywhere in Iowa Code 562A.13. That silence is deliberate drafting, not an oversight in our reading, and it means the federal rule stands alone in Iowa.

Nearly everything written about lead disclosure describes it in the abstract — “tell tenants about lead” — and then stops. The rule is not abstract. 40 CFR 745.113(b) is a closed list of six elements that must be attached to, or contained within, every lease of target housing. Miss one and the disclosure is defective even if you delivered it on time. Not one of the pages currently ranking for Iowa lead paint queries reproduces this list.

The item that is missing, and why that matters

Compare the lease list above with the sales list at 40 CFR 745.113(a) and one difference jumps out. The sales version has seven elements, because 745.113(a)(5) requires “A statement by the purchaser that he/she has either: (i) Received the opportunity to conduct the risk assessment or inspection required by 745.110(a); or (ii) Waived the opportunity.” There is no counterpart in the lease list. The lessor elements run (b)(1) through (b)(6) and none of them mentions an inspection, an opportunity, or a waiver. That absence is the whole reason the 10-day window is a sales rule, and it is why a rental disclosure carrying a 10-day waiver line is not a more thorough form — it is a form copied from the wrong regime.

The rule applies to “target housing,” and the definition at 40 CFR 745.103 is the hinge on which every exemption question turns. Its exact words matter, so here they are:

The date is a construction date, not a paint date. If the building went up before 1 January 1978, it is target housing, and it stays target housing forever. A 1962 Cedar Rapids duplex that was stripped to the studs and rebuilt in 2003 is still target housing. A landlord’s honest belief that “all that old paint is long gone” changes nothing about the trigger — it may well be a true and useful thing to say in the disclosure, but it is not an exemption.

People often ask why 1978 and not some other year. The answer is the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s ban at 16 CFR 1303.1, which prohibits lead-containing paint manufactured after 27 February 1978. That is the historical reason the cutoff sits where it does, and it is the reason later housing is outside the rule. It is not the operative test. The operative test is 745.103’s “constructed prior to 1978.” Do not conflate the manufacturing ban date with the construction trigger; a house built in 1977 is target housing regardless of when the paint on it was made.

The exemptions are at 40 CFR 745.101 and they are narrow, closed, and frequently misdescribed. The section applies to all transactions to sell or lease target housing, including subleases, “with the exception of the following”:

• 745.101(a) — Sales at foreclosure. A sales exemption. Irrelevant to a lease.
• 745.101(b) — Certified lead-free housing. Leases of target housing “that have been found to be lead-based paint free by an inspector certified under the Federal certification program or under a federally accredited State or tribal certification program.” Your own belief does not qualify; a certified inspector’s finding does. The rule adds that a lessor may use the results of additional tests by a certified inspector to confirm or refute a prior finding.
• 745.101(c) — Short-term leases. “Short-term leases of 100 days or less, where no lease renewal or extension can occur.” Both halves are required. A 90-day lease with a renewal option is not exempt, because renewal can occur.
• 745.101(d) — Lease renewals. Renewals of an existing lease where the lessor has already disclosed everything required under 745.107 and no new information has come into the lessor’s possession. Note the cross-reference is to 745.107, not 745.113.
• Elderly and disabled housing — which is not in 745.101 at all. It sits inside the definition of target housing at 745.103, and since the 2025 amendment it shares the child condition with the 0-bedroom exclusion.

What counts as a 0-bedroom dwelling is broader than “studio.” 40 CFR 745.103 defines it as “any residential dwelling in which the living area is not separated from the sleeping area,” and adds that the term “includes efficiencies, studio apartments, dormitory housing, military barracks, and rentals of individual rooms in residential dwellings.” That last clause matters in Iowa’s college towns: a room rented individually in a pre-1978 house in Iowa City or Ames can fall within the 0-bedroom exclusion, because the rented unit is the room. If you are letting rooms rather than units, work the definition rather than assuming.

Here is a genuine Iowa trap that no ranking page, form site, or AI answer currently mentions. Iowa has its own statutory definition of “target housing,” and it does not match the federal one. Iowa Code 10A.901(2) provides:

Read the two side by side. Before 2025 they differed: the federal text isolated the child condition inside a parenthesis attached only to the elderly and disabled limb, while Iowa’s text has no parenthesis and applies “unless at least one child, under six years of age, resides or is expected to reside” to both limbs. The 2025 federal amendment closed that gap. As amended, 745.103 also applies the child condition to the 0-bedroom limb, so a no-bedroom unit with a small child in it is now swept back into the definition under both the federal and the Iowa phrasings.

So which controls? Both — in their own lanes, and neither may be imported into the other. Iowa Code 10A.901 opens with the words “For the purposes of this subchapter,” and that subchapter is Iowa’s lead inspector, abater, and renovator certification programme. Iowa’s definition therefore scopes Iowa’s certification and notification duties. Your obligation to hand a tenant a disclosure form is a federal obligation, and it runs on 40 CFR 745.103, where, since the 2025 amendment, the 0-bedroom exclusion is conditional on no child under six residing or being expected — the same condition Iowa’s definition already carried.

The practical consequence is precise and slightly counterintuitive. Consider a pre-1978 efficiency apartment in Davenport rented to a parent with a four-year-old. Under the federal rule the unit is not target housing, so no lead disclosure is owed. Under Iowa Code 10A.901(2) that same unit is target housing, so if anyone performs a renovation on it, Iowa’s certification requirements do apply. One unit, two regimes, two different answers, both correct. This is exactly the kind of distinction that gets flattened when a page treats “lead law” as one undifferentiated topic.

40 CFR 745.107(a)(1) requires the lessor to provide the lessee with an EPA-approved lead hazard information pamphlet — the document titled Protect Your Family From Lead in Your Home (EPA document 747-K-94-001), or an equivalent pamphlet approved for use in that state by EPA. Iowa has no separate state pamphlet mandate for leasing; the federal document is what you deliver.

Two failures recur. The first is treating the pamphlet as optional garnish on the “real” form. It is not: it is an independent element of the disclosure duty, and delivering a perfect disclosure with no pamphlet is a violation. The second is delivering a link. Handing over a URL is not handing over a pamphlet unless you satisfy the E-SIGN conditions set out below. If the tenant is signing on paper, give them paper.

Order matters too. 745.107(a) requires the pamphlet, the knowledge disclosure, the agent disclosure, and the records delivery to be completed before the lessee is obligated. And 745.107(b) covers the awkward case where the tenant has already made an offer: if any disclosure activity happens after the lessee has provided an offer to lease, the lessor must complete the disclosure activities before accepting the offer and must allow the lessee an opportunity to review the information and possibly amend the offer. In other words, a late disclosure does not just get papered over by the signature — it reopens the tenant’s decision.

This is the most misunderstood aspect of the rule, and the text settles it. 40 CFR 745.107(a) states: “Nothing in this section implies a positive obligation on the seller or lessor to conduct any evaluation or reduction activities.” You are not required to test a pre-1978 Iowa rental for lead. You are not required to remove lead paint. You are required to tell the truth about what you know.

“No knowledge” is therefore an honest and lawful answer for the large majority of Iowa rentals, which have never been tested. Checking it does not make you a bad landlord and does not create an inference against you.

What “no knowledge” cannot do is launder information you already have. You have knowledge if you hold an inspection report or a risk assessment. You have knowledge if a previous owner handed you one at closing. You have knowledge if you abated a hazard, or paid someone to. You have knowledge if a tenant’s child returned an elevated blood-lead result and the county health department contacted you about the unit. And 745.107(a)(2) goes further than the bare yes-or-no: where lead-based paint or hazards are known, the lessor “shall also disclose any additional information available concerning the known lead-based paint and/or lead-based paint hazards, such as the basis for the determination that lead-based paint and/or lead-based paint hazards exist, the location of the lead-based paint and/or lead-based paint hazards, and the condition of the painted surfaces.” A bare tick in the “known” box, with the explanation line left empty, is an incomplete disclosure.

The scope of “available” is wider than most landlords assume. 40 CFR 745.103 defines it as “in the possession of or reasonably obtainable by the seller or lessor at the time of the disclosure.” Reasonably obtainable does real work: a report sitting in your property manager’s filing cabinet is available to you.

If you take one thing from this page, take this. Iowa tenants have no federal right to a 10-day lead inspection window. The provision everyone half-remembers is 40 CFR 745.110(a), and it reads:

Purchaser. Seller. Purchase. Every operative noun is a sales noun, and the statute behind it is scoped identically at 42 U.S.C. 4852d(a)(1)(C). The corresponding acknowledgment — the received-or-waived statement — appears only on the sales disclosure, at 745.113(a)(5). The lessor’s elements at 745.113(b) contain no inspection item, and the EPA lessor form has no such line. There is no lease counterpart because Congress did not create one.

This is not a technicality. Pages ranking for Iowa lead queries surface the 10-day window inside a rental frame without scoping it, and two of the four AI answers we captured for these queries did the same. A landlord who copies a sales form onto a tenancy grants a contractual inspection right they never owed and may not be able to honour. A tenant who reads it demands a right that does not exist. Both then behave as if the lease is defective when it is not.

You may, of course, offer a prospective tenant a chance to inspect. That is good practice and costs you nothing but time. Just be clear with yourself about what it is: a voluntary courtesy, not compliance with a federal rule. And do not print it on the disclosure. The generator below does not, deliberately.

The generator produces a complete, federally compliant lessor disclosure carrying all six elements of 40 CFR 745.113(b), scoped to a lease and to Iowa. Everything runs in your browser; nothing is uploaded. Fill in what you know, generate, print, and have every party sign before the tenant is obligated. If you need the state-neutral version, the federal lead paint disclosure form is here.

Why the acknowledgment lines print blank

The generated PDF leaves items (c), (d), and (e) as empty initial lines, and leaves every signature blank. That is by design and it is not an omission. Items (c) and (d) are statements by the lessee — that they received the information, and that they received the pamphlet. Item (e) is a statement by the agent. A landlord cannot truthfully make any of them in advance, and a form that lets you pre-tick your tenant’s acknowledgment produces a document that certifies something you do not know. If a dispute ever reaches an enforcement officer, a disclosure with the tenant’s acknowledgments conveniently pre-completed by the landlord is worse than useless. The lines stay blank until the people who can honestly initial them do so.

40 CFR 745.113(c) requires the lessor to retain a copy of the completed disclosure for three years from the commencement of the leasing period. The clock starts at the start of the tenancy, not at the date of signature and not at the date of any renewal.

Three years is a floor, not a ceiling, and there is a specific reason not to read it as an expiry date on 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 for exactly what it says: the retention rule does not cut down the tenant’s civil remedies. It is a savings clause about the scope of the recordkeeping provision. It does not say that the passage of three years is no defence to anything, and this page does not stretch it that far.

The practical point is simpler than the drafting. The signed disclosure is the only thing standing between you and a tenant’s word in an enforcement inquiry, and it costs nothing to keep a PDF. Keep it for as long as you own the building.

Electronic disclosure and signature are lawful under the E-SIGN Act, 15 U.S.C. 7001, and EPA permits the lead disclosure to be delivered and executed electronically. The conditions are the point:

• Give the tenant a clear statement of their right to receive the documents on paper.
• Explain the procedure for withdrawing consent to electronic delivery, and the consequences of doing so.
• Explain how the tenant can access and retain the electronic records, including the hardware and software needed.
• Obtain consent in a manner that reasonably demonstrates the tenant can actually access the materials in the form in which they are sent.
• Retain the electronic record for the same three years, in a form that remains accessible and reproducible.

A link in an email is not delivery. If the tenant cannot open the pamphlet, you have not provided the pamphlet. The safest electronic workflow attaches the disclosure and the pamphlet as files, captures an affirmative acknowledgment of receipt of each, and archives the whole exchange.

This is where Iowa law actually reaches an Iowa landlord — and it is a different duty from the one this form satisfies. Handing a tenant a disclosure says nothing about who is allowed to disturb the paint afterwards.

Iowa Code 10A.902: the exemption you lose when a tenant moves in

Iowa runs a lead inspector, lead abater, and lead-safe renovator training and certification programme under Iowa Code 10A.902. (If you go looking for this in chapter 135 you will find a stub: the section was formerly Iowa Code 135.105A and was transferred to 10A.902 by 2023 Acts, chapter 19, section 1711, when the programme moved to the Department of Inspections, Appeals, and Licensing. Its neighbour 135.105C was transferred to 10A.903 the same way. Guides written before 2023 cite section numbers that no longer carry the text.)

Iowa Code 10A.902(3) provides that, except as otherwise provided, a person shall not perform lead abatement or lead inspections, and shall not perform renovations on target housing or a child-occupied facility, unless the person has completed a department-approved training programme and obtained certification — and that the work must be conducted in accordance with the department’s work practice standards.

Then comes the subsection that catches landlords. Iowa Code 10A.902(2) creates a do-it-yourself exemption for property owners, and immediately withdraws it:

A tenant is a person other than the owner or a member of the owner’s immediate family. So the exemption that lets an owner-occupier scrape their own window sills does not protect a landlord doing the same work in an occupied rental. Renovate your own home: no certification needed. Renovate the pre-1978 duplex next door while your tenant is living in it: certification required. Iowa Code 10A.902(4) sets a civil penalty of up to five thousand dollars for each offense — a statutory per-violation figure fixed on the face of the section, unlike the federal penalties discussed below. The same subsection also encourages owners who are not required to be certified to take the training anyway.

Iowa Code 10A.903: what your contractor owes you and your tenant

Iowa Code 10A.903(1)(a) requires that a person who performs renovation, remodeling, or repainting services for target housing or a child-occupied facility for compensation shall provide an approved lead hazard information pamphlet to the owner and occupant of the housing before commencing the services. Note both features. It runs to the owner as well as the occupant, so as a landlord you should be receiving one. And because it is scoped to work performed for compensation, it does not reach a landlord doing their own work — though Iowa Code 10A.902 and the federal rule below may. The penalty under 10A.903(2) is again up to five thousand dollars for each offense.

The federal RRP rule sits on top

Separately from Iowa’s regime, EPA’s Renovation, Repair and Painting rule at 40 CFR Part 745 Subpart E requires that renovations disturbing painted surfaces in pre-1978 target housing be performed by a certified firm using lead-safe work practices, and that occupants receive lead hazard information before work begins. Where common areas are affected, notice describing the nature, location, and expected dates of the work must reach the affected units. Iowa’s certification programme and the federal RRP rule are separate compliance tracks; satisfying one does not discharge the other, and neither has anything to do with the disclosure you hand a tenant at signing. Landlords who plan to do their own maintenance on an occupied pre-1978 Iowa rental should resolve their status under both before picking up a scraper.

Two distinct exposures follow a failure to disclose, and they are both federal.

The tenant’s private action. 42 U.S.C. 4852d(b)(3) provides that any person who knowingly violates the disclosure requirements is jointly and severally liable to the purchaser or lessee for three times the amount of damages incurred by that person. 42 U.S.C. 4852d(b)(4) adds that the court may award court costs, reasonable attorney fees, and expert witness fees to a prevailing plaintiff. This is the exposure that actually bites landlords: it does not require EPA to notice you, only a tenant with a lawyer and a damaged child.

Government civil money penalties. EPA and HUD may assess civil penalties per violation, and knowing violations can carry criminal exposure as well.

One clarification worth making, because tenants and landlords both get it wrong: the disclosure rule does not cancel the lease. EPA is explicit that the rule does not cancel leasing or sales contracts. A landlord’s failure to disclose does not void the tenancy, and a tenant cannot walk away on that basis alone. It exposes the landlord to damages, penalties, and fees. If a tenant wants out of an Iowa tenancy over lead, the route runs through habitability, not through this form.

Lead disclosure violations rarely surface through a routine inspection. Nobody is auditing Iowa leases at random. They surface in four predictable ways, and knowing them tells you where your risk actually is.

• A child’s elevated blood-lead result. A test result triggers a public-health response, an environmental investigation of the dwelling, and questions about what the landlord knew and disclosed. Iowa runs a childhood lead poisoning prevention programme in the Department of Health and Human Services under Iowa Code chapter 135, and Iowa Code 135.105D encourages blood lead testing of children by age two and requires evidence of testing by age six for school enrolment. This is the most common route by which a lead file gets opened on a rental.
• A tenant complaint to EPA or HUD. Both agencies take complaints directly. The disclosure file is the first thing requested.
• A private lawsuit. The treble-damages provision makes lead disclosure claims attractive to plaintiffs’ counsel, especially where a child has a documented injury.
• A renovation gone wrong. Uncertified work on an occupied pre-1978 unit draws attention from the Department of Inspections, Appeals, and Licensing, and an inspector already on site tends to ask what was disclosed at signing.

In every one of those routes, the first question is the same: produce the signed disclosure. If you have it, dated before the tenant was obligated, with the pamphlet noted and the tenant’s initials on the acknowledgment lines, most inquiries end there.

Disclosure and habitability are separate duties, and satisfying one does not satisfy the other. You can hand over a flawless disclosure and still be in breach of Iowa Code 562A.15 if the paint in the unit is failing.

Iowa Code 562A.15(1)(a) requires an Iowa landlord to comply with applicable building and housing codes materially affecting health and safety, to make all repairs and do whatever is necessary to put and keep the premises in a fit and habitable condition, and to keep all common areas in a clean and safe condition. The section carries an interpretive rule that matters here: under 562A.15(1)(b), where the building-and-housing-code duty is greater than another duty in the list, the landlord’s duty is determined by reference to the code duty. Local Iowa housing codes therefore do real work, and a code provision addressing deteriorated paint can raise the standard.

Iowa Code 562A.21 supplies the tenant’s remedy. For a material noncompliance with the rental agreement, or a noncompliance with 562A.15 materially affecting health and safety, the tenant may deliver a written notice specifying the acts and omissions constituting the breach; the rental agreement terminates in not less than seven days after receipt if the breach is not remedied within seven days. Under 562A.21(2) the tenant may also recover damages and obtain injunctive relief for any noncompliance with 562A.15 — unless the landlord affirmatively demonstrates due diligence and that the failure was due to circumstances reasonably beyond their control — and where the noncompliance is willful, the tenant may recover reasonable attorney fees. The full picture is in our Iowa habitability laws guide.

Deteriorated lead paint in a pre-1978 Iowa unit is a habitability question on those provisions, and it is independent of whether you disclosed. Flaking paint on a window sill in a unit occupied by a toddler is a condition problem. The disclosure form does not fix it, does not excuse it, and does not discharge it. Fix the paint.

Iowa Code 135.105B authorises the Department of Health and Human Services to develop voluntary guidelines for local programmes addressing the health and environmental needs of children confirmed as lead poisoned, and provides that cities and counties may elect to use those guidelines to develop and administer local programmes through city or county health departments — while expressly stating that cities and counties are not required to do so. The statute also notes those guidelines may be based on existing local ordinances addressing medical case management and mitigation of the environmental factors that contributed to the poisoning.

The honest consequence for a landlord: lead requirements in Iowa can vary by city and county, and this page does not know which apply to your building. We have not verified any individual municipal ordinance and we do not present any local rule as state law. If your rental is in an older neighbourhood in Des Moines, Davenport, Dubuque, Sioux City, Waterloo, Council Bluffs, or a university town, call the local code-enforcement office or county health department and ask directly whether the property is subject to any registration, inspection, or notice obligation beyond the federal disclosure. That question takes ten minutes and is the only reliable way to answer it.

Skipping disclosure on a pre-1978 unit

The most basic failure and the most common. If the building went up before 1978 and the lease runs more than 100 days, the disclosure is mandatory. No exception exists for small landlords, for a single rented house, for a family member as tenant, or for a unit you are confident is clean.

Delivering it at signing instead of before

The duty attaches before the tenant is obligated under the lease. A disclosure produced with the pen and the keys, as one of the papers in the closing stack, is late. 40 CFR 745.107(b) is explicit that where a disclosure activity happens after the tenant has made an offer, you must complete it before accepting and let them reconsider.

Assuming the studio rule works the other way

Since the 2025 amendment the 0-bedroom exclusion is conditional. A pre-1978 efficiency is outside the federal disclosure rule only where no child under six lives there or is expected to; with a young child in it, the efficiency is target housing and the disclosure is owed. The 0-bedroom exclusion now carries the same child condition as the elderly and disabled limb, which also aligns it with Iowa Code 10A.901(2). Older charts still show it as unconditional, which was correct only through 12 January 2025.

Wrong build-year assumption

“It looks eighties” is not a build year. Pull the county assessor record. A 1976 house that was extensively remodelled reads as modern and is still target housing.

Failing to provide the EPA pamphlet

An independent element, not a courtesy. A perfect disclosure delivered without Protect Your Family From Lead in Your Home is a violation.

Verbal or implied disclosure

“I told them the place was old” is not disclosure. The rule requires the written elements, attached to or contained within the lease, signed and dated.

Rewriting the lead warning statement

The paragraph at 745.113(b)(1) is prescribed wording. Tightening it, modernising it, or splicing in the sales version’s recommendation that an inspection be obtained prior to purchase all defeat it. Reproduce it as written.

Pre-ticking the tenant’s acknowledgments

Items (c), (d), and (e) are statements by the lessee and the agent. A landlord who completes them in advance has produced a document certifying facts they cannot know, and has made their own file worse rather than better.

Treating “no knowledge” as a place to hide

It is the right answer when it is true. It is a knowing violation when you hold a report, remember an abatement, or have already heard from the county about a child’s blood-lead result.

Failing to disclose to every lessee

The duty runs to each lessee. Every adult on the lease initials and signs, not just whoever showed up first.

Forgetting the records for the rest of the building

40 CFR 745.107(a)(4) reaches records about common areas and about other units in multifamily target housing where they come from a building-wide evaluation. A risk assessment of the whole property is within scope for every unit in it.

Renovating an occupied unit without checking Iowa Code 10A.902

The Iowa-specific one, and the one nobody warns about. The owner exemption from certification disappears the moment the dwelling is occupied by someone other than you or your immediate family while the work is done. That describes every occupied rental.

Citing Iowa Code 135.105A

It no longer carries the text. The certification programme moved to Iowa Code 10A.902 in 2023. A landlord relying on a guide that still cites the old number is reading a stub.

The right to the disclosure before being obligated

An Iowa tenant is entitled to the completed disclosure, with the lessor’s knowledge statement and records list, before they are obligated under the lease — not at move-in.

The right to the EPA pamphlet

Every lessee of pre-1978 target housing is entitled to a copy of Protect Your Family From Lead in Your Home or an EPA-approved equivalent.

The right to triple damages plus fees

Under 42 U.S.C. 4852d(b)(3) a knowing violator is jointly and severally liable for three times the damages incurred, and 4852d(b)(4) allows court costs, reasonable attorney fees, and expert witness fees.

The right to report to EPA or HUD

Tenants may complain directly to either agency, which may investigate and assess civil penalties independently of any private action.

The right to a habitable unit

Independent of disclosure, Iowa Code 562A.15 requires a fit and habitable dwelling and compliance with applicable codes materially affecting health and safety; Iowa Code 562A.21 supplies the seven-day notice-and-cure route, damages, injunctive relief, and attorney fees for willful noncompliance.

The right to tort damages for actual exposure

Where a child is injured by lead in a rental, ordinary Iowa negligence and premises-liability principles apply alongside the statutory remedies. The disclosure rule is a floor, not a shield.

The right to fair-housing protection

Refusing to rent to families with children to sidestep lead risk is familial-status discrimination under the federal Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. 3601 et seq. The disclosure duty is never a lawful reason to screen out children.

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