Free Massachusetts Lead Paint Disclosure

A Massachusetts 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). Massachusetts then adds the most demanding state lead regime in the country — the Massachusetts Lead Law at M.G.L. c.111 §§189A–199B — which requires a second document before every tenancy agreement, imposes an affirmative duty to delead in defined circumstances, and makes the owner liable for a poisoned child. Generate the federal form below, then read on for exactly what each regime requires and where they diverge. For the underlying condition of the unit, see our Massachusetts habitability laws guide.

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Massachusetts lead paint disclosure overview

The single most useful thing to understand about leasing pre-1978 property in Massachusetts is that two separate legal instruments are owed to the same tenant at roughly the same moment, and completing one does nothing for the other. Almost every compliance failure we see in this state comes from an owner who did the federal paperwork properly, filed it, and stopped.

Document one is the federal disclosure. It is required by 42 U.S.C. 4852d and specified element-by-element at 40 CFR 745.113(b). It must be attached to or inserted into the lease, it must be delivered before the lessee is obligated under the lease, and it must be accompanied by the EPA pamphlet. That is the form the generator on this page produces.

Document two is the Massachusetts Tenant Lead Law Notification. It is required by M.G.L. c.111 §197A(d)(2). It must be delivered prior to entering into a tenancy agreement, and it consists of state-published materials plus a state-published certification form, plus copies of specified lead paperwork, plus a two-copy certification of receipt. The form itself is published by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, not by us and not by any form vendor.

The two documents overlap in subject matter and diverge in almost every mechanical detail: different authors, different triggers, different content, different delivery moments, different penalties, different enforcement bodies. They are not alternatives. They are cumulative.

Yes — and it is the most demanding state lead regime in the country. The Massachusetts Lead Law occupies M.G.L. c.111 §§189A through 199B. Unlike the many states whose “lead law” turns out on inspection to be a restatement of the federal rule, Massachusetts genuinely adds duties that do not exist federally, backed by a liability rule that does not exist federally either.

Here is the whole regime, mapped to the section that actually creates each duty. Every cite below was read from the Legislature’s own published text of Chapter 111, not from a summary.

This is the state document, and it is the one Massachusetts landlords miss. The duty is created by §197A(d)(2), which provides that — effective 1 December 1994 — prior to entering into a tenancy agreement, the owner of premises, or such other person to whom rent is to be regularly paid, shall provide a prospective tenant who is about to enter such an agreement with three things.

Item (i): the materials and the standard form

A copy of the materials and standard form prepared under §197A(d)(1). That paragraph directs the DPH lead poisoning control director to prepare a standard notification brochure covering the hazards of dangerous levels of lead, the symptoms and treatment of lead poisoning, measures parents and owners can take to reduce a child’s exposure, and the requirements of §§189A–199B. The brochure must also explain the significance of Letters of Interim Control and Letters of Full Compliance, and the need for tenants to promptly notify the owner, the director, the local code enforcement agency or the board of health in writing whenever an intact painted surface begins to peel or flake.

The same paragraph requires a standard form for owners to distribute, which must carry the name, address and telephone number of the owner or the owner’s managing agent, and the address and telephone number of the state childhood lead poisoning prevention programme. And it imposes a disclosure duty in its own right: the owner shall disclose any information actually known to the owner concerning the location of paint, plaster or other accessible structural materials containing dangerous levels of lead — expressly including such material that has been covered or encapsulated. That last clause matters. Encapsulated lead is still disclosable lead.

Item (ii): the lead paperwork for the unit and the common areas

A copy of the most recent lead paint inspection report, Letter of Interim Control, Letter of Full Compliance, or abatement plan applicable to the dwelling unit and to the common areas or exterior surfaces of the residential premises. Read the scope: the statute reaches past the leased unit to the common areas and the exterior. A building-wide document is within the tenant’s entitlement, not just the file for their apartment.

Item (iii): two copies of a certification

Two copies of a statement certifying that the prospective tenant received all of the above — one copy to be retained by the tenant and one by the owner. The statute then adds a practical permission: “For purposes of this section, inclusion of such certification as a provision in a written tenancy agreement shall be permitted.” You may fold the certification into the lease rather than executing a standalone sheet. You may not skip it.

Massachusetts has a second, better-known state notification — the Property Transfer Lead Paint Notification — and it is routinely misdescribed as a rental requirement. It is not one. Our own earlier version of this page said the property transfer notification is “required at every sale or lease transfer.” That was wrong, and it is worth being precise about why.

Read §197A(b). It provides that “all persons selling premises shall, prior to the signing of a purchase and sale agreement, provide a copy of the form and other materials prepared pursuant to subsection (a) to the prospective purchaser.” It then extends the same duty, effective 1 May 1994, to “all persons leasing premises with an option to purchase such premises,” before the signing of that lease-with-option. Both limbs are purchase transactions. An ordinary tenancy appears nowhere in subsection (b).

The structure of §197A is the tell: subsection (b) governs prospective purchasers, subsection (d) governs tenants and prospective tenants. The section deliberately runs two parallel notification tracks, and the Legislature wrote separate forms for them — subsection (a) directs the director to prepare “a separate notification form and materials for prospective purchasers of residential properties containing one or more rental units,” addressing purchaser-specific issues such as liability insurance and the discrimination prohibitions.

What §197A(b) also requires of a seller, for completeness, because it is genuinely additive: at the time of notification the lessor-prospective seller must hand over any Letter of Interim Control issued under §197(b) or any Letter of Full Compliance issued under §197(c), and the seller and any real estate agent involved “shall disclose to the prospective purchaser any information known to the seller or real estate agent about the presence of paint, plaster, or other accessible structural materials containing dangerous levels of lead.”

This is the obligation that makes Massachusetts different from every other state, and it is also the one most often misstated. The popular version — repeated by the AI answers on this query — is that Massachusetts requires deleading in any pre-1978 rental where a child under six lives or visits. That is not what §197(a) says.

The statutory text: “Whenever a child under six years of age resides in any premises in which any paint, plaster or other accessible structural material contains dangerous levels of lead, the owner shall abate or contain said paint, plaster or other accessible structural materials in accordance with the requirements of subsection (b) or (c).”

Two elements, both required:

• A child under six years of age resides in the premises. The word is “resides.” It is not “visits,” and it is not “occupies occasionally.” Massachusetts does use a visitation concept elsewhere — §189A defines a “child-occupied facility” by reference to a child under six visiting regularly on at least two days a week for at least three hours each, at least six hours weekly and at least sixty hours annually, and names day care centres, preschools and kindergarten classrooms as examples. That definition governs child-occupied facilities. It is not the §197(a) rental trigger, and importing it into §197(a) overstates the duty.
• The material contains dangerous levels of lead. The duty is not triggered by the building’s age alone. A pre-1978 unit that has been tested and found free of dangerous levels, or that has been deleaded to full compliance, does not generate a §197(a) duty merely because a toddler moves in. The threshold itself is regulatory: §194 provides that the amount of lead “that produces the danger of lead poisoning shall be determined by regulation by the director.”

The ninety-day clock on a change of ownership. §197(a) continues: except as provided in §197D (which deals with secured lenders), whenever premises containing dangerous levels of lead undergo a change of ownership and as a result a child under six “will become or will continue to be a resident therein, the new owner shall have ninety days to contain or abate.” Buyers of occupied pre-1978 multifamily stock in this state should treat that sentence as a due-diligence item with a hard date attached, not a formality.

What “abate or contain” means. §189A defines abatement as “the removal and replacement of paint, plaster or other accessible structural material containing dangerous levels of lead,” and containment as “the encapsulation, covering or enclosing by means authorized by the director” of the same materials. Containment is a lawful answer, not a lesser one — but note the §197A(d)(1) point made earlier: encapsulated lead remains disclosable to tenants.

Who may do the work. §197B(b) requires deleaders to be licensed by the Department of Labor Standards, and §197B(b)(2) provides that no person shall engage in or conduct deleading operations without a licence. §197B(a) puts lead paint inspectors under the DPH director’s licensing regime and bars unlicensed inspection. §197(b) also anticipates that regulations will address the conditions under which owners themselves may perform certain abatement and containment activities. If you are planning to do this work yourself, that permission is defined by regulation, and this page does not attempt to state its scope.

Massachusetts gives an owner two documented compliance statuses, and the difference between them is worth real money.

Letter of Interim Control — §197(b)

The temporary status. An owner controls urgent hazards under an emergency lead management plan approved by a licensed inspector, and the inspector then issues a Letter of Interim Control certifying compliance with the plan. §197(b) requires the director’s regulations to include, at minimum: a determination whether structural defects such as roof and plumbing leaks and deteriorating windows need correcting to prevent damage to lead surfaces, and repair of any found; abatement or containment of all peeling paint plus safeguards protecting intact material inside and out; removal of lead dust by specified methods; provision of DPH educational materials to tenants occupying the premises, and compliance with the tenant notification provisions of §197A; correction of any other condition the director determines poses an urgent risk to children under six; use of licensed deleading contractors or the regulated owner-performed route; and a final inspection with dust testing.

Three limits define it. A Letter of Interim Control expires one year from issuance and may be renewed once for one further year. In no case may premises stay under interim control for longer than two years — the statute makes full compliance under §197(c) the mandatory endpoint of every emergency lead management plan. And where a lead-poisoned child already resides in the premises, §197(b) allows the interim-control route only by waiver from the department.

Letter of Full Compliance — §197(c)

The permanent status, issued when the premises satisfy the full requirement rather than an interim plan.

“Massachusetts landlords are strictly liable for lead poisoning” is the sentence everyone repeats. The statute is more precise, and the precision is entirely in the landlord’s interest, because it identifies the way out.

§199(a), the liability limb. Except as provided in §197D, the owner of any premises “shall be liable for all damages to a child under six years of age at the time of poisoning, upon proof that said child’s blood lead level equals or exceeds the blood lead level at which the department defines lead poisoning, that are caused by his failure to comply with the provisions and requirements of section one hundred and ninety-four, subsection (a) of section one hundred and ninety-six or section one hundred and ninety-seven, and regulations pursuant to said provisions.”

Unpack that. The claimant is a child under six at the time of poisoning. The proof required is a blood lead level at or above the DPH lead-poisoning definition. The damages are “all damages.” And the hook is non-compliance with §194, §196(a), or §197 — which in practice means §197, the deleading duty. Negligence is not an element. The owner’s good intentions are not an element. Whether the child was also exposed somewhere else is not an element the statute puts on the plaintiff.

§199(a), the shield limb. The same subsection continues: an owner of premises covered by a Letter of Full Compliance under §197(c), or a Letter of Interim Control under §197(b), “shall not be strictly liable under this section for damages caused to a child under six years of age at the time of poisoning.” The compliance letter is the defence. This is why deleading to a documented status is not merely a regulatory chore in Massachusetts — it is the only reliable way to convert an open-ended strict-liability exposure into an ordinary fault-based one.

The shield is not a blank cheque. The subsection closes by providing that while a letter is in effect the owner “shall take reasonable care to ensure that the premises are in compliance” — with §197(c)’s requirements where a full compliance letter is held, or with §197(b) and the emergency lead management plan where an interim control letter is held — “and shall be liable for all damages caused by his breach of that duty of reasonable care.” So the letter removes strict liability and substitutes a reasonable-care duty. Obtaining a letter and then letting the paint deteriorate re-opens the exposure through the negligence door.

§199(b), the willfulness limb. §199(b) addresses an owner who has been notified under §§189A–199B of a dangerous level of lead on the premises, or who has received a notice or order to comply from the director, a local board or department of health, or a code enforcement agency, and who willfully fails to take the required actions or to remedy the conditions by the applicable deadlines. The section is titled “Liability of owner of premises; punitive damages.” An owner sitting on a compliance order is in materially worse territory than one who simply never knew.

Faced with a deleading bill, the tempting answer is to rent to someone without young children. Massachusetts anticipated that answer and closed it, in unusually direct language.

§199A(a) makes it “an unlawful practice for purposes of chapter one hundred and fifty-one B” for the owner, lessee, sublessee, real estate broker, assignee, or managing agent of any premises to refuse to sell, rent, lease or otherwise deny or withhold from any person, or to discriminate against any person in the terms, conditions or privileges of the sale, rental or lease, because the premises do or may contain materials with dangerous levels of lead, or because the transaction “would trigger duties under sections one hundred and eighty-nine A to one hundred and ninety-nine B,” or because a person chooses to exercise any right under those sections. A person aggrieved may file a complaint under c.151B §5.

Note the second and third limbs especially. It is not merely unlawful to refuse a family because the unit has lead. It is unlawful to refuse them because renting to them would create the deleading obligation in the first place — which is precisely the motive an owner doing the arithmetic would have. And it is unlawful to penalise a tenant for asserting a lead-law right, such as asking for an inspection.

§199A(b) forecloses the obvious rejoinder: “Refusing to rent to families with children in violation of paragraph eleven of section four of chapter one hundred and fifty-one B shall not constitute compliance with the lead law and regulations.” You cannot describe a discriminatory refusal as your lead-law compliance strategy.

§199A(c) extends the same logic to sitting tenants: “Refusing to renew the lease of or evicting families with children shall not constitute compliance with the lead law and regulations. Such evictions shall also constitute a violation of section two of chapter ninety-three A and section eighteen of chapter one hundred and eighty-six.” So a lead-motivated non-renewal is simultaneously a lead-law problem, a c.93A unfair-and-deceptive-practices problem, and a c.186 §18 reprisal problem. Three statutes, one bad decision.

Most guides list “three things” a landlord must do. The regulation is more precise. 40 CFR 745.113(b) requires six distinct elements in the lease or an attachment to it, in the language of the contract. A disclosure missing any one of them is defective no matter how professional it 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. That is exactly where Massachusetts departs from it — §197 does make you act on the building.

Two federal definitions worth knowing, because they decide arguments. 40 CFR 745.103 defines available as “in the possession of or reasonably obtainable by the seller or lessor at the time of the disclosure” — so a report you could readily get is within (b)(3), not just one already in your drawer. And it defines common area as “a portion of a building generally accessible to all residents/users including, but not limited to, hallways, stairways, laundry and recreational rooms, playgrounds, community centers, and boundary fences.” Both definitions push the disclosure past the four walls of the unit — and §197A(d)(2)(ii) pushes the state notification the same way.

“Target housing” is the federal term for property subject to the rule, defined at 40 CFR 745.103 as housing constructed prior to 1978, subject to the exclusions covered in the next section. Massachusetts uses a different word for the same idea and lands on the same date: §189A defines “Premises” as “any residential premises, dwelling unit or residential property constructed prior to nineteen hundred and seventy-eight.”

That alignment is the single most convenient fact in Massachusetts lead compliance. One build-year question answers both regimes. If the unit went up before 1978, assume both the federal disclosure duty and the Massachusetts Lead Law are in play and work from there. If it went up in 1978 or later, both regimes are out, and no amount of lead-coloured paint changes that.

Why 1978 — and which 1978 date actually governs. The operative cutoff comes from the definitions themselves: 745.103 and §189A both say constructed prior to 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 is what decides coverage, but it tells you which cite to trust: for whether your unit is covered, read 745.103 and §189A, not the CPSC rule.

How to verify the build year in Massachusetts. The municipal assessor’s record is the fastest authoritative source and every Massachusetts city and town publishes it. The original certificate of occupancy, the building permit file, and the registry of deeds also establish it. The lessor carries the burden of correctly identifying the trigger — “I think it was around 1980” is not a defence, and in a state with §199 strict liability attached to the answer, a guess is an unpriced bet. Massachusetts has among the oldest housing stock in the country: in much of Boston, Worcester, Springfield, Lowell, New Bedford, Fall River, Lynn and Somerville, pre-1978 is the default rather than the exception, and the triple-decker stock that defines the state’s rental market is overwhelmingly within both regimes.

Renovation does not reset the clock. A 1910 triple-decker stripped to the studs and rebuilt in 2004 is still target housing and still “premises.” The original construction date controls, not the date of the most recent gut. This trips up owners of heavily rehabbed older stock constantly.

Here is where the two regimes stop agreeing, and where nearly every page on this topic goes wrong. The federal exclusions and the Massachusetts exemption are shaped differently, carry different conditions, and must be checked independently. A unit can be outside one regime and squarely inside the other.

The federal side

Federal carve-outs come from two different places, which is why competing lists disagree with each other. Some are exclusions written into the definition of target housing at 40 CFR 745.103 — a unit meeting one of those was never target housing at all. The others are transaction-level exemptions at 40 CFR 745.101 — the housing is target housing, but this particular deal sits outside the subpart.

• Housing built in 1978 or later (745.103). Not target housing.
• 0-bedroom dwellings (745.103, definitional). The regulation excepts “any 0-bedroom dwelling,” defined as “any residential dwelling in which the living area is not separated from the sleeping area,” a term that “includes efficiencies, studio apartments, dormitory housing, military barracks, and rentals of ind