Free Michigan Lead Paint Disclosure

A Michigan 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). Michigan imposes no separate lead paint disclosure statute — the disclosure duty here is purely federal, and we prove that below from Michigan’s own statutory text rather than asserting it. What Michigan does add is a mandatory lead safe housing registry duty (MCL 333.5474b), a criminal landlord penalty statute (MCL 333.5475a, Public Act 434), a certification regime, and an independent habitability duty under MCL 554.139 covered in our Michigan habitability laws guide. Generate the form below, then read on for exactly what the rule requires.

▶ Watch overview

Free Michigan 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 Michigan 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. In Michigan this item has an extra edge: if such records exist because the unit was abated or interim-controlled, the same facts may trigger the registry duty at MCL 333.5474b discussed below.

Fourth, it documents the tenant’s receipt of the disclosure and of the EPA pamphlet. The signed acknowledgment is the landlord’s primary evidence 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 Michigan rental leased without one exposes the landlord to government civil penalties and to a tenant’s private action for triple damages plus fees under 42 U.S.C. 4852d(b)(3) and (b)(4). Compliance takes fifteen minutes; non-compliance is the most expensive paperwork failure in pre-1978 rental practice. If you are assembling a full move-in packet, pair this with our Michigan lease agreement and Michigan move-in checklist.

No. Michigan adds no lead paint disclosure duty whatsoever. The disclosure duty for a Michigan rental is entirely federal. That is the single most useful thing this page can tell a Michigan landlord, and it is worth stating carefully, because “this state adds nothing” is only useful if it is demonstrated rather than assumed.

Michigan’s lead statute is the lead abatement act, Part 54A of the Public Health Code, MCL 333.5451 to 333.5479 (MCL 333.5451 gives it that short title; MCL 333.5478 and 333.5479 were repealed by 2007 PA 162, effective 1 July 2010, so the operative part ends at MCL 333.5477). Read end to end — all 37 sections in the legislature’s index for the part — it is a certification, training, abatement and enforcement regime. It tells you who may perform a lead inspection, what a risk assessor must be trained in, what an accredited training program must teach, what fees apply, what the department may fine, and what happens to a landlord who leaves a known hazard in place while a poisoned child lives there. It never tells a landlord to disclose anything to a tenant.

We checked the obvious adjacent doors as well, because a half-read statutory chain is worse than none:

• The Truth in Renting Act (1978 PA 454, MCL 554.631 to 554.641) is where Michigan says what a lease must and must not contain. MCL 554.634 lists the mandatory lease statements: the lessor’s notice address, and a prescribed 12-point notice telling tenants the agreement must comply with the Truth in Renting Act. Lead is not mentioned. MCL 554.633’s list of prohibited clauses does not mention lead either.
• MCL 554.139, the habitability covenant, is condition-based, not disclosure-based. It is real and it matters (see the habitability section below), but it is not a disclosure duty.
• The lead safe housing registry at MCL 333.5474b is a filing duty owed to the department, not a disclosure owed to a tenant.

So the honest, complete answer is: in Michigan, the lead paint disclosure duty begins and ends with federal law. Any page selling you a “Michigan lead paint disclosure law”, a “Michigan-specific lead form”, or extra Michigan lease language for lead is describing something that does not exist. Michigan’s real lead duties are adjacent ones — a registry filing, a criminal penalty statute, a certification regime, and habitability — and each is covered below with its section number.

Nearly every page on this topic paraphrases the rule. It is more useful to enumerate it, because 40 CFR 745.113(b) is a list of exactly six elements that must appear in, or be attached to, every lease of target housing. If your disclosure carries all six, it complies; if it drops one, it does not. The generator on this page produces all six.

Read that list once more and notice what is not on it. There is no inspection item. There is no 10-day item. There is no waiver item. The lease limb of the rule contains no opportunity-to-evaluate element of any kind — a point we return to below, because it is the single most repeated error in this form category.

Notice also who states each element. Items 4, 5 and 6 are statements by the lessee, by the agent, and by all parties signing. They are not facts the landlord can assert on the tenant’s behalf, which is why they print as blank initial and signature lines on the generated PDF.

The disclosure duty attaches to target housing. 40 CFR 745.103, as amended eff. 13 January 2025 (89 FR 89416), defines it as: “any housing constructed prior to 1978, except housing for the elderly or persons with disabilities or any 0-bedroom dwelling (unless any child who is less than 6 years of age resides or is expected to reside in such housing).”

Three practical consequences follow.

The original construction date controls. Not the renovation date, not the date you bought it, not the date the kitchen was replaced. A 1954 Detroit bungalow taken back to the studs in 2010 is still target housing. The question the rule asks is when the housing was constructed.

1978 is the line, and it is a construction line, not a paint line. The reason the year matters is historical: the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s ban at 16 CFR 1303.1 covers paint manufactured after 27 February 1978. But the operative trigger in the disclosure rule is not when the paint was made — it is 745.103’s “constructed prior to 1978”. Do not conflate the two. A unit built in 1979 is outside the rule even if someone later brushed on a tin of pre-ban paint from a garage shelf.

Verify the date from a record, not from memory. Use the local assessor’s record, the certificate of occupancy, or the original building permit. In much of Michigan’s older housing stock — Detroit, Grand Rapids, Flint, Saginaw, Lansing, Hamtramck — the majority of rental units predate 1978, so the default assumption for an unverified older property should be that the rule applies.

Michigan writes the same definition — and writes it more clearly

Michigan has its own target housing definition, at MCL 333.5460(1), and comparing the two is genuinely instructive. Michigan’s version reads: “‘Target housing’ means housing constructed before 1978, except any of the following: (a) Housing for the elderly or persons with disabilities, unless any 1 or more children age 6 years or less resides or is expected to reside in that housing. (b) A 0-bedroom dwelling. (c) An unoccupied dwelling unit pending demolition, provided the dwelling unit remains unoccupied until demolition.”

Two things are worth noticing.

Michigan adds a third carve-out the federal rule does not have — subdivision (c), the unoccupied unit pending demolition. That carve-out governs Michigan’s Part 54A duties (including the registry duty below). It does not shrink your federal disclosure duty, because the federal definition at 745.103 has no demolition limb. If you are leasing, you are not demolishing, so the point is mostly academic for a live tenancy — but it matters when you are working out whether Part 54A reaches a given building.

Michigan’s drafting settles a federal ambiguity. By enumerating the exclusions as separate subdivisions (a), (b) and (c), Michigan makes plain what the federal sentence packs into one line: the child condition sits inside the elderly and disabled limb, and the zero-bedroom exclusion stands alone. That is exactly how the federal sentence parses too, and it is where most pages go wrong.

One genuine divergence: the federal parenthetical says a child “less than 6 years of age”; Michigan says “age 6 years or less”. A six-year-old is outside the federal condition but inside Michigan’s. That wording gap runs to Michigan’s Part 54A duties — it does not change your federal disclosure duty, whose “less than 6” condition, since the 2025 amendment, reaches both the elderly/disabled and the 0-bedroom limbs.

The exemptions are narrow and they are enumerated at 40 CFR 745.101, which applies the subpart to all transactions to sell or lease target housing, including subleases, with four exceptions. For a landlord, three of the four matter:

What counts as a 0-bedroom dwelling is defined, not left to intuition. 40 CFR 745.103: “0-bedroom dwelling means any residential dwelling in which the living area is not separated from the sleeping area. The term includes efficiencies, studio apartments, dormitory housing, military barracks, and rentals of individual rooms in residential dwellings.”

That last clause does real work in Michigan. Rentals of individual rooms in a residential dwelling are 0-bedroom dwellings. A landlord letting rooms individually in a pre-1978 house — a common arrangement around Ann Arbor, East Lansing, Ypsilanti and Mount Pleasant — is renting 0-bedroom dwellings, which are outside the disclosure rule. Dormitory housing is named in the definition too.

The disclosure is only half of the delivery. 40 CFR 745.107(a)(1) requires the lessor to give the lessee an EPA-approved lead hazard information pamphlet — 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. The lessee’s acknowledgment item at 745.113(b)(4) then records receipt of the pamphlet, which is required under 15 U.S.C. 2696.

Practical points landlords trip on:

• The pamphlet is a separate deliverable. A signed disclosure with no pamphlet delivered is an incomplete compliance chain, and the tenant has signed a statement saying they received something they did not.
• Deliver it before the tenant is obligated, on the same 745.107(a) timing as the disclosure itself.
• Record which edition you handed over. EPA revises the pamphlet. A note in the file naming the edition and the delivery date is cheap and answers the question years later.
• A link is not delivery unless you have satisfied the E-SIGN conditions described below.

This is the question Michigan landlords ask most, and the rule answers it in terms. 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. You are not required to inspect, to commission a risk assessment, or to hire anyone. Michigan adds no testing duty either — Part 54A regulates the people who perform lead work, not landlords who decline to commission it.

What the rule compels is honest transmission of actual knowledge. If the unit has never been tested and you hold no reports, “no knowledge” is the correct, honest, lawful answer, and the generator will produce a disclosure saying exactly that.

Deliberate ignorance is also not a defence to the disclosure duty, and it is a poor commercial strategy. If a certified risk assessor’s report exists anywhere in your files, it is “available” within the meaning of 40 CFR 745.103, which defines available as “in the possession of or reasonably obtainable by the seller or lessor at the time of the disclosure.”

A Michigan landlord owes a prospective tenant no 10-day lead inspection period. This is the most repeated error in the lead disclosure form category, and it is worth settling with the two regulatory texts side by side.

Here is the 10-day rule, in full, at 40 CFR 745.110(a):

Every actor in that sentence is a sales actor. Purchaser, purchase, seller, purchaser. The statute behind it, 42 U.S.C. 4852d(a)(1)(C), is drafted the same way. And 745.110(b) confirms the frame: a purchaser may waive the opportunity in writing.

Now the lease limb. 40 CFR 745.113(b) lists the six elements a lease must carry — warning statement, lessor’s knowledge, records list, lessee’s receipt, agent’s statement, signatures. Search it for an inspection opportunity and you will find nothing: no 10-day period, no risk assessment item, no waiver, not even a cross-reference to 745.110. The sales limb at 745.113(a) has a seventh element that the lease limb simply does not have — 745.113(a)(5), a statement by the purchaser that he or she has either received the opportunity to conduct the risk assessment or inspection required by 745.110(a), or waived it.

Two honest qualifications. First, you may offer an inspection window voluntarily. Nothing stops a Michigan landlord letting a prospective tenant bring in a certified risk assessor before signing, and for an older property with an anxious family it can be a sensible commercial gesture. It is best practice, never law — so do not describe it to the tenant as a federal right. Second, if you sell the property rather than lease it, the 10-day rule does apply to you, in full, along with the seventh element at 745.113(a)(5).

Complete the fields below to generate a federally compliant Michigan 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. It prints no 10-day line, because a lease disclosure has no 10-day element.

40 CFR 745.113(c)(1) requires the lessor, and any agent, to retain a copy of the completed attachment or lease contract containing the required information for no less than three years from the commencement of the leasing period. Note the trigger: commencement of the leasing period, not the signature date, not the move-out date.

Retain, as one bundle per tenancy: the signed disclosure; a note of which pamphlet edition was delivered and when; copies of every record and report you listed and handed over; and, if you delivered electronically, the E-SIGN consent trail.

Three years is the floor, not the target. The signed disclosure is your primary evidence in an EPA or HUD inquiry or a private action, and the limitation periods that matter in a lead-exposure claim can run far longer than three years — particularly where a child’s injury is involved. Keeping the bundle for the life of ownership costs nothing and is the practice we would recommend to any Michigan landlord.

Electronic disclosure and signature are permitted under the E-SIGN Act, 15 U.S.C. 7001. Michigan adds no obstacle. But “we emailed a link” is not delivery, and the conditions are where landlords fail:

• Statement of the right to receive paper. The tenant must be told clearly they may have paper documents instead.
• Withdrawal procedure and consequences. Explain how consent is withdrawn and what follows.
• Access and retention. Explain how the tenant accesses and keeps the electronic records — a portal link that dies at move-out is not retention.
• Demonstrated consent. Obtain consent in a way that shows the tenant can actually access the format you are using. A tenant who cannot open the file has not received the disclosure.

Then retain the electronic record, and the consent trail, for the same three years required by 745.113(c)(1). If any of the four conditions is shaky — an applicant without reliable email, a shared household device, a language barrier — hand over paper. It is one page.

This is Michigan’s most overlooked landlord duty, and it is the reason a Michigan lead page cannot simply be a federal page with the state’s name swapped in. Not one of the ten ranking pages we measured for this topic mentions it.

MCL 333.5474b(1) directs the department, with the family independence agency and the Michigan state housing development authority, to establish and maintain a registry — the lead safe housing registry — listing residential and multifamily dwellings and child occupied facilities that have been abated of, or have had interim controls performed to control, lead-based paint hazards as determined through a lead-based paint investigation performed by a certified risk assessor.

Then comes the duty. MCL 333.5474b(2): “The owner of target housing that is offered for rent or lease as a residence or the owner of a child occupied facility shall register that property with the department if that property has been abated of or has had interim controls performed to control lead-based paint hazards as determined through a lead-based paint investigation performed by a certified risk assessor certified under this part in a form as prescribed by the department free of charge.”

Unpack it into its four working parts:

The registration form must include, at minimum: the owner’s name; the building’s address; the date of construction; and the date and description of any lead-based paint activity, including the name of the certified abatement worker or certified risk assessor who performed the abatement or conducted the inspection, lead-hazard screen, assessment or clearance testing, and the results.

MCL 333.5474b(3) adds a second, easily missed obligation: an owner required to register “shall provide the department with a copy of each report, document, or other information that is required to be filed with the federal government under federal law and regulations related to lead-based paint.” If you are inside the mandatory limb, your federal lead paperwork has a Michigan filing destination too.

MCL 333.5474b(4) runs the other way: the owner of any other residential or multifamily dwelling offered for rent, or of a child occupied facility, may register voluntarily, and the department shall include it on the registry. That limb requires the form plus the prescribed fee. Under subsection (5), the department publishes the registry on its website.

Several pages tell Michigan landlords that “Public Act 434” means jail for renting a unit with lead. That is a caricature of a narrow statute with cumulative elements and two affirmative defences. Here is what MCL 333.5475a actually does.

The subject: a property manager, housing commission, or owner of a rental unit who rents or continues to rent a residential housing unit to a family with a minor child found to have 10 micrograms or more of lead per deciliter of venous blood.

The elements — all three must apply (MCL 333.5475a(1)):

• (a) Prior actual knowledge that the rental unit contains a lead-based paint hazard.
• (b) At least ninety days have passed since that actual knowledge.
• (c) No good-faith action to reduce the hazards through interim controls, abatement, or a combination of the two.

The knowledge presumption (MCL 333.5475a(2)) is narrower than people assume. Actual knowledge is presumed only if one of exactly two things happened: the owner signed an acknowledgment of the hazard as a result of a risk assessment under the chapter at the time the risk assessment was made; or the owner was served, as a result of a risk assessment under the chapter, with notice of the hazard by first-class mail and a return receipt of that service was obtained. Both routes run through a risk assessment. A rumour, a tenant’s complaint, or a neighbour’s remark does not trigger the presumption.

The penalties (MCL 333.5475a(3)). Conviction is a misdemeanor: imprisonment for not more than 93 days or a statutory fine of not more than $5,000.00, or both. Where the defendant was previously convicted of violating this section or a substantially corresponding local ordinance, the misdemeanor carries imprisonment for not more than 93 days or a statutory fine of not more than $10,000.00, or both. These are penalty ceilings set by the statute itself, not adjusted figures.

The affirmative defences (MCL 333.5475a(4)). The landlord may assert either, and carries the burden of proof by a preponderance of the evidence:

• That the landlord requested or contracted with a person responsible for maintaining the unit to reduce the hazard through interim controls or abatement, and reasonably expected the hazard would be reduced.
• That the tenant would not allow entry into or upon the premises where the hazard is located, or otherwise interfered with correcting the hazard.

The practical Michigan lesson is about the ninety-day clock. Once a risk assessment has produced a signed acknowledgment or a served notice, you are on notice permanently, and the clock starts. Good-faith interim controls stop the statute cold — element (c) is not satisfied if you acted. Document what you did, when, and who you engaged. If a tenant blocks access, paper that too: it is the second affirmative defence, and it only helps you if it is in writing. Our Michigan notice to enter form is the right instrument for creating that record.

One claim about Michigan lead law is circulating widely enough — including in AI-generated answers and in one of the top-ranking pages for this topic — that it deserves a direct answer.

This is not Michigan law. No such duty exists.

We checked it against the whole of Part 54A — all 37 sections listed in the legislature’s own index for the part, MCL 333.5451 through 333.5479, read from the legislature’s published text rather than from any summary. The statute contains:

• No “regardless of construction date” provision. Part 54A is built on “target housing”, which MCL 333.5460(1) defines as housing constructed before 1978. Construction date is the foundation of the Act, not something it overrides.
• No pregnancy trigger. Pregnancy appears in Part 54A exactly once, and it creates no duty for anyone who owns property: MCL 333.5473a(4) directed the department to recommend appropriate maintenance practices “designed to prevent lead poisoning among children 6 years of age or less and pregnant women”. That is a recommendation the state was told to write, not an obligation imposed on a landlord, and the same subsection tells the department to weigh “the effects of those maintenance practices on the availability and affordability of housing and credit”. It is the opposite of a mandate.
• No under-six evaluation trigger. Children age six or less appear in the elderly-and-disabled carve-out of the target housing definition, in the “child occupied facility” and “living area” definitions, and in the departmental recommendation above — never as a trigger obliging a landlord to evaluate.
• No mandated evaluation for rental property at all. This is not an inference from silence — Part 54A says it outright. MCL 333.5460a(3): “This part does not require the owner or occupant to undertake any lead-based paint activities.” The part regulates who may perform a lead-based paint activity if one is commissioned (MCL 333.5461, 333.5469); it never orders an owner to commission one.

The nearest real provisions are the ones set out above, and they are materially different: MCL 333.5474b requires registration after abatement or interim controls have already happened; MCL 333.5475a imposes criminal exposure only where a child is already poisoned, the landlord already had actual knowledge, ninety days have passed, and nothing was done. Neither compels a landlord to evaluate anything.

Why this matters beyond pedantry: a landlord who believes Michigan mandates evaluations for every unit housing a young child may commission unnecessary assessments — and, far worse, a report that finds a hazard creates actual knowledge, starts the MCL 333.5475a ninety-day clock, and may pull the property into the MCL 333.5474b registry duty once controls are performed. Acting on a fabricated duty has real consequences under the genuine ones. Michigan does not require you to test. Federal law does not either (40 CFR 745.107(a)).

Part 54A’s centre of gravity is certification, and it reaches a landlord the moment they decide to act on lead rather than merely disclose it.

MCL 333.5461(1) is the rule: “A person shall not engage or offer to engage in a lead-based paint activity unless certified in the appropriate discipline under this part.” MCL 333.5469(1) reinforces it for firms: since 30 August 1999, a person shall not perform or offer to perform lead-based paint activities without departmental certification. A “lead-based paint activity” is defined at MCL 333.5458(2) as inspection, risk assessment, and abatement in target housing and child occupied facilities.

The disciplines are enumerated at MCL 333.5462(1): inspector, risk assessor, supervisor, project designer, abatement worker or laborer, and clearance technician. Michigan sets its own minimum training hours per discipline at MCL 333.5463(1) — 24 hours for an inspector, 16 for a risk assessor, 32 for a supervisor, 16 for an abatement worker, 8 for a clearance technician and for a project designer.

What this means in practice for a Michigan landlord:

• “Certified” means Michigan-certified. When MCL 333.5474b conditions the registry duty on an investigation “performed by a certified risk assessor certified under this part”, it means certified by the department under Part 54A. Do not engage someone on the strength of an out-of-state credential without checking — though MCL 333.5461(2) requires the department to certify an applicant licensed or certified in another state where that state’s standards are substantially similar.
• Abatement has a precise meaning (MCL 333.5453(1)): measures designed to permanently eliminate lead-based paint hazards. It expressly excludes (MCL 333.5453(2)) renovation or remodelling not designed to permanently eliminate hazards, interim controls, and — usefully — lead work performed by the owner of an owner-occupied dwelling or an owner-occupied multifamily dwelling of four or fewer units, in that owner-occupied unit only.
• Interim controls are not abatement. MCL 333.5457(5) defines them as measures designed to temporarily reduce exposure — specialised cleaning, repairs, maintenance, painting, temporary containment, monitoring, and resident education. They are what MCL 333.5475a’s good-faith limb contemplates, and performing them can trigger the MCL 333.5474b registry duty.

Michigan runs two separate penalty ladders for Part 54A itself, and they are worth keeping apart from both the federal disclosure penalties and MCL 333.5475a:

Because Part 54A imposes no disclosure duty, neither ladder punishes a disclosure failure. A Michigan landlord who skips the federal disclosure is exposed federally — not under MCL 333.5476 or 333.5477. This distinction is lost in nearly every summary of Michigan lead law, which is how the $2,000 figure ended up welded onto PA 434.

Disclosure governs leasing. The moment you disturb paint, a different rule applies: the EPA Renovation, Repair and Painting rule at 40 CFR Part 745 Subpart E.

Where a renovation disturbs painted surfaces in a pre-1978 rental, the work must be performed by a certified firm using lead-safe work practices, and occupants must receive lead hazard information no more than 60 days before work begins. Where common areas are affected, notice describing the nature, location and expected dates of the work must reach every affected unit in the building.

Michigan layers its own certification regime on top for anything meeting the Part 54A definition of a lead-based paint activity. The distinction that matters: routine repainting or remodelling that is not designed to permanently eliminate a hazard is not abatement under MCL 333.5453(2)(a), so it does not pull in Part 54A’s abatement certification — but it can still be a renovation under the federal RRP rule. Two regimes, two triggers, one job.

Skipping the federal disclosure creates two distinct exposures. Neither is a Michigan penalty.

First, the tenant’s private action. 42 U.S.C. 4852d(b)(3) makes any person who knowingly violates the section jointly and severally liable to the purchaser or lessee for three times the amount of damages incurred. 42 U.S.C. 4852d(b)(4) allows the court to award court costs, reasonable attorney fees, and expert witness fees. In a lead-exposure case involving an injured child, the trebled figure is the exposure that matters, and it dwarfs any administrative fine.

Second, government civil money penalties. EPA and HUD can pursue civil penalties for disclosure violations, and knowing violations can carry criminal exposure.

Note the contrast with Michigan’s own numbers. The statutory ceilings at MCL 333.5475a(3) ($5,000 and $10,000) and the administrative fine ladder at MCL 333.5476(1) ($2,000, $5,000, $10,000 per violation or per day) are set in the statute, not inflation-adjusted, so they can be stated with confidence. That is precisely why we print those and not the federal ones.

Lead disclosure violations rarely surface through an audit. They surface through an event.

• A child’s elevated blood lead result. Under MCL 333.5474(1)(c), the department requires results of all blood lead level tests conducted in Michigan to be reported, and on notice of a level above 10 micrograms per deciliter it must contact the local public health department or the child’s physician. That contact is how a Michigan rental unit enters the system — and it is the same fact pattern that starts MCL 333.5475a.
• A tenant complaint to EPA or HUD. Both agencies take disclosure complaints directly.
• A local code inspection, particularly in cities with their own lead ordinances tied to rental registration.
• Litigation discovery. In an injury claim, the first document request is the signed disclosure. Its absence is the case.

In every one of those paths, the question is the same: produce the signed disclosure and the record of pamphlet delivery. Which is the entire argument for the three-year rule being a floor rather than a target.

Michigan expressly preserves local lead authority, and this is where a Michigan landlord’s real extra obligations usually live. MCL 333.5477(3): “This part does not diminish the responsibilities of an owner or occupant, or the authority of enforcing agents under state, county, city, municipal, or other local building, housing, or health and safety codes.” MCL 333.5477(4) adds: “The requirements of this part are in addition to other pertinent provisions of a code listed in subsection (3).” MCL 333.5477(2) makes the sanctions cumulative with other federal, state and local ones.

So Part 54A is a floor, not a ceiling, and local law stacks on top of it.

Disclosure is a paperwork duty about knowledge. Habitability is a condition duty about the building. They are independent, and a Michigan landlord can comply perfectly with one while breaching the other.

MCL 554.139(1) writes two covenants into every lease of residential premises: “(a) That the premises and all common areas are fit for the use intended by the parties. (b) To keep the premises in reasonable repair during the term of the lease or license, and to comply with the applicable health and safety laws of the state and of the local unit of government where the premises are located…” — except where the disrepair was caused by the tenant’s own wilful or irresponsible conduct.

Three features make this matter for lead:

• It reaches common areas expressly. Deteriorating pre-1978 paint in a shared stairwell or porch of a Michigan multifamily is squarely within subsection (1)(a).
• It incorporates local codes by reference. Subsection (1)(b) obliges compliance with the health and safety laws of the state and of the local unit of government — so a Detroit or Grand Rapids lead provision becomes a lease covenant, enforceable by the tenant.
• It is hard to contract out of. MCL 554.139(2) permits modification only where the lease has a current term of at least one year, and MCL 554.139(3) requires the section to be construed liberally, adding that a prospective tenant’s privilege of inspecting the premises before signing “shall not defeat his right to have the benefit of the covenants established herein”. A tenant who looked at the flaking paint and rented anyway keeps the covenant.

The Truth in Renting Act closes the loop: MCL 554.633(1)(a) voids any lease provision that waives or alters a remedy available when the premises violate the MCL 554.139 covenants. So “tenant accepts the unit as-is including any lead paint” is not merely ineffective — it is a prohibited clause, and MCL 554.636 gives the tenant a damages action for including it.

The practical consequence: a signed lead disclosure is not a defence to a habitability claim about the same paint. Disclosing that you know about deteriorated lead-based paint tells the tenant something true; it does not make the unit fit. If anything, a disclosure stating known hazards is documentary evidence of your knowledge in a later habitability or MCL 333.5475a proceeding. Full detail is in our Michigan habitability laws guide.

Skipping disclosure on a pre-1978 unit

The most expensive and the most common. Much of Michigan’s rental stock predates 1978, and the duty attaches to the building’s age, not to whether anyone believes there is lead in it. Untested is not the same as lead-free.

Delivering at signing instead of before

40 CFR 745.107(a) requires the activities to be completed before the purchaser or lessee is obligated under any contract. Handing the disclosure across the table with the pen, or into the move-in packet with the keys, is late — and late delivery is the same violation as no delivery.

Wrong build-year assumption

“It was fully renovated in the nineties” is not an exemption. Original construction controls. Verify from the assessor’s record, the certificate of occupancy or the permit — not from the listing or from memory.

Treating a studio as exempt when a child under six lives there

Before 2025 the zero-bedroom exclusion was unconditional. The 2025 amendment to 40 CFR 745.103 (89 FR 89416) attached the child-under-six condition to it, so a studio where a child under six resides is now target housing and needs the federal disclosure. The 100-day and certified-lead-free exemptions still carry no child condition. Relying on a stale chart here means missing a disclosure you actually owe — the costly direction of the error.

Failing to provide the EPA pamphlet

The pamphlet is an independent deliverable under 745.107(a)(1). A signed acknowledgment of a pamphlet the tenant never received is worse than no acknowledgment: the tenant has certified a falsehood you authored.

Verbal or implied disclosure

“I told them the house was old” is not disclosure. The rule requires prescribed language, in a document, attached to or within the lease, signed.

Rewriting the lead warning statement

745.113(b)(1) prescribes the language. Tightening it, modernising it, or trimming it for space can defeat the disclosure. Reproduce it.

Pre-ticking the tenant’s or agent’s acknowledgments

Items (b)(4), (b)(5) and (b)(6) are statements by the lessee and the agent. A landlord cannot make them. A form that lets you pre-tick them is manufacturing an acknowledgment on a certified document — which is why this generator will not do it.

Printing a 10-day inspection or waiver line on a lease

There is no such element at 745.113(b). Offering a tenant the chance to “waive” a right they never had misstates federal law on an instrument both parties certify as accurate.

Treating “no knowledge” as a place to hide

It is a statement about actual knowledge. Holding a report, a prior abatement record, a health department notice, or knowledge of a child’s elevated blood lead result and ticking “no knowledge” is a knowing violation — the exact mental state 42 U.S.C. 4852d(b)(3) trebles.

Failing to disclose to every lessee

Every tenant signing the lease is a lessee. One roommate’s signature does not discharge the duty to the others.

Forgetting the records for the rest of the building

The duty is not limited to the four walls of the leased unit. Where a building-wide evaluation identified hazards in a stairwell, a laundry room, a porch or a neighbouring unit, that report is within scope for a pre-1978 building. MCL 333.5455(3) defines common area broadly for Part 54A purposes, and 40 CFR 745.103 does the same federally.

Missing the Michigan registry duty after doing the right thing

A distinctly Michigan trap, and a perverse one: the landlord who acts — commissions a certified risk assessor, abates or installs interim controls — is the landlord who acquires the MCL 333.5474b(2) registration duty and the MCL 333.5474b(3) filing duty. Doing the work and not registering converts a compliance success into a Part 54A violation exposed to the MCL 333.5476 fine ladder.

Renovating without the RRP rule

Scraping, sanding or replacing painted components in a pre-1978 rental triggers 40 CFR Part 745 Subpart E, certified-firm work practices, and the 60-day occupant information requirement — independent of anything on the disclosure form.

Acting on a Michigan duty that does not exist

Commissioning evaluations because a summary said Michigan mandates them for units housing young children does more than waste money. A report that finds a hazard creates actual knowledge, starts the MCL 333.5475a ninety-day clock, and can pull you into the registry duty once controls are performed. Verify a duty before you act on it.

Michigan tenants in pre-1978 rentals hold a specific, enumerable set of rights. Landlords who understand them price the compliance work correctly.

The right to the disclosure before being obligated

Under 40 CFR 745.107(a), the disclosure, the records and the pamphlet must all reach the tenant before they are obligated under the lease — not at signing, not at move-in.

The right to the EPA pamphlet

An independent entitlement under 745.107(a)(1) and 15 U.S.C. 2696, separate from the disclosure document itself.

The right to the landlord’s actual knowledge and records

Not a summary, and not a reassurance. Under 745.107(a)(2) and (a)(4), the basis for the determination, the location, and the condition of the painted surfaces, plus copies of the records themselves.

The right to triple damages plus fees

42 U.S.C. 4852d(b)(3): a knowing violator is jointly and severally liable to the lessee for three times the damages incurred. 4852d(b)(4) adds court costs, reasonable attorney fees and expert witness fees. This is the remedy that makes the paperwork worth doing.

The right to report to EPA or HUD

Both agencies accept tenant complaints about disclosure violations directly, and 745.113(c)(2) confirms the recordkeeping rule places no limitation on civil suits or on a lessee’s rights under 4852d(b)(3).

The right to a habitable unit under Michigan law

MCL 554.139(1) covenants fitness and reasonable repair, reaches common areas, and incorporates state and local health and safety laws. MCL 554.633(1)(a) voids any lease clause purporting to waive the remedy, and MCL 554.139(3) preserves the covenant even where the tenant inspected before signing.

The right not to be rented a known hazard while a child is poisoned

MCL 333.5475a is a criminal statute, not a private remedy — but it is a right in the practical sense that a landlord who rents on with a known, unremediated hazard to a family whose child has 10 micrograms or more per deciliter of venous blood, ninety days after acquiring actual knowledge, faces prosecution.

The right to tort damages for actual exposure

Disclosure liability is separate from injury liability. A child injured by lead exposure has ordinary Michigan negligence claims against a landlord who knew and did nothing, and the disclosure you signed is evidence of what you knew and when.

The right to fair-housing protection

The federal Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. 3601 et seq., protects familial status. A landlord who responds to the lead rules by refusing to rent pre-1978 units to families with young children has swapped a disclosure problem for a discrimination problem. The lawful response to lead risk is disclosure and, where warranted, remediation — never tenant selection. Our Michigan tenant screening laws guide covers the boundary.

Every provision below was verified against primary text: federal provisions against the published Code of Federal Regulations, Michigan provisions against the Michigan Legislature’s own published text of the Public Health Code and the Truth in Renting Act.

Published by Tenant Screening Background Check

Established 2004 · 20+ Years · All U.S. States & Territories · Statute-Based · Attorney-Reviewed

A Private Eye Reports™ service trusted by landlords, property managers, and attorneys.