Free Minnesota Lead Paint Disclosure

A Minnesota 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). Minnesota imposes no separate lead paint disclosure statute — the disclosure duty here is purely federal, and there is no such thing as a “Minnesota lead disclosure form” no matter what a form vendor calls it. But Minnesota is not a hands-off state: the Lead Poisoning Prevention Act at Minn. Stat. 144.9501 to 144.9512 creates real, owner-binding duties once a hazard is found, and Minnesota habitability law applies to deteriorated paint independently. Generate the form below, then read on for the parts nobody else explains.

▶ Watch overview

Minnesota 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 Minnesota 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 Minnesota this item has more teeth than in most states, because the state’s own secondary-prevention system manufactures records — lead risk assessments, lead orders, and clearance inspections all land in your file and all become disclosable.

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

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

This is the question this page exists to answer honestly, because the search results get it wrong in both directions. The accurate answer has two halves, and most pages give you only one.

Half one: Minnesota has no lead paint disclosure statute. There is no Minnesota lead disclosure law, no Minnesota-specific lead disclosure form, and no state filing. Every element of the disclosure described on this page comes from federal law: 42 U.S.C. 4852d, 40 CFR Part 745 Subpart F, and 24 CFR Part 35 Subpart A. We checked this against the statutory text rather than against other websites: across the entire Lead Poisoning Prevention Act — Minn. Stat. 144.9501 through 144.9512 — the word “disclosure” appears exactly twice, and both instances are the definition of the EPA Renovate Right pamphlet at 144.9501 subd. 8a, which belongs to the renovation rules, not to leasing. The phrase “prospective tenant” does not appear at all. There is no pre-1978 lease trigger anywhere in Minnesota law.

Half two — and this is what the “Minnesota adds nothing” pages miss: Minnesota regulates lead heavily. It simply does it on a different axis. Federal law governs what you must say before the lease. Minnesota law governs what happens after a hazard is found. The Lead Poisoning Prevention Act is a secondary-prevention regime, and it binds property owners directly:

• Lead risk assessments on statutory deadlines — Minn. Stat. 144.9504 subd. 2. When a child or pregnant female is identified with an elevated venous blood lead level, an assessing agency must assess the property, on a clock keyed to the blood lead number.
• Lead orders — Minn. Stat. 144.9504 subd. 5. A “lead order” is defined at 144.9501 subd. 20 as a legal instrument to compel a property owner to engage in lead hazard reduction. The agency issues it to you.
• Tenant relocation rights that override your lease — Minn. Stat. 144.9504 subd. 7. Rent stops, the tenant may terminate, and your deposit deadline collapses to five days.
• Owner notification duty — Minn. Stat. 144.9504 subd. 8. A 30-day deadline that catches owners who plan to do the work themselves.
• Licensing and standards — Minn. Stat. 144.9505 and 144.9508, implemented through the state’s lead rules at Minn. R. ch. 4761, including the lead standards for paint, dust, bare soil, and drinking water at Minn. R. 4761.2510.
• Non-waivable habitability covenants — Minn. Stat. 504B.161, which apply to deteriorated paint whether or not you disclosed it.

So the honest summary is: Minnesota adds nothing to what you must disclose, and a great deal to what you must do. A landlord who reads only the federal rule will complete the form correctly and still be blindsided the first time a blood lead result comes back. The rest of this page covers both halves — the federal disclosure you owe today, and the Minnesota machinery that can arrive later. Because the disclosure obligation is federal rather than state-specific, the same form applies to a rental in any state; our federal lead-based paint disclosure form is the generic version of the Minnesota form on this page.

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

Note what is not in that list: no inspection window, no testing requirement, no notarization, no filing with any agency, and no obligation to remediate. The 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, and it does not make you fix anything. Minnesota law is what can make you fix something — a distinction covered in detail below.

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

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

How to verify the build year in Minnesota. The county assessor’s property record is the fastest authoritative source, and Minnesota counties publish it online; Hennepin and Ramsey both offer parcel lookups that show year built. The original certificate of occupancy, the building permit file, and title records also establish it. The lessor carries the burden of correctly identifying target housing — “I think it was around 1980” is not a defence, and a guess that turns out wrong is a knowing violation waiting to happen.

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

Common areas in multi-unit buildings. If the building predates 1978, the disclosure scope reaches the common areas as well as the leased unit. 40 CFR 745.103 defines “common area” as a portion of a building generally accessible to all residents or users, including but not limited to hallways, stairways, laundry and recreational rooms, playgrounds, community centers, and boundary fences. This has a practical consequence for records, covered below: a building-wide evaluation is disclosable to every tenant in the building, not just the one whose unit it sampled.

Minnesota context. Minnesota has one of the older housing stocks in the country, and its pre-1978 inventory is concentrated exactly where families rent: Minneapolis and Saint Paul, plus the older cores of Duluth, Rochester, Winona, and Mankato. Whole neighbourhoods of Minneapolis and Saint Paul are dominated by pre-1940 single-family and duplex stock, which means the disclosure is the default rather than the exception for landlords in those markets. This is also why Minnesota built a secondary-prevention statute in the first place, and why the state’s lead orders are not a theoretical risk. Portfolio landlords with mixed-vintage holdings are the ones who get caught, because the compliance answer differs unit by unit. When in doubt, verify against the assessor record rather than relying on the exemption.

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

• Housing constructed in 1978 or later (40 CFR 745.103). Not target housing at all.
• Zero-bedroom dwellings (40 CFR 745.103, definitional). Defined as 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. Since the 2025 amendment this exclusion is conditional. Read the definition carefully, because most exemption lists still misread it: as amended effective 13 January 2025 (89 FR 89416), target housing means 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).” The amendment moved the child parenthetical to the end of the except-clause, so it now reaches both limbs. A studio is target housing when a child under six resides or is expected to reside there — older charts still show it as unconditional.
• Housing for the elderly or persons with disabilities (40 CFR 745.103, definitional) — unless a child under six resides or is expected to reside there. Since the 2025 amendment this and the zero-bedroom exclusion each carry that child condition. Note the rule defines “housing for the elderly” precisely: retirement communities or similar housing reserved for households composed of one or more persons 62 years of age or more at the time of initial occupancy. An ordinary building that happens to have older tenants does not qualify.
• Short-term leases of 100 days or less (40 CFR 745.101(c)), where no lease renewal or extension can occur. Both halves matter. Vacation and short-term rentals typically qualify; a month-to-month tenancy does not, because it renews.
• Certified lead-free housing (40 CFR 745.101(b)). Leases of target housing found to be lead-based paint free by a certified inspector. Retain the certification; it is the only proof of the exemption.
• Qualifying lease renewals (40 CFR 745.101(d)). A renewal of an existing lease where the lessor has previously disclosed all information required under 745.107 and no new information described in 745.107 has come into the lessor’s possession. Watch the cross-reference: 745.101(d) points at 745.107, not at 745.113(b); pages that cite 745.113(b) here have followed the wrong thread. The regulation adds that renewal includes both renegotiation of existing lease terms and ratification of a new lease.
• Foreclosure sales (40 CFR 745.101(a)). Exempt — but note this is a sales exemption, and it is the one most often misread on rental pages. A purchaser at foreclosure who then leases the pre-1978 property owes the tenant the full disclosure.

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

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

Language. 40 CFR 745.113(b) requires the disclosure elements in the language of the contract. An English lease takes the English pamphlet; a Spanish lease takes the Spanish edition. This matters in Minnesota, where landlords in the Twin Cities routinely lease to Somali-, Hmong-, Spanish-, and Karen-speaking households. The obligation follows the language of the lease, not the language of the conversation — if you write the lease in English, the English pamphlet discharges the duty, but a landlord who negotiates in another language and then papers the file in English should think carefully about whether the tenant genuinely received the information the rule exists to transmit.

Do not confuse the two pamphlets. Minnesota law references a different one. Protect Your Family From Lead in Your Home is the leasing pamphlet required by this rule. Renovate Right — defined in Minnesota law at Minn. Stat. 144.9501 subd. 8a as the “disclosure pamphlet” — is the renovation pamphlet, delivered to occupants before work disturbs paint. Different documents, different triggers, different duties. Delivering one does not discharge the other, and the fact that Minnesota’s statute calls Renovate Right the “disclosure pamphlet” is exactly the kind of terminology collision that produces confident, wrong compliance advice.

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

Existing tenants. The leasing disclosure duty attaches to new leases, not to sitting tenants mid-term. There is one important exception, and it is the renovation rule: if you disturb paint in an occupied pre-1978 unit, the occupants must receive lead hazard information regardless of when their lease started.

The disclosure rule does not require you to test for lead, and it does not require you to remove it. It is a disclosure rule, not an abatement rule, and it does not cancel leasing or sales contracts. Non-disclosure does not void the lease.

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

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

• You hold a risk assessment, inspection report, or abatement record for the unit or the building.
• A previous tenant’s child had an elevated blood-lead result traced to the unit.
• An assessing agency issued lead orders on the property under Minn. Stat. 144.9504 subd. 5.
• A code-enforcement notice, rental-licensing inspection, insurance report, or contractor flagged deteriorated paint.
• You know the property was tested and the report is inconvenient, so you never collected it.

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

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

Read the regulation. 40 CFR 745.110(a) provides that before a purchaser is obligated under any contract to purchase target housing, the seller shall permit the purchaser a 10-day period (unless the parties mutually agree, in writing, upon a different period of time) to conduct a risk assessment or inspection for the presence of lead-based paint and/or lead-based paint hazards. Purchaser. Seller. Purchase. Every operative noun is a sales noun. Subsection (b) adds that a purchaser may waive the opportunity in writing — again, a purchaser.

Now read the lessor rules. 40 CFR 745.113(b) — the six elements listed earlier — contains no inspection-opportunity item. Neither does the EPA lessor disclosure form. The statute agrees: 42 U.S.C. 4852d(a)(1)(C) frames the inspection opportunity around purchasers.

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

One Minnesota footnote. Do not let the absence of a federal inspection right lull you into thinking a pre-lease walkthrough settles anything. Minn. Stat. 504B.161 subd. 3 provides that the section shall be liberally construed and that the opportunity to inspect the premises before concluding a lease or license shall not defeat the covenants established in this section. Whatever the tenant did or did not look at before signing, your habitability covenants survive intact.

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

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

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

What belongs in the file:

• The executed disclosure with every party’s initials, signatures, and dates.
• A note identifying which pamphlet edition was delivered, and how.
• Copies of every record and report you handed to the lessee.
• The lease itself, if the disclosure was inserted rather than attached.
• For electronic delivery: the consent record and the delivery/access log.
• In Minnesota: any lead risk assessment, lead order, notice submitted under Minn. Stat. 144.9504 subd. 8, and clearance inspection touching the property.

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

Practical retention advice. Three years is a floor, not a target. A lead-poisoning claim brought on behalf of a minor can surface many years after the tenancy ends. Retention is nearly free; destroy the file on the three-year anniversary and you have optimised for the wrong risk. Keep it for the life of ownership and hand the file over at sale — the buyer inherits the disclosure duty and will need the records to answer item (b)(3) honestly.

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

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

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

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

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

This is the section no competing page has, and it is the part of Minnesota lead law that actually costs landlords money. Google is currently ranking the raw statute for landlord lead queries because no commercial page explains it. Here is what Minn. Stat. 144.9504, titled Secondary Prevention, does to a property owner.

The trigger is a blood test, not an inspection. Minnesota’s system is reactive: it starts when a child or pregnant female is identified with an elevated venous blood lead level. Nobody is auditing your paint. A clinic result sets the whole machine in motion.

The statutory assessment clock (subd. 2)

Under Minn. Stat. 144.9504 subd. 2(b), an assessing agency shall conduct a lead risk assessment of a residence where lead hazards are suspected, on deadlines keyed to the venous blood lead level:

A definitional trap worth knowing. Minnesota generally defines “child” as an individual up to 72 months of age (144.9501 subd. 6a). But subd. 2(a) of 144.9504 opens by saying that notwithstanding that definition, for purposes of the risk-assessment subdivision “child” means an individual under 18 years of age. The assessment trigger is therefore far broader than the under-six framing most lead guidance uses. A 14-year-old’s blood lead result can bring an assessing agency to your property.

Multi-unit buildings. Subd. 2(d) requires the agency to assess the individual unit where the conditions are met and to inspect all common areas accessible to a child. If the child visits other sites, those get inspected too. This is how a single blood test produces building-wide records — records that then become disclosable to every future tenant in the building under 40 CFR 745.113(b)(3).

The neighbour-notification provision. Subd. 2(e) is one most owners have never heard of. Within the limits of appropriations, the assessing agency identifies the known addresses for the previous 12 months of a child with a venous blood lead level of at least 15 micrograms per deciliter (or a pregnant female at 10 or more), and notifies the property owners, landlords, and tenants at those addresses that an elevated blood lead level was found in a person who resided ther