Free Nevada Lead Paint Disclosure

A Nevada 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). Nevada imposes no separate lead paint disclosure statute — we checked the primary text, and NRS Chapter 118A does not contain the words “lead paint” at all. What Nevada adds is an independent habitability duty at NRS 118A.290, covered in our Nevada habitability laws guide. What Clark County adds is an entire local lead regulation that almost nobody writing about this topic mentions. Generate the form below, then read on.

▶ Watch overview

Nevada 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 Nevada 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 included as an attachment to or within the lease.

Second, it transmits the lessor’s actual knowledge of lead-based paint or hazards in the dwelling. The lessor picks one of exactly two positions: known lead-based paint or hazards are present, with a description of what is known; or the lessor has no knowledge of lead-based paint or hazards in the housing. There is no third box, and there is no “maybe”.

Third, it transmits any reports the lessor holds from prior inspections, risk assessments, or hazard-reduction work. The lessor either provides copies of all available records and lists them, or affirmatively states that no reports or records exist.

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

The disclosure is not optional and the duty is not waivable by agreement. A pre-1978 Nevada 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.

No. Nevada has no state-specific lead paint disclosure statute, and this page will not invent one. We did not take that on trust from another website — we pulled the chapters from the Nevada Legislature’s own server and searched the text. NRS Chapter 118A, the landlord-and-tenant chapter that governs Nevada dwellings, runs to roughly 131,000 characters and contains zero occurrences of “lead paint”, “lead-based paint”, or even “1978”. The same search came back empty for NRS 113 (sales of real property and seller disclosures), NRS 118, NRS 439, NRS 444, NRS 618, NRS 645, and NRS 40, and for the administrative code at NAC 439 and NAC 444.

That is the honest answer, and it is more useful than a fabricated one. If you are searching for the Nevada lead paint statute number, there isn’t one to find. Every substantive requirement 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. Because the obligation is federal rather than state-specific, the same disclosure applies to a rental in any state — our federal lead-based paint disclosure form is the generic version of the Nevada form on this page.

What Nevada does contribute is two adjacent things worth knowing, and one of them turns out to matter a great deal:

• Habitability — NRS 118A.290. The landlord’s duty to maintain the dwelling in a habitable condition applies independently of disclosure. Deteriorated lead paint can be a habitability defect on its own, whether or not you disclosed it. Disclosure does not cure a hazard; it only discloses one. This is covered in detail below, because the precise wording of 118A.290 does something on this topic that most habitability statutes do not.
• Local health-district regulation. Nevada’s public health work is done by regional health districts created under NRS 439, and those districts can adopt binding regulations for their own territory. In Clark County, that power has been exercised on lead paint specifically. This is local law, not state law, and the distinction matters if your property is in Reno rather than Las Vegas.

Here is the single most under-reported fact on this topic. If your pre-1978 rental is in Clark County — Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, Henderson, Boulder City, Mesquite, or Laughlin, which together hold the large majority of Nevada’s population — there is a second rulebook sitting on top of the federal one, and it has teeth the federal disclosure rule does not.

The Southern Nevada Health District is the public health entity for Clark County under NRS 439. Its governing body, the Southern Nevada District Board of Health, is authorised by NRS 439.366 to adopt regulations to prevent and control public health hazards within the health district. Using that power, together with NRS 439.479 (regulations on the condition of rental dwelling units, including regulations “to recover all costs incurred by the district board of health relating thereto”) and NRS 439.490 (a health officer may “order the abatement or removal of any nuisance detrimental to the public health”), the Board adopted the Regulations Governing Lead Paint Hazard Prevention and Control. The regulations order compliance “within Clark County, Nevada”.

What Section 4 does: restates the disclosure duty locally

Section 4 of the SNHD regulations mirrors the federal disclosure rule almost clause for clause. The purpose paragraph requires a seller or lessor of target housing to disclose known lead-based paint and hazards, provide available records and reports, provide the lead hazard information pamphlet, “give purchasers a ten (10)-day opportunity to conduct a risk assessment or inspection”, and attach the disclosure and warning language before the purchaser or lessee is obligated. Section 4.3.1.4 goes out of its way to say that the records duty “includes records or reports regarding common areas” and records covering “other residential dwellings in multifamily target housing” where they form part of a building-wide evaluation.

Note that the local regulation gets the 10-day question right: its Section 4.4.1 is purchaser-scoped word for word, matching 40 CFR 745.110(a). The practical effect of Section 4 is not to add a new form — it is to make the same failure enforceable by a local health inspector who can be at your property this week, rather than only by a federal agency in another time zone.

The divergence worth checking: the 100-day exemption

There is one difference between Section 4 and the federal rule that a careful Clark County landlord should notice. 40 CFR 745.101 lists four exceptions to the disclosure subpart: foreclosure sales, leases of certified lead-free housing, short-term leases of 100 days or less where no renewal or extension can occur, and qualifying lease renewals. SNHD Section 4.2 lists only three: foreclosure sales (4.2.1), certified lead-free leases (4.2.2), and qualifying renewals (4.2.3). The words “100 days” do not appear anywhere in Section 4.

We are telling you what the text says, not what it means, because we could not verify from the regulation itself whether that omission is deliberate policy or a drafting artefact, and we are not going to guess on your behalf. The conservative reading is obvious enough: if you run short-term or vacation lets in a pre-1978 Clark County building and you have been relying on the federal 100-day exemption, the local regulation as written does not appear to carry that exemption forward. Delivering the disclosure anyway costs you nothing and removes the question entirely.

Section 2: the part that is genuinely beyond the federal rule

The federal disclosure rule is an information-transfer rule. It never makes you fix anything. SNHD Section 2 does.

Under Section 2.1, the Health Authority performs a lead hazard screening or risk assessment whenever it learns of potentially hazardous paint conditions through any of three routes: an elevated blood-lead investigation at a child’s residence or anywhere the child spends time; a referral from a federal, state or local entity that identified a renter-occupied residence constructed before 1978 with a possible lead hazard; or an observation made by an environmental health specialist while investigating some unrelated complaint. That third route deserves a moment’s thought: a routine complaint about something else entirely can become a lead investigation because of what the inspector notices on the way in.

If the screening finds a lead paint-related hazard, Section 2.2 requires the Health Authority to treat it as a substantial hazard to public health and to require correction through interim controls or abatement. Section 2.4 requires areas deemed a substantial public health hazard to be removed from public access immediately. The listed hazards include lead-based paint in fair or poor condition, dust-lead hazards, and soil-lead hazards.

Sections 6 and 7: the enforcement machinery

Section 6 sets out the Notice of Violation and Order for Abatement. It identifies the property and the owner, describes the hazard, states which sections were violated, requires remediation or abatement by a certified firm within a specified period, requires clearance testing by a stated date, and tells the owner about the right to appeal. It may be served personally, by mail to the last known address, and additionally by posting on the property. Where corrective work cannot be finished in time, the owner must file a written Request for Extension before the compliance date, with a statement of intent and a work plan; the Health Authority may accept or deny it.

Section 7 gives the appeal route: a written request for an administrative hearing, with a minimum of ten business days allowed to file it, a hearing date set no later than 60 days from the request, a hearing before a Health Authority Hearing Officer with counsel permitted, witnesses, subpoenas, and a verbatim record. Judicial review runs under NRS 233B.130(2) and NRS 233B.131 through 233B.150. Section 7.3 adds that where an owner does not comply, the Health Authority may seek relief in court and must notify licensing, building, and code-enforcement authorities — and the EPA — of the continued non-compliance.

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, in the language of the contract. A disclosure missing any one of them is defective, regardless of how professional the form looks. This is the checklist to audit your own paperwork against.

Note what is not in that list: no inspection window, no testing requirement, no filing with any agency, and no obligation to remediate. The federal rule is an information-transfer rule. It makes you tell the truth about what you know and hand over what you hold; it does not make you go looking. (In Clark County, as set out above, the remediation piece arrives from a different direction entirely.)

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

How to verify the build year in Nevada. The county assessor’s record is the fastest authoritative source, and Clark County and Washoe County both publish theirs online. 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 — hallways, stairwells, porches, laundry rooms, and shared storage. This has a practical consequence for records, covered below: a building-wide evaluation is disclosable to every tenant in the building, not just the one whose unit it sampled.

Nevada context, and why the exemption gets assumed wrongly here. Nevada is an unusually young housing market. The overwhelming majority of Clark County’s rental stock was built well after 1978, and in a market where nearly everything postdates the trigger it becomes a habit to assume the rule never applies. The pre-1978 inventory that does exist is concentrated and easy to name: the historic Las Vegas core and the older neighbourhoods near downtown, the established parts of Reno and Sparks, Carson City, and the old railroad and mining towns — Elko, Ely, Winnemucca, Boulder City’s original townsite. Portfolio landlords with mixed-vintage holdings are the ones who get caught, because the compliance answer differs unit by unit and the habit says “no”. When in doubt, verify against the assessor record rather than relying on the vintage of the neighbourhood.

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 built in 1978 or later (40 CFR 745.103). Not target housing at all.
• 0-bedroom dwellings (40 CFR 745.103, definitional). A dwelling in which the living area is not separated from the sleeping area — the definition expressly includes efficiencies, studio apartments, dormitory housing, military barracks, and rentals of individual rooms in residential dwellings. As amended effective 13 January 2025 (89 FR 89416), this exclusion is conditional: it lifts when a child under six resides or is expected. See the callout below, because this is the single most misstated point in the rule.
• Housing for the elderly or persons with disabilities (40 CFR 745.103, definitional) — unless any child who is less than 6 years of age resides or is expected to reside there. “Housing for the elderly” has its own definition in 745.103: retirement communities or similar housing reserved for households with one or more persons 62 or older at initial occupancy.
• Short-term leases of 100 days or less (40 CFR 745.101(c)), where no lease renewal or extension can occur. A month-to-month tenancy does not qualify, because it renews. Clark County landlords: see the Section 4.2 divergence discussed above before relying on this one.
• Certified lead-free housing (40 CFR 745.101(b)). Property inspected by a certified inspector and found free of lead-based paint. Retain the certification; it is the only proof of the exemption.
• Qualifying lease renewals (40 CFR 745.101(d)). A renewal of an existing lease where the lessor already made every disclosure required by 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. 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. The Clark County regulation restates the same duty at Section 4.3.1.1.

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. The disclosure elements must be provided in the language of the contract. An English lease takes the English pamphlet; a Spanish lease takes the Spanish edition. In a market like Las Vegas, where a large share of tenancies are negotiated in Spanish, this is not a hypothetical: match the pamphlet to the lease language, not to the conversation you had at the viewing.

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 the lead hazard information regardless of when their lease started. That is covered in the renovation section below.

The rule does not require you to test for lead, and it does not require you to remove it. EPA states this plainly: the disclosure rule does not require sellers or landlords to test or remove lead-based paint or lead-based paint hazards, and it does not cancel leasing or sales contracts. It is a disclosure rule, not an abatement rule. The Clark County regulation carries the same rule at Section 4.3.1: “Nothing in this Section implies a positive obligation on the seller or lessor to conduct any evaluation or reduction activities.” That is not independent local drafting — it is the federal sentence at 40 CFR 745.107(a) reproduced word for word, which is a useful tell for how closely SNHD’s Section 4 tracks the federal rule (and makes the places where it departs more significant).

The standard is actual knowledge, not constructive knowledge and not a duty to investigate. “Available” is defined at 40 CFR 745.103 as in the possession of or reasonably obtainable by the lessor at the time of the disclosure. 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.
• A code-enforcement notice, insurance report, or contractor flagged deteriorated paint.
• You received a health-district notice or screening result on the property.
• 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. 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. There is a Clark County wrinkle worth naming: once the health district has screened your property, the results exist. From that day forward “no knowledge” is gone for that unit and every future tenancy in it.

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

Read the regulation. 40 CFR 745.110(a) provides that before a purchaser is obligated under any contract to purchase target housing, the seller shall permit the purchaser a 10-day period (unless the parties mutually agree, in writing, upon a different period of time) to conduct a risk assessment or inspection for the presence of lead-based paint and/or lead-based paint hazards. Purchaser. Seller. Purchase. Every operative noun is a sales noun. The statute agrees: 42 U.S.C. 4852d(a)(1)(C) frames the opportunity as one given to the 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. Compare the two versions of the form directly and you can see it: the sales version carries an item where the purchaser states they either received or waived the 10-day opportunity; the lessor version simply has no such line, because there is no such right to receive or waive.

Even Clark County gets this right. SNHD Section 4.4.1 reproduces the federal sentence exactly — “Before a purchaser is obligated under any contract to purchase target housing, the seller shall permit the purchaser a 10-day period…” — and Section 4.5.1.5, the item recording that the opportunity was received or waived, sits in the seller requirements at 4.5.1, not in the lessor requirements. The local regulation is more careful about this than most of the national form industry.

What this means for you. A Nevada 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.

Complete the fields below to generate a federally compliant Nevada 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)(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. 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 Clark County: any health-district correspondence, screening result, or clearance test on 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 how long you can be sued. 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.

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.

The disclosure rule governs leasing. A different rule governs work on the building, and Nevada landlords routinely comply with the first while breaching the second. In Clark County there are two versions of this rule running in parallel.

The federal RRP rule. The EPA Renovation, Repair and Painting rule at 40 CFR Part 745 Subpart E applies to renovation, repair, or painting that disturbs painted surfaces in pre-1978 target housing. Above the de minimis threshold, the work must be performed by an EPA-certified firm using certified renovators and lead-safe work practices — containment, prohibited practices such as open-flame burning and uncontained power sanding, and cleaning verification. This is not a paperwork rule; it dictates how the work is physically done, and it applies to a landlord’s own maintenance staff, not just outside contractors.

The 60-day information duty. Where the renovation affects an occupied pre-1978 unit, the occupants must receive lead hazard information no more than 60 days before work begins. This duty runs to sitting tenants who already have a lease and already received their leasing disclosure years ago.

The Clark County version, Section 3. The SNHD regulation carries its own renovation regime with mechanics worth knowing, because they are more specific than the summary most landlords have in their heads. Where renovations are performed for compensation, the firm performing the renovation must, no more than 60 days before beginning work in a dwelling unit, give the owner the pamphlet and either obtain a written acknowledgment or a certificate of mailing at least seven days before the renovation. If the owner does not occupy the unit — which describes every rental — the firm must separately reach an adult occupant with the pamphlet and obtain an acknowledgment, or certify in writing that delivery was made and an acknowledgment could not be obtained, recording the address, the date and method of delivery, who delivered it, and why no acknowledgment was obtained.

Common areas trigger building-wide notice. If the work affects common areas of a pre-1978 multi-unit building, written notice must go to each affected unit describing the general nature and locations of the work and its expected starting and ending dates, plus how to obtain the pamphlet and the records — or the firm may instead post informational signs where occupants of all affected units are likely to see them. If the scope, locations, or dates change after the initial written notification, further written notice must go out before work extends beyond the original notice.

Emergency work is treated differently. Section 3.3 exempts emergency renovations — unplanned work from a sudden, unexpected event that presents a safety or public health hazard or threatens significant property damage — from the information-distribution requirements, and emergency work other than interim controls is also exempt from the warning sign, containment, waste handling, training, and certification requirements to the extent necessary to respond. Note the two limits: interim controls put in place in response to a child’s elevated blood-lead level count as emergency renovations, and emergencies are never exempt from the cleaning and recordkeeping requirements.

Note also that entering an occupied unit to carry out that work is its own compliance question under NRS Chapter 118A — see our Nevada landlord entry laws guide for the notice a landlord owes before entering to renovate.

Why it matters in Nevada. Repainting between tenancies is the most routine task in the business, and Nevada’s turnover is high. Scraping and repainting a 1958 duplex’s window trim with in-house staff and no certification is an RRP violation with its own penalty exposure, entirely independent of a flawless leasing disclosure. And there is a second-order effect: work that disturbs paint can create the very hazard you then have to disclose to the next tenant, and it can generate the records that make “no knowledge” unavailable to you going forward.

Search this topic and you will be told the penalty is a specific number per violation. You will see several different numbers, none dated, most copied from an old page. Here is the accurate structure, which has two entirely separate limbs — three, in Clark County.

Limb one: the tenant’s private action, 42 U.S.C. 4852d(b)(3). Any person who knowingly violates the section is jointly and severally liable to the purchaser or lessee for three times the amount of damages that person incurred. This multiplier is written into the statute; it does not move with inflation. Section 4852d(b)(4) adds that a court may award court costs together with reasonable attorney fees and expert witness fees to a prevailing plaintiff. The fee-shifting is what makes small disclosure violations economically worth suing over.

Limb two: government civil money penalties. These are assessed by EPA and HUD, and they are inflation-adjusted — annually, under the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act, with the operative amounts published in the table at 40 CFR 19.4 for EPA-assessed penalties. Knowing violations can also carry criminal exposure.

Limb three, in Clark County: the abatement order. This one is not a fine at all, which is exactly why it gets overlooked. An SNHD Notice of Violation and Order for Abatement requires you to pay a certified firm to remediate, on the health district’s timetable, and to pay for clearance testing to prove you did. The costs are yours whether or not any penalty is ever assessed. Be precise about where that authority actually sits: NRS 439.490 is a single sentence letting a health officer “order the abatement or removal of any nuisance detrimental to the public health” — it says nothing about money. The cost-recovery limb is in NRS 439.479(2), which lets the district board adopt regulations enforcing rental-dwelling condition laws “and to recover all costs incurred by the district board of health relating thereto”. Worth knowing, because the health district’s own preamble describes NRS 439.490 as authorising it “to recover any of the costs” of abatement — a characterisation the text of 439.490 does not carry. We report the statute as written and flag the gap rather than resolve it.

The asymmetry is what should drive behaviour. Completing this form correctly costs fifteen minutes. The downside is a treble-damages judgment with the tenant’s legal fees attached, plus an agency penalty, plus — if a child was actually poisoned — a tort claim in which the disclosure violation supplies a ready-made negligence theory.

EPA and HUD share enforcement of the federal disclosure rule. EPA’s Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics and HUD’s Office of Lead Hazard Control and Healthy Homes run the programme jointly, and enforcement has historically concentrated on larger landlords and property managers, where a single practice failure replicates across hundreds of tenancies and produces a large per-violation multiplier.

How a federal case starts. Rarely with an inspector at the door. Usually one of four ways: a tenant reports a missing disclosure; a child’s elevated blood-lead result triggers a health investigation that works backwards to the paperwork; a private lawsuit’s discovery exposes a systemic gap; or an agency initiative targets a market and requests files from a portfolio owner.

How a Clark County case starts — which is different. The local route is faster and more physical. Section 2.1 gives three triggers: an elevated blood-lead investigation at the child’s home or anywhere the child spends time; a referral from any federal, state, or local entity identifying a pre-1978 renter-occupied residence with a possible hazard; or an environmental health specialist noticing possible lead conditions while investigating an unrelated complaint. Under Section 7.3.3, continued non-compliance with a local order gets reported onward to licensing, building officials, code enforcement, and the EPA. A local screening can therefore become the referral that starts the federal file.

Where violations get reported. Tenants can report a disclosure violation to EPA or to HUD through the reporting channels published on their enforcement pages. The National Lead Information Center, 1-800-424-LEAD, fields questions from both landlords and tenants. In Clark County, a tenant can also simply call the health district’s environmental health programme. Nothing about any of these routes requires the tenant to hire a lawyer first, which is precisely why a clean file matters more than a good argument.

What an inquiry asks for. Signed disclosures for the tenancies in scope, proof of pamphlet delivery, and the records you disclosed or certified you did not have. That is it. An owner who can produce the file usually ends the matter at the document-request stage; an owner who cannot is negotiating over the size of the penalty, not whether there is one.

Federal disclosure is the compliance floor, not the whole picture. Nevada habitability law applies independently to the underlying condition of the paint, and the way NRS 118A.290 is drafted does something on this topic that deserves attention.

NRS 118A.290(1) requires the landlord to maintain the dwelling unit in a habitable condition at all times during the tenancy. Then it defines the failure in two ways. A dwelling unit is not habitable if it substantially lacks a list of specified things — and that list includes, at paragraph (h), “Floors, walls, ceilings, stairways and railings maintained in good repair,” which is where deteriorated paint on walls and stairwells lands. But read the words that come before the list: a dwelling unit is not habitable “if it violates provisions of housing or health codes concerning the health, safety, sanitation or fitness for habitation of the dwelling unit”.

What NRS 118A.355 gives the tenant. Where the landlord fails to maintain the unit in a habitable condition, the tenant delivers written notice specifying each failure and requesting a remedy. If the landlord does not adequately remedy it, or use best efforts to do so, within 14 days of receiving the notice, the tenant may terminate the rental agreement immediately, recover actual damages, apply to the court for such relief as it deems proper, or withhold rent as it becomes due without incurring late fees or other charges until the landlord has remedied or attempted in good faith to remedy the failure.

And the notice shortcut. Ordinarily the tenant must give that 14-day notice first. But NRS 118A.355(4)(a) lets the tenant recover damages without giving it in two situations: where the landlord admits to the court that he had knowledge of the condition, or where the landlord “has received written notice of that condition from a governmental agency authorized to inspect for violations of building, housing or health codes”. An SNHD Notice of Violation and Order for Abatement is precisely that document. NRS 118A.360 — the repair-and-deduct remedy for low-cost habitability failures — carries a parallel notice shortcut in its subsection 3. The practical sequence is worth spelling out: a health-district lead order does not merely start a remediation clock with the county — it can simultaneously supply the written agency notice that removes the tenant’s obligation to notify you before pursuing damages.

The distinction landlords miss is the one underneath all of this: disclosure and habitability are independent. Disclosing a hazard does not licence you to leave it in place. A perfectly executed disclosure that says “known lead-based paint present, peeling in the second bedroom” is a complete defence to a disclosure claim and simultaneously a written admission in a habitability claim — and, in Clark County, a candidate referral. Deteriorated paint in a pre-1978 Nevada unit should be remediated by a certified firm before re-rental, both to comply with the RRP rule and to remove the habitability exposure that disclosure does nothing to cure. Our Nevada habitability laws guide covers the condition-based duties in full.

The federal Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. 3601 et seq., adds one more edge. It prohibits familial-status discrimination, and a landlord who steers families with young children away from pre-1978 units to dodge lead obligations has swapped a disclosure problem for a fair-housing complaint — a considerably worse trade. See our Nevada tenant screening laws guide for where screening practice and familial status intersect.

Skipping disclosure on a pre-1978 unit

The most common violation, and the one with the worst risk-to-effort ratio. There is no penalty for over-disclosing and a severe one for guessing wrong. When the build year is uncertain, deliver the form.

Assuming Nevada’s young housing stock means the rule never applies

This is the distinctively Nevada failure. Because so much of the state’s rental inventory postdates 1978, “it’s too new to matter” becomes reflexive — and then it gets applied to the one 1961 fourplex near downtown that the portfolio picked up three years ago. The rule is unit-by-unit, not market-by-market.

Reading the Clark County regulation as Nevada law — or ignoring it

Both directions are errors. It is a Clark County health-district regulation, so quoting it at a Reno tenant is wrong. But treating a Las Vegas pre-1978 rental as governed by the federal rule alone misses Section 2 abatement, Section 3 renovation mechanics, and the Section 6 order-and-clearance process entirely.

Delivering it at signing instead of before

The disclosure must be delivered before the lessee is obligated under the lease. A disclosure produced with the lease packet at the signing table, signed in the same motion as the lease, does not give the tenant the pre-obligation information the rule exists to provide. Send it in advance and let the tenant read it. If any disclosure activity slips until after the tenant has made an offer, complete it before you accept the offer.

Wrong build-year assumption

“Around 1980” is not a defence. The county assessor record, permit file, or certificate of occupancy establishes it. A 1976 building renovated in 1985 is still target housing.

Relying on the pre-2025 studio exemption

Since the 13 January 2025 amendment (89 FR 89416) the child-under-six condition reaches both the 0-bedroom limb and the elderly/disabled limb. A toddler in a pre-1978 studio now brings the unit back inside target housing, exactly as it always has for elderly or disabled housing. Landlords working from a pre-2025 chart that still calls the studio exclusion categorical are relying on repealed wording, and the current definition at 40 CFR 745.103 settles it in a single sentence.

Failing to provide the EPA pamphlet

The form alone is not compliance. The pamphlet is a distinct requirement and a distinct violation, and substituting your own lead handout does not satisfy it.

Verbal or implied disclosure

Disclosure must be written, signed, and retained. Conversations, text messages, and oral assurances do not satisfy 40 CFR 745.113 — and cannot be produced three years later when an inquiry asks for the file.

Rewriting the lead warning statement

The language at 40 CFR 745.113(b)(1) is prescribed. Tightening it, modernising it, or folding it into your lease’s own warranty language can defeat the disclosure. Reproduce it as written — including the fact that it says “the presence of lead-based paint”, not “the presence of known lead-based paint”.

Pre-ticking the tenant’s acknowledgments

A landlord cannot acknowledge, on the tenant’s behalf, that the tenant received the pamphlet. Forms that invite you to do this create a false statement on a document certified for accuracy by every signatory. The acknowledgment items belong to the lessee and are completed by the lessee.

Printing a 10-day inspection line on a lease disclosure

A tenant has no 10-day inspection right to receive or waive. A checkbox recording that they did either is a false statement on a certified document, and it is copied from the sales form.

Treating “no knowledge” as a place to hide

Honest when nothing is known; fraud when something is. A landlord aware of prior peeling paint, a prior report, a health-district screening, or a child’s elevated blood-lead result cannot check “no knowledge” and expect it to hold.

Failing to disclose to every lessee

If multiple tenants sign the lease, each must receive the disclosure and pamphlet and each must sign the acknowledgment. One signature on a four-tenant lease leaves three undisclosed tenancies.

Forgetting the records for the rest of the building

A building-wide evaluation covering common areas or other units is disclosable to this tenant. Owners routinely disclose the unit-specific file and sit on the building report. Both the federal rule and Clark County’s Section 4.3.1.4 say so expressly.

Renovating without the RRP rule

Compliance with the leasing disclosure says nothing about compliance when your maintenance crew sands pre-1978 window trim. Separate rule, separate certification, separate penalty — and in Clark County, a separate local section with its own seven-day mailing mechanics.

Tenants of Nevada pre-1978 rentals hold meaningful rights under federal law, state law, and — in Clark County — local regulation. Landlords benefit from understanding them, because they define the consequences of a defective form.

The right to the disclosure before being obligated

Delivery must precede the lessee’s obligation under the lease. A disclosure produced afterwards does not satisfy 40 CFR 745.113, and the timing violation stands on its own even where the substance was accurate.

The right to the EPA pamphlet

Independent of the form. Non-delivery is a separate violation supporting separate damages.

The right to triple damages plus fees

Under 42 U.S.C. 4852d(b)(3) a tenant injured by a knowing violation recovers three times actual damages, and under (b)(4) the court may add costs, reasonable attorney fees, and expert witness fees. The knowing standard is broad enough to reach reckless disregard.

The right to report to EPA or HUD

Tenants may report violations to either agency without filing suit. Agency action can bring civil penalties, consent decrees, injunctive relief, and ongoing compliance monitoring across a portfolio.

The right to a habitable unit

Independent of disclosure, NRS 118A.290 entitles Nevada tenants to a dwelling maintained in a habitable condition. Deteriorated lead paint can support a habitability claim under NRS 118A.355 — termination, actual damages, court relief, or rent withholding after a 14-day notice that goes unremedied.

The right to skip the notice step when an agency has already written

Under NRS 118A.355(4)(a), a tenant may recover damages without first giving the landlord notice where the landlord has already received written notice of the condition from a governmental agency authorised to inspect for building, housing, or health code violations. In Clark County, a health-district lead order is that notice.

The right to a health-district investigation (Clark County)

A Clark County tenant — or a clinician, or any other agency — can put a pre-1978 renter-occupied unit in front of the Southern Nevada Health District under Section 2.1. The tenant does not need a lawyer, a filing fee, or a theory of the case. They need a phone.

The right to tort damages for actual exposure

Where a child or pregnant tenant suffers lead exposure, ordinary tort remedies apply — medical costs, pain and suffering, future treatment, and lost earning capacity. A disclosure violation supplies a ready foundation for a negligence theory, which is why the paperwork failure and the injury claim tend to arrive together.

The right to fair-housing protection

The Fair Housing Act prohibits familial-status discrimination. Avoiding families with young children to sidestep lead obligations is itself actionable.

One thing the rule does not give the tenant. A missing disclosure does not void the lease. EPA is explicit that the rule does not cancel leasing or sales contracts, and there is no provision anywhere in Subpart F that rescinds a tenancy for a paperwork failure. The route that can actually end a Nevada tenancy is condition-based rather than paperwork-based, and it runs through NRS 118A.355. We flag this because the opposite claim is common on pages covering this topic, and it is wrong in the tenant’s favour as often as the 10-day error is wrong in the landlord’s.

The bottom line for landlords. Compliance is cheap and mechanical. The failure mode is a treble-damages judgment with the tenant’s fees attached, an agency penalty that rises every January, a Clark County abatement order with a certified-firm invoice attached, and — in the worst case — a poisoned child and a tort claim your own file helps prove. The form above handles the mechanics; the rest of this page is what the form cannot do for you.

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.