Free New Hampshire Lead Paint Disclosure

A New Hampshire 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). New Hampshire imposes no separate lead paint disclosure statute — the disclosure duty here is purely federal. What New Hampshire does add is a genuinely consequential parallel regime under RSA 130-A: a statutory duty of reasonable care, a lead-safety certification requirement for conversions, and a hazard-reduction order that is recorded at the registry of deeds and runs with the land. Our New Hampshire landlord-tenant laws overview covers the rest of the tenancy. Generate the form below, then read on for exactly what each rule requires.

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New Hampshire 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 New Hampshire 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 New Hampshire this item quietly does more work than elsewhere, because a property that has been through the RSA 130-A:5 investigation process may carry an inspection report, a risk assessment, and an RSA 130-A:7 order — all of them records available to the lessor, all of them 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 — and, uniquely in New Hampshire, it is admissible evidence of reasonable care under RSA 130-A:18.

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

No. New Hampshire has no state-specific lead paint disclosure statute for landlords, and this page will not invent one. Every element of the disclosure described here comes from federal law: 42 U.S.C. 4852d, 40 CFR Part 745 Subpart F, and 24 CFR Part 35 Subpart A. If you are hunting for the New Hampshire statute number that makes you hand a tenant a lead form, there is not one to find.

That answer needs a careful qualifier, because New Hampshire is emphatically not one of the states that adds nothing. It has a substantial lead chapter — RSA 130-A, Lead Paint Poisoning Prevention and Control — and a lead notification section in the conveyances title, RSA 477:4-a. Neither creates a landlord disclosure duty at lease-up, and that distinction is the single most useful thing on this page. Here is the whole New Hampshire layer, sorted by what it actually does to you:

• A duty of reasonable care — RSA 130-A:18. Owners of pre-1978 rental housing must take reasonable care to prevent exposure to, and the creation of, lead hazards. This is a real statutory standard, and it is the provision that connects your federal paperwork to New Hampshire civil liability. Covered in full below.
• Lead-safety certification for conversions — RSA 130-A:5-d. After July 1, 2024, a pre-1978 building being converted to rental use must be certified lead-safe before occupancy. It does not touch existing rentals.
• An investigation and order regime — RSA 130-A:5, :6, :7. Triggered by a child’s elevated blood lead level, not by leasing. The resulting order is recorded against your title.
• Contractor licensing — RSA 130-A:9 and :12. Lead inspectors, risk assessors, and abatement contractors must be licensed. This is a regime for the people doing the work, not a disclosure duty for you.
• A sales notification — RSA 477:4-a. Real, and irrelevant to leasing: it applies before a contract for purchase and sale, and expressly creates no liability.

Notice what is missing from that list: nothing in it tells a landlord to give a prospective tenant a lead form. That job belongs entirely to the federal rule. And 40 CFR 745.119 confirms the two layers coexist rather than compete — nothing in the federal subpart relieves a lessor from compliance with state or local laws governing notice or disclosure of lead. Because the disclosure obligation is federal rather than state-specific, the identical form works in any state; our federal lead-based paint disclosure form is the generic version of the New Hampshire form on this page. For the condition-based duties that disclosure does not address, see our New Hampshire habitability laws guide.

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 filing with any agency, no notarisation, 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.

The contrast with the sales side is exact and worth seeing, because it is the origin of the internet’s favourite lead-paint error. The seller’s list at 40 CFR 745.113(a) has seven elements, not six. The extra one is (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. That item exists on the sales form and only on the sales form. When a vendor bolts a “10-day inspection” checkbox onto a rental disclosure, what they have actually done is copy element (a)(5) from the wrong list.

“Target housing” is the federal term for property subject to the rule, and the definition at 40 CFR 745.103 is the sentence that decides whether you owe a disclosure at all. It reads: “Target housing means 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).” Parse the exceptions carefully, because this sentence is widely misquoted: the child-under-six parenthetical attaches only to the elderly-or-disabled limb, and “or any 0-bedroom dwelling” is a separate, unconditional exclusion. A studio is therefore not target housing even when a child under six lives there.

Why 1978 — and which 1978 date actually governs. The operative cutoff comes from the definition itself: 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 reaches paint manufactured after 27 February 1978, which is a different date and a different test. 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 tells you which cite to trust: for whether your unit is covered, read 745.103, not the CPSC rule.

How to verify the build year in New Hampshire. The municipal assessing record is the fastest authoritative source, and New Hampshire towns and cities publish property record cards showing 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 1910 mill-town duplex stripped to the studs and rebuilt in 2003 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 — and New Hampshire has a great deal of heavily rehabbed older stock.

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. 40 CFR 745.107(a)(4) is explicit that the records requirement “includes records or reports regarding common areas” and also records regarding other residential dwellings in multifamily target housing, where the information is part of an evaluation or reduction of lead-based paint in the housing as a whole. A building-wide evaluation is therefore disclosable to every tenant in the building, not just the one whose unit it sampled.

New Hampshire context. New Hampshire’s housing stock skews old by national standards. The mill cities and older town centres — Manchester, Nashua, Concord, Berlin, Claremont, Somersworth, Rochester, Laconia, Franklin, Dover, Portsmouth — carry large concentrations of pre-1978 multifamily housing, much of it built long before 1950 when paint lead content was highest. For a great many New Hampshire landlords the honest answer to “is this target housing?” is simply yes, and the exemption analysis below is a formality. Portfolio owners with mixed-vintage holdings are the ones who get caught, because the compliance answer differs unit by unit.

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.
• Zero-bedroom dwellings (40 CFR 745.103, definitional). The rule defines these too: “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.” This exclusion is unconditional. Read the target-housing sentence carefully: the structure is “except [housing for the elderly or persons with disabilities (unless any child under 6…)] or [any 0-bedroom dwelling]”. The child-under-six parenthetical sits inside the elderly-or-disabled limb; it does not reach the 0-bedroom limb. A genuine studio is not target housing even when a child under six resides there. Some pages garble this by attaching the child condition to the studio exclusion; the regulation does not. The real trap runs the other way, in the warning box below: a unit with a separate sleeping area is not a 0-bedroom dwelling no matter how small.
• Housing for the elderly or persons with disabilities (40 CFR 745.103, definitional). “Housing for the elderly” is itself defined as 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. This is the one exclusion on the whole page that carries a child condition: it collapses if any child under six resides or is expected to reside there. The 0-bedroom limb does not share that condition.
• Short-term leases of 100 days or less (40 CFR 745.101(c)), where no lease renewal or extension can occur. Both halves matter. A New Hampshire seasonal or ski-season let typically qualifies; 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. In New Hampshire the inspector must be licensed under RSA 130-A:12. 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; pages that cite 745.113 here have followed the wrong thread. Renewal includes both renegotiation of existing terms and ratification of a new lease. If anything new reached you, the exemption is gone.
• 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.

None of the four exemptions at 745.101 carries a child condition. That is worth stating flatly, because a common garbling of this material claims the exemptions “evaporate” when a young child is involved. The child condition lives in exactly one place: the elderly-or-disabled limb of the target-housing definition at 745.103. It does not reach the 0-bedroom limb, and it does not touch the four transaction exemptions at 745.101. One exclusion turns on whether a young child is present; the rest do not.

Federal law requires the lessor to give the prospective lessee an EPA-approved lead hazard information pamphlet before any lease obligation attaches. 40 CFR 745.107(a)(1) names it: the EPA document Protect Your Family From Lead in Your Home (EPA No. 747-K-94-001) or an equivalent pamphlet approved for use in that State by EPA. 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 has 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 to be given “in the language of the contract (e.g., English, Spanish)”. An English lease takes the English pamphlet; a Spanish lease takes the Spanish edition. New Hampshire’s mill cities have significant Spanish-speaking and refugee-resettlement tenant populations, and landlords marketing to non-English-speaking tenants should match the pamphlet to the lease language, not to the conversation.

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. The regulation says so in terms. 40 CFR 745.107(a): “Nothing in this section implies a positive obligation on the seller or lessor to conduct any evaluation or reduction activities.” EPA states the same thing in its public guidance: the disclosure rule does not require 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, and non-disclosure does not void your 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 — in New Hampshire, the exact event that triggers an RSA 130-A:5 investigation.
• DHHS has issued you an order under RSA 130-A:7, or you bought a property already subject to one.
• A code-enforcement notice, 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.

New Hampshire sharpens this calculus in a way no other state on this site quite matches, and it is worth pausing on. RSA 130-A:18 makes “evidence of actions taken or not taken by the owner of a pre-1978 rental property or childcare facility in compliance with applicable public health laws and regulations concerning lead” admissible on the question of reasonable care or negligence. The deliberate-ignorance strategy is lawful as against the federal disclosure rule, and simultaneously it is the sort of “action not taken” that a New Hampshire plaintiff will ask a jury to weigh. Those two things are not in conflict, but a landlord who reads only the federal half of the chain will badly misjudge the risk.

This is the most widespread error on the lead-disclosure internet, it is currently printed on a ranking New Hampshire law firm page, 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 behind it, 42 U.S.C. 4852d(a)(1)(C), is scoped the same way.

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. And the sales list at 745.113(a) proves the omission is deliberate rather than an oversight: element (a)(5) requires “[a] statement by the purchaser that he/she has either: (i) Received the opportunity to conduct the risk assessment or inspection required by § 745.110(a); or (ii) Waived the opportunity.” The drafters wrote that item, put it on the sales list, and did not put it on the lease list. There is no lessee equivalent anywhere in the subpart.

What this means for you. A New Hampshire landlord owes a prospective tenant no statutory inspection window. You may offer one voluntarily, and doing so is a perfectly 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 under 745.113(b)(6). The generator below prints no inspection line, and that is not an omission — it is the rule.

Complete the fields below to generate a federally compliant New Hampshire 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. If you are also placing a new renter, our New Hampshire tenant screening laws guide covers what you may check at application.

40 CFR 745.113(c)(1) requires the lessor, and any agent, to retain a copy of the completed attachment or the lease 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.

Three years is a records floor, not a liability sunset. This is a distinction competing pages blur, and the regulation is unusually explicit about it. 40 CFR 745.113(c)(2): the recordkeeping requirement “is not intended to place any limitations on civil suits under the Act, or to otherwise affect a lessee’s or purchaser’s rights under the civil penalty provisions of 42 U.S.C. 4852d(b)(3).” Read that for exactly what it says and no more: it means the three-year rule does not cut down a tenant’s civil rights. It does not say that the passage of three years is no defence to anything, and this page will not extend it that far — limitation periods come from other law entirely. What (c)(2) tells you is simply that discarding the file on day 1,096 does not extinguish anybody’s claim; it only extinguishes your evidence.

A New Hampshire-specific reason to keep it longer. RSA 130-A:18 makes evidence of actions taken or not taken in compliance with public health lead law admissible on reasonable care. A signed disclosure, a note of the pamphlet edition, and a record of what you handed over are precisely such evidence — and a lead-exposure claim involving a young child can surface years after the tenancy ends. Three years is the federal floor. The property file is the sensible unit of retention.

Do not confuse this with the grant covenant. New Hampshire Housing runs lead hazard reduction grant and loan programmes, and those carry their own “3-Year Compliance Period” for participating rental property owners. That is a condition of the funding — about keeping units affordable and available — not the federal records rule. The two share a number and nothing else. AI answers merge them regularly.

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 or access log.
• Any RSA 130-A:7 order, risk assessment, or clearance documentation touching the property.

Electronic delivery and signature are permitted. The Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act, 15 U.S.C. 7001, gives an electronic signature and an electronic record the same legal effect as ink and paper, and EPA has recognised that the lead disclosure may be delivered and signed electronically.

The conditions are the ordinary E-SIGN ones, and they are not onerous:

• Consent. The tenant agrees to transact electronically. Build it into your application flow rather than assuming it.
• Complete documents, not links. Both the disclosure and the pamphlet must be transmitted as documents the tenant actually receives. A URL in an email is not delivery, and this is the most common electronic-delivery failure.
• Retention capability. The tenant must be able to keep a copy in a form they can retain and reproduce.
• Timing is unchanged. Electronic or not, delivery must precede the tenant’s obligation under the lease.
• Keep the audit trail. The consent record, timestamps, and the delivery log belong in the file alongside the signed disclosure for the full three years.

One caution specific to e-signature platforms: many lease packets are assembled from vendor template libraries, and those libraries are exactly where the phantom “10-day inspection” checkbox lives. If your platform’s lead addendum contains an inspection-opportunity item, it has given you the sales form. Have it removed rather than initialling around it.

Disclosure governs lease-up. The moment you disturb paint in an occupied pre-1978 unit, a different rule takes over: the Renovation, Repair and Painting rule at 40 CFR Part 745 Subpart E. New Hampshire landlords meet this rule far more often than the disclosure rule, because the housing stock is old and always under repair.

Scope. 40 CFR 745.82(a) applies Subpart E to all renovations performed for compensation in target housing and child-occupied facilities. The exceptions are narrow and evidentiary: a written determination by a certified inspector or risk assessor that the affected components are lead-free; a certified renovator’s test-kit determination; or laboratory analysis of paint chip samples. Absent one of those, assume the rule applies.

The 60-day rule, in the direction the regulation actually states it. 40 CFR 745.84(a) requires that “No more than 60 days before beginning renovation activities in any residential dwelling unit of target housing, the firm performing the renovation must” provide the owner with the pamphlet and obtain a written acknowledgment or a certificate of mailing at least 7 days prior to the renovation; and where the owner does not occupy the unit, provide an adult occupant with the pamphlet and obtain an acknowledgment, a certification of attempted delivery, or a certificate of mailing. Read the direction. “No more than 60 days before” is a freshness ceiling — it stops you from relying on a pamphlet handed over half a year ago — not a 60-day advance-notice requirement. AI answers and vendor blogs state this backwards as “at least 60 days before the renovation begins” with striking regularity. It is not a waiting period. Nothing in 745.84 makes you wait 60 days to start work.

Common areas. For renovations in common areas of multi-unit target housing, 745.84(b) requires the same pamphlet delivery to the owner, plus either written notification to each affected unit describing the general nature and locations of the work, the expected start and end dates, and how to obtain the pamphlet and records at no cost — or posted informational signs while the work is ongoing.

Emergencies. 40 CFR 745.82(b) exempts emergency renovations — unplanned activities resulting from a sudden, unexpected event that, if not immediately attended to, presents a safety or public health hazard or threatens property with significant damage — from the information distribution requirements. Notably, the same provision treats interim controls performed in response to an elevated blood lead level in a resident child as emergency renovations, which is where the federal RRP rule and the New Hampshire RSA 130-A order regime physically meet.

Records. 40 CFR 745.86(a) requires firms to retain records demonstrating compliance for three years following completion of the renovation, and expressly notes that this does not supersede longer retention obligations under other law, including State requirements.

The New Hampshire overlay on renovation work. RSA 130-A:9 prohibits performing lead base substance abatement, in-place management, or interim controls other than as provided in the rules adopted under RSA 130-A:10, and prohibits advertising or offering services as a lead inspector, lead risk assessor, or lead abatement contractor without a licence under RSA 130-A:12. Two carve-outs matter to owners. RSA 130-A:12, I(b): “Any owner who owns 4 or fewer dwelling units shall not be required to obtain a lead abatement contractor license to perform lead abatement on such owner’s dwellings or dwelling units, provided that such owner shall comply with all rules adopted under RSA 130-A:10, I.” RSA 130-A:10, IV gives owners of more than 4 but fewer than 7 dwelling units a licence fee at half the ordinary rate, valid only for work on their own dwellings. And RSA 130-A:9, III bars any child or pregnant woman from being present in a leased dwelling during lead hazard reduction that releases lead base substances, with no reoccupancy until an inspection shows the hazard reduced.

Neither duty discharges the other. Perfect RRP compliance does not excuse a missing disclosure, and a flawless disclosure does not license uncertified renovation. They are different rules, in different subparts, with different triggers, aimed at different moments in the tenancy. Our New Hampshire notice to enter form covers the access side of getting into an occupied unit to do the work.

If you read one New Hampshire-specific section on this page, read this one. RSA 130-A:18 is the provision that connects your federal paperwork to New Hampshire civil liability, and not one of the pages currently ranking for New Hampshire lead paint queries mentions it. Because the section is short and consequential, here is what it actually establishes, limb by limb.

The duty. The section opens: “Owners of pre-1978 rental housing and childcare facilities shall take reasonable care to prevent exposure to, and the creation of, lead hazards.” That is an affirmative statutory standard of care, imposed by name on owners of pre-1978 rental housing — which is to say, on precisely the population this page is written for. The federal disclosure rule contains no such duty; 745.107(a) expressly disclaims one. New Hampshire supplies it.

The protections. The same section then does a great deal of work for owners, and it is not faint:

• “Notwithstanding any provision of law to the contrary, the mere presence of a lead base substance shall not constitute negligence on the part of an owner of any dwelling.” Old paint is not, by itself, a tort.
• “To establish negligence on the part of an owner, the plaintiff in a civil suit shall demonstrate actual injury caused by the lead base substance.” The claim requires actual injury and causation — not merely a hazard.
• “Remedial actions taken by a property owner after a lead exposure has occurred shall not be admissible evidence for purposes of establishing liability.” Fixing the problem cannot be used to prove you were at fault for it — a subsequent-remedial-measures rule written into the lead statute.
• “Evidence of a tenant’s disturbance of painted surfaces containing lead paint also shall be admissible evidence.” Tenant conduct is in play.
• “In addition, the mere presence of a lead base substance in a dwelling shall not by itself violate any warranty of habitability.” This is the answer to a question New Hampshire tenants ask constantly, and it is a clear no.

And the hinge. Between those two halves sits the sentence that should change how you file your paperwork: “Evidence of actions taken or not taken by the owner of a pre-1978 rental property or childcare facility in compliance with applicable public health laws and regulations concerning lead may be admissible evidence of reasonable care or negligence.”

Sit with that for a moment. The federal lead disclosure rule is an applicable public health regulation concerning lead. Under RSA 130-A:18, whether you complied with it — or did not — is admissible on the question of whether you exercised reasonable care. That cuts both ways, and both directions matter. A New Hampshire landlord with a signed, dated disclosure, a pamphlet-delivery note, and a clean file has documentary evidence of reasonable care in a lead-injury suit. A New Hampshire landlord with no disclosure has handed the plaintiff evidence of an action not taken, in a case where the plaintiff must otherwise prove actual injury and causation.

This is why the “I’d rather not know” strategy needs re-examining in New Hampshire specifically. Declining to test remains lawful; the federal rule demands no investigation and this page will not pretend otherwise. But RSA 130-A:18 does not ask whether you complied with a testing duty. It asks a jury to weigh actions taken or not taken under public health lead law generally, and it lets the answer land on either side of the reasonable-care line. The paperwork is cheap. The evidentiary posture it buys, in this state, is not.

This is New Hampshire’s newest lead requirement for property owners, it became operative on July 1, 2024, and it is routinely described inaccurately. RSA 130-A:5-d, “Sale and Rental of Property”, provides in full:

Read the statute’s own definition, because it is the whole point. The heading says “newly-constructed”, which sounds like new builds — and aggregator summaries duly paraphrase it as applying to “newly constructed rental properties”, which is misleading in two directions at once. New construction cannot be in a building erected prior to 1978. The statute resolves its own ambiguity in the very next sentence: “newly-constructed rental units” means “rental units being converted from a use other than residential rental housing.” The target is conversion.

Who this actually catches. Given New Hampshire’s building stock, the realistic fact patterns are specific and identifiable:

• A pre-1978 mill or industrial building converted to apartments — a defining New Hampshire redevelopment pattern in Manchester, Nashua, Dover, Somersworth and Franklin.
• A pre-1978 commercial or office building converted to residential rental use.
• A pre-1978 owner-occupied single-family house or condo offered as a rental for the first time — its use is being converted from owner occupancy to residential rental housing.
• A pre-1978 building newly licensed as a day care facility (paragraph II).

Who this does not catch. An existing rental unit, already in use as residential rental housing, continuing as residential rental housing. Turnover between tenants is not a conversion. A renovation is not a conversion. Buying an apartment building that has been an apartment building since 1955 is not a conversion. If your unit was already residential rental housing, RSA 130-A:5-d does not reach it — and the great majority of New Hampshire rental units are in that position.

What we will not tell you. The statute requires “certification of lead safety pursuant to this chapter” and stops there. It does not, in its own text, specify who issues the certificate, what inspection it requires, what it costs, or how long it lasts. Those mechanics live in the Department of Health and Human Services administrative rules (the He-P 1600 series) adopted under RSA 130-A:10, which we did not retrieve from primary text for this page — so we are not going to describe them. If you are converting a pre-1978 building to rental or day care use, that is the conversation to have with DHHS and a licensed New Hampshire lead risk assessor before occupancy, not after. What we can tell you with confidence is the trigger, the date, and the statutory definition — which is more than any competing page currently offers.

The federal disclosure rule is triggered by leasing. The New Hampshire order regime is triggered by a child. Understanding the difference — and how serious the second one gets — is the other half of lead compliance in this state.

The trigger. RSA 130-A:5, I: the commissioner shall investigate cases of lead poisoning in children reported under RSA 141-A whose blood lead level meets or exceeds 5 micrograms per deciliter of whole venous blood. The discretionary limb is narrower than it is usually reported: the commissioner may also investigate where there is reason to believe that a lead exposure hazard exists for a child, but the statute restricts that limb by cross-reference to the hazards “defined in RSA 130-A:1, XVI(b) and (d)” — deteriorated, peeling, chipping, chalking or cracking paint likely to become accessible to a child, and bare soil over the lead limits. The friction and abrasion hazard at XVI(c), and the chewable-surface hazard at XVI(a), are not listed in the discretionary limb. In practice the mandatory blood-lead trigger is the one that starts most investigations. New Hampshire feeds that pipeline deliberately: RSA 130-A:5-c requires parents to have children tested at ages one and two (subject to an opt-out), RSA 130-A:5-a requires primary care providers to conduct blood testing of all one- and two-year-old patients, and RSA 130-A:3 requires laboratories to report results. Elevated results surface, and they surface systematically.

The investigation. RSA 130-A:5, I(a)–(c) lets the commissioner require reports from the owner or the owner’s agent of a leased dwelling, inspect dwellings and test environmental samples, and issue orders. RSA 130-A:5, IV allows an administrative inspection warrant under RSA 595-B if the owner refuses consent. RSA 130-A:6, I extends inspection to other units in a multi-unit building occupied by a child or pregnant woman once a hazard is found, and requires the commissioner to notify all tenants of hazard findings in common areas.

The order. Where a lead exposure hazard exists under RSA 130-A:1, XVI(a), (b) or (c), RSA 130-A:6, I says the commissioner shall issue an order under RSA 130-A:7 requiring lead hazard reduction; for the bare-soil hazard at XVI(d) the order is discretionary. RSA 130-A:7, II sets out what the order contains: the findings and specific hazard locations, the appropriate reduction methods, the compliance period, reoccupancy standards, and responsibility for verification by a licensed inspector or risk assessor. The compliance period for an occupied dwelling shall not exceed 90 days, extendable at the commissioner’s discretion for a period the commissioner determines reasonable.

And now the part that matters most. Two paragraphs of RSA 130-A:7 turn a lead order from a compliance headache into a property-title event:

• RSA 130-A:7, IV: “Any order issued by the commissioner that requires lead hazard reduction shall be binding upon and enforceable against the person to whom the order was issued and any other individual or entity that may acquire ownership of, or an interest in, the property that is subject to the order.” Selling the building does not shed the order.
• RSA 130-A:7, VI: “Any order issued by the commissioner shall be recorded in the registry of deeds for the county in which the property is situated and, upon recordation, the order shall run with the property.” The order is recorded against title and runs with the land.

No page currently ranking for these queries tells a New Hampshire landlord that. It is the most consequential single fact in the state’s lead regime: an outstanding RSA 130-A:7 order is an encumbrance a title search will find, a buyer will inherit, and a lender will ask about. It also feeds straight back into the disclosure duty — an order is unambiguously a record available to the lessor under 40 CFR 745.107(a)(4) and 745.113(b)(3), and unambiguously actual knowledge of a lead hazard under (b)(2). If you hold one, “no knowledge” is not available to you.

Interim controls. RSA 130-A:7, V permits interim controls as an alternative to abatement only with the commissioner’s prior written approval, and requires an annual certificate of compliance from a licensed risk assessor before the current certificate expires. Let it lapse, or fail an inspection, and the commissioner shall require a certificate of compliance for abatement instead. Interim controls are a recurring obligation, not a one-time fix.

Enforcement. RSA 130-A:7, I and III allow the commissioner to issue a notice of violation, impose administrative fines under RSA 130-A:14, and seek injunctive relief under RSA 130-A:17, where either the attorney general or the commissioner may bring a civil action in superior court, heard on an expedited basis. A person subject to an order may petition the superior court to review it.

Search for “New Hampshire lead law” and much of what comes back describes licensing. It is real law, and it is not your disclosure duty. Keeping the two apart is the difference between understanding your obligations and inventing them.

What RSA 130-A:9 and :12 actually do. They regulate the people who perform lead work. RSA 130-A:12, I requires a licence, issued by DHHS and valid 12 months, to perform as a lead abatement contractor, lead inspector, or lead risk assessor, available for inspection at any worksite. RSA 130-A:12, II requires certification for lead abatement workers and lead clearance testing technicians. RSA 130-A:12, III requires training programmes themselves to be certified. RSA 130-A:9, V prohibits advertising or offering such services unlicensed; RSA 130-A:9, IV bars the person who performed the hazard reduction from also performing the post-work clearance inspection.

What they do not do. Nothing in that scheme requires a landlord to register a rental, file a lead form, obtain a certificate for an existing rental, or disclose anything to a tenant. A landlord is not, by virtue of being a landlord, a licensee under RSA 130-A:12. The chapter reaches you when you hire the work done, when a child is poisoned, or when you convert a building — not when you sign a lease.

The carve-outs worth knowing. RSA 130-A:12, I(b) exempts an owner of 4 or fewer dwelling units from the lead abatement contractor licence for work on their own dwellings, provided the owner complies with all rules adopted under RSA 130-A:10, I — the exemption is from the licence, not from the standards. RSA 130-A:10, IV halves the licence fee for owners of more than 4 but fewer than 7 dwelling units, valid only for work on their own units. Note also that these state carve-outs do not touch the federal RRP certification requirement, which is a separate federal scheme with its own rules.

The numbers behind the definitions. New Hampshire writes its own hazard thresholds into RSA 130-A:1, XI: a “lead base substance” is lead at or above 1.0 milligram per square centimetre by portable XRF, or 0.5 percent by weight by laboratory analysis; in soil, at or above 400 parts per million in children’s play areas or 1,200 ppm average for the rest of the yard; in surface dust, at or above 40 micrograms per square foot on floors, 250 on windowsills, and 400 in window wells. Those paint thresholds are identical to the federal definition of lead-based paint at 40 CFR 745.103. The dust and soil numbers carry a deferral clause you should notice: RSA 130-A:1, XI(c)(4) adds the standard “As established by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, in which case the federal standard shall prevail.” EPA has revisited its dust-lead standards, and because the statute defers where EPA has acted, we state New Hampshire’s statutory numbers and the deferral clause rather than assert a current federal figure we have not verified against primary text. If a dust number decides your case, get it from EPA’s current rule or from a licensed New Hampshire risk assessor.

One definitional footnote with real reach: RSA 130-A:1, XVI defines “lead exposure hazard” to include lead base substances that are peeling, chipping, chalking or cracking, or any paint on a damaged or deteriorated surface likely to become accessible to a child, and paint subject to abrasion or friction or repeated impact. Windows and doors in old New Hampshire housing are friction surfaces by definition. And RSA 130-A:1, I defines “child” as a person 72 months of age or less — adjacent to, but not identical with, the federal “less than 6 years of age” in 745.103. Six years and one month old is still a child under RSA 130-A.

New Hampshire does have a statute that makes somebody hand over a written lead notification. It is RSA 477:4-a, “Notification Required; Radon, Arsenic, Lead PFAS and Flood”, and it does not apply to your lease. It is worth covering precisely, because it is the provision most often waved at landlords as evidence that “New Hampshire has a lead disclosure law.”

The trigger is a sale. RSA 477:4-a, I: “Prior to the execution of any contract for the purchase and sale of any interest in real property which includes a building, the seller, or seller’s agent, shall provide the following notification to the buyer. The buyer shall acknowledge receipt of this notification by signing a copy of such notification.” Purchase and sale. Seller. Buyer. There is no lease limb, no lessor, and no tenant anywhere in the section.

What it says about lead. The statute prescribes fixed notification language covering radon, arsenic, lead, PFAS and flood. The lead paragraph reads: “Before 1978, paint containing lead may have been used in structures. Exposure to lead from the presence of flaking, chalking, chipping lead paint or lead paint dust from friction surfaces, or from the disturbance of intact surfaces containing lead paint through unsafe renovation, repair, or painting practices, or from soils in close proximity to the building, can present a serious health hazard, especially to young children and pregnant women. Lead may also be present in drinking water as a result of lead in service lines, plumbing and fixtures. Tests are available to determine whether lead is present in paint or drinking water.” It is general public-health information, not a property-specific disclosure of known conditions.

And it carries no liability. RSA 477:4-a, II: “Nothing in this section shall be construed to have any impact on the legal validity of title transferred pursuant to a purchase and sale contract in paragraph I, or to create or place any liability with the seller or seller’s agent for failure to provide the notification described in paragraph I.” The statute expressly declines to attach liability to its own breach — which is about as far from the federal disclosure rule’s treble-damages regime as a provision can get.

The citation trap. If a page tells you New Hampshire lead law is at “RSA 477:4”, check it. RSA 477:4 is “Acknowledgments” — a provision about ambassadors, consular officers, notaries public and commissioners taking acknowledgments outside the United States. It has nothing whatever to do with lead paint. The lead notification is at RSA 477:4-a, a distinct section. A ranking New Hampshire law firm page currently prints the shorter cite, and AI answers have picked it up and repeated it.

Telling a landlord where a duty is not is as useful as telling them where it is, and it is the part every competing page skips. We read the obvious candidate statutes in full on the legislature’s own site. Here is what is not there.

• RSA 48-A:14 — minimum housing standards. No lead item. New Hampshire’s baseline standards statute for municipalities without their own code lists twelve conditions a landlord may not maintain (paragraphs I through XI, with I-a added for bed bugs): insect and rodent infestation, bed bugs, defective plumbing or sewage backup, electrical shock and fire hazards, leaking roofs or walls, falling plaster, substantial holes in floors, walls or ceilings, unsound porches, stairs or railings, garbage accumulation in common areas, inadequate water supply or water heating, gas leaks and defective pilot lights, and inadequate heating facilities to an average of 65 degrees F. Lead paint is not among them. Deteriorated paint may still reach the list through the falling-plaster or substantial-holes limbs on the facts, but there is no lead item as such — and RSA 130-A:18 confirms the direction of travel by providing that mere presence does not by itself violate any warranty of habitability.
• RSA 540-A:3 — prohibited practices. No lead item. The statute governing what a New Hampshire landlord may not do — utility shutoffs, lockouts, seizing tenant property, unlawful entry, bed bug investigation duties, stored property, application fee disclosure, electronic-payment-only rules — says nothing about lead. There is no lead notice buried in it.
• No state lead registry for rentals. Nothing in RSA 130-A requires a landlord to register a pre-1978 rental with the state, and RSA 130-A:13 makes even the contractor notification programme discretionary: the commissioner “may, if necessary, institute a program requiring the notification to the department of all inspections… risk assessments… and of all lead hazard reduction activities”. That is a programme aimed at inspectors and abatement contractors, not at landlords, and it is permissive.
• No state disclosure form. There is no New Hampshire lead disclosure form to obtain, because there is no New Hampshire lead disclosure duty. The EPA lessor form — which the generator on this page produces — is the form.
• No state-mandated inspection at turnover. RSA 130-A inspections are investigatory, triggered under RSA 130-A:5, not routine and not tied to leasing.

Two honest limits on this section. First, we did not verify any New Hampshire municipal lead ordinance from primary text, so this page asserts none — if you own in Manchester, Nashua, Concord or Berlin, ask local code enforcement rather than assuming statewide silence means local silence. 40 CFR 745.119 preserves state and local requirements for exactly this reason. Second, RSA 130-A:10 delegates substantial rulemaking to DHHS, and administrative rules under the He-P 1600 series carry operative detail we did not retrieve here. Where those rules govern — the RSA 130-A:5-d certificate above is the clearest example — we have said so rather than filled the gap with plausible-sounding process.

Lead disclosure exposure in New Hampshire runs on two independent tracks. Most pages describe neither accurately.

Track one: federal. 42 U.S.C. 4852d(b)(1) makes any person who knowingly violates the disclosure rule subject to civil money penalties. 42 U.S.C. 4852d(b)(3) gives the tenant a private right of action: a person who knowingly violates the rule is jointly and severally liable to the purchaser or lessee in an amount equal to three times the amount of damages incurred, and 4852d(b)(4) provides for court costs, reasonable attorney fees, expert witness fees, and litigation costs to the prevailing party. HUD and EPA can also pursue injunctive relief, and knowing and wilful violations carry criminal exposure.

Why this page prints no federal dollar figure. The maximum civil penalty is adjusted for inflation every year under the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act, through the table at 40 CFR 19.4. Any specific number is therefore correct for one year and wrong afterwards — which is precisely why competing pages carry figures that contradict one another, and why several sibling pages on this site once carried figures that were stale by the time they published. The honest citation is the mechanism, not the amount: for the current maximum, read 40 CFR 19.4 as it stands today. What matters commercially is not the government’s ceiling anyway; it is the treble-damages limb, because that is the one a tenant’s lawyer uses, and it scales with the tenant’s damages rather than with a schedule.

EPA does enforce this in New Hampshire. This is not a theoretical regime aimed at large portfolios elsewhere. EPA’s New England region has publicly announced enforcement against a New Hampshire property owner for violations of the federal lead-based paint rules, and EPA New England maintains a dedicated tip and complaint form for lead-based paint disclosure rule violations — a standing invitation for a tenant to report you that requires no lawyer and no filing fee.

Track two: New Hampshire. The state penalty attaches to RSA 130-A, not to the federal disclosure. Under RSA 130-A:14, the commissioner, after notice and opportunity for a hearing, may impose a statutory administrative fine not to exceed $5,000 for each offense upon any person who violates any provision of the chapter or its rules, with the schedule of that penalty scaled by rule to reflect the scope and severity of the violation, and the fine per violation deposited into the lead poisoning prevention fund under RSA 130-A:15. The section adds that an administrative fine “shall not preclude the imposition of further penalties or administrative actions under this chapter” — so a fine and an order can both land. Unlike the federal figure, this one is a fixed number written into the statute, which is why we are willing to print it.

The third exposure, which has no schedule at all. A lead-injury suit under RSA 130-A:18 is not capped by either track. It requires the plaintiff to prove actual injury and causation — a real hurdle — but a childhood lead-exposure claim is a serious personal injury claim, and the statute makes your compliance record admissible on reasonable care. In practical terms, the disclosure you generate on this page is worth more as evidence in that suit than it is as protection against any penalty schedule.

Nobody audits lead disclosures. There is no filing, no registry, and no inspector who arrives to check your file. Violations surface reactively, and knowing the actual routes tells you where the risk really sits.

• A tenant complains to EPA. EPA New England publishes a lead-based paint disclosure rule tip and complaint form. This is the most common route and the cheapest for the tenant.
• A child tests high. New Hampshire’s testing pipeline — RSA 130-A:5-a provider testing, RSA 130-A:5-c parental duty, RSA 130-A:3 laboratory reporting — surfaces elevated blood lead levels systematically. At 5 micrograms per deciliter, RSA 130-A:5, I makes a DHHS investigation mandatory, and the first documents requested under RSA 130-A:5, I(a) come from the owner. Your disclosure file is inspected in a proceeding you did not initiate.
• A private suit. The tenant’s lawyer asks for the signed disclosure in discovery. Its absence is the case.
• HUD-assisted housing. Units under HUD programmes carry 24 CFR Part 35 obligations and are subject to programme monitoring.
• A sale or refinance. An RSA 130-A:7 order recorded under paragraph VI turns up in the title search — the one route where a lead problem surfaces without any tenant doing anything at all.

The pattern is worth internalising: every route except the last one starts with a person, usually a parent. That is why the file matters more than the form, and why the least defensible position is a signed lease with no disclosure behind it.

These are the failures that actually generate liability, ordered roughly by how often they show up in New Hampshire fact patterns.

• Believing there is no lead duty because New Hampshire has no lead disclosure statute. The absence of a state statute is not the absence of a duty. The federal rule reaches every pre-1978 rental in the state.
• Believing the opposite — that RSA 130-A imposes a disclosure duty. It does not. It is a public health, licensing, and hazard-reduction chapter. Landlords who go looking for the RSA 130-A form they are supposed to give tenants are looking for something that does not exist.
• Printing a 10-day inspection line on a rental disclosure. The window is a sales rule. Documenting a tenant’s receipt or waiver of it is an inaccurate statement on a form certified for accuracy.
• Believing known lead paint must be removed before renting. It must be disclosed, not removed. 40 CFR 745.107(a) disclaims any positive reduction obligation; removal is compelled only by a DHHS order.
• Delivering at signing rather than before obligation. 40 CFR 745.107(a) sets the deadline before the lessee is obligated. Handing the packet over with the keys is a violation, not a technicality.
• Skipping the pamphlet. A separate duty and a separate violation. A link is not delivery.
• Calling a unit a “studio” to claim the 0-bedroom exemption when it has a separate sleeping area. The 0-bedroom exclusion at 40 CFR 745.103 is unconditional — a genuine studio is not target housing even with a young child in it — but a 0-bedroom dwelling means one in which the living area is not separated from the sleeping area. A small one-bedroom is not a 0-bedroom dwelling, and stretching the label to dodge a disclosure for a pre-1978 unit with a young child in it is the textbook enforcement target.
• Assuming a month-to-month tenancy is a short-term lease. The 100-day exemption requires that no renewal or extension can occur. Month-to-month renews by definition.
• Treating every renewal as automatically exempt — or automatically not. 745.101(d) has two conditions. Both must hold.
• Answering “no knowledge” while holding an RSA 130-A:7 order. An order is both a record available to the lessor and actual knowledge. This is a knowing violation with a paper trail at the registry of deeds.
• Buying a building without checking for a recorded order. RSA 130-A:7, IV and VI make it binding on you and run it with the land. It is a title question, and it is answerable before closing.
• Letting an interim controls certificate lapse. RSA 130-A:7, V requires annual recertification by a licensed risk assessor; lapse converts the obligation to full abatement.
• Assuming the 4-or-fewer-units carve-out means the rules do not apply. RSA 130-A:12, I(b) exempts you from the licence, expressly conditioned on complying with all rules adopted under RSA 130-A:10, I — and it says nothing about federal RRP certification.
• Renovating an occupied pre-1978 unit with an uncertified contractor. A separate rule with separate penalties, and the most frequent real-world New Hampshire violation given the age of the stock.
• Waiting 60 days to start a renovation because a blog said so. 745.84 says “no more than 60 days before”. There is no waiting period.
• Discarding the file at three years. The federal floor is three years; a lead-injury claim involving a child can arrive much later, and RSA 130-A:18 makes the file evidence.
• Trusting a vendor lease packet. Template libraries are where the phantom inspection checkbox lives. Read the addendum your platform generates.

Tenants land on this page too, and the honest answers differ from what tenant-facing content usually promises.

What a New Hampshire tenant is entitled to. Before being obligated under a lease of pre-1978 housing: the lead warning statement; the landlord’s disclosure of known lead-based paint and hazards, including the basis, location and condition if known; a list of and copies of available records and reports, including building-wide evaluations covering common areas and other units; and the EPA pamphlet Protect Your Family From Lead in Your Home in the language of the lease. The tenant signs an acknowledgment of receipt — nothing more.

What a New Hampshire tenant is not entitled to. A 10-day inspection window: that belongs to purchasers under 40 CFR 745.110(a), and no lessee equivalent exists at 745.113(b). Testing: 40 CFR 745.107(a) imposes no duty on the lessor to evaluate. Abatement on demand: the federal rule is not an abatement rule, and RSA 130-A:18 provides that mere presence is neither negligence nor a habitability breach. Cancellation of the lease: EPA is explicit that the rule does not cancel leasing or sales contracts, so a missing disclosure does not void the tenancy — it creates a claim, which is a different and better thing.

What a New Hampshire tenant can actually do.

• Report it. EPA New England takes lead-based paint disclosure rule tips and complaints directly. It costs nothing and requires no lawyer.
• Sue for treble damages. 42 U.S.C. 4852d(b)(3) gives a private right of action for three times actual damages against a knowing violator, with fees and costs under (b)(4).
• Get the child tested and trigger the state regime. This is the most powerful lever in New Hampshire and the least understood. A blood lead level at or above 5 micrograms per deciliter reported under RSA 141-A makes a DHHS investigation mandatory under RSA 130-A:5, I — not discretionary. If a hazard is found under RSA 130-A:1, XVI(a)–(c), the commissioner shall order lead hazard reduction, with a compliance period not exceeding 90 days for an occupied unit. Testing at ages one and two is already required of parents under RSA 130-A:5-c and of providers under RSA 130-A:5-a.
• Rely on the order regime, not on self-help. RSA 130-A:6, I requires the commissioner to give findings to the occupant as well as the owner, to notify all tenants of hazard findings in common areas, and requires the owner on request to provide a copy of the order to occupants of dwellings on the same lot at no charge.
• Sue for injury. RSA 130-A:18 permits a negligence claim on proof of actual injury caused by the lead base substance, with the owner’s compliance record admissible on reasonable care. Note the statute’s counterweights: post-exposure remedial action is inadmissible to establish liability, and a tenant’s own disturbance of painted surfaces is admissible.
• Know the protection during the work. RSA 130-A:9, III bars any child or pregnant woman from being present during lead hazard reduction that releases lead, with no reoccupancy until inspection shows the hazard reduced.

Tenants should also know what sits outside the lead chapter entirely. Deteriorated conditions that make a unit unfit are addressed by the ordinary habitability route — see our New Hampshire habitability laws guide — and retaliation for asserting these rights is governed by RSA 540:13-a and RSA 540:13-b, covered in our New Hampshire eviction notice laws guide.

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