Free New Jersey Lead Paint Disclosure

A New Jersey 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 Jersey adds no element to that federal form — but unlike most states it does run a separate, genuinely demanding regime alongside it: periodic lead-based paint inspection and lead-safe certification of most pre-1978 rentals under N.J.S.A. 52:27D-437.16, as amended by P.L.2024 c.74. Generate the form below, then read on for both duties — and for the exemption trap where they fail to line up.

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New Jersey 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 Jersey 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 Jersey this element does more work than it does in most states, because the state inspection regime manufactures exactly the kind of report that lands here — more on that below.

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 New Jersey 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.

Yes — but it is not a disclosure law, and that distinction is the whole point of this page. New Jersey is one of the minority of states that legislated on residential lead paint in its own right. What it enacted, however, is not an addition to the federal disclosure form. It is a separate inspection and certification regime, and it is administered by municipalities rather than by the landlord filling in a box.

The operative statute is N.J.S.A. 52:27D-437.16, enacted as section 1 of P.L.2021 c.182 (approved 22 July 2021, effective 22 July 2022) and substantially amended by P.L.2024 c.74 (approved 12 September 2024, effective immediately). The implementing rules are at N.J.A.C. 5:28A, adopted 1 May 2023.

So there are two true statements that most pages get wrong by collapsing into one:

• New Jersey adds no element to the federal lead paint disclosure form. There is no New Jersey lead warning statement, no state box, no state filing, and no state-specific disclosure statute. The form generated on this page is complete for New Jersey precisely because the federal elements are the whole of the disclosure duty.
• New Jersey nonetheless imposes a substantial, separate lead obligation that most landlords in most states do not have: get the unit inspected on a cycle, obtain a lead-safe certification, give it to new tenants, attach it to the lease, keep a record, and remediate anything found.

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, 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. New Jersey is what makes you go looking — which is exactly why landlords here need both halves of this page.

“Target housing” is the federal term for property subject to the disclosure rule. The definition is at 40 CFR 745.103, and it is worth reading in the regulation’s own words, because the way it is punctuated decides real cases:

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 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 tells you which cite to trust: for whether your unit is covered, read 745.103, not the CPSC rule.

New Jersey banned it first. The Department of Community Affairs’ own guidance document notes that New Jersey banned the use of lead-based paint in 1972, six years before the federal ban. That is historical colour and nothing more — it does not move your trigger date. Both the federal disclosure duty and the New Jersey inspection duty run off construction before 1978, not off the 1972 state ban. Do not let a 1974 building’s “but New Jersey had already banned it” argument talk you out of compliance: the statutes both say 1978.

How to verify the build year in New Jersey. The municipal tax assessor’s property record card is the fastest authoritative source, and most New Jersey municipalities publish assessment data online through the county board of taxation. The original certificate of occupancy, the construction permit file held by the municipal construction official, 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, and New Jersey has a great deal of heavily rehabbed older stock.

New Jersey context. New Jersey has some of the oldest housing stock in the country, and the pre-1978 share is not confined to the cities. Newark, Jersey City, Paterson, Trenton, Camden, Elizabeth, and New Brunswick carry dense concentrations, but so do the older suburban and shore boroughs, and much of the two- and three-family stock that defines North Jersey rental practice predates the trigger by decades. For most New Jersey landlords the honest working assumption is that the disclosure duty applies and the burden is on you to prove it does not.

Even pre-1978 property can fall outside the federal 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.

• Housing built in 1978 or later (40 CFR 745.103). Not target housing at all.
• Zero-bedroom units (40 CFR 745.103, definitional). A dwelling in which the living area is not separated from the sleeping area. The regulation defines it expressly: “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.” As amended effective 13 January 2025 (89 FR 89416), this exclusion is conditional: the child-under-six condition now attaches to the 0-bedroom limb as well as the elderly and disabled limb. A 0-bedroom dwelling sits outside target housing only where no child under six resides or is expected — most exemption charts, written before the amendment, still call it categorical.
• Housing for the elderly or persons with disabilities (40 CFR 745.103, definitional), where the housing is designated as such — unless any child who is less than 6 years of age resides or is expected to reside there. Since the 13 January 2025 amendment (89 FR 89416) both this and the 0-bedroom exclusion are defeated by a child under six.
• Short-term leases of 100 days or less (40 CFR 745.101(c)), where no lease renewal or extension can occur. Shore-season and short-term rentals often qualify; a month-to-month tenancy does not, because it renews.
• Certified lead-free housing (40 CFR 745.101(b)). Leases of target housing found to be lead-based paint free by a certified inspector. Retain the certification; it is the only proof of the exemption. In New Jersey this dovetails neatly with the state’s lead-free certificate under N.J.A.C. 5:17 — the same document can do both jobs.
• Qualifying lease renewals (40 CFR 745.101(d)). Renewals of an existing lease where the lessor has previously disclosed all information required under 745.107 and where 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. 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 transaction exemptions at 745.101 carries a child condition. Foreclosure, certified lead-free, the 100-day short lease, and the qualifying renewal are all unaffected by who lives in the unit. The child condition lives entirely in the target-housing definition at 745.103, where — since the 13 January 2025 amendment (89 FR 89416) — it reaches both the elderly and disabled housing limb and the 0-bedroom limb. If you read a page telling you that a studio is exempt no matter who lives there, that page is quoting the pre-2025 definition.

This is the single most useful thing on this page, and no page currently ranking for these queries says it. The federal disclosure exemptions and the New Jersey inspection exemptions are two unrelated lists. They were written by different legislatures for different purposes with different definitions, and they do not line up. A landlord who checks one list and stops has answered only half the question.

Read the first three rows again. The pre-1978 studio is the cleanest illustration of why this matters. Federally it is not target housing, so no disclosure form is owed at all. Under New Jersey law it is an ordinary rental dwelling unit with no applicable exemption, so it must be inspected on the cycle, certified, and the certification handed to the new tenant and stapled to the lease. A landlord who reads a federal exemption page, concludes “studios are exempt”, and does nothing has walked into a $1,000-per-week New Jersey penalty exposure while being entirely correct about federal law.

The reverse trap exists too. A four-month shore rental to a family that does not renew is exempt from the New Jersey inspection under 437.16(c)(4) but is not federally exempt, because 745.101(c) tops out at 100 days and four months is longer. That landlord owes the federal disclosure and owes no state inspection — the mirror image of the studio.

The practical rule. Run both lists, every time, in this order: is it target housing federally, and is any 745.101 transaction exemption available? Then separately: is it a rental dwelling unit in New Jersey, and does any 437.16(c) exemption apply? Answer them independently. The only two facts that reliably clear both lists at once are a post-1977 build date and a genuine lead-free certification.

Everything in this section comes from the enacted text of N.J.S.A. 52:27D-437.16 as it currently stands after P.L.2024 c.74, with the implementing rules at N.J.A.C. 5:28A. Where the statute and the rule now conflict, this page says so rather than picking the convenient one.

What triggers an inspection, and when

The initial inspection for covered rentals was due at tenant turnover or within three years of the law’s 22 July 2022 effective date, whichever came first. P.L.2024 c.74 stretched that window from two years to three, moving the backstop date from 22 July 2024 to 22 July 2025. Both dates are now behind us, so for any New Jersey landlord reading this in 2026 the initial deadline has passed — if your covered unit has never been inspected, you are already out of compliance and the cure clock in the enforcement section below is the thing to read.

The ongoing cycle is the operative rule now. The statute provides that thereafter all such units shall be inspected for lead-based paint hazards the earlier of every three years or upon tenant turnover, except that an inspection upon tenant turnover shall not be required if the owner has a valid lead-safe certification. So:

• Every three years, no matter what. The cycle runs regardless of whether anyone moves.
• At every tenant turnover — unless you are holding a valid lead-safe certification for that unit, in which case the turnover does not force a fresh inspection.

“Tenant turnover” is defined, and the definition is narrower than landlords assume: “the time at which all existing occupants vacate a dwelling unit and all new tenants move into the dwelling unit.” All of them out, all new ones in. One roommate replacing another in a shared unit is not a turnover on the statute’s terms. Note that N.J.A.C. 5:28A-1.2 states the definition slightly more broadly, adding “or the time at which a new tenant enters a vacant dwelling unit” — a sensible gloss covering a unit that sat empty.

Who does the inspecting

The duty to cause the inspection sits on the municipality, not on you — which surprises most landlords. The statute splits by municipal capacity:

• Municipalities with a permanent local agency (a local body that already inspects buildings and enforces codes) either inspect through that agency, or, following the P.L.2024 c.74 amendment, the governing body may contract with a certified lead evaluation contractor or enter a shared service agreement with another local unit. The shared-service option is new, and c.74 made it retroactive to 22 July 2022 so that agreements already signed are valid.
• Municipalities without a permanent local agency must contract with a certified lead evaluation contractor or enter a shared service agreement.
• You may always hire your own. N.J.S.A. 52:27D-437.16(b)(3) is emphatic: a municipality shall permit the dwelling owner or landlord to directly hire a lead evaluation contractor certified by the Department of Community Affairs to satisfy the requirement. This is a right, not a favour.

Direct hiring is not unconditional in practice. N.J.A.C. 5:28A-2.1(d) gives the municipality oversight, and lets it prohibit an owner from directly hiring where that owner previously opted to hire a contractor and then failed to have the inspection completed, or where the municipality determines there is a conflict of interest between the owner and the chosen contractor.

Who pays

You do. This is unambiguous in both limbs of the statute: the municipality shall charge the dwelling owner or landlord a fee sufficient to cover the cost of the inspection, and where the municipality hired the contractor, that fee includes the cost of hiring them. Fees collected are ring-fenced — subsection (b)(5) requires they be dedicated to implementing and enforcing the subsection and not used for any other purpose.

On top of the inspection fee, subsection (h) of section 1 of P.L.2021 c.182 requires each municipality to assess an additional $20 per unit inspected, dedicated by that statutory provision to the Lead Hazard Control Assistance Fund established under section 4 of P.L.2003 c.311. You escape the second $20 only if you can demonstrate the Department of Community Affairs already assessed a $20 fee on that unit under section 10 of P.L.2003 c.311 (N.J.S.A. 52:27D-437.10). One further wrinkle worth knowing if you own a condominium: in a planned real estate development (as defined at section 3 of P.L.1977 c.419, N.J.S.A. 45:22A-23), the statutory inspection fee is the responsibility of the unit owner and not the homeowners’ association — unless the association is itself the owner of the unit. P.L.2024 c.74 swapped the older phrase “common interest community” for “planned real estate development” here.

Visual assessment or dust wipe sampling

Which method applies to your unit is not your choice and not the inspector’s — it is decided by your municipality’s childhood blood-lead data:

• Under three percent — where less than three percent of children tested, six years of age or younger, have a blood lead reference value greater than or equal to five micrograms per decilitre, the contractor or local agency may inspect through visual assessment (437.16(g)(1)).
• Three percent or more — the inspection shall be performed through dust wipe sampling (437.16(g)(2)).

The data source is the central lead screening database maintained by the Department of Health under N.J.S.A. 26:2-137.6. P.L.2024 c.74 refined this in three ways: it changed “blood lead level” to blood lead reference value, allowed the Department of Health to adopt a different value, and expressly permitted the Commissioner of Community Affairs to determine an appropriate reference value on the basis of multiple years of data rather than a single year’s snapshot. It also clarified that disclosing this municipal-level data does not constitute disclosing the identity of any child.

Common areas — new in 2024

P.L.2024 c.74 added a definition of common area and pulled common areas into scope for smaller buildings. The definition is broad: the interior portions of a building used for residential rental purposes that are generally accessible to residential tenants, but not including the interior of individual dwelling units, expressly including hallways, stairs, foyers, basements, laundry rooms, and the interior of attached or detached garages where generally accessible to tenants.

The inspection duty now reaches, in a building consisting of two or three dwelling units, the common area within each building that contains a rental dwelling unit. If you own two- and three-family houses in New Jersey — which is to say, if you own the most characteristic rental asset in the state — this expanded your exposure in September 2024, and the detached garage clause in particular catches owners off guard.

What the inspection produces

If no hazard is found, the contractor or local agency certifies the unit as lead-safe on a form prescribed by the Department of Community Affairs. That certification is valid for three years — see the section below, because this is where nearly every other page is now wrong.

If a hazard is found, the owner must remediate it using abatement or lead-based paint hazard control methods approved under the Lead Hazard Control Assistance Act, and a further inspection then certifies the hazard no longer exists. The rules at N.J.A.C. 5:28A-2.5 fill in the mechanics:

• Interim controls — the contractor or agency conducts an additional inspection within 60 days of the initial inspection, using dust wipe sampling. If the hazard is gone, the unit is certified lead-safe.
• Abatement — where a lead abatement clearance certificate is issued under N.J.A.C. 5:17, the resulting lead-free certificate exempts the dwelling from future periodic inspections altogether. This is the permanent exit from the cycle, and for an owner facing repeated inspections on an old building it is worth pricing against three-yearly compliance forever.
• Two- and three-unit buildings — if a hazard is found in one unit, the remainder of the building’s units must be inspected, except those certified lead-safe (437.16(g)(3), as amended; the rule at 5:28A-2.4(b)1 also excepts units certified free of lead-based paint). Fees may be charged for those additional inspections.

Lead safe is not lead free

New Jersey uses two certifications and the difference is expensive. Under N.J.A.C. 5:28A-1.2, “lead safe” means that a dwelling has been found to have no outstanding lead-based paint hazards. It does not mean that the dwelling is certified to be lead free. “Lead free” means the dwelling has been certified to have no lead-based paint, or has undergone lead abatement, in accordance with N.J.A.C. 5:17.

The consequences diverge sharply. A lead-safe certification expires, and the unit re-enters the inspection cycle. A lead-free certification takes the unit out of the state periodic regime permanently and supplies the federal 40 CFR 745.101(b) lease exemption. One document ends one inspection; the other ends the obligation.

Note the asymmetry that catches people: holding a lead-safe certification does not exempt you from the federal disclosure. Lead-safe means “no outstanding hazards today”, not “no lead-based paint here”. The federal exemption at 745.101(b) requires the housing to have been found lead-based paint free. Landlords who wave a lead-safe certificate as a reason to skip the federal form have confused the two documents.

A New Jersey lead-safe certification is valid for three years. The enacted text of N.J.S.A. 52:27D-437.16(d)(2), as amended by P.L.2024 c.74, provides that the lead-safe certification provided to the property owner “shall be valid for three years”. The amendment struck the word “two” and inserted “three”. It was approved on 12 September 2024 and took effect immediately.

Now the honest part, because you are going to go and check this and find something else.

Why this matters commercially. The cycle and the certificate no longer disagree. Under the original 2021 scheme a certificate lapsed at two years while the inspection cycle ran to three, opening a one-year hole in which a turnover forced a fresh inspection even though your last one was recent. That mismatch is what N.J.A.C. 5:28A-2.1(a)1 was patching when it directed that “the next periodic lead-based paint inspection shall be counted from the most recent periodic lead-based paint inspection that resulted in a valid lead-safe certification”. P.L.2024 c.74 fixed it at the source by aligning the certificate to the three-year cycle. One of the deepest pages currently ranking for this topic still walks readers through the old mismatch as a live trap — “two different timelines overlap” — when the Legislature closed it in 2024.

One thing the three years does not do: it does not make the certificate unkillable. N.J.A.C. 5:28A-2.4(a)1.i provides that if, during the certification period, a certified contractor, a lead inspector or risk assessor, a local health department, or a public agency conducts an independent inspection and finds a lead-based paint hazard, the lead-safe certification is invalid, and a fresh periodic inspection is scheduled once remediation concludes. The certificate is a statement about a moment, and a later finding overrides it.

If you research this topic for more than an hour you will run into N.J.S.A. 55:13A-12.2, enacted by P.L.2007 c.251, which directed the Commissioner to inspect every single-family and two-family rental dwelling in accordance with the Hotel and Multiple Dwelling Law at least once every five years for lead-based paint hazards, charging a fee capped at one-third of the three-unit multiple-dwelling inspection fee.

It no longer exists. Section 3 of P.L.2024 c.74 repealed it outright: “Section 1 of P.L.2007, c.251 (C.55:13A-12.2) is repealed.” There is no five-year lead inspection duty for single-family and two-family rentals in New Jersey. The single cycle that governs is the one in 52:27D-437.16 — the earlier of every three years or tenant turnover.

We flag this because the repeal is invisible in most secondary sources. Guidance written between 2021 and 2024 describes both regimes running in parallel and creates the impression that single-family and two-family owners face two overlapping state inspection duties. They do not, and they have not since 12 September 2024. Any page still describing a five-year New Jersey lead inspection is quoting a statute that has been off the books for nearly two years.

P.L.2024 c.74 also deleted 437.16(e)(1), which had required owners to produce evidence of a valid lead-safe certification and of the most recent tenant turnover at the time of the cyclical inspection under the Hotel and Multiple Dwelling Law. That duty is gone from the statute. Be aware, though, that the corresponding rule at N.J.A.C. 5:28A-3.1(b) still states it — the same non-conformity problem as the two-year certificate. Multiple-dwelling owners going through a cyclical inspection should expect to be asked for it regardless, and producing it costs nothing.

Of everything in the state regime, exactly one obligation lands on the leasing transaction itself, and it is the one to get right. N.J.S.A. 52:27D-437.16(e)(2) requires property owners to:

Three things follow, and each is a place landlords go wrong:

• It runs to new tenants at turnover, not to sitting tenants. The statute does not require you to serve a certificate on the household already living there mid-tenancy. The obligation attaches when a new tenancy starts.
• Handing it over is not enough — it must be affixed to the lease as an exhibit. A copy emailed separately, or produced on request, does not satisfy the words “affix … as an exhibit to the tenant’s or tenants’ lease”. Attach it to the executed lease the way you would attach any rider, and keep the composite document.
• The municipality gets a copy too. The statute names only the tenant, but N.J.A.C. 5:28A-3.1(a) is broader: the owner “shall provide to the tenant and to the municipality evidence of a valid lead-safe certification … at the time of tenant turnover.”

The exemption cross-reference changed in 2024, and in the landlord’s favour. The duty is disapplied where the unit was not required to be inspected under paragraphs (1), (2), (3), or (4) of subsection (c). The original 2021 text said “(1), (2), (3), and (4)” — read literally, a conjunctive list requiring a unit to satisfy all four exemptions at once, which no unit ever could. P.L.2024 c.74 changed “and” to “or”, fixing what was almost certainly a drafting error. Note that exemption (c)(5) — holding a valid lead-safe certification — is deliberately absent from that cross-reference, which makes sense: if the reason you did not need a new inspection is that you already hold a certificate, then you have a certificate to give the tenant.

The rest of the owner duties

• Keep a record with tenant names. 437.16(e)(3) requires the owner to maintain a record of the lead-safe certification, which “shall include the name or names of the unit’s tenant or tenants, if the inspection was conducted during a period of tenancy”. Same exemption cross-reference.
• Tell the municipality about turnovers. N.J.A.C. 5:28A-3.1(d) requires the owner of any dwelling subject to the chapter to inform the municipality of all tenant turnover activity, so any required inspection can be scheduled. This is a rule-level duty with no statutory twin, and it is the one owners most often do not know exists.
• Hand the file over when you sell. N.J.A.C. 5:28A-3.1(e) requires the owner to give a copy of the chapter, any lead-safe certifications issued under it, and DCA’s guidance document Lead-Based Paint in Rental Dwellings to any prospective owner during a real estate transaction, settlement, or closing. Buying a New Jersey rental? Ask for these. Selling one? Produce them.

There is also a reporting duty that runs the other way. P.L.2024 c.74 added 437.16(f), requiring each municipality to deliver to DCA a list identifying each dwelling unit inspected and each found to contain a lead-based paint hazard, with DCA reporting annually to the Legislature by county. Your unit’s inspection result is now a data point in a public statewide report, which is worth knowing before you assume a hazard finding stays local.

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

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

Language. The disclosure must be provided in the language of the contract. An English lease takes the English pamphlet; a Spanish lease takes the Spanish edition. New Jersey’s rental markets are among the most linguistically diverse in the country, and landlords marketing to non-English-speaking tenants should match the pamphlet to the lease language, not to the conversation at the kitchen table.

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.

Do not confuse it with the New Jersey guidance document. DCA publishes its own guide, Lead-Based Paint in Rental Dwellings, and N.J.A.C. 5:28A-3.1(e) requires you to hand that one to a prospective owner at closing. It is not a substitute for the EPA pamphlet and it does not go to tenants under any provision we could find. Two documents, two audiences, two rules.

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 federal 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 federal 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 runs in the familiar direction too. “No knowledge” becomes fraud when you actually know something:

• You hold a risk assessment, inspection report, lead-safe certification, 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 know the property was inspected and the report is inconvenient, so you never collected it from the municipality.

Note the asymmetry the federal rule creates. Testing is optional; disclosing is not. A landlord who tests and finds lead must disclose it, and many owners in other states conclude — rationally — that they would rather not know. That is lawful there. What is not lawful anywhere 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. In New Jersey, that file now includes whatever the municipality sent you.

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, in full: “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 statutory source, 42 U.S.C. 4852d(a)(1)(C), is scoped the same way, and 745.110(b) lets the purchaser waive it.

Now read the lessor rules. 40 CFR 745.113(b) — the six elements listed earlier — contains no inspection-opportunity item. Neither does the EPA lessor disclosure form. The item does exist on the sales disclosure, at 40 CFR 745.113(a)(5), where the purchaser states they received the 10-day opportunity or waived it. That is where the contamination comes from: vendors copy the sales form’s element list onto the lease form without noticing that (a) and (b) are different lists for different transactions.

What this means for you. A New Jersey 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. The generator below prints no such line, by design.

There is a New Jersey-flavoured footnote worth adding. Because the state inspection regime exists, a New Jersey tenant asking about lead has a better question available than the fictitious ten days: “can I see the lead-safe certification?” That one is real, it is enforceable under 437.16(e)(2), and the answer for most pre-1978 units should be yes.

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

40 CFR 745.113(c) requires the lessor to retain a copy of the completed disclosure for no less than three years from the commencement date of the leasing period. That is the entire federal 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 federal 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 federal 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.

What the rule actually says about the three years. 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 it for what it says and no more: the retention period does not cut down the tenant’s civil remedies. It is a statement about the relationship between two provisions, not a rule about limitation periods, and it is worth quoting precisely because several pages inflate it into a claim the text does not make. The practical implication is the useful part — three years is how long you are required to keep the file, and the tenant’s rights are not measured by that clock.

New Jersey adds a second, different record. N.J.S.A. 52:27D-437.16(e)(3) requires the owner to maintain a record of the lead-safe certification which “shall include the name or names of the unit’s tenant or tenants, if the inspection was conducted during a period of tenancy”. The statute sets no retention period for it at all, which in practice means keep it indefinitely: it is the evidence that you were inspected and certified, and there is no point at which producing it stops being useful. N.J.A.C. 5:28A-3.1(c) restates the duty, and 3.1(e) requires the whole file to travel to the next owner at closing.

Practical retention advice. Three years is a floor, not a target. New Jersey’s limitation periods for the underlying claims run longer than three years, and a lead-poisoning claim brought on behalf of a minor can surface many years after the tenancy ends — New Jersey tolls limitations during minority, so a child exposed at two can sue as an adult. 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, which for New Jersey certifications you are required to do anyway.

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.

The New Jersey exhibit needs the same care. If you are executing the lease electronically, the lead-safe certification has to be part of the executed package as an exhibit — not a separate attachment in a covering email. An e-sign envelope that contains the lease but links the certificate elsewhere has arguably not affixed anything to anything.

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. The New Jersey statute governs periodic inspection. A third rule governs work on the building, and New Jersey landlords routinely comply with the first two while breaching this one.

The 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 — the EPA renovation pamphlet, delivered to the tenants in the unit. This duty runs to sitting tenants who already have a lease and already received their leasing disclosure years ago.

Common areas trigger building-wide notice. If the work affects common areas of a pre-1978 multi-unit building, notice must go to every unit in the building describing the nature and location of the work and the dates it is expected to begin and end. Every unit — not merely the ones adjacent to the work.

Note also that entering an occupied unit to carry out that work is its own compliance question — see our New Jersey landlord entry laws guide for the notice a landlord owes before entering to renovate.

Why the three rules collide in New Jersey. Here is the sequence that catches owners. Your municipality inspects the unit and finds a hazard. You are now obliged under 437.16(d)(1) to remediate it. The remediation is, by definition, work that disturbs lead-based paint in pre-1978 target housing — so it is RRP work, and if the unit is occupied it carries the 60-day information duty. Meanwhile the hazard finding is a record you must disclose federally to the next tenant, and the eventual lead-safe certification is a document you must affix to their lease. One inspection result activates all three regimes at once. The remediation itself must be done by a certified lead abatement contractor under N.J.A.C. 5:17 for abatement, or in conformance with HUD guidance for interim controls under N.J.A.C. 5:28A-2.5(b) — sending your handyman is not one of the options.

There is a second-order effect worth naming. 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. Scraping and repainting a 1958 Bergen County 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 a current lead-safe certificate.

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. New Jersey landlords face three separate limbs, and only one of them is a number we will print.

Limb one: the tenant’s private federal 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: federal 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: the New Jersey penalty — and this one we will print

The state figures are different in kind, and that is why we quote them: they are written into the enacted statute, they are not inflation-indexed, and they have not moved. N.J.S.A. 52:27D-437.19(b) authorises a municipality or its permanent local agency to investigate and penalise a property owner’s failure to comply with the remediation duty at 437.16(d)(1) or the owner duties at 437.16(e). The mechanism is a two-step:

• Thirty days to cure. The property owner “shall first be given 30 days to cure any violation by conducting the required inspection or initiate any required remediation efforts”. The cure is starting, not finishing — N.J.A.C. 5:28A-4.1(a)2 defines remediation efforts as initiated “when the dwelling owner has hired a lead abatement contractor or other qualified party to perform lead-hazard control methods”.
• Then $1,000 per week. If not cured after 30 days, the owner “shall be subject to a penalty not to exceed $1,000 per week until the required inspection has been conducted or remediation efforts have been initiated”. Per week, per violation, running until you act.

The thirty-day cure is the most important sentence in the New Jersey enforcement scheme and the least appreciated. A New Jersey lead inspection violation is curable. Unlike a federal disclosure violation — which is complete the moment the tenant signs without the form and cannot be undone — the state duty can be discharged by picking up the phone within thirty days of the notice. An owner who has never had a covered unit inspected is out of compliance today, but is not yet facing a penalty; the penalty clock starts thirty days after the municipality tells them. That is a strong argument for getting ahead of it voluntarily, and a very strong argument for not ignoring municipal correspondence.

Municipalities are not exempt from scrutiny either. Under 437.19(a) and N.J.A.C. 5:28A-4.1(c), the Commissioner may investigate and penalise a municipality that fails to run the programme, on complaint by any person or on the Department’s own initiative — same 30-day cure, same $1,000 per week. If your town has never inspected anything, that is the town’s problem as well as yours.

The asymmetry is what should drive behaviour. Completing the federal form correctly costs fifteen minutes. A New Jersey inspection costs a modest municipal fee plus $20. The downside is a treble-damages judgment with the tenant’s legal fees attached, a federal agency penalty that rises every January, a state penalty accruing weekly, and — if a child was actually poisoned — a tort claim in which the disclosure violation supplies a ready-made negligence theory.

Federal enforcement is shared by EPA and HUD. EPA’s Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics and HUD’s Office of Lead Hazard Control and Healthy Homes run the disclosure 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.

New Jersey enforcement is municipal. This is the structural difference and it changes the risk profile completely. The federal rule is enforced by distant agencies that will probably never hear your name. The state inspection duty is enforced by your own town’s code officials — people who already hold a list. Under N.J.A.C. 5:28A-3.2, the municipality must maintain a record of every dwelling subject to the chapter, with up-to-date information on inspection schedules, inspection results, and tenant turnover, plus a record of every lead-safe and lead-free certification issued. Your unit is on a spreadsheet in the building department, with a date next to it.

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-department 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 New Jersey case starts. Usually because the date on the municipal list passed, or because you reported a turnover under N.J.A.C. 5:28A-3.1(d) and no inspection followed, or because you did not report one and the municipality found out. It requires no complaint and no injured child. It is administrative and routine, which is precisely why it catches owners who have gone twenty years without a lead problem.

Where violations get reported. Tenants can report a federal disclosure violation to EPA at epa.gov/lead/violation or to HUD at the lead regulations mailbox published on HUD’s enforcement pages. The National Lead Information Center, 1-800-424-LEAD, fields questions from both landlords and tenants. For the New Jersey duty, the complaint route runs to the municipality, and under 437.19(a) a complaint about a municipality’s failure runs to the Department of Community Affairs. Nothing about any of these processes 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. Federally: signed disclosures for the tenancies in scope, proof of pamphlet delivery, and the records you disclosed or certified you did not have. In New Jersey: the current lead-safe certification, the record with tenant names, and evidence you gave it to the new tenant and attached it to the lease. 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 and the state inspection regime is the middle storey. Habitability law applies independently to the underlying condition of the paint, and it is the oldest of the three.

New Jersey’s implied warranty of habitability is judge-made rather than codified in a single landlord-tenant statute — it comes from the line of Supreme Court decisions beginning with Marini v. Ireland (1970) and Berzito v. Gambino (1973), which established that a residential landlord warrants the premises are habitable and that a tenant may respond to a breach through repair-and-deduct or a rent abatement. Deteriorated lead-based paint — peeling, chipping, chalking, cracking, or damaged — can rise to a habitability defect on its own. Separately, multiple dwellings are regulated by the Hotel and Multiple Dwelling Law, N.J.S.A. 55:13A-1 et seq., under which DCA’s Bureau of Housing Inspection conducts the cyclical inspections that the lead statute’s exemption at 437.16(c)(3) cross-references. Our New Jersey habitability laws guide covers the condition-based duties in full.

The distinction landlords miss: disclosure, certification, and habitability are three independent things. 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 a lead-safe certificate is not a habitability defence either — it says there were no outstanding hazards on the day of the inspection, not that the unit is fit today.

The federal Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. 3601 et seq., adds one more edge, and New Jersey’s own Law Against Discrimination reinforces it. Both prohibit 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. The New Jersey inspection regime arguably reduces the temptation, since the unit gets inspected whether or not a child ever moves in. See our New Jersey tenant screening laws guide for where screening practice and familial status intersect.

Assuming the studio exemption covers you in New Jersey

The federal 0-bedroom exclusion is real but, since the 13 January 2025 amendment (89 FR 89416), conditional: it lifts when a child under six resides or is expected, so a studio with a young child does owe the federal disclosure. And even where it applies, it means nothing at all about the New Jersey inspection duty, which has no studio exemption. This is the most New Jersey-specific error on the list, and the most expensive, because the landlord is reading federal information and drawing a fatally incomplete conclusion.

Believing the certificate is still good for two years

P.L.2024 c.74 made it three, effective September 2024. Conversely, do not assume the third year is safe without checking with your municipality — DCA’s published guidance and N.J.A.C. 5:28A have not been conformed, and local officials read those. Know that the conflict exists and handle it deliberately.

Relying on the repealed five-year rule

N.J.S.A. 55:13A-12.2 is gone. If your compliance calendar has single-family and two-family rentals on a five-year lead cycle, it is built on repealed law and your units are almost certainly overdue.

Treating the lead-safe certificate as a federal exemption

Lead-safe is not lead-free. The federal exemption at 40 CFR 745.101(b) needs housing found lead-based paint free by a certified inspector. A lead-safe certificate says there are no outstanding hazards; the disclosure is still owed.

Handing over the certificate instead of affixing it

N.J.S.A. 52:27D-437.16(e)(2) says affix a copy as an exhibit to the lease. Emailing it separately, or producing it on request, is not what the statute asks for. Attach it to the executed lease.

Not telling the municipality about turnovers

N.J.A.C. 5:28A-3.1(d) requires the owner to inform the municipality of all tenant turnover activity so any required inspection can be scheduled. Almost no landlord knows this rule exists, and it is the one that quietly puts you on the wrong side of the municipal list.

Skipping disclosure on a pre-1978 unit

The most common federal 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.

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.

Wrong build-year assumption

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

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 — or DCA’s rental guidance document — 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.

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 waiver that the rule never created for tenants

The right does not exist on a lease. A checkbox certifying that a tenant received or waived it is a false statement on a certified document — manufactured out of a sales-form item at 40 CFR 745.113(a)(5) that has no business on a lease form.

Ticking “no records” while holding a lead-safe certificate

Once New Jersey has inspected your unit, you hold records. Element (b)(3) is not blank any more. This is the interlock most New Jersey landlords have not thought through.

Renovating without the RRP rule

Compliance with the leasing disclosure and a current lead-safe certificate say nothing about compliance when your maintenance crew sands pre-1978 window trim. Separate rule, separate certification, separate penalty — and remediation ordered under 437.16(d)(1) is itself RRP work.

Ignoring the municipal notice

The New Jersey penalty only starts running thirty days after you are told. An owner who opens the letter and calls a certified contractor pays nothing. An owner who files it under “later” pays up to $1,000 a week.

Tenants of New Jersey pre-1978 rentals hold meaningful rights under federal and state law. Landlords benefit from understanding them, because they define the consequences of a defective form — and New Jersey tenants have one significant right that tenants in most states do not.

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 see the lead-safe certification — the New Jersey difference

This is the one that has no equivalent in most states. Under N.J.S.A. 52:27D-437.16(e)(2), a new tenant of a covered New Jersey rental is entitled at turnover to evidence of a valid lead-safe certification, and to have a copy affixed to their lease as an exhibit. A tenant who signs a pre-1978 New Jersey lease with no certificate attached and no applicable exemption has a concrete, enforceable grievance to take to the municipality — one that does not require them to prove any injury.

The right to have hazards remediated

Where an inspection finds a lead-based paint hazard, 437.16(d)(1) obliges the owner to remediate by abatement or hazard control, followed by a further inspection certifying the hazard is gone. This is a duty to fix, not merely to tell — the thing the federal disclosure rule conspicuously does not provide.

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, HUD, or the municipality

Tenants may report federal violations to either agency without filing suit, and New Jersey inspection failures to the municipality — or, where the municipality itself is not running the programme, to the Department of Community Affairs under 437.19(a). 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 and of certification, New Jersey’s implied warranty of habitability entitles tenants to a unit fit for occupancy. Deteriorated lead paint can support a habitability action, a defence in a possession proceeding, or a rent abatement claim.

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, and in New Jersey a failure to obtain a statutorily required inspection is an additional and rather stark exhibit. Limitations are tolled during a child’s minority.

The right to fair-housing protection

The federal Fair Housing Act and the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination both prohibit familial-status discrimination. Avoiding families with young children to sidestep lead obligations is itself actionable.

The bottom line for landlords. Compliance is cheap and mechanical. The failure mode is a treble-damages judgment with the tenant’s fees attached, a federal agency penalty that rises every January, a state penalty accruing at up to $1,000 a week, and — in the worst case — a poisoned child and a tort claim your own file helps prove. The form above handles the federal mechanics; the New Jersey inspection is a phone call to a certified contractor; the rest of this page is what neither can do for you.

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