Free New York Lead Paint Disclosure

A New York 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 York layers two more regimes on top, and the single most important thing to understand about them is that neither one covers the whole state: New York City Local Law 1 of 2004 is a city ordinance that stops at the city line, and the state lead rental registry at N.Y. Pub. Health Law 1377 expressly excludes cities of a million or more, which means it excludes New York City. Generate the form below, then read on for exactly which of the three layers is yours. For the condition-based duties disclosure does not address, see our New York habitability laws guide.

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New York 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 York 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 lead warning statement, a fixed federal paragraph required by 40 CFR 745.113(b)(1) that must be attached to or inserted into the lease. Second, it transmits the lessor’s actual knowledge of lead-based paint or hazards in the dwelling. Third, it lists and delivers the records and reports the lessor holds. Fourth, it documents the tenant’s receipt of the EPA pamphlet and captures the acknowledgments and signatures that make the document provable later.

What it is not is a New York form. There is no New York State lead paint disclosure statute that adds items to this document, and no New York City ordinance that changes what the federal disclosure must say. New York’s contribution sits alongside the disclosure — extra notices, an inspection regime, a registry — and we work through each of those below, with the section number for every duty, so you can tell what is actually yours.

Yes — but not the one you have been told about, and probably not the one that applies to you. This is the single most misreported question on the New York lead SERP, so it is worth being precise.

Search “New York lead law landlord” and you will get page after page describing annual notices, a February 15 deadline, turnover work, and XRF testing. Every one of those duties is real. Every one of them is New York City law. They come from Local Law 1 of 2004, codified at N.Y.C. Admin. Code 27-2056.1 and following inside the New York City Housing Maintenance Code. A landlord in Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Albany, Utica, Binghamton, or Yonkers owes precisely none of it. Of the eleven ranking pages we measured for this page, eight discuss Local Law 1 and not one says plainly that it is a city ordinance.

Meanwhile the genuinely statewide lead program — the one that has actually been rolling out over the last two years — appeared on zero of those eleven pages. It is the state lead rental registry at N.Y. Pub. Health Law 1377, implemented by 10 NYCRR Subpart 67-5. And it runs in the opposite direction: it deliberately carves New York City out.

The three layers, and how to tell which are yours

So the useful question is not “what is New York’s lead law” but “which of the three am I in?” If your rental is a multiple dwelling in the five boroughs, read the New York landlord-tenant framework alongside the Local Law 1 sections below and ignore the registry. If it is a two-or-more-unit building built before 1980 anywhere else in the state, the registry sections are the ones that matter and Local Law 1 is somebody else’s problem. Everyone leasing pre-1978 housing anywhere in New York owes the federal disclosure regardless.

The lease disclosure is not free-form. 40 CFR 745.113(b) enumerates what must appear, and a document missing an element is a defective disclosure even if it looks complete. The lettering below is the rule’s own.

The whole rule hangs on one defined term. 40 CFR 745.103 says, verbatim:

Read the structure, because the structure is where the 2025 amendment changed the answer. As amended, the sentence is: except [ housing for the elderly or persons with disabilities ] or [ any 0-bedroom dwelling ] (unless a child under 6 resides or is expected to reside). There are two excepted categories joined by “or”, and the child parenthetical now sits at the end, governing both. It reaches the 0-bedroom limb as well as the first.

Original construction date controls. A brownstone built in 1910 and stripped to the studs in 2004 is still target housing, because it was still “constructed prior to 1978”. Renovation does not reset the clock; only the build year matters. Verify it against the certificate of occupancy, the tax assessment record, or the building permit — not against the tenant’s guess or the listing copy.

Why 1978, and why the 1978 you have heard about is a different date

The Consumer Product Safety Commission ban at 16 CFR 1303.1 covers paint manufactured after 27 February 1978. That is the historical reason 1978 matters, and it is a manufacturing date. It is not the legal test. The operative trigger is 745.103’s “constructed prior to 1978” — a construction date. Conflating the two produces confident, wrong answers about buildings finished in 1978 using paint bought in 1977. Use the construction date.

This is the highest-value correction on this page, and it turns on a date. Through 12 January 2025, a 0-bedroom dwelling was excluded from target housing outright — a studio was exempt no matter who lived there. Effective 13 January 2025, 40 CFR 745.103 was amended (89 FR 89416) to move the child parenthetical to the end of the definition, so it now reaches the 0-bedroom limb as well. Under current law a studio rented to a family with a child under six is subject to disclosure. Nearly every competing page, and most stale charts, still print the pre-2025 “categorically exempt” reading.

Under current law a 0-bedroom dwelling is not target housing only where no child under six resides or is expected to. Since the 2025 amendment the exclusion carries the same child condition as the elderly and disabled one: a studio occupied by a family with a two-year-old is target housing and the disclosure is owed. Both excepted categories now evaporate when a child under six is in the picture, because the parenthetical was moved to the end of the definition where it governs both. Before 13 January 2025 the 0-bedroom limb carried no child condition at all, which is the reading you will still find nearly everywhere.

The same section tells you what counts, verbatim:

Note the last clause: “rentals of individual rooms in residential dwellings.” Room rentals are 0-bedroom dwellings. In a state with as much room-share and SRO-style housing as New York, that is not an edge case — and it means a landlord letting a single furnished room in a 1920s house is outside the federal disclosure rule, provided no child under six resides or is expected there (the 2025 amendment attached that condition to the 0-bedroom limb). The functional test is architectural: is the living area separated from the sleeping area? If a wall and a door separate where you sleep from where you sit, it is a one-bedroom and the rule applies. If they are the same room, it is a 0-bedroom and the rule does not.

Separately from the target-housing definition, 40 CFR 745.101 lists exemptions from Subpart F. There are four, they are narrow, and — this matters — not one of them carries a child condition. The rule’s own words:

The practical reading for a New York landlord: the renewal exemption is real but fragile. If you obtained a lead report, learned of a hazard, received a Department of Health and Mental Hygiene order, or completed an XRF investigation since the original disclosure, new information has come into your possession and the exemption is gone. Because re-disclosing at renewal costs nothing and the exemption evaporates silently, re-disclosing at every renewal is the conservative practice. And in New York City it is close to moot anyway, because 27-2056.4(d)(1) independently requires the child-inquiry notice “at the signing of a lease, including a renewal lease.”

Delivering the signed form is only half of it. The lessee must also receive the federally approved lead hazard information pamphlet, Protect Your Family From Lead in Your Home. The lead warning statement says so on its face, and item (d) on the form is the tenant’s acknowledgment that it happened.

Three practical points. First, the pamphlet must be delivered, not merely referenced — a URL in a lease rider is not delivery. Second, EPA reissues the pamphlet periodically; note in your file which edition you handed over and when. Third, the acknowledgment is the tenant’s statement, so it is initialled by the tenant at signing. It is not a box the landlord ticks in advance, and this generator will not let you.

The federal rule compels disclosure, not investigation. It does not require any landlord to test for lead-based paint, to hire a risk assessor, or to remove anything. If the unit has never been tested and you hold no reports, “no knowledge” is the honest, lawful, and correct answer.

What you may not do is check “no knowledge” while sitting on something. Knowledge is knowledge however you got it: a prior owner’s inspection report handed over at closing, an abatement record, a building-wide risk assessment, a Department of Health and Mental Hygiene order, an HPD violation, a prior tenant’s child with an elevated blood lead result. If it is in your possession or your actual knowledge, it goes on the form.

This is the most-copied error in the entire lead paint form category, and one of the eleven pages ranking on this SERP still carries it. Here is the regulation, verbatim, at 40 CFR 745.110(a):

Purchaser. Seller. Contract to purchase. The word “lessee” does not appear, and the statute behind it is scoped identically at 42 U.S.C. 4852d(a)(1)(C). The lease-disclosure elements at 40 CFR 745.113(b) contain no inspection item, and the received-or-waived statement at 40 CFR 745.113(a)(5) sits in the sales subsection.

So a New York tenant has no federal 10-day right to inspect for lead before signing. A landlord may offer an inspection window voluntarily — it is good practice, it costs nothing, and it can defuse a dispute before it starts — but it is a courtesy, not a compliance step, and it must never be printed on the disclosure as though the tenant were waiving a right. Doing so misrepresents federal law on a document every party certifies as accurate.

Complete the fields below to generate a federally compliant New York lead paint disclosure. The generated PDF reproduces the lead warning statement, the lessor’s disclosure items, the lessee’s acknowledgment items, the agent’s acknowledgment, and the certification of accuracy with signature and date lines for each party. It is the federal document; if you are in New York City you will attach the Local Law 1 lease notice and the child-inquiry rider alongside it, and those come from HPD and the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, not from here.

Under 40 CFR 745.113(c), the lessor must retain the completed disclosure — or the lease containing it — for at least three years from the commencement of the leasing period. Keep the signed original, a note of which pamphlet edition was delivered, and copies of every record you handed over. In an EPA or HUD inquiry, the signed disclosure is not merely helpful evidence; it is essentially the whole defence. Landlords who “know they gave it” and cannot produce it lose.

The rule adds a limit on what that retention period means, and the exact words matter because they are often stretched. 40 CFR 745.113(c)(2) says 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).” That is a statement about what the retention rule does not limit. It is not a statement that the three-year period is irrelevant to a limitations defence, and pages that paraphrase it into “expiring the three years is not a defence” are putting words in the regulation’s mouth. Read it for what it says.

In New York City the retention obligation is longer and separate. N.Y.C. Admin. Code 27-2056.4(f) requires the owner to inform the occupant in writing of an investigation’s results, to provide a copy of any report received or generated, to retain a copy of each investigation report for ten years from the date of the report, to make it available to the department on request, and to transfer it to the owner’s successor in title. That last clause is the one that surprises buyers: lead records follow the building, and if you bought a pre-1960 NYC multiple dwelling you should have received a decade of investigation reports at closing. If you did not, you have a problem to solve before your first annual notice cycle, not after.

Electronic disclosure and signature are permitted under the E-SIGN Act, 15 U.S.C. 7001, and EPA has confirmed the disclosure rule accommodates them. EPA attaches conditions worth taking seriously: give a clear statement of the right to receive paper documents, explain the procedure to withdraw consent and its consequences, explain how to access and retain the electronic records, and obtain consent in a way that reasonably demonstrates the tenant can actually access the materials in the format used.

Two failure modes recur. A link is not delivery. Emailing a URL to a pamphlet, with no evidence the tenant opened anything, is thin. Attach the pamphlet, or hand it over. And the retention clock does not care about your inbox. The electronic record must be retained the same three years, in a form you can actually reproduce — which means exporting the executed PDF, not trusting that an e-signature vendor you may stop paying will still have it in 2029.

If your rental is a multiple dwelling in New York City, two Local Law 1 duties attach to the same envelope as the federal disclosure. Because the ranking pages are written from an enforcement or remediation angle, they bury the two duties that actually happen at lease signing. These are them.

1. The lease itself must carry a conspicuous notice — 27-2056.4(c)

The code’s words: “All leases offered to tenants or prospective tenants in such multiple dwellings must contain a notice, conspicuously set forth therein, which advises tenants of the obligations of the owner and tenant as set forth in this section. Such notice must be in a manner approved by the department, the content of which shall, at a minimum, be in English and Spanish. The owner of such multiple dwelling shall provide the occupant of such multiple dwelling with the pamphlet described in subdivision b of section 17-179 of this code.”

Three things follow. The notice goes in the lease, not in a folder handed over later. It must be conspicuous, which is a drafting standard rather than a formatting preference. And it must be in English and Spanish at a minimum, with the city pamphlet under 17-179(b) riding along — a city pamphlet additional to the EPA one. Delivering either does not discharge the other.

2. The child-inquiry notice at every signing, including renewals — 27-2056.4(d)(1)

The owner “shall provide to an occupant of a dwelling unit at the signing of a lease, including a renewal lease, if any, or upon any agreement to lease, or at the commencement of occupancy if there is no lease, a notice in English and Spanish, the form and content of which shall be approved by the department of health and mental hygiene, inquiring whether a child of applicable age resides or will reside therein. If there is a lease, such notice shall be included in such lease or be attached as a rider to such lease. Such notice shall be completed by the occupant at the time of such signing.”

Note the four triggers — a lease signing, a renewal lease signing, an agreement to lease, or commencement of occupancy where there is no lease — and note it must be completed by the occupant at signing, not posted after and chased. A NYC landlord renewing a lease who reasons “the federal renewal exemption at 745.101(d) applies, nothing to do” has just missed a city duty.

Under 27-2056.4(e)(1), the owner of a multiple dwelling erected before 1 January 1960 must, each year, present each unit’s occupant with a Department of Health and Mental Hygiene-approved notice, in English and Spanish, asking whether a child of applicable age resides there — “no earlier than January first and no later than January sixteenth.” Both walls of that window are real: early is as non-compliant as late.

Delivery is not free-form either. 27-2056.4(e)(2) permits exactly four methods: (i) first class mail addressed to the occupant; (ii) hand delivery; (iii) enclosure with the January rent bill, but only “if such rent bill is delivered after December fifteenth but no later than January sixteenth”; or (iv) delivery in conjunction with the annual window guard notice required under section 17-123.

That fourth option is what experienced New York City managers use, because the window guard notice already goes out on the same calendar to the same units asking a nearly identical question about the same children. If you are running that mailing anyway, our New York City window guard notice generator produces the companion document, and combining them is expressly authorised rather than merely tolerated.

The New York City trigger is a child under six. Six of the eleven ranking pages we measured say so, and they are right — but not one of them quotes a single provision, and the route to that answer is a two-step worth showing, because Local Law 1’s own text says seven. Read the Housing Maintenance Code alone and you will confidently cite the wrong age. Here is the provision that starts the chain, from N.Y.C. Admin. Code 27-2056.18, taken from the Housing Maintenance Code as published by the City of New York and corroborated against a second independent rendering:

Read what that does. Every operative section of Local Law 1 — the annual investigation at 27-2056.4(a), the presumption at 27-2056.5(a), the class C violation at 27-2056.6, the turnover duties at 27-2056.8 — is written around the phrase “child of applicable age”, not “child under six”. 27-2056.18 is where that phrase gets its content. Step one is the baseline it states: under seven. Step two is the delegation in the same sentence — the Board of Health may narrow it to under six, “but no lower” — and the Board of Health exe