Free North Dakota Lead Paint Disclosure

A North Dakota 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). North Dakota imposes no lead paint disclosure statute whatsoever — we checked the primary text, and NDCC chapter 47-16 returns zero hits for lead. What North Dakota does add is a habitability duty at NDCC 47-16-13.1 for deteriorated paint, covered in our North Dakota habitability laws guide. Generate the form below, then read on for exactly what the rule requires.

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North Dakota 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 North Dakota 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.

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 North Dakota rental leased without one exposes the landlord to government civil money 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. If you are also preparing the tenancy paperwork, our North Dakota lease agreement is the document this disclosure attaches to.

No. North Dakota codified law contains no lead paint disclosure provision for landlords, and this page will not invent one. That is not a hedge or an assumption — we pulled the primary text from the North Dakota Legislature’s own system and searched it. NDCC chapter 47-16, the chapter that governs the lease of real property in North Dakota, returns zero hits for the word “lead”. No lead registry. No essential maintenance practices regime. No landlord lead certification. No state lead disclosure form. No state tenant lead notice.

Every substantive requirement described on this page comes from federal law: 42 U.S.C. 4852d, 40 CFR Part 745 Subpart F, and 24 CFR Part 35 Subpart A. If you are searching for the North Dakota lead statute number, there is not one to find. This is a genuinely useful answer, not an evasion: a North Dakota landlord who complies with the federal rule has discharged the entire lead disclosure obligation, full stop.

What North Dakota does contribute is three adjacent things worth knowing, none of which is a disclosure duty:

• Habitability — NDCC 47-16-13.1. The landlord’s duty to keep the premises in a fit and habitable condition applies independently of disclosure and expressly reaches all common areas. Deteriorated lead paint can be a habitability defect on its own, whether or not you disclosed it. Disclosure does not cure a hazard; it only discloses one. Full detail in our guide to habitability duties in North Dakota.
• Renovation work — federal, run by EPA. Disturbing paint in a pre-1978 unit triggers the federal Renovation, Repair and Painting rule. North Dakota is not an EPA-authorised state for that programme, so EPA administers it here directly rather than a state agency.
• Lead-abatement contractors — ND DEQ. North Dakota does license lead-based paint abatement contractors and certify lead-based paint workers, under NDCC 23.1-06-05 and NDAC 33.1-15-24, administered by the Department of Environmental Quality. That is a rule for the people who perform abatement work, not a disclosure duty owed to a tenant, and it bites only when lead work is actually being done.

Be careful with one common conflation. North Dakota does run a lead-based paint contractor and worker regime (NDCC 23.1-06-05; NDAC 33.1-15-24), and writers sometimes point at it, call it “North Dakota’s lead law”, and imply a landlord must register. It is not a landlord duty at all: it licenses the firms and certifies the workers who perform lead inspection and abatement, and it adopts only the federal lead-activities rules (40 CFR Part 745, sections 220 through 233), never the disclosure rule. A landlord who hires a certified abatement firm has met that regime; a landlord renting a pre-1978 unit still owes the separate federal disclosure. Because that disclosure duty is federal rather than state-specific, the same form applies to a rental in any state — our federal lead-based paint disclosure form is the generic version of the North Dakota form on this page.

The disclosure duty attaches to “target housing”, and the definition is one sentence that almost every guide misreads — and that was quietly amended in 2025. Here it is verbatim from 40 CFR 745.103 as amended effective 13 January 2025 (89 FR 89416):

Read the grammar deliberately, because the whole thing turns on it. The sentence excludes two categories:

• Limb one: housing for the elderly or persons with disabilities. If a child under six resides there or is expected to, this exclusion evaporates and the housing is target housing again. This limb has always carried that condition.
• Limb two: “or any 0-bedroom dwelling”. Before the 2025 amendment this limb carried no condition — a studio was excluded outright. As amended effective 13 January 2025 (89 FR 89416), the child parenthetical was moved to the end of the sentence so that it now governs both limbs: a 0-bedroom dwelling is excluded unless a child under six resides or is expected to reside there.

The practical consequence under current law: a pre-1978 studio IS target housing when a child under six resides or is expected to reside there. Both excepted categories now carry the same child condition. This is the single most-misreported point in the topic, because the rule changed in January 2025: nearly every competing page, stale chart, and AI-generated answer still states that a 0-bedroom dwelling is categorically exempt and that a young child makes no difference. That was correct through 12 January 2025. Since 13 January 2025 it is wrong — a studio with a young child is covered.

The rule then defines the term so there is no room to argue about it. Also verbatim from 40 CFR 745.103: “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.”

That last clause matters more than it looks in North Dakota. “Rentals of individual rooms in residential dwellings” is expressly a 0-bedroom dwelling. If you rent rooms by the room in an old house — a common arrangement near the university towns and in older Fargo, Grand Forks, and Bismarck housing stock — you are renting 0-bedroom dwellings, but since the 2025 amendment that exclusion holds only where no child under six resides or is expected to reside there. Rent a room in a pre-1978 house to a household with a young child and the disclosure is owed. Dormitory housing and military barracks are named in the same definition.

Why 1978, and the detail almost everyone garbles

The trigger year exists because the Consumer Product Safety Commission banned lead-containing paint for residential use. But the ban and the disclosure trigger are two different rules with two different dates, and they get conflated constantly.

16 CFR 1303.1 reaches paint manufactured after 27 February 1978. That is the CPSC ban, and it is historical rationale — it explains why 1978 is the line. The operative trigger for your disclosure duty is 40 CFR 745.103’s “constructed prior to 1978.” Construction date, not manufacture date. Do not reason from the February date to a conclusion about your building; a house finished in January 1978 is not target housing, because the definition asks when the housing was constructed.

Establishing the build year in North Dakota

The lessor bears the burden of correctly identifying target housing, so establish the year from a record rather than from memory or a listing sheet. In North Dakota the county director of tax equalization holds the assessment records that carry a year built for essentially every parcel, and those records are the practical first stop. The certificate of occupancy, the original building permit, and the title file all corroborate.

Two traps worth naming. A later renovation does not reset the clock: a 1952 house gutted to the studs in 1998 is still target housing, because the definition asks when the housing was constructed, not when it was last improved. And an approximate year is not a defence: “I think it went up around 1980” will not help you if the assessor’s record says 1974. When the record is ambiguous or missing, the cheap move is to disclose. There is no penalty for disclosing on a property that turned out to be exempt.

Two different mechanisms take a property out of the disclosure rule, and mixing them up is how landlords talk themselves into exemptions that do not exist. Almost every competing page presents one undifferentiated “exemptions” list. The regulation does not work that way.

• The definition (40 CFR 745.103) decides whether the property is target housing at all. Post-1977 construction is outside the definition; 0-bedroom dwellings and qualifying elderly or disabled housing are outside it only where no child under six resides or is expected to (as amended eff. 13 January 2025). Where the exclusion applies there is no transaction to exempt, because the rule never reached the property.
• The scope section (40 CFR 745.101) exempts particular transactions in property that is target housing. The property is covered; this specific deal is not.

Here are the four transactional exemptions, quoted from 40 CFR 745.101, which “applies to all transactions to sell or lease target housing, including subleases, with the exception of the following”:

Not one of these four carries a child condition. No part of 745.101 asks whether a child under six lives in the unit. The only child condition anywhere in this scheme sits inside the elderly and disabled limb of the 745.103 definition. If you read that a young child’s presence defeats the 100-day exemption or the certified lead-free exemption, you are reading something the regulation does not say.

Also note what is not on the list. There is no exemption for a landlord who owns only one property, no exemption for renting to family, no exemption for a low rent, no exemption for a house that “obviously” has no lead, and no exemption for a tenant who says they do not care. The list above is the list.

Most guides list “three things” a landlord must do. The regulation is more precise. 40 CFR 745.113(b) requires the lease to include an attachment containing six distinct elements, in the language of the contract. A disclosure missing any one of them is defective no matter how professional the form looks. Audit your own paperwork against this.

Notice what is absent from that list: any inspection-opportunity item. The lessor’s six elements contain nothing about 10 days, nothing about a risk assessment window, nothing about waiving one. That is not an oversight in our summary — it is the actual content of 745.113(b). Compare it with the seller’s list at 745.113(a), which has a seventh element at (a)(5): a statement that the purchaser received the 10-day opportunity or waived it. The sales form has it. The lease form does not.

Complete the fields below to generate a federally compliant lead-based paint disclosure for a North Dakota rental. The PDF reproduces the verbatim Lead Warning Statement at 40 CFR 745.113(b)(1), the lessor’s disclosure and records items, the lessee’s acknowledgment lines, the agent’s certification, and the signature block. Deliver it to the lessee, with the EPA pamphlet, before the lessee is obligated under the lease.

This is the most misstated fact in the entire topic, and getting it right is worth more to a North Dakota landlord than anything else on this page. Here is 40 CFR 745.110(a), verbatim:

Every operative noun in that sentence is a sales noun. Purchaser. Contract to purchase. Seller. The word “lessee” does not appear. The word “lease” does not appear. The statute behind it, 42 U.S.C. 4852d(a)(1)(C), is scoped the same way and directs the rules to give purchasers — not lessees — an opportunity to conduct an inspection.

The corroborating evidence sits in the structure of the rules themselves, and it is decisive. 40 CFR 745.113(a)(5) puts the received-or-waived statement on the sales disclosure. 40 CFR 745.113(b), the lease disclosure, has no inspection item at all — six elements, none of them about an inspection window. Two parallel lists, drafted together, and the item exists in only one of them. That is a deliberate choice, not an omission.

So: a North Dakota landlord owes a tenant no 10-day inspection period — that window is a purchaser’s sales right, never a tenant’s — and no federal rule requires you to offer one voluntarily. Nor does North Dakota law add one — there is no lead provision in North Dakota’s leasing code to add anything. If you have been handing tenants a rental disclosure with a 10-day waiver line on it, you have been using a form built by someone who copied the sales version and did not check.

You may still offer an inspection window voluntarily. Doing so is a defensible practice, especially where a prospective tenant has a young child and asks. Just be clear with yourself about what it is: a courtesy you chose to extend, not a legal requirement you satisfied. And if you do offer one, do not print it as a federal entitlement on a form — put it in the lease or in correspondence where it reads as the voluntary term it actually is.

The disclosure form alone does not discharge your duty. Federal law separately requires the lessor to give the prospective lessee the EPA lead hazard information pamphlet, Protect Your Family From Lead in Your Home, before the lessee is obligated under the lease. It is a distinct element at 40 CFR 745.113(b)(4), and failing to deliver it is its own violation supporting its own damages.

Where to get it. The pamphlet is published jointly by EPA, HUD, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission and is free from EPA at epa.gov/lead. There is an English edition and a Spanish edition, Para Proteger A Su Familia Del Plomo En Su Hogar. Both are printable PDFs. You do not need permission to reproduce it and you must not charge for it.

Language. 40 CFR 745.113(b) requires the disclosure elements to be provided “in the language of the contract”. If the lease is in English, the English pamphlet fits. If you write the lease in Spanish, the Spanish pamphlet is the one that belongs with it. North Dakota landlords serving tenants whose lease is not in English should match the pamphlet to the lease.

Delivery method. Hand delivery with the tenant initialling receipt is the gold standard. Electronic delivery works if you meet EPA’s conditions, covered below. What does not work: posting the pamphlet on your website, texting a link, or telling the tenant where to find it. The pamphlet must be delivered as a complete document, on paper or electronically. A link is not delivery.

Substitution does not work either. Your own lead handout, your management company’s glossy safety brochure, or a printout of an EPA web page are all not the pamphlet. The rule names a specific federally approved document.

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

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

What belongs in the file:

• The executed disclosure with every party’s initials, signatures, and dates.
• A note identifying which pamphlet edition was delivered, and how.
• Copies of every record and report you handed to the lessee.
• The lease itself, if the disclosure was inserted rather than attached.
• For electronic delivery: the consent record and the delivery and access log.

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

Practical retention advice. Three years is a floor, not a target. A lead-poisoning claim brought on behalf of a minor can surface long after the tenancy ends. Retention is nearly free; destroying the file on the three-year anniversary optimises for the wrong risk. Keep it for the life of ownership and hand the file over at sale. If you are documenting unit condition at the same time, our North Dakota move-in checklist belongs in the same file and dates the condition of painted surfaces at handover.

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

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

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

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

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

If you use a property manager or a leasing agent in Fargo, Bismarck, Grand Forks, Minot, or anywhere else in North Dakota, a whole element of the rule runs through them and most landlords never think about it.

40 CFR 745.113(b)(5) requires a statement by the agent that the agent has informed the lessor of the lessor’s obligations under 42 U.S.C. 4852d and is aware of the agent’s own responsibility to ensure compliance with the requirements. The agent is not a witness to your disclosure. The agent is making an affirmative statement about their own conduct and accepting their own compliance responsibility.

Who is an agent? 40 CFR 745.103 defines it: “any party who enters into a contract with a seller or lessor, including any party who enters into a contract with a representative of the seller or lessor, for the purpose of selling or leasing target housing.” The definition then carves out the other side: “This term does not apply to purchasers or any purchaser’s representative who receives all compensation from the purchaser.” So your leasing agent is an agent under the rule. A prospective tenant’s own rental-finder, paid entirely by the tenant, is not.

Why this matters to you. Agent liability under the rule is independent, but it is not a shield for the lessor. Delegating leasing to a manager does not delegate away your own disclosure duty — you remain the lessor, and the elements at 745.113(b)(2) and (b)(3) are yours to state. What the agent item does is make your manager separately accountable, which is exactly why a good manager will chase you for the disclosure before move-in. If your manager has never mentioned lead paint on your pre-1978 units, that is a signal worth acting on.

Where no agent is involved — the ordinary case for a small North Dakota landlord renting their own property — the agent item is simply marked not applicable. Leave the agent field on the generator blank and no agent signature block prints.

The disclosure duty does not stop at the door of the leased unit, and this is one of the few places where the federal rule and North Dakota law point in the same direction at once.

Federally, 40 CFR 745.103 defines a common area as “a portion of a building generally accessible to all residents/users including, but not limited to, hallways, stairways, laundry and recreational rooms, playgrounds, community centers, and boundary fences.” Where a building-wide evaluation identified lead-based paint or hazards in a stairwell, a shared laundry, or another unit, those records are within the scope of what you must disclose and provide for a pre-1978 building. The records item at 745.113(b)(3) reaches the records you actually have, and a building-wide report is a record you have.

In North Dakota, NDCC 47-16-13.1 says it out loud. Among the landlord’s listed duties are to “keep all common areas of the premises in a clean and safe condition” (47-16-13.1(1)(c)) and to “make all repairs and do whatever is necessary to put and keep the premises in a fit and habitable condition” (47-16-13.1(1)(b)). Common areas are expressly named. So for a pre-1978 multi-unit building in North Dakota, deteriorated paint in a shared stairwell is simultaneously a federal disclosure question, if you hold a report about it, and a North Dakota habitability question, whether or not you hold a report about it.

The practical instruction for a multi-unit owner is short. Do not answer the records question by looking only in the file for unit 4. Look in the building file.

This is the North Dakota law that actually governs lead paint in a rental — not as a disclosure duty, but as a condition duty. It is worth reading closely, because it is stronger than most landlords assume.

The duty: NDCC 47-16-13.1

Section 47-16-13.1 provides that “a landlord of a residential dwelling unit shall” then sets out the duties, including to “comply with the requirements of applicable building and housing codes materially affecting health and safety”, to “make all repairs and do whatever is necessary to put and keep the premises in a fit and habitable condition”, and to “keep all common areas of the premises in a clean and safe condition”, together with duties to maintain the electrical, plumbing, sanitary, heating and other facilities and to supply running water.

Three features of that sentence matter for lead paint:

• “Fit and habitable” is the standard. Section 47-16-13.1(1)(b) requires the landlord to make all repairs and do whatever is necessary to keep the premises in a fit and habitable condition. Deteriorated lead paint in a pre-1978 unit is capable of meeting that standard, particularly where a young child is in residence — the statute sets a condition standard rather than listing hazards.
• It reaches common areas and the codes. The same section separately requires the landlord to keep all common areas clean and safe (subsection (1)(c)) and to comply with applicable building and housing codes materially affecting health and safety (subsection (1)(a)). A local housing-code provision on deteriorated paint is pulled in through subsection (1)(a).
• It is a connected, enforceable scheme. Sections 47-16-13.1 through 47-16-13.6 form one connected scheme with its own enforcement section at 47-16-13.6, and it stacks on top of the federal disclosure rule rather than substituting for it. The federal form does not discharge the North Dakota condition duty, and the condition duty does not discharge the federal form.

The remedies: NDCC 47-16-13

If, within a reasonable time after notice from the lessee of dilapidations which the lessor ought to repair, the lessor neglects to do so, NDCC 47-16-13 gives the lessee a menu:

• Repair and deduct — the lessee may repair the premises and deduct the expense of the repair from the rent.
• Recover it otherwise — the lessee may recover the cost of the repair from the lessor in any other lawful manner.
• Vacate — the lessee may vacate the premises, and is then discharged from further payment of rent and performance of other conditions.

Lead work is exactly the kind of repair this menu is built for. Abatement or interim controls in an old North Dakota rental are rarely cheap, so the repair-and-deduct and cost-recovery limbs carry real weight: a landlord who ignores written notice of deteriorating paint can end up funding the repair out of deducted or recovered rent, or lose the tenancy to a lawful vacate. North Dakota’s statute does not add a separate rent-escrow account — the three routes above are the ones the code gives.

The leasing disclosure is one duty. Doing work on the building is a completely separate one, with its own rule, and landlords routinely comply with the first while walking into the second.

The rule. The EPA Renovation, Repair and Painting rule, at 40 CFR Part 745 Subpart E, requires lead-safe work practices and firm certification for renovations that disturb painted surfaces in pre-1978 target housing and child-occupied facilities. Occupants must receive lead hazard information before the work begins. Crucially, EPA states that the rule does apply if you rent all or part of your home — the do-it-yourself carve-out is for owner-occupants working on their own home, not for landlords working on a rental.

Who administers it in North Dakota: EPA, directly. EPA administers the RRP programme in most states and has authorised only a subset to run their own. North Dakota is not on that list, so there is no state RRP programme to register with here and no state RRP certification to obtain (lead abatement, covered below, is a separate state regime). Your certified firm is certified by EPA, and enforcement is federal. This trips up landlords who go looking for a North Dakota lead contractor licence and conclude, when they cannot find one, that no rule applies. The rule applies; the administrator is simply federal.

What North Dakota does add: a licence for the people doing the abatement. North Dakota licenses lead-based paint abatement contractors and certifies lead-based paint workers under NDCC 23.1-06-05, with the standards at NDAC 33.1-15-24, administered by the Department of Environmental Quality. That regime governs who is qualified to perform lead inspection, risk assessment, and abatement; it adopts the federal lead-activities standards (40 CFR Part 745, sections 220 through 233) and does not touch the disclosure rule. A landlord hiring out lead work in North Dakota should confirm the firm holds that state licence — while the RRP renovation certification, by contrast, remains federal.

So the honest summary for a North Dakota landlord renovating a pre-1978 rental: federal RRP rule, federal administrator, federal renovation certification — with a North Dakota licence required of the abatement contractor you hire. None of it is a disclosure duty, and none of it substitutes for the form on this page.

Search the North Dakota Century Code for “lead-based paint” and you do land somewhere — just not in landlord-tenant law. The phrase lives in NDCC chapter 23.1-06, the state’s Air Pollution Control chapter, and it is worth seeing exactly what it does so a page calling it “North Dakota’s lead law” does not mislead you.

NDCC 23.1-06-05 is titled “Licensing of asbestos and lead-based paint contractors and certification of asbestos and lead-based paint workers.” It directs the Department of Environmental Quality to “administer and enforce a licensing program for asbestos contractors and lead-based paint contractors and a certification program for asbestos workers and lead-based paint workers.” The technical standards sit in the administrative rules at NDAC 33.1-15-24, “Standards for Lead-Based Paint Activities.”

Read who that binds. It binds the firms and individuals who perform lead inspection, risk assessment, and abatement — contractors and workers — not a landlord who rents out a house. The delegation is deliberately narrow: North Dakota’s rule adopts only the federal lead-activities provisions (40 CFR Part 745, sections 220 through 233), the abatement subpart. It does not adopt the federal disclosure subpart (40 CFR 745.100 through 745.119), which is where the lessor’s disclosure duty and the 10-day rule live. The one place lead-based paint appears in North Dakota statute is a rule for the people doing the physical work, keyed to a different part of the federal regulation than the one on this page.

And note what is not in North Dakota’s code. Unlike some states, North Dakota imposes no statutory residential seller lead-disclosure form, no rental lead registry, and no lead-safe rental certificate. The only lead-based paint text in the code is the contractor regime just described. For a landlord, the operative document remains the federal disclosure this page generates.

Two separate exposures run in parallel, and they are not alternatives — a landlord can face both for the same failure.

The tenant’s private action

42 U.S.C. 4852d(b)(3) makes any person who knowingly violates the section jointly and severally liable to the purchaser or lessee for three times the amount of damages incurred by that person. 42 U.S.C. 4852d(b)(4) adds that in a civil action brought for damages under (b)(3), the court may award court costs “to the party commencing such action, together with reasonable attorney fees and any expert witness fees, if that party prevails.” That combination — treble damages plus fee-shifting — is what makes a small disclosure failure economically serious: it makes a modest claim worth a lawyer’s time.

Note which way that fee clause runs. It is one-directional. Subsection (b)(4) lets the court award costs and fees only to the party commencing the action — the tenant — and only if that party prevails. It is not a general prevailing-party provision, so a landlord who successfully defends a 4852d claim does not recover fees under it. The asymmetry is deliberate, and it is the whole reason a tenant’s lawyer will take a case whose actual damages are modest.

Note the standard: knowing. It is not a strict-liability trap for a landlord who made an honest error on an ambiguous build year. But it is broad enough to cover a landlord who never looked, never asked, and never delivered a pamphlet on a house they know is old.

Government civil money penalties

We are deliberately not printing a dollar figure here, and you should distrust pages that do. Federal civil money penalty amounts are adjusted for inflation every year — EPA’s are published and updated in the table at 40 CFR 19.4. Any specific per-violation number written into a web page is stale within twelve months of publication, which is exactly why the figures you see quoted around the internet disagree with each other and with the current table. If you need the operative statutory penalty amount for a real matter, read the current 40 CFR 19.4 table or the current Federal Register adjustment notice. Do not take it from a form site, including a number one of them attributes to us.

Enforcement is real and shared between EPA and HUD, and both agencies have historically pursued landlords and property managers with pre-1978 portfolios. But the day-to-day risk for most North Dakota landlords is not a federal enforcement sweep; it is the tenant with a lawyer and a treble-damages statute.

Skipping the disclosure on a pre-1978 unit

The single most common violation, and the least defensible. A pre-1978 North Dakota rental leased without a signed lead-based paint disclosure exposes the landlord to government civil money penalty exposure plus the tenant’s treble-damages action. There is no penalty for over-disclosing. When in doubt, disclose.

Assuming the build year

“I think it was built around 1980” is not a defence. Pull the county director of tax equalization record, the permit, or the certificate of occupancy. And remember that a 1976 house substantially renovated in 1985 is still target housing — original construction controls.

Treating a studio as categorically exempt

Believing a 0-bedroom dwelling is exempt no matter who lives there. That was true through 12 January 2025, but 40 CFR 745.103 as amended (89 FR 89416) now withdraws the 0-bedroom exclusion where a child under six resides or is expected — a pre-1978 studio with a young child is target housing. The elderly and disabled exclusion has always collapsed the same way. Older charts and competitor pages still show the studio as an unconditional carve-out; do not rely on them.

Using a form with a 10-day waiver line on it

If your rental disclosure has a line about a 10-day inspection opportunity being received or waived, it was built from the sales form. The lessor elements at 40 CFR 745.113(b) contain no inspection item. It is not fatal to have an extra line, but it tells you the form was never checked against the rule — and a form nobody checked is a form that may be missing a required element too.

Pre-ticking the tenant’s acknowledgment

Filling in the lessee’s initials, or having your office check the box that the pamphlet was received, destroys the only evidentiary value the document has. Elements (c), (d), and (e) are statements by the lessee and the agent. They print blank on purpose. Let the people making the statements make them.

Failing to deliver the EPA pamphlet

The form alone is not compliance. The pamphlet is a separate element and a separate violation. Substituting your own handout, or linking to it, does not satisfy the rule.

Delivering after the lease is signed

The rule says before the lessee is obligated. A disclosure produced at move-in, or stapled into the welcome packet with the keys, is late — and late is the same violation as never.

Verbal or implied disclosure

“I told them the place was old” is not a disclosure. It must be written, signed by lessor and lessee, and retained. Text messages and oral assurances do not satisfy 40 CFR 745.113.

Rewriting the Lead Warning Statement

The language at 40 CFR 745.113(b)(1) is prescribed. Tightening it, modernising it, or improving the tone can defeat the disclosure. Reproduce it as written.

Treating “no knowledge” as a place to hide

“No knowledge” is honest when nothing has been tested and you hold no reports. It is fraud when you hold a report, remember the abatement, or know a child in the unit tested positive. Actual knowledge is the standard, and actual knowledge includes what you have in a drawer.

Disclosing to only one tenant on a multi-tenant lease

Every lessee signing the lease must receive the disclosure and the pamphlet and must sign the acknowledgment. One signature on a four-tenant lease leaves three undisclosed tenancies.

Only searching the unit file in a multi-unit building

Building-wide evaluations covering common areas and other units are records available to you, and they are within scope. Search the building file, not just the unit folder.

Confusing disclosure with habitability

Disclosing deteriorated paint does not make the unit fit. NDCC 47-16-13.1 is a separate statutory duty about condition — fit and habitable premises, clean and safe common areas — that disclosure does not satisfy. Disclosure answers the federal question. It does not answer the North Dakota one.

Renovating without the RRP rule

Disturbing paint in an occupied pre-1978 rental triggers 40 CFR Part 745 Subpart E and its certified-firm and lead-safe-work-practice requirements — administered by EPA directly in North Dakota. Looking for a North Dakota lead contractor licence, failing to find one, and concluding no rule applies is a mistake with real teeth.

Understanding what a tenant can actually do is the fastest way for a landlord to calibrate the risk. North Dakota tenants in pre-1978 housing hold rights from two sources at once.

The right to receive the disclosure before being obligated

The disclosure must be delivered before the lessee is obligated under the lease. A disclosure produced after signature does not satisfy 40 CFR 745.113. What this does not give the tenant is a right to void the lease — that remedy does not exist under the rule. What it gives them is the statutory damages route below.

The right to the EPA pamphlet

The pamphlet is an independent element. Failure to deliver it is a separate violation supporting independent damages, even where the form itself was delivered and signed.

The right to treble damages and fees

Under 42 U.S.C. 4852d(b)(3), a tenant injured by a knowing violation can recover three times the damages incurred; 4852d(b)(4) allows the court to add court costs, reasonable attorney fees, and expert witness fees. Fee-shifting is what makes counsel available for claims that would otherwise be too small to bring.

The right to complain to EPA or HUD

Tenants can report suspected violations to EPA or HUD. Because EPA administers both the disclosure rule and the RRP programme in North Dakota directly, a North Dakota tenant’s complaint goes to a federal agency rather than a state one.

The right to a habitable unit — NDCC 47-16-13.1

Independent of any disclosure question, NDCC 47-16-13.1 requires the landlord to keep the premises fit and habitable and all common areas clean and safe, and to comply with applicable health-and-safety housing codes. Deteriorated lead paint can support that claim on its own.

The repair, recover, and vacate remedies — NDCC 47-16-13

After notice of a needed repair and a reasonable time for the landlord to act, NDCC 47-16-13 lets a North Dakota tenant repair the premises and deduct the cost from rent, recover the cost from the landlord in any other lawful manner, or vacate and be discharged from further rent. Those are the statutory routes; North Dakota does not add a separate rent-escrow account.

The right to sue for personal injury

If a child or pregnant woman is exposed and harmed, the tenant can pursue tort damages: medical costs, pain and suffering, future treatment, and lost earning capacity. A disclosure violation can supply a negligence foundation for that claim, independent of the paperwork.

Fair housing protection

The federal Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. 3601 et seq., prohibits familial-status discrimination. A landlord who refuses families with young children to sidestep lead obligations has not solved a lead problem — they have created a fair housing problem, and traded a paperwork duty for a discrimination complaint. Screen on lawful criteria; our North Dakota tenant screening laws guide covers what those are.

Most North Dakota lead paint disclosures are routine compliance paperwork, and the generator on this page handles the mechanics. Consult a North Dakota landlord-tenant attorney before issuing the disclosure if any of the following is true:

• The property has known deteriorated lead paint, or a prior abatement you are unsure how to describe.
• A child under six in the unit has tested positive for lead exposure.
• A tenant has alleged lead exposure, given written notice of a paint condition, or begun repairing-and-deducting or recovering repair costs under NDCC 47-16-13.
• You are mid-remediation, or planning work that will disturb paint in an occupied unit.
• You are a multi-property owner facing an EPA or HUD inquiry.
• You are hiring out lead inspection or abatement work and need to confirm the firm’s North Dakota licence under NDCC 23.1-06-05 and NDAC 33.1-15-24.
• The build year is genuinely ambiguous and an exemption call turns on it.

A clean compliance package is the foundation. An attorney’s review at the right moment costs far less than defending a treble-damages action under 42 U.S.C. 4852d.

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