Free Texas Lead Paint Disclosure

A Texas 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). Texas imposes no lead paint disclosure statute of its own — and unusually, Texas says so in its own rulebook, at 25 TAC 295.212(h). What Texas does add is a licensing regime for lead contractors and an independent duty to repair under Tex. Prop. Code 92.052, covered in our Texas habitability laws guide. Generate the form below, then read on for exactly what the rule requires.

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Texas 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 Texas 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 Texas 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.

Texas has no lead paint disclosure statute, and this page will not invent one. Every disclosure requirement described here comes from federal law: 42 U.S.C. 4852d, 40 CFR Part 745 Subpart F, and 24 CFR Part 35 Subpart A. But the honest answer for Texas is more interesting than a flat “nothing”, because Texas does regulate lead — just not this. Getting the distinction right is the whole point of this section.

Texas’s own rule says the disclosure duty is federal

Most states are silent, leaving you to infer that federal law governs. Texas is unusually explicit. Buried in the state’s lead rules, at 25 TAC 295.212(h), is this sentence: “Building owners are subject to the requirements mandated under §1018 of the Residential Lead-Based Paint Hazard Reduction Act of 1992 and 40 Code of Federal Regulations, §745, Subpart F, ‘Disclosure of Known Lead-based Paint and/or Lead-based Paint Hazards Upon Sale or Lease of Residential Property.'”

Read what that does. Texas, in its own administrative code, addresses the building owner’s disclosure obligation and points it at federal law. It does not create a parallel Texas duty, a Texas form, a Texas filing, or a Texas registry. It defers. That single sentence is the most direct answer available to the question “what does Texas require?” — and no page currently ranking for this topic quotes it.

What Texas actually regulates: lead contractors, not landlord paperwork

Texas runs a genuine, substantial lead programme. It lives in Tex. Occ. Code Chapter 1955 (Lead-Based Paint Abatement) and is implemented by the Department of State Health Services at 25 TAC Chapter 295, Subchapter I, the Texas Environmental Lead Reduction rules. Its stated purpose, at 25 TAC 295.201(a), is “to establish the means to control and minimize public exposure to lead by regulating lead-based paint activities in target housing and child-occupied facilities.”

The operative requirement is a certification requirement. 25 TAC 295.201(b)(1) provides that the rules “require that all lead-based paint activities in target housing and child-occupied facilities be performed by certified individuals.” The rules then set certification standards for lead inspectors, risk assessors, abatement supervisors, project designers, abatement workers, and lead firms. Texas tracks the federal trigger date exactly — 25 TAC 295.202(75) defines target housing as “[a]ny housing constructed prior to 1978” — but its carve-outs are worded differently from the federal ones in a way worth a moment. Texas withdraws the elderly/disabled exclusion where “any child who is six years of age or younger resides or is expected to reside in such housing”, while the federal definition at 40 CFR 745.103 says “less than 6 years of age”: a six-year-old engages the Texas rules but not the federal definition. And Texas states the zero-bedroom limb flatly at 25 TAC 295.201(b)(2) — the sections “do not apply to housing for the elderly or persons with disabilities, unless a child who is six years of age or younger resides or is expected to reside in that housing, nor do these sections apply to target housing with zero bedrooms.” Under the Texas Chapter 295 rules no child condition attaches to the zero-bedroom limb. Federally the answer has changed: since 40 CFR 745.103 was amended effective 13 January 2025 (89 FR 89416), the child-under-six condition now reaches the federal 0-bedroom limb too, so a pre-1978 studio with a young child is federal target housing. The Texas lead-activities rule and the federal disclosure duty now diverge on this point — watch which one you are applying.

So the regime is real, and it binds a party. That party is the person doing the lead work — not the landlord signing a lease. Nothing in Chapter 1955 or 25 TAC Chapter 295 Subchapter I requires a Texas landlord to test, to abate, to register a property, to file anything, or to disclose anything beyond what federal law already requires. There is no Texas lead registry for rentals and no Texas de-leading mandate. Anyone who tells you otherwise is describing a different state’s law.

The TREC addendum is a sales form — do not put it on a lease

Search “Texas lead paint disclosure” and most of what returns is TREC No. OP-L, also circulated as TXR 1906. Its full name tells you the problem: Addendum for Seller’s Disclosure of Information on Lead-Based Paint and Lead-Based Paint Hazards as Required by Federal Law. It is adopted at 22 TAC 537.63, which states that the Commission “adopts by reference standard contract form TREC No. OP-L approved by the Commission in 2011 for voluntary use to comply with federal regulation to furnish a lead paint disclosure in properties constructed prior to 1978.”

Two things follow, and both cut against how the form is usually described. First, it is adopted for voluntary use — the rule’s own words — so it is not a Texas mandate even in a sale. Second, and more important for a landlord: it is a seller’s addendum, built for a purchase contract. It carries the purchaser’s 10-day inspection item, because a purchaser is entitled to one. Bolt that form onto a Texas lease and you have just handed your tenant a document asserting an inspection right that federal law does not give tenants, on an instrument every party signs certifying its accuracy. A Texas landlord needs a lessor disclosure carrying the six elements of 40 CFR 745.113(b). That is what the generator on this page produces.

What else Texas contributes

• Duty to repair — Tex. Prop. Code 92.052. A Texas landlord must make a diligent effort to repair a condition that “materially affects the physical health or safety of an ordinary tenant.” Chapter 92 never mentions lead, but deteriorated lead paint can meet that description on its own facts. Disclosure does not cure a hazard; it only discloses one.
• DSHS abatement notification — 25 TAC 295.214. Texas requires written notice to the DSHS Environmental Lead Notification Section before lead-based paint abatement in target housing. Note who owes it: the rule places the duty on the certified lead firm, not on the property owner. Your contractor files it. It is still worth knowing it exists, because it means your abatement is on the state’s radar.
• Local programmes. Some Texas cities and counties run rental-registration or code-enforcement programmes that can add inspection or notice obligations. These are municipal, not statewide. Check with local code enforcement before assuming none applies.

Because the disclosure obligation is federal rather than state-specific, the same form works for a rental in any state — our federal lead-based paint disclosure form is the generic version of the Texas form on this page.

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 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.

“Target housing” is the federal term for property subject to the rule. The definition at 40 CFR 745.103 is residential dwellings constructed before 1 January 1978, subject to the narrow exclusions in the next section.

Why 1978 — and which 1978 date actually governs. The operative cutoff comes from the definition itself: 40 CFR 745.103 defines target housing as housing constructed prior to 1978, meaning construction before 1 January 1978. The historical reason that year was chosen is the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s ban on lead-containing paint at 16 CFR 1303.1 — but that ban applies to paint manufactured after 27 February 1978, which is not the same date. Competing pages routinely merge the two and report the CPSC ban as effective 1 January 1978, or describe lead paint as “banned for residential use in 1978” without saying which rule or which date. 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. Housing constructed from 1 January 1978 onward sits outside the disclosure regime entirely.

How to verify the build year in Texas. The county appraisal district record is the fastest authoritative source, and every Texas county publishes it online — HCAD in Harris County, DCAD in Dallas, TCAD in Travis, BCAD in Bexar. The original certificate of occupancy, the building permit file, and title records also establish it. The lessor carries the burden of correctly identifying target housing — “I think it was around 1980” is not a defence, and a guess that turns out wrong is a knowing violation waiting to happen.

Renovation does not reset the clock. A 1962 building stripped to the studs and rebuilt in 2001 is still target housing. The original construction date controls, not the date of the most recent renovation. This trips up owners of heavily rehabbed older stock constantly.

Common areas in multi-unit buildings. If the building predates 1978, the disclosure scope reaches the common areas as well as the leased unit — hallways, stairwells, porches, laundry rooms, and shared storage. This has a practical consequence for records, covered below: a building-wide evaluation is disclosable to every tenant in the building, not just the one whose unit it sampled.

Texas context. Texas is a young-stock state by national standards — the post-1978 suburban build-out around Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, and San Antonio means most Texas rental units are simply outside the rule. That is exactly what makes Texas landlords vulnerable: the compliance answer is “no” so often that the pre-1978 unit gets processed on autopilot with the rest of the portfolio. The older stock is concentrated and identifiable — the Heights and Third Ward in Houston, Oak Cliff and East Dallas, Austin’s central-east neighbourhoods, the King William and Dignowity Hill areas of San Antonio, and most of Galveston, Waco, and inner-loop Fort Worth. Mixed-vintage portfolios are where this goes wrong. When in doubt, check the appraisal district record rather than relying on the exemption.

Even pre-1978 property can fall outside the rule. The carve-outs are narrow, and they come from two different places in the regulation — which is why competing lists of “the lead paint exemptions” disagree with one another. Some are exclusions written into the definition of target housing at 40 CFR 745.103: a unit that meets one of those was never target housing in the first place. The others are transaction-level exemptions listed at 40 CFR 745.101: the housing is target housing, but this particular deal is outside the subpart. The compliance answer is often the same either way, but knowing which provision governs tells you which text to read and which facts matter. Verify against the current rule before relying on any of them.

• Housing built in 1978 or later (40 CFR 745.103). Not target housing at all. In Texas this is the majority of the rental stock.
• Zero-bedroom units (40 CFR 745.103, definitional). A dwelling whose living area is not separated from the sleeping area — efficiencies, studios, dormitories, barracks, and the rental of individual rooms. Since 745.103 was amended effective 13 January 2025 (89 FR 89416) this federal exclusion is conditional: the child-under-six condition now attaches to it just as it does to the elderly/disabled limb, so a pre-1978 studio is federal target housing when a child under six resides or is expected to. Texas’s own lead-activities rule is drafted differently — 25 TAC 295.201(b)(2) says “nor do these sections apply to target housing with zero bedrooms” with no child condition — but that governs the Chapter 295 certification requirements, not the federal disclosure duty this form satisfies, and the two now diverge on the studio question.
• Housing for the elderly or persons with disabilities (40 CFR 745.103, definitional), where the housing is specifically designated as such — unless a child under six resides or is expected to reside there.
• Short-term leases of 100 days or less (40 CFR 745.101(c)), where no lease renewal or extension can occur. Vacation and short-term rentals typically qualify; a month-to-month tenancy does not, because it renews.
• Certified lead-free housing (40 CFR 745.101(b)). Property inspected by a certified inspector and found free of lead-based paint. Retain the certification; it is the only proof of the exemption. In Texas, note that the inspector doing that work must hold DSHS certification under 25 TAC 295.206.
• Qualifying lease renewals (40 CFR 745.101(d)). A renewal of an existing lease where the lessor already made every disclosure required by 745.107 and no new information described in 745.107 has come into the lessor’s possession. Both conditions must hold. Watch the cross-reference: 745.101(d) points at 745.107, not at 745.113(b); pages that cite 745.113(b) here have followed the wrong thread. 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.

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. This matters more in Texas than in most states given the size of the Spanish-speaking rental market: landlords marketing to non-English-speaking tenants should match the pamphlet to the lease language, not to the conversation.

Delivery. Hand delivery with the lessee initialing receipt is the gold standard. Electronic delivery is permitted subject to the E-SIGN conditions covered below. What does not satisfy the rule is pointing at a website: posting a link is not delivery. The pamphlet must be transmitted as a complete document, on paper or electronically.

Existing tenants. The leasing disclosure duty attaches to new leases, not to sitting tenants mid-term. There is one important exception, and it is the renovation rule: if you disturb paint in an occupied pre-1978 unit, the occupants must receive the lead hazard information regardless of when their lease started. That is covered in the renovation section below.

The rule does not require you to test for lead, and it does not require you to remove it. 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 standard is actual knowledge, not constructive knowledge and not a duty to investigate. If the unit has never been tested and you hold no reports, “no knowledge” is the honest, lawful answer, and checking it exposes you to nothing.

The trap is the opposite direction. “No knowledge” becomes fraud when you actually know something:

• You hold a risk assessment, inspection report, or abatement record for the unit or the building.
• A previous tenant’s child had an elevated blood-lead result traced to the unit.
• A code-enforcement notice, insurance report, or contractor flagged deteriorated paint.
• You know the property was tested and the report is inconvenient, so you never collected it.

Note the asymmetry the rule creates. Testing is optional; disclosing is not. A landlord who tests and finds lead must disclose it, and many owners conclude — rationally — that they would rather not know. That is lawful. What is not lawful is knowing and papering over it, because 42 U.S.C. 4852d(b)(3) attaches its treble-damages remedy to knowing violations, and a fact-finder deciding what you knew will look at every document in your file.

This is the most widespread error on the lead-disclosure internet, and in Texas it has a specific cause worth naming, 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.

Why Texas gets this wrong more than most. Search the Texas SERP for this topic and it is dominated by home sales: the TREC OP-L seller’s addendum, TXR 1906, realtor guidance, brokerage blogs. The loudest fact on nearly every one of those pages is the buyer’s 10-day inspection right — correctly, because those pages are about buyers. A Texas landlord researching “Texas lead paint disclosure” therefore reads page after page about a 10-day inspection right and reasonably concludes it applies to them. It does not. The Texas search results are answering a different question than the one a landlord is asking.

Read the regulation. 40 CFR 745.110(a) provides that before a purchaser is obligated under any contract to purchase target housing, the seller shall permit the purchaser a 10-day period (unless the parties mutually agree, in writing, upon a different period of time) to conduct a risk assessment or inspection for the presence of lead-based paint and/or lead-based paint hazards. Purchaser. Seller. Purchase. Every operative noun is a sales noun. The statute behind it, 42 U.S.C. 4852d(a)(1)(C), says the same thing: the duty is to permit the purchaser a 10-day period.

Now read the lessor rules. 40 CFR 745.113(b) — the six elements listed earlier — contains no inspection-opportunity item. Neither does the EPA lessor disclosure form. And EPA answers the question directly on its own site: “Under the law, the 10-day inspection period is limited to sales transactions, but nothing prevents the renter from negotiating with the lessor to allow time for an inspection before rental.”

What this means for you. A Texas 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 omits the item entirely, because the lessor rule omits it.

Complete the fields below to generate a federally compliant Texas 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 legal requirement, and it is also the single highest-leverage thing in this whole guide, because the signed disclosure is the only artefact that proves you complied.

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

What belongs in the file:

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

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 a measure of how long the tenant’s rights last. The tenant’s treble-damages right is expressly unaffected by the recordkeeping provision. 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. Texas 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. Retention is nearly free; destroy the file on the three-year anniversary and you have optimised for the wrong risk. Keep it for the life of ownership and hand the file over at sale.

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

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

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

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

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

The disclosure rule governs leasing. Different rules govern work on the building, and Texas landlords routinely comply with the first while breaching the second. In Texas there are two layers here, federal and state, and they are easy to confuse.

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

The 60-day information duty. Where the renovation affects an occupied pre-1978 unit, the occupants must receive lead hazard information no more than 60 days before work begins — the EPA pamphlet for renovation, 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.

The Texas layer: certification and thresholds. Separately from the federal RRP rule, Texas requires certification for lead-based paint activities — inspection, risk assessment, and abatement — in target housing. 25 TAC 295.213(b) provides that no person may offer to perform or perform any lead-based paint activity in target housing or a child-occupied facility unless certified. 25 TAC 295.213(a) then sets de minimis thresholds below which the state’s performance standards do not apply: less than two square feet of deteriorated lead-based paint per room or equivalent, less than 20 square feet on the exterior, or less than 10% of the total surface area of a component with a small surface area. Do not read those thresholds as a general permission slip — they limit the reach of the state standards at 25 TAC 295.212, and they say nothing about the separate federal RRP rule, which has its own de minimis levels and its own certification requirement.

And remember the owner-exemption trap. As covered above, 25 TAC 295.201(b)(2) withdraws the own-residence exemption where the residence is occupied by someone other than the owner or the owner’s immediate family. Your rental is occupied by a tenant. Entering that occupied unit to carry out the work is also its own compliance question under Chapter 92 — see our Texas landlord entry laws guide for the notice position before entering to renovate.

Why it matters in Texas. Repainting between tenancies is the most routine task in the business, and Texas’s pre-1978 stock is concentrated in exactly the neighbourhoods where small owner-operators do their own work. Scraping and repainting a 1958 bungalow’s window trim with in-house staff and no certification is a violation with its own penalty exposure, entirely independent of a flawless leasing disclosure. And there is a second-order effect: work that disturbs paint can create the very hazard you then have to disclose to the next tenant, and it can generate the records that make “no knowledge” unavailable to you going forward.

Search this topic and you will be told the penalty is a specific number per violation. Run the search three times and you will get three different numbers. Researching this page, three separate searches on this exact topic returned three different five-figure amounts — none dated, none naming the assessing agency, each presented as the current figure. They cannot all be right, and we are not going to add a fourth number to that pile. Here is the accurate structure, which has two entirely separate limbs.

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

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

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

EPA and HUD share enforcement of the disclosure rule. EPA’s Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics and HUD’s Office of Lead Hazard Control and Healthy Homes run the programme jointly, and enforcement has historically concentrated on larger landlords and property managers, where a single practice failure replicates across hundreds of tenancies and produces a large per-violation multiplier. The Texas certification regime is enforced separately by DSHS, which has its own inspection, investigation, decertification, and administrative-penalty provisions at 25 TAC 295.218 through 295.220 — a distinct process aimed at contractors rather than at your lease paperwork.

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

Where violations get reported. Tenants can report a 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. Nothing about the process requires the tenant to hire a lawyer first, which is precisely why a clean file matters more than a good argument.

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

Federal disclosure is the compliance floor, not the whole picture. Texas law applies independently to the underlying condition of the paint.

Tex. Prop. Code 92.052 requires a landlord to make a diligent effort to repair or remedy a condition that “materially affects the physical health or safety of an ordinary tenant”, where the tenant has given notice as the lease requires and is not delinquent in rent. Chapter 92 does not mention lead anywhere — but it does not need to. Deteriorated lead-based paint — peeling, chipping, chalking, cracking, or damaged — in a unit where children under six live is a strong candidate for a condition materially affecting physical health, and the tenant’s remedies under Subchapter B include repair-and-deduct, termination, and a judicial action for damages. Our Texas habitability laws guide walks the notice mechanics, which are unusually procedural in Texas and easy to get wrong from either side.

The distinction landlords miss: disclosure and repair are independent duties. 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 for a 92.052 claim. Deteriorated paint in a pre-1978 Texas unit should be addressed by a properly certified firm before re-rental — both to comply with the federal RRP rule and the Texas certification rules, and to remove the repair exposure that disclosure does nothing to cure.

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

Using the TREC seller’s addendum on a lease

The most distinctively Texan error. TREC No. OP-L is a sales addendum carrying the purchaser’s 10-day inspection item. Attaching it to a lease imports a right tenants do not have onto a document everyone signs certifying accuracy. Use a lessor disclosure with the six elements of 40 CFR 745.113(b).

Assuming Texas has a lead statute you have missed

It does not have a disclosure one. Texas has a contractor certification regime (Occ. Code Ch. 1955; 25 TAC Ch. 295 Subch. I) and a duty to repair (Prop. Code 92.052). Neither adds a disclosure step. Time spent hunting for the Texas lead disclosure statute is time not spent delivering the federal form.

Relying on the own-residence exemption for a rental

25 TAC 295.201(b)(2) looks like it lets an owner do their own lead work. It does not, once the residence is occupied by anyone other than the owner or the owner’s immediate family. A tenanted rental fails that test on day one.

Skipping disclosure on a pre-1978 unit

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

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 appraisal district record, permit file, or certificate of occupancy establishes it. A 1976 building renovated in 1985 is still target housing. In a state where most stock is post-1978, the pre-1978 unit is the one that slips through.

Failing to provide the EPA pamphlet

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

Verbal or implied disclosure

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

Rewriting the lead warning statement

The language at 40 CFR 745.113(b)(1) is prescribed. Tightening it, modernising it, or folding it into your lease’s own warranty language can defeat the disclosure. Reproduce it as written.

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.

Treating “no knowledge” as a place to hide

Honest when nothing is known; fraud when something is. A landlord aware of prior peeling paint, a prior report, or a child’s elevated blood-lead result cannot check “no knowledge” and expect it to hold — and in Texas a certified firm’s report was delivered to you by rule.

Failing to disclose to every lessee

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

Forgetting the records for the rest of the building

A building-wide evaluation covering common areas or other units is disclosable to this tenant. Owners routinely disclose the unit-specific file and sit on the building report.

Renovating without certification

Compliance with the leasing disclosure says nothing about compliance when your maintenance crew sands pre-1978 window trim. Separate rules, separate certifications, separate penalties — federal RRP and the Texas lead rules both bite.

Tenants of Texas 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.

The right to the disclosure before being obligated

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

The right to the EPA pamphlet

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

The right to triple damages plus fees

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

The right to report to EPA or HUD

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

The right to repair under Chapter 92

Independent of disclosure, Tex. Prop. Code 92.052 obliges the landlord to make a diligent effort to repair a condition materially affecting the tenant’s physical health or safety, once the statutory notice conditions are met. Deteriorated lead paint can support that claim, with remedies under Subchapter B.

The right to tort damages for actual exposure

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

The right to fair-housing protection

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

What tenants do not get

Two things, and stating them plainly serves both sides. Tenants do not get a statutory 10-day inspection window — that is a purchaser’s right. And tenants do not get the lease voided for a missing disclosure — EPA is explicit that the rule does not cancel leasing contracts. The remedies above are real and substantial; these two are not among them.

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

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