Free Wisconsin Lead-Based Paint Disclosure

A Wisconsin lead-based 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). Wisconsin imposes no separate lead-based paint disclosure duty on landlords — the leasing duty here is purely federal. What Wisconsin does add sits alongside it: a repair-and-habitability duty under Wis. Stat. 704.07, covered in our Wisconsin habitability laws guide, and a lead hazard order regime under Wis. Stat. 254.166. Generate the form below, then read on for exactly what the rule requires.

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Wisconsin lead-based paint disclosure overview

The lead-based paint disclosure — often called the Section 1018 disclosure, after the 1992 statute that created it — is the formal federal notice a Wisconsin 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 lead investigations, 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 Wisconsin 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.

Wisconsin has no state-specific lead-based paint disclosure duty for landlords, and this page will not invent one. The leasing disclosure obligation in Wisconsin is entirely federal: 42 U.S.C. 4852d, 40 CFR Part 745 Subpart F, and 24 CFR Part 35 Subpart A. That is a genuinely useful answer, not a shrug — it means you are looking for one form, not two, and it means any page promising you a “Wisconsin lead disclosure statute” is selling something that does not exist.

Wisconsin does have a substantial lead code. It simply is not aimed at you as a disclosing landlord. Here is what it actually does, checked against the statutes themselves rather than a summary of them.

Wis. Stat. ch. 254 — certification, investigation, and abatement

Subchapter II of Wis. Stat. ch. 254 is Wisconsin’s lead programme. Its centre of gravity is who is allowed to touch lead and what happens when a child is poisoned, not what paperwork a landlord hands a tenant. Wis. Stat. 254.176 authorises the Department of Health Services to set certification requirements for anyone who performs or supervises lead hazard reduction or a lead management activity. Wis. Stat. 254.167 lets DHS write rules for how lead investigations are conducted. Wis. Stat. 254.172 governs prevention and control of lead-bearing paint hazards and directs DHS to keep its rules consistent with federal law.

Wis. Admin. Code ch. DHS 163 is the rule chapter those sections produced. Its own title tells you its scope: Certification for the Identification, Removal and Reduction of Lead-Based Paint Hazards. It certifies individuals and companies to perform lead-safe renovation, lead hazard reduction, and lead investigation activities. It contains no landlord disclosure duty and no tenant notice form.

Wis. Stat. 254.12 — the application ban

One Wisconsin prohibition is worth knowing because it is absolute and easy to breach during a turnover. Wis. Stat. 254.12(1) provides that no person may apply lead-bearing paints to any exposed surface on the inside of a dwelling, to the exposed surface of a structure used for the care of children, or to any fixture or other object placed in or upon a surface inside a dwelling and ordinarily accessible to children. Subsection (2) bars selling or transferring such a fixture or object. This is not a disclosure rule; it is a conduct rule, and it applies to your maintenance staff.

Wisconsin defines “lead paint” more broadly than the federal rule

The two regimes do not use the same term or the same numbers, and the difference is real. Federal law at 40 CFR 745.103 defines lead-based paint as paint or other surface coatings containing lead equal to or in excess of 1.0 milligram per square centimetre or 0.5 percent by weight. Wisconsin’s term at Wis. Stat. 254.11(8) is lead-bearing paint, and it means any paint or other surface coating material containing more than 0.06 percent lead by weight, calculated as lead metal, in the total nonvolatile content of liquid paint; more than 0.5 percent lead by weight in the dried film of applied paint; or more than 1 milligram of lead per square centimetre in the dried film of applied paint.

Read the two side by side and the picture is precise: the dried-film limbs track each other closely, but Wisconsin adds a liquid-paint limb at 0.06 percent that has no federal counterpart. Practically, that matters for what a Wisconsin contractor may apply under 254.12, not for what you disclose — your disclosure duty is measured by the federal definition. But it explains why a Wisconsin lead report may use language a federal form does not.

What Wisconsin does not have

To be explicit, because the gap is the point: Wisconsin has no lead registry a landlord files with, no state lead disclosure form, no state-mandated lead certificate for ordinary rentals, no periodic lead inspection mandate for private rental housing, and no state lead disclosure penalty. Wisconsin has not built a Maryland-style or Rhode Island-style rental lead regime. If you comply with the federal rule and keep your unit in repair, you have addressed Wisconsin’s lead disclosure requirements in full.

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. It was not. The distinction has no practical effect on your compliance answer, because the construction cutoff in 745.103 is what decides coverage, but it does tell 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 Wisconsin. The municipal or county assessor’s property record is the fastest authoritative source, and most Wisconsin municipalities publish it online; many counties also expose parcel data through their land information offices. 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 1921 Milwaukee duplex stripped to the studs and rebuilt in 2004 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. The federal definition of “common area” at 40 CFR 745.103 is broad: a portion of a building generally accessible to all residents or users, including but not limited to hallways, stairways, laundry and recreational rooms, playgrounds, community centres, and boundary fences. 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.

Wisconsin context. Wisconsin’s housing stock is old by national standards, which makes this rule unusually broad here rather than a niche concern. The pre-1978 concentration runs through Milwaukee’s older neighbourhoods and the near-ring suburbs, Racine, Kenosha, Sheboygan, Green Bay’s older core, Madison’s isthmus and near-east side, and the small industrial cities across the state. A large share of Wisconsin’s two-flat and duplex stock predates the trigger by decades. Portfolio landlords with mixed-vintage holdings are the ones who get caught, because the compliance answer differs unit by unit. When in doubt, verify against the assessor 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.
• 0-bedroom dwellings (40 CFR 745.103, definitional) — unless any child who is less than 6 years of age resides or is expected to reside there. A dwelling in which the living area is not separated from the sleeping area. The regulation names them: efficiencies, studio apartments, dormitory housing, military barracks, and rentals of individual rooms in residential dwellings. The child-under-six condition has applied to this limb since 13 January 2025 — see the callout below, because this is the single most misreported sentence in the rule.
• Housing for the elderly or persons with disabilities (40 CFR 745.103, definitional) — unless any child who is less than 6 years of age resides or is expected to reside there. “Housing for the elderly” is itself defined at 745.103 as retirement communities or similar housing reserved for households composed of one or more persons 62 years of age or more at the time of initial occupancy, so this is a designation, not a description of who happens to live there.
• Short-term leases of 100 days or less (40 CFR 745.101(c)), where no lease renewal or extension can occur. Both halves matter. A genuine 90-day corporate or seasonal let with no extension right qualifies; a month-to-month tenancy does not, because it renews.
• Leases of certified lead-based paint free housing (40 CFR 745.101(b)). Housing found to be lead-based paint free by an inspector certified under the federal certification programme or under a federally accredited state or tribal programme. Retain the certification; it is the only proof of the exemption.
• Qualifying lease renewals (40 CFR 745.101(d)). A renewal of an existing lease where the lessor already made every disclosure required by 745.107 and no new information described in 745.107 has come into the lessor’s possession. Watch the cross-reference: 745.101(d) points at 745.107, not at 745.113; pages that cite 745.113 here have followed the wrong thread. The rule adds that renewal includes both renegotiation of existing lease terms and ratification of a new lease. If anything new reached you, the exemption is gone.
• Foreclosure sales (40 CFR 745.101(a)). Exempt — but note this is a sales exemption, and it is the one most often misread on rental pages. A purchaser at a Wisconsin 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. Element (b)(4) of 40 CFR 745.113 ties the lessee’s acknowledgment to the lead hazard information pamphlet required under 15 U.S.C. 2686. 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. The Wisconsin Department of Health Services also distributes lead materials for renters and rental-property owners, but those supplement the federal pamphlet rather than replacing it — a state handout does not discharge the 15 U.S.C. 2686 duty.

Language. The disclosure must be provided in the language of the contract — 40 CFR 745.113(b) says so expressly, giving English and Spanish as examples. An English lease takes the English pamphlet; a Spanish lease takes the Spanish edition. 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. Nothing in Wisconsin law changes that for an ordinary tenancy.

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 lead investigation report, risk assessment, or lead hazard reduction record for the unit or the building.
• A previous tenant’s child had an elevated blood lead level traced to the unit, or a local health department opened a lead investigation on your property.
• A municipal 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.

Where Wisconsin can force the issue. There is one route by which testing stops being voluntary in Wisconsin, and it is not the leasing rule. Under Wis. Stat. 254.166(1), once the department is notified that an occupant under six years of age has lead poisoning or lead exposure, it may request admission to conduct a lead investigation; where the child has an elevated blood lead level, the department shall conduct or ensure a lead investigation. Refusal is not a wall — the statute lets the department seek a warrant. The resulting written report is filed and, subject to medical-information limits, available for public inspection. Once that report exists, “no knowledge” is gone forever on that property.

This is the most widespread error on the lead-disclosure internet, and it is worth being precise about, because form vendors routinely bolt a “10-day inspection opportunity” checkbox onto rental disclosures — and some pre-tick it on the landlord’s behalf, which manufactures a tenant acknowledgment of a right that does not exist.

Read the regulation. 40 CFR 745.110(a) provides 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, and the statute behind it, 42 U.S.C. 4852d(a)(1)(C), reads the same way. Subsection (b) then lets the purchaser waive that opportunity in writing — a waiver mechanism that exists only because the right exists only for purchasers.

Now read the lessor rules. 40 CFR 745.113(b) — the six elements listed earlier — contains no inspection-opportunity item. Neither does the EPA lessor disclosure form. The sales limb at 745.113(a)(5) does carry a received-or-waived statement about the 10-day opportunity; the lease limb at 745.113(b) simply has no counterpart to it. That asymmetry is deliberate, and it is visible in the text of the regulation itself.

What this means for you. A Wisconsin landlord owes a prospective tenant no statutory inspection window — not under federal law, and not under Wisconsin law either, which adds nothing here. 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.

Complete the fields below to generate a federally compliant Wisconsin lead-based 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)(1) requires the lessor, and any agent, to retain a copy of the completed attachment or the lease contract containing the required information for no less than three years from the commencement of the leasing period. That is the entire legal requirement, and it is also the single highest-leverage thing in this whole guide, because the signed disclosure is the only artefact that proves you complied.

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

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 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. Be precise about why, because the reason is not the one usually given: Wisconsin’s own limitation period for a personal-injury claim is itself three years, under Wis. Stat. 893.54(1m)(a) — it does not run longer than the federal retention clock. The provision that should drive your retention policy is Wis. Stat. 893.16(1): where the person entitled to bring the action was under 18 when the cause of action accrued, the action may be commenced within 2 years after the disability ceases. A lead-poisoning claim brought on behalf of a child can therefore arrive up to two years after that child turns 18 — potentially two decades after the tenancy ended, long after your three-year federal retention duty lapsed. 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. A different rule governs work on the building, and Wisconsin landlords routinely comply with the first while breaching the second.

The RRP rule. The EPA Renovation, Repair and Painting rule at 40 CFR Part 745 Subpart E applies to renovation, repair, or painting that disturbs painted surfaces in pre-1978 target housing. Above the de minimis threshold, the work must be performed by a 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 Wisconsin certification layer. This is the one place where Wisconsin law reaches into your lead compliance directly. Wisconsin runs its own certification and accreditation programme through the Department of Health Services under Wis. Stat. 254.176 and Wis. Admin. Code ch. DHS 163, which certifies individuals and companies to perform lead-safe renovation, lead hazard reduction, and lead investigation activities. So a Wisconsin renovator’s credential comes from DHS. Note the carve-outs at 254.176(2): certification is not required of a person whose activities are limited to interim control activities (unless directly funded by a HUD grant), a person whose activities do not involve lead-bearing paint or lead-contaminated soil or dust, or a homeowner doing lead hazard reduction on their own nonrental residential property. Read that last one twice — the homeowner carve-out expressly does not cover rental property, so a landlord doing the work themselves does not fall inside it.

The 60-day information duty. Where the renovation affects an occupied pre-1978 unit, the occupants must receive lead hazard information no more than 60 days before work begins — the EPA renovation pamphlet, delivered to the tenants in the unit. This duty runs to sitting tenants who already have a lease and already received their leasing disclosure years ago.

Common areas trigger building-wide notice. If the work affects common areas of a pre-1978 multi-unit building, 40 CFR 745.84(b)(2)(i) requires the firm to notify in writing, or ensure written notification of, each affected unit, describing the general nature and locations of the planned work and its expected starting and ending dates — or, under (b)(2)(ii), to post informational signs where the occupants of all affected units are likely to see them. “Affected” is read broadly for common-area work: it is not limited to the units adjacent to the work.

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

Why it matters in Wisconsin. Wisconsin’s rental stock skews old, and repainting between tenancies is the most routine task in the business. Scraping and repainting a 1926 Milwaukee duplex’s window trim with in-house staff and no certification is an RRP violation with its own penalty exposure, entirely independent of a flawless leasing disclosure. And 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. You will see several different numbers, none dated, most copied from an old page. Here is the accurate structure, which has two entirely separate federal limbs, plus a Wisconsin one covered in the next section.

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.

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 level triggers a health-department investigation that works backwards to the paperwork; a private lawsuit’s discovery exposes a systemic gap; or an agency initiative targets a market and requests files from a portfolio owner. In Wisconsin the second route is live in a way it is not everywhere, because Wis. Stat. 254.166 puts a statutory lead investigation behind a child’s elevated blood lead level, and a local health department already at your property asking about paint is not far from a question about your disclosure file.

Where violations get reported. Tenants can report a disclosure violation to EPA or to HUD through the enforcement contacts published on their lead pages. The National Lead Information Center, 1-800-424-LEAD, fields questions from both landlords and tenants. In Wisconsin, the Department of Health Services and local health departments administer the state lead programme and are the practical first call on a hazard, as distinct from a disclosure failure. 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. Wisconsin law does not add a second lead form, but it adds four things that bear directly on lead in a rental — and no competing page connects them to this topic. Each is cited to the statute so you can read it yourself.

1. Habitability and repair — Wis. Stat. 704.07

Wis. Stat. 704.07(2) imposes the landlord’s duty to keep the premises in a reasonable state of repair. Deteriorated lead-bearing paint — peeling, chipping, chalking, cracking, or damaged — can be a repair and habitability problem on its own, whether or not you disclosed it. The section also carries an untenantability limb at 704.07(4): if the premises become untenantable because of any condition hazardous to health, or if there is a substantial violation of sub. (2) materially affecting the health or safety of the tenant, the tenant may remove from the premises unless the landlord proceeds promptly to repair or eliminate the health hazard; and if the tenant stays and the condition materially affects health or safety, rent abates to the extent the tenant is deprived of the full normal use of the premises. Our Wisconsin habitability laws guide covers that machinery in detail.

The distinction landlords miss: disclosure and habitability are independent. Disclosing a hazard does not licence you to leave it in place. A perfectly executed disclosure that says “known lead-based paint present, peeling in the second bedroom” is a complete defence to a disclosure claim and simultaneously a written admission in a habitability claim. Deteriorated paint in a pre-1978 Wisconsin unit should be addressed by a DHS-certified firm before re-rental — both to comply with the RRP rule and to remove the habitability exposure that disclosure does nothing to cure.

2. The code-violation disclosure — Wis. Stat. 704.07(2)(bm) and ATCP 134.04(2)

This is the Wisconsin duty most likely to catch a landlord who thinks lead is only a federal issue, because it can bite earlier than the federal rule does.

Wis. Stat. 704.07(2)(bm) requires a landlord to disclose to a prospective tenant — before entering into a rental agreement with or accepting any earnest money or security deposit from the prospective tenant — any building code or housing code violation to which all four of the following apply:

• The landlord has actual knowledge of the violation.
• The violation affects the dwelling unit that is the subject of the prospective rental agreement, or a common area of the premises.
• The violation presents a significant threat to the prospective tenant’s health or safety.
• The violation has not been corrected.

Wis. Admin. Code ATCP 134.04(2) is the parallel rule from the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, headed “Code violations and conditions affecting habitability”, and it carries the same trigger: before entering into a rental agreement or accepting any earnest money or security deposit, the landlord shall disclose to the prospective tenant. (ATCP 134.04(1) separately requires written disclosure of the name and address of the person authorised to collect or receive rent and manage and maintain the premises, and of the owner or person authorised to accept service of legal process — a Wisconsin address at which personal service can be made. That subsection does not apply to an owner-occupied structure of no more than four dwelling units.)

Why this matters for lead. Wisconsin’s chapter 704 and ATCP 134 never mention lead — we checked, and the word does not appear in either. But if a municipal inspector has cited deteriorated paint at your pre-1978 property as a building or housing code violation, and you know about it, and it affects the unit or a common area, and it threatens health or safety, and it is uncorrected, then you owe a Wisconsin disclosure about that violation on a clock that starts before you take a deposit — earlier than the federal “before the lessee is obligated” trigger. And as the callout above sets out, the second limb at ATCP 134.04(2)(b) can run without any citation at all, on a knows-or-could-know standard. The two disclosures are not substitutes: the federal form discloses lead; the Wisconsin duty discloses the condition or the citation, on an earlier clock, with a different remedy behind it.

3. The Wisconsin remedy that has real teeth — Wis. Stat. 100.20(5)

Chapter ATCP 134 is adopted under the authority of Wis. Stat. 100.20, and that pedigree carries a private remedy most landlords have never read. Under Wis. Stat. 100.20(5), any person suffering pecuniary loss because of a violation of an order issued under that section may sue for damages and shall recover twice the amount of such pecuniary loss, together with costs, including a reasonable attorney fee. DATCP says the same thing in the chapter’s own note: a person who suffers a monetary loss because of a violation of ch. ATCP 134 may sue the violator directly under s. 100.20(5) and may recover twice the amount of the loss together with costs and reasonable attorneys’ fees.

Stack that against the federal exposure and the shape of Wisconsin risk becomes clear. A lead-based code violation you knew about and did not disclose can produce a federal treble-damages claim under 42 U.S.C. 4852d(b)(3) for the lead disclosure failure and a Wisconsin double-damages-plus-fees claim under 100.20(5) for the ATCP 134.04(2) failure. Both carry fee-shifting. They are different duties with different triggers, and one form does not answer both.

4. Lead hazard orders — Wis. Stat. 254.166(2m)

If a lead investigation finds a hazard at your property, Wisconsin’s order regime engages, and its deadlines are short. Under Wis. Stat. 254.166(2m), where a lead hazard is present, the local health department shall and the state department may issue an order requiring:

• reduction or elimination of an imminent lead hazard within 5 days after the order is issued; and
• reduction or elimination of other lead hazards within 30 days after issuance.

There is a Wisconsin-shaped winter carve-out: for orders issued between 1 October and 1 May that relate only to exterior lead hazards that are not imminent, the order may require elimination no earlier than the 1 June immediately following issuance. Where the issuing agency determines the owner has good cause for not complying within the 5-day or 30-day period, it may extend.

The two consequences that should hold your attention are not the deadlines. First, failure to comply within the time prescribed or as extended is prima facie evidence of negligence in any action brought to recover damages for injuries incurred after the time period expires. Second, and in the other direction, if an order to conduct lead hazard reduction is issued and the owner complies with it, there is a rebuttable presumption that the owner exercised reasonable care with respect to lead poisoning or lead exposure caused after the order has been complied with. Wisconsin has written both a penalty and a safe harbour into the same section. Complying with a lead order is not merely avoiding a fine; it is buying a presumption you will want if a claim ever arrives.

Lead-free and lead-safe certificates — Wis. Stat. 254.11(4g) and (4h)

Wisconsin recognises two certificates worth knowing about. A certificate of lead-free status (Wis. Stat. 254.11(4g)) is issued by a certified lead risk assessor, or another person certified under 254.176, documenting a finding that a premises, dwelling, or unit is free of lead-bearing paint as of the certificate date. A certificate of lead-safe status (254.11(4h)) documents that the assessor detected no lead-bearing paint hazards on the date specified. Wis. Stat. 254.172(2) directs a certified assessor whose investigation report shows the criteria are met to issue the appropriate certificate.

The tempting move is to assume a Wisconsin lead-free certificate switches off your federal disclosure duty via the 40 CFR 745.101(b) exemption. Be careful, and do not assume it. The federal exemption is written for housing found lead-based paint free by an inspector certified under the federal certification programme or under a federally accredited state or tribal programme, and it uses the federal definition of lead-based paint. Wisconsin’s certificate uses Wisconsin’s broader “lead-bearing paint” definition. Whether a given Wisconsin certificate satisfies the federal exemption turns on the accrediting status of the programme under which it was issued — which we could not settle from the statutory text, and which is not something to guess about. If you intend to rely on 745.101(b), confirm the certifying programme’s federal accreditation with EPA and take advice before you skip a disclosure. Over-disclosing costs nothing; a wrong exemption call costs treble damages.

Fair housing

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 Wisconsin tenant screening laws guide for where screening practice and familial status intersect.

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. Given how much of Wisconsin’s rental stock predates 1978, the base rate here is high. 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.

Relying on the pre-2025 studio exemption

It is not exempt if a child under six resides or is expected to reside there. Since 13 January 2025 the 0-bedroom exclusion at 40 CFR 745.103 carries the same child condition as the elderly and disabled limb. Anyone working from a template, a checklist, or an AI answer written before that date is working from superseded text. The mirror-image error is still dangerous: calling a unit a studio when the sleeping area is actually separated. The exclusion turns on that fact, not on the listing copy.

Wrong build-year assumption

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

Failing to provide the EPA pamphlet

The form alone is not compliance. The pamphlet is a distinct requirement and a distinct violation, and substituting your own lead handout — or a Wisconsin DHS leaflet — does not satisfy 15 U.S.C. 2686.

Verbal or implied disclosure

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

Rewriting the lead warning statement

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

Pre-ticking the tenant’s acknowledgments

A landlord cannot acknowledge, on the tenant’s behalf, that the tenant received the pamphlet. Forms that invite you to do this create a false statement on a document certified for accuracy by every signatory. The acknowledgment items belong to the lessee and are completed by the lessee.

Printing a 10-day inspection line on a lease disclosure

There is no tenant inspection right to receive or waive. A checkbox asserting one manufactures a false acknowledgment on a certified document, and it is squarely a landlord-created problem.

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 lead investigation report, a municipal citation, or a child’s elevated blood lead level cannot check “no knowledge” and expect it to hold.

Missing the Wisconsin code-violation disclosure

A cited, uncorrected, health-threatening code violation you know about must be disclosed under Wis. Stat. 704.07(2)(bm) and ATCP 134.04(2) before you take earnest money or a security deposit. Landlords who file the federal lead form and stop there miss a Wisconsin duty with an earlier trigger and a double-damages remedy behind it.

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 the RRP rule

Compliance with the leasing disclosure says nothing about compliance when your maintenance crew sands pre-1978 window trim. Separate rule, separate DHS certification, separate penalty — and the homeowner carve-out at Wis. Stat. 254.176(2)(c) does not cover rental property.

Tenants of Wisconsin 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, and grounded in 15 U.S.C. 2686. 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 the Wisconsin code-violation disclosure — and double damages

A Wisconsin tenant is entitled under Wis. Stat. 704.07(2)(bm) and ATCP 134.04(2) to be told, before the agreement or before paying earnest money or a deposit, about a known, uncorrected, health-threatening code violation affecting the unit or a common area. Where that failure causes pecuniary loss, Wis. Stat. 100.20(5) gives twice the loss plus costs and a reasonable attorney fee.

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 a habitable unit

Independent of disclosure, Wis. Stat. 704.07 entitles Wisconsin tenants to premises kept in a reasonable state of repair. Where a hazardous condition makes the premises untenantable, 704.07(4) allows the tenant to remove unless the landlord proceeds promptly, and provides for rent abatement to the extent the tenant is deprived of the full normal use of the premises.

The right to a lead investigation after a child is poisoned

Under Wis. Stat. 254.166(1), where a child under six in the dwelling has an elevated blood lead level, the department shall conduct or ensure a lead investigation, and may seek a warrant if admission is refused. A resulting order under 254.166(2m) can compel hazard reduction in 5 or 30 days depending on imminence.

The right to tort damages for actual exposure

Where a child or pregnant tenant suffers lead exposure, ordinary tort remedies apply — medical costs, pain and suffering, future treatment, and lost earning capacity. A disclosure violation supplies a ready foundation for a negligence theory, and Wis. Stat. 254.166(2m) makes non-compliance with a lead order prima facie evidence of negligence, 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.

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, a Wisconsin double-damages claim on top where a code violation was in play, 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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