The short answer
If your rental was built before 1978, federal law almost always requires your landlord to tell you about any lead-based paint or lead hazards they know about, hand you an EPA-approved information pamphlet, and include specific lead-warning language in your lease before you're bound to it. This comes from a federal law and regulation that apply nationwide, not a state-by-state rule.
The federal rule, in plain terms
The requirement comes from the Residential Lead-Based Paint Hazard Reduction Act of 1992 and the EPA/HUD regulation that implements it. Before you're obligated under a lease for "target housing" — the regulation's term for housing built before 1978, with a few exceptions described below — your landlord must give you the EPA pamphlet "Protect Your Family From Lead in Your Home," disclose any lead-based paint or lead hazards they actually know about along with any test reports or records they have, and attach a lead warning statement to the lease that both of you sign, along with a statement about what records were or weren't provided (42 U.S.C. § 4852d; 40 C.F.R. §§ 745.107, 745.113). Your landlord and any agent must keep a copy of that signed disclosure for at least three years.
What landlords are not required to do
The federal rule is a disclosure requirement, not a testing or removal requirement — it doesn't require your landlord to test for lead paint, and it doesn't require them to remove or cover any lead paint that's found. It only requires them to disclose what they already know. If your landlord genuinely has no test results or records, they can say so, but they still can't skip the pamphlet or the lease disclosure language. The automatic 10-day window to test for lead-based paint before signing that you may have heard about applies to home buyers under this rule, not to renters — a lessee gets the disclosure and pamphlet, but not a guaranteed inspection period, unless your lease or landlord offers one.
Which rentals are exempt
The disclosure rule doesn't apply to every rental. It exempts housing built in 1978 or later; housing specifically for the elderly or persons with disabilities, or a studio or efficiency-style "0-bedroom" unit, unless a child under 6 lives there or is expected to; housing a certified inspector has found to be free of lead-based paint; short-term leases of 100 days or less with no possible renewal; and a lease renewal where the landlord already gave you all the required disclosures and nothing new has come up (40 C.F.R. §§ 745.101, 745.103).
What happens if your landlord skips this
A landlord who knowingly violates the disclosure rule can be sued for triple your actual damages, plus your attorney's fees and court costs, on top of federal civil penalties (42 U.S.C. § 4852d(b); 40 C.F.R. § 745.118). Any agent involved in the rental — a property manager or leasing agent working on the landlord's behalf — has their own separate duty to make sure the disclosure happens, and to tell the landlord about these requirements in the first place (40 C.F.R. § 745.115).
In practice, the more immediate issue for most tenants is health, not the lawsuit: if you believe there's deteriorating or peeling paint in a pre-1978 unit, especially with young children in the home, that's worth raising with your landlord in writing regardless of what was or wasn't disclosed at signing. Lead dust from paint that's chipping, peeling, or being disturbed by renovation is the more common real-world exposure route, not paint that's intact and undisturbed behind a coat of newer paint.
What to do with the disclosure once you have it
Keep your copy of the signed lead disclosure and the pamphlet with your lease paperwork. If it discloses known lead-based paint or a past hazard, ask specifically what was found and where, and consider whether a professional risk assessment makes sense before you sign, especially with young children. A risk assessment is a separate, more thorough inspection than a general home inspection, and it's the kind of test that can tell you whether a hazard is actually present versus just theoretically possible because of the building's age.
Honestkey™ checks your uploaded lease for whether the required lead disclosure language and pamphlet acknowledgment are present, which is easy to miss buried in a long lease packet.