What must a Connecticut landlord disclose to a tenant, and what must the lease say?

No statute requires a residential lease to be in writing beyond the statute of frauds, so an oral tenancy is lawful. No statute requires the landlord to give the tenant a copy of the lease.

No Connecticut statute requires a residential rental agreement to be in writing, and an oral tenancy is lawful: unless the agreement fixes a definite term the tenancy is month to month, or week to week where the tenant pays weekly rent, and a parol lease reserving a monthly rent with no agreed end date is a lease for one month only (sections 47a-3b and 47a-3d). A lease of more than one year must be written and signed to be sued on. What the state regulates is the content and the front of a written lease: since April 1, 2026 no landlord may provide a written rental agreement without the completed state summary form as its first page. There is no duty to give the tenant a copy of the signed lease: the only copy duties in the chapter are the duplicate signed walk-through checklists, the tenant-requested payment ledger and the screening report a prospective tenant must receive, none of which is a copy of the executed lease.

Statute of frauds: A lease that is not to be performed within one year of its making, or any agreement concerning an interest in real property, cannot be sued on unless it or a memorandum of it is in writing and signed by the party to be charged (section 52-550, subsection a, subdivisions 4 and 5). Subsection b takes oral leases of one year or less out of the section where the tenant has actually occupied the premises during any part of the term, so a short oral tenancy is enforceable.

Format and plain-language rules: Connecticut has a plain-language regime and it covers residential leases. A written agreement is a consumer contract, and must be written in plain language, where a consumer enters into it primarily for personal, family or household purposes and leases any residential dwelling; unlike the sale and loan limbs, the lease limb carries no dollar cap (sections 42-151 and 42-152). A drafter may comply either with nine judgment-based tests (short sentences, everyday words, personal pronouns, active verbs, readable type size, contrasting ink, captions in boldface or otherwise standing out, workable layout and spacing, clear organization) or with eleven measured ones, which are the source of the state's type rules: no typeface smaller than eight points; at least three-sixteenths of an inch of blank space between paragraphs and sections; at least half an inch of blank space at every page border; printed captions in boldface of at least ten points, or underlined captions if the contract is typewritten; an average line no longer than sixty-five characters; fewer than twenty-two average words per sentence and no sentence over fifty words; fewer than seventy-five average words per paragraph and no paragraph over one hundred fifty words; fewer than 1.55 average syllables per word; and personal pronouns or the parties' names. Language a statute, regulation, court decision or agency expressly requires or authorizes cannot itself violate the chapter (section 42-156), which protects the state summary form and the sprinkler notice. A landlord who fails to comply owes the tenant one hundred dollars in statutory damages plus, at the court's discretion, an attorney's fee of up to one hundred dollars, and the lease stays enforceable either way (sections 42-154 and 42-157). Separately, the fire-sprinkler notice must be printed in not less than twelve-point boldface type of uniform font (section 47a-3f).

Language: One duty, and it falls on the state rather than the landlord: the standardized rental terms summary form must be published and provided in both English and Spanish (section 47a-7d, subsection c). The Department of Housing meets that by publishing a single bilingual form, so a landlord who uses the published form satisfies the language duty. Nothing else in the landlord-tenant chapter requires a lease, a notice or a disclosure in a language other than English, and Connecticut has no language-of-negotiation rule.

Electronic leases and signatures: Connecticut's Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (chapter 15, sections 1-266 to 1-286) says a record or signature may not be denied effect solely because it is electronic, that an electronic record satisfies a law requiring a writing, and that an electronic signature satisfies a law requiring a signature, so a lease may be signed and delivered electronically and the page-one summary form may travel with it. The act applies only between parties who have each agreed to conduct the transaction electronically, judged from their conduct and the surrounding circumstances. The carve-out that matters to a landlord is that the act does not apply to a notice of default, acceleration, repossession, foreclosure or eviction, or of the right to cure, under a rental agreement for an individual's primary residence, unless the federal electronic-signatures act reaches that notice; those notices are on the lease-termination and eviction pages.

Yes — a statute requires the landlord to disclose the owner's or managing agent's identity to the tenant, in a separate writing.

The landlord, an authorized agent, or a successor landlord or successor's agent must notify the tenant in writing, on or before the tenancy begins (or, for a successor, at the time of the succession), of the name and address of the person authorized to manage the premises and of the person authorized to receive notices, demands and service of process, and that name and address must be kept current (section 47a-6, subsection a). The statute names no location, so any writing does the job, including a term of the lease; there is no posting alternative and no telephone number is required. The duty binds an oral tenancy too, and it carries no unit-count, owner-occupancy or single-family exemption. If the landlord does not comply, the person the landlord authorized to enter into the rental agreement is deemed the landlord's agent for service of process and for receiving notices and demands, for performing the landlord's repair and lock duties and the rental agreement, and for spending collected rent to perform them (subsection b); the section states no damages figure, fine or termination right. In practice a compliant written lease also carries the landlord's name and a point of contact on the state summary form that must be its first page, but that is a separate duty. Connecticut has no statewide landlord or rental registration. Any municipality may require a nonresident owner or project-based housing provider to file a residential address, and the address of the agent in charge where the owner is an entity, with the tax assessor or another designated municipal office, updating it within twenty-one days of a change; a violation is an infraction and a municipality may set a civil penalty of up to five hundred dollars for a first violation and one thousand dollars afterwards. That filing produces nothing for the tenant: filings made on or after October 1, 2023 are confidential and are not disclosable under the Freedom of Information Act.

Yes — Connecticut prescribes one general document and no general lease text: the standardized rental terms summary form has had to be the first page of every written residential lease since April 1, 2026, and the only lease text the statutes prescribe, the fire-sprinkler notice in twelve-point boldface for a building that must be sprinklered, is a hazard-specific text carried in the hazard table rather than counted here. There is no general tenant-rights statement, code summary or handbook a landlord must hand over, and no statute requires the lease to recite the landlord's identity, a deposit, domestic-violence or military rights, a late-fee amount or a repair remedy. The Department of Housing also publishes a model lease agreement, marked on its face as a reference only with all terms subject to the parties' agreement; no statute commands it, so it is a resource rather than a duty. The pre-occupancy walk-through checklist the department publishes is described on the move-in row, and the state's other landlord-tenant forms are eviction notices belonging to the eviction page. The fire-sprinkler notice that section 47a-3f requires in the lease is a hazard-specific text and is carried in the hazard table, where it is one of Connecticut's two counted hazard disclosures.

Required item:

Standardized Rental Terms Summary Form / Formulario Resumen de Términos de Alquiler Estandarizados — a state-prescribed document to be handed over or attached; issued by the Connecticut Department of Housing. Since April 1, 2026 no landlord may give a tenant a written rental agreement unless a completed copy of this state form is the agreement's first page, and the duty reaches renewals as well as new leases. The Department of Housing publishes it as one bilingual page, so a landlord who uses the published form meets the statute's requirement that it be provided in English and Spanish. Seven fields are printed on it: the address of the premises; the name of each tenant on the lease; the name of the landlord, meaning the owner and the individual signing for the landlord; the point of contact for property management and for communicating with the tenant; the start and end dates of the lease term; the total periodic rent; and any other charges the tenant must pay on a periodic basis, including a charge the tenant can opt out of, with the opt-out marked. The total periodic rent is the one field the landlord has to work out rather than copy: it is the all-in figure, every charge the tenant must pay on a periodic basis prorated and included, and any charge that is billed by default each month counts even if the tenant may opt out of it; only the five carve-outs listed on the utilities and fees row sit outside it. A landlord who violates the section owes the tenant a civil penalty equal to one month's rent, and the court may award the tenant reasonable attorney's fees and costs. Revision: The face of the form carries no revision date or edition; the only date printed on it is the statutory trigger in its own instruction line. The copy published by the Department of Housing was last changed on January 22, 2026, and that date is given here in place of a printed revision. The department also issued a landlord notice dated March 27, 2026 announcing the requirement. Given at signing and on renewal, attached as the first page of the lease. Languages: English, Spanish. Agency page. (§ 47a-7d(c), (d), (f))

Lease contents the statutes or rules address, each in the circumstance it names:

• The completed state summary form as the first page of the agreement (section 47a-7d, subsection d).

• Where the building is one required to be sprinklered, the fire-sprinkler notice in twelve-point boldface type, including the last maintenance and inspection date if a system exists (section 47a-3f, subsections b and c).

• Nothing on the prohibited-clause roster in section 47a-4, subsection a, and from October 1, 2026 nothing on its new eleventh item.

• Plain language: a residential lease is a consumer contract and must meet the plain-language standard of chapter 742, a drafting and typography standard rather than a list of subjects.

• A late charge may be assessed only where the rental agreement contains a valid written agreement to pay one (section 47a-15a, subsection b; the amounts and the grace period are on the late-fee page).

The landlord must offer a walk-through or checklist, and the document follows only on the tenant's request.

Since January 1, 2024 a landlord must offer every tenant the chance to conduct a walk-through of the dwelling unit, a joint physical inspection by the landlord and the tenant or their designees for the purpose of noting observed conditions. The offer is compulsory; the document follows only if the tenant takes it up, and then the parties must use a copy of the pre-occupancy walk-through checklist prepared by the Commissioner of Housing, note any existing conditions, defects or damages on it, and sign duplicate copies so each holds one. The duty does not depend on a deposit being taken. What a completed checklist buys the tenant is that, on vacating, the landlord may neither keep any part of the security deposit nor seek payment for any condition, defect or damage noted on it; the checklist is admissible as evidence of the unit's condition at the start of the tenancy, subject to the rules of evidence, but is not conclusive. No penalty is stated for failing to make the offer, and the section does not reach a tenancy under a rental agreement entered into before January 1, 2024. The checklist is published by the Department of Housing on its mandatory landlord-tenant forms page as an editable document in English only; its face carries no revision date and the published copy was last changed on November 30, 2023, a day before the statutory publication deadline. It sets out header fields for the landlord or property manager, the tenant or representative, the address and unit, and whether another tenant's belongings were still in the unit, then paired columns for the condition at pre-occupancy and at the end of occupancy, room by room, down to floors, walls and ceilings, outlets, doors and locks, light fixtures, windows and coverings, smoke alarms, carbon monoxide alarms, cabinets, counters, appliances, sinks and plumbing.

When and who signs: The offer must be made after the rental agreement is entered into and before the tenant occupies the unit. If the tenant asks for the walk-through, the landlord and tenant, or their designees, inspect the unit together, note any existing conditions, defects or damages on the state checklist, and sign duplicate copies, each keeping one. An agency prescribes the form.

Deposit notice at signing: Within thirty days of receiving a security deposit, or of transferring it, the landlord must give the tenant written notice of the amount held and of the name and address of the financial institution holding it (section 47a-21, subsection h, subdivision 4). The deposit cap, interest and return rules are on the security-deposits page.

Two in-force state hazard disclosures: bed bugs (before signing and on request) and fire sprinkler notice in the lease (at signing). No state duty exists for lead, mold, radon, methamphetamine, or asbestos.

Every state duty and every stated absence, hazard by hazard:

Lead (state add-on to the federal rule) — no state duty. Connecticut adds nothing to the federal lead-paint disclosure rule for landlords: no state form, no registration, no certificate handed to a tenant and no re-disclosure on renewal. The state's lead law is about remediation and enforcement instead. An owner of a dwelling where paint, plaster or other material is found to contain toxic levels of lead and children under six live must remediate through testing, abatement or management (section 19a-111c); the informational materials on lead poisoning are given by the local director of health to the parent or guardian of a child with an elevated blood lead level, not by a landlord at signing. In a rented dwelling, paint on exposed interior surfaces may not be cracked, chipped, blistered, flaking, loose or peeling so as to be a health hazard, a condition standard the municipal health authority enforces (section 47a-52, subsection d). The old statute that made non-conforming paint render property unfit was repealed in 1994. The state lead regulations add abatement procedure, worker protection and reporting to the commissioner, with no landlord-to-tenant notice.

Mold — no state duty. No Connecticut statute or regulation requires a landlord to disclose mold to a tenant. The state's only mold provision directs the Department of Public Health to evaluate federal guidance, develop uniform standards for identifying, assessing and remediating mold in residential housing, publish them on its website and run a public awareness campaign (section 19a-111m). That is an agency duty, with no landlord disclosure, no form, no trigger and no penalty. Mold in an occupied unit is a repair and habitability question, on the habitability page.

Bed bugs — in force — a state duty, before signing and on request (a statute). Before renting a dwelling unit, a landlord must tell the prospective tenant whether that unit, or any contiguous unit the landlord owns, leases or subleases, is currently infested with bed bugs. That disclosure is owed unprompted, and it is separate from the standing bar on offering for rent a unit the landlord knows or reasonably suspects is infested. On request from a tenant or prospective tenant, the landlord must also give the last date on which the unit was inspected for bed bugs and found free of them. No form, wording, type size or signature is prescribed for either. During the tenancy a further duty applies: on the tenant's notice the landlord must inspect within five business days, and where the landlord does the inspection itself, must give the tenant written notice within two days saying whether the unit is infested and telling the tenant that if still concerned the tenant may contact the local health department, with that department's contact information on the notice. Knowledge standard: Whether the unit is currently infested; the companion bar on offering a unit for rent turns on what the landlord knows or reasonably suspects. Threshold: The section's definition of a dwelling unit excludes a single-family unattached unit, so a detached single-family house is outside the whole section (section 47a-7a, subsection a, subdivision 7). If the duty is not met: A landlord who fails to comply is liable to the tenant for reasonable attorney's fees and the greater of two hundred fifty dollars or the tenant's actual damages, and the tenant may also proceed under the general tenant-remedy routes in sections 47a-12 and 47a-14h. The remedies are in addition to any other remedy at law or in equity, and state and local housing and health code enforcement is preserved.

Radon — no state duty. No Connecticut statute or regulation requires a radon disclosure, a test result or a brochure to a tenant, and none requires a rental unit to be tested. The state's radon provisions reach other subjects: testing private and semipublic wells for arsenic, radium, uranium, radon or gross alpha emitters, and radon measurement in public schools. In the regulations the only radon requirement is for child day care centers, which must test once where a basement or first floor is used and reduce a level at or above four picocuries per liter. Nothing in the landlord-tenant chapter mentions radon.

Methamphetamine — no state duty. Connecticut has no methamphetamine law that touches a rental at all: no disclosure duty, no contaminated-property registry, no decontamination standard in statute and no bar on renting a property that was used as a drug laboratory. The landlord-tenant chapter, the health and environmental titles and the state regulations carry nothing on the subject. The Department of Public Health publishes non-binding cleanup guidance, which is advice rather than a legal duty.

Asbestos — no state duty. No Connecticut statute or regulation requires an asbestos disclosure to a tenant. Asbestos here is a licensing and abatement-practice regime: the statutes credential asbestos contractors, consultants, abatement workers and supervisors and training providers, and the regulations on asbestos abatement and on asbestos-containing building materials govern how work is done. Neither the word tenant nor lessee, occupant or rental agreement appears in those regulations.

Fire sprinkler notice in the lease — in force — a state duty, at signing, in the lease itself (a statute). When renting a unit in a building that must be equipped with a fire sprinkler system, the landlord must include in the rental agreement a notice saying whether an operative fire sprinkler system exists in the building, printed in not less than twelve-point boldface type of uniform font. If there is an operative system, the agreement must further give the last date of maintenance and inspection, in the same type. This is not a universal yes-or-no sprinkler line in every lease: it fires only where the building is one a code or statute requires to be sprinklered. The section states no penalty for omitting the notice. Threshold: Only where the unit is in a building required to be equipped with a fire sprinkler system under section 29-315, the State Fire Safety Code, the State Fire Prevention Code or another statute or regulation. A building nothing requires to be sprinklered carries no notice duty.

No.

Connecticut requires no flood disclosure to a renter. The word flood does not appear anywhere in the landlord-tenant chapter, in its 2026 Supplement, or in the tenement-house and rented-dwelling enforcement chapters. The state's flood questions live in the sales condition report, and that report does not reach an ordinary lease: its scope clause says the section applies only to transfers by sale, exchange or lease with option to buy, of residential real property of one to four dwelling units including cooperatives and condominiums, and the report is owed to the prospective purchaser before the purchaser signs a binder, purchase contract, option or lease containing a purchase option. The 2025 session widened the report's flood block into six questions covering a designated floodplain and its zone, past federal or state disaster assistance for flood damage, a current flood insurance policy, an elevation certificate, any flood claim, and any water penetration or damage from seepage or a natural flood event; a seller who does not deliver the report credits the purchaser five hundred dollars at closing. A tenant with no purchase option is outside all of it. One act re-enacts the whole section from January 1, 2027, again on the sales side only.

Yes — of the facts the rule names, some need not be disclosed and no cause of action arises from not disclosing some, each as stated here.

Connecticut calls two things a nonmaterial fact concerning real property: that an occupant is or has been infected with a disease on the Commissioner of Public Health's list of reportable diseases, emergency illnesses and health conditions, and that the property was at any time suspected to have been the site of a death or felony. The existence of a nonmaterial fact is not a material fact that must be disclosed in a real estate transaction, and no cause of action arises against an owner, the owner's agent or an agent of the transferee for failing to disclose one (sections 20-329cc and 20-329dd). So a landlord need not volunteer a death, a felony or an occupant's reportable disease and faces no claim for staying silent. Two limits matter. A lessee who makes a written request during a bona fide offer must still be answered about a homicide, other felony or suicide, through the owner's agent, or told in writing that the owner refuses. And the chapter expressly leaves untouched the legal rights of a purchaser, lessee, seller or lessor over physical deficiencies in the property (section 20-329ff), so nothing here shields a landlord over the condition of the unit.

Yes — the statute lists the lease provisions that are void or prohibited.

Ten prohibited provisions sit in one place, section 47a-4, subsection a, framed as things a rental agreement may not provide that the tenant does, so the roster reaches clauses that burden the tenant rather than either party's clauses. Two items are unusual. The first is very wide: it voids a waiver of rights not only under the landlord-tenant chapter and the listed sections but under any section of the general statutes and under any municipal ordinance, unless that section or ordinance expressly says the right may be waived. The seventh is a cap rather than a ban: a clause making the tenant pay the landlord's attorney's fees is lawful up to fifteen percent of a money judgment against the tenant, and only in an action where money damages are awarded. The sanction throughout is that the offending provision is unenforceable. An eleventh item arrives on October 1, 2026 for agreements entered into or renewed on or after that date: a lease may not make the tenant pay for utilities billed to the tenant where no separate meter measures utilities delivered exclusively to that unit. Connecticut has no general unconscionability provision in the chapter.

Sanction as the statute states it: A provision prohibited by the roster and included in a rental agreement is unenforceable (section 47a-4, subsection b). That is the whole sanction: no damages figure, no rent multiple, no knowing-use multiplier, no cure window, no action to strike the clause and no effect on the rest of the lease.

The listed provisions:

• A waiver or forfeiture of the tenant's rights or remedies under the landlord-tenant chapter and the listed deposit, summary-process, judgment and entry sections, or under any section of the general statutes or any municipal ordinance, unless that section or ordinance expressly says the rights may be waived.

• Authority for the landlord to confess judgment on a claim arising out of the rental agreement.

• Exculpation or limitation of any liability of the landlord arising under law, or an agreement to indemnify the landlord for that liability or its costs.

• A waiver of the tenant's right to interest on the security deposit.

• Permission for the landlord to dispossess the tenant without resort to a court order.

• Consent to the distraint of the tenant's property for rent.

• An agreement to pay the landlord's attorney's fees in excess of fifteen percent of any judgment against the tenant in an action in which money damages are awarded.

• An agreement to pay a late charge before the grace period expires, or to pay a reduced rent if rent is paid before the grace period expires.

• An agreement to pay a late charge after the grace period in an amount exceeding the limits set by the late-charge statute.

• An agreement to pay a heat or utilities surcharge where heat or utilities is included in the rental agreement.

By statute a one-way landlord attorney-fee clause is read as reciprocal, so the tenant has the same right on prevailing.

A one-way landlord's fee clause is lawful in Connecticut but three statutes work on it. It is capped: a lease may not make the tenant pay the landlord's attorney's fees above fifteen percent of a money judgment against the tenant, and only in an action where money damages are awarded (section 47a-4, subsection a, item 7). It is limited: the holder of a lease for personal, family or household purposes that provides for the lessor's attorney's fees may not receive, claim or collect any fee for an attorney who is its own salaried employee, or any fee before a lawsuit is commenced (section 42-150aa, subsection a). And it is reciprocal: where a contract or lease entered into on or after October 1, 1979 to which a consumer is a party provides for the commercial party's attorney's fee to be paid by the consumer, a fee is awarded as a matter of law to the consumer who successfully prosecutes or defends an action or counterclaim on the contract or lease, sized as far as practicable by the same terms that govern the commercial party's fee; where the landlord uses in-house counsel the tenant's fee is instead a reasonable amount (section 42-150bb). A lease that says nothing about fees leaves each side to bear its own, since no statute awards fees on its own force. The Appellate Court has held that the reciprocity statute is unambiguous in its application to residential leases and reaches summary process actions, so the conversion is settled law rather than an inference.

Yes — state law authorizes local governments to add rules of their own, as stated here.

Connecticut leaves the door open to municipalities and in one place holds it open. The anti-waiver item at the head of the prohibited-clause roster voids a lease term by which the tenant waives rights or remedies under any section of the general statutes or any municipal ordinance, unless that section or ordinance expressly says the right may be waived, so a municipal lease-disclosure ordinance is reinforced by state law rather than displaced by it. Nonresident-owner registration is a local option: any municipality may require a nonresident owner or project-based housing provider to file a current residential address with the tax assessor or another office the municipality designates, and a municipality may set a civil penalty by ordinance of up to five hundred dollars for a first violation and one thousand dollars for a later one, appealable to the Superior Court within thirty days. Fair rent commissions are likewise municipal, under the municipalities title, and belong to the rent-increase page. No preemption clause was found anywhere in the landlord-tenant chapter, its 2026 Supplement, the tenement-house and rented-dwelling enforcement chapters, or the 2026 acts: Connecticut has no counterpart to the statutes that reserve lease-content rules to the state in Texas, Virginia or Illinois. No Connecticut city carries a lease packet or signing-time disclosure on this page.