What must a Delaware 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. The landlord must give the tenant a copy of the lease; the statute sets no day count.

No Delaware statute requires a residential lease to be in writing. An oral agreement is lawful; it simply cannot run longer than a year, and where no term is stated it is a month-to-month tenancy. Where there is a written agreement, the landlord must give the tenant a copy free of charge, and the Code sets no deadline anywhere for doing it: the duty is real, the timing is unstated, and the section names no penalty for a failure. Where the agreement is oral, the landlord must give the tenant, on demand, a written statement of the owner and agent information the written form would have carried. Delaware prescribes no plain-language act, no type size, no typeface and no placement rule for residential leases. The only format-shaped words in the Code are the command that the owner and agent information be disclosed prominently in the agreement, and the requirement that an agreement for the tenant to perform repairs be in a conspicuous writing separate from the rental agreement.

Statute of frauds: An agreement concerning an interest in land, or an agreement that cannot be performed within one year of its making, cannot be sued on unless it is put in writing, or a memorandum or note of it is signed by the party to be charged (section 2714, subsection a, of Title 6). For a residential tenancy the Landlord-Tenant Code's own rule is the one that bites: an oral agreement is not void, it is capped, because no rental agreement is effective for a term longer than one year unless it is in writing (section 5106, subsection a).

Language: The lease itself carries no translation duty. The right-to-representation materials the landlord must hand over are different: the statute requires the Coordinator to prepare them in English, Spanish and Haitian Creole (section 5606). The Attorney General's summary of the Code is current in English only; the Department's own page also offers six translations it labels archival, the Spanish one dating from October 2019 against an English edition revised in October 2024.

Electronic leases and signatures: Delaware's electronic transactions act (chapter 12A of Title 6) gives an electronic record the effect of a writing and an electronic signature the effect of a signature, and the bodies of law it excludes — wills and codicils, most of the commercial code, the entity statutes and the bank corporation laws — do not include residential leases. A lease, the documents on this page and any acknowledgment may therefore be signed and delivered electronically. The Code assumes electronic delivery in two places: a bed-bug notice may be given by email or through a portal or management communication system available to both landlord and tenant, and the rights-and-responsibilities guide, when it starts, may be paper or electronic.

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

Each written rental agreement must prominently disclose the names and usual business addresses of all persons who own the rental unit or the property it is part of, or the names and business addresses of their appointed resident agents, and the names and addresses of anyone who would count as a landlord under the Code's own definition. The choice between owner and agent belongs to the landlord, so a tenant may lawfully be given only an agent's name and business address. No telephone number and no email address is required, there is no posting alternative, and no threshold applies. Where the agreement is oral, the same information must be given as a written statement on the tenant's demand. Delaware has no statewide landlord or rental-unit registration; landlord licensing and unit registration are county and city matters. Nothing in the Code requires a new owner to re-disclose after a sale. The consequence of a failure is narrow: an owner or resident agent who is not the one dealing with the tenant is responsible for the landlord's compliance with the section and may not take advantage of a failure to serve process in a proceeding under the Code where that failure is due to its own non-compliance. That is an estoppel against a service objection, not a rule making the manager the landlord, and it carries no damages, no fine and no bar on bringing a possession action.

Yes — a state-prescribed general tenant-rights document (a statement, summary or form) must be handed over or attached, and no general lease text is prescribed.

Delaware prescribes documents, not lease words. Two general documents must be handed over in an ordinary residential letting: the Attorney General's summary of the Landlord-Tenant Code, at the beginning of the rental term, and the Coordinator-approved materials explaining the right to representation, at signing and again at the first renewal or modification and with certain notices. A third document, the Real Estate Commission's consumer information statement, is owed by a licensee to a prospective tenant before a showing or an offer, so it is listed with its own scope rather than counted as something every landlord must give. A fourth, the tenant-employee disclosure form, is written by the landlord and reaches only employees of the landlord. No statute fixes words that a residential lease must contain, and there is no enumerated list of lease subjects of the kind some states use. What the Code does instead is condition the landlord's right to charge or allocate something on the lease saying so, which is why the required-contents list below reads as a list of permissions. Two lease-borne lead duties are enacted and not yet started and are described in the lead row; the rights and responsibilities guide the Real Estate Commission must draft has not been published.

Required items:

A Summary of the Delaware Residential Landlord-Tenant Code — a state-prescribed document to be handed over or attached; issued by the Delaware Department of Justice, Consumer Protection Unit. The Consumer Protection Unit of the Attorney General's Office prepares a summary of the Landlord-Tenant Code, and the landlord must give it to a new tenant at the beginning of the rental term; the document's own cover puts it at the signing of a residential lease. If the landlord does not provide it, the tenant may plead ignorance of the law as a defense, and the section states no other consequence. No threshold applies and no typography is prescribed. The current edition is in English; the Department's page also carries six translations it labels archival, among them a Spanish version from October 2019. Revision: Revised October 2024, as printed on the cover and repeated on page 2 of the document. Given at signing, handed over. Languages: English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Hindi, Haitian Creole, French. Agency page. (25 Del. C. § 5118)

Right-to-representation informational materials approved by the Coordinator — a state-prescribed document to be handed over or attached; issued by the Right to Representation Coordinator, designated by section 5601 within Delaware Volunteer Legal Services. A landlord, or a housing authority, must give the tenant informational materials approved by the Right to Representation Coordinator that explain the legal representation available to tenants, including the right to representation, and identify available resources. They are owed on signing a written agreement or entering an oral one, on the first renewal or modification of an agreement after November 22, 2023, when the landlord gives a notice that rent is past due, that the tenant has violated a material provision or that a for-cause agreement is terminated, and when a tenant receives notice that a housing subsidy is ending. The statute requires the Coordinator to prepare them in English, Spanish and Haitian Creole. Neither the section nor the chapter states any penalty for a failure. The Coordinator sits within a private legal-services organization designated by statute rather than in a State agency, so the materials are not published on an official State source and the section itself is the surface to watch; no Haitian Creole version could be located on any official source. Revision: No revision or edition can be recorded. The statute names no title, edition or publication cycle, and no copy of the approved materials is published on an official State source; the materials answering the statutory description appear unchanged since the duty began on November 22, 2023. Given at signing and on renewal, handed over. Languages: English, Spanish, Haitian Creole. The prescribing section. (25 Del. C. §§ 5601(1), 5602(b)(1), 5606)

Tenant-employee disclosure form — a document the landlord must supply that no agency publishes. Where the landlord or the landlord's management agent is also the tenant's employer, the landlord must, at the time of hire or move in and before occupancy, give the tenant employee a written disclosure form signed by both of them, advising the person of all conditions and requirements for occupying and vacating the dwelling place and of the right to continued occupancy after the employment ends. No form is required if the same rights and responsibilities are set out in the written rental agreement or an addendum to it. No agency prescribes or publishes the form and no title is fixed, so the landlord writes it; the section states no penalty. It does not apply where the employment ends for cause. This is the only document a Delaware tenant signs at move-in under State law. Given before signing and at move-in, handed over. Threshold: Tenant employees only: a person whose employer is the landlord or the landlord's management agent and who occupies a dwelling place in connection with that employment. (25 Del. C. § 5123(b))

Listed, but not a general duty counted above:

Consumer Information Statement (CIS) for Consumers Seeking to Rent Residential Property — a state-prescribed document to be handed over or attached; issued by the Delaware Real Estate Commission, Division of Professional Regulation. Where a real estate licensee is involved in the letting, the licensee must give a prospective tenant the Real Estate Commission's consumer information statement at the earliest of the first scheduled appointment, the first showing of a property, or the making of an offer; it need not be signed until the prospective tenant completes a rental application or signs a lease. The duty binds the licensee rather than the landlord directly, which is why it is listed here with its scope rather than counted among the documents every landlord must hand over. Non-renewable leases of 120 days or less are exempt, and so are properties other than one-to-four-family residential ones. The consequence runs through licensee discipline; the statement gives the tenant no money remedy. Revision: Form approved by the Delaware Real Estate Commission on August 8, 2024, as printed in the footer of page 3. Given before signing, handed over. Languages: English. Threshold: Licensee-brokered lettings only. Non-renewable leases of 120 days or less are exempt, as are transactions in properties other than those marketed as one-to-four-family residential property or a single lot for such a residence. Agency page. (24 Del. C. § 2938(a), (e)–(g); 24 DE Admin. Code 2900, rule 10.4.1) Not counted as a general duty.

Rights and responsibilities guide for landlords and tenants — a document the statute orders an agency to prescribe that the agency has not yet published; issued by the Delaware Real Estate Commission. A 2026 act directs the Real Estate Commission to draft, maintain and distribute a rights and responsibilities guide for landlords and tenants, and requires a landlord or real estate service provider to give it to the tenant before the rental agreement is entered into and again at each renewal of a year or more, with the tenant acknowledging receipt on paper or electronically. Thirteen subjects are fixed by statute, among them the availability of renters' and flood insurance, where to find information about the right to representation and the eviction diversion program, lead-based paint disclosures that may be required by federal, State or local law, local requirements such as landlord licensing, unit registration and inspections, bed-bug obligations, fair housing law, detector installation and maintenance, and school district feeder patterns. The Commission has not published the guide and the duty has not started: it begins on the earlier of June 10, 2027 or the publication of a notice in the Register of Regulations, and the provision making a violation an unlawful trade practice follows 180 days after that. No such notice has appeared in any issue of the Register since the act was approved on June 10, 2026. Given before signing and on renewal, delivered electronically or on paper. The prescribing section. (25 Del. C. § 5124; 24 Del. C. §§ 2907(d), 2925A(c)) Not counted: the document does not exist yet.

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

• The names and usual business addresses of the owners of the rental unit, or of their appointed resident agents, disclosed prominently on each written rental agreement (section 5105, subsection a).

• Where the return of a security deposit is conditioned on the surrender of keys, a clear procedure for that surrender, which may not require surrender before the end of the lease term (section 5125, subsection a; the statute supplies default methods if the lease is silent).

• Permission to charge separately for metered utility service: the landlord may do so only if the rental agreement so provides and the service is separately metered (section 5312, subsection a).

• Permission to bill tenants individually for utility service bought in bulk: only where the units are individually metered or the cost is included in each monthly rental payment as the agreement provides (section 5312, subsection b).

• Permission to pass through utility charges not based on consumption: only if the rental agreement so provides, billed monthly or quarterly as the agreement sets out (section 5312, subsection i).

• Permission to place refuse removal and the supply of water, hot water, heat and electricity on the tenant: only if the rental agreement so specifies (section 5305, subsection b).

• Permission to increase a security deposit in step with the rent: only if the rental agreement so specifies (section 5514, subsection j; the deposit rules are on the security-deposits page).

No.

No Delaware statute requires a move-in condition report, checklist, inventory or walk-through, and no deduction from a security deposit depends on one: a landlord may deduct for damage without any record of what the unit looked like when the tenant moved in. What Delaware has instead runs at the other end of the tenancy. Within 20 days after a rental agreement ends, the landlord must give the tenant an itemized list of damages and the estimated cost of repairing each, and tender payment for the difference; a failure counts as an acknowledgment by the landlord that no payment for damages is due. That is a move-out mechanism and belongs to the security-deposits page. The only document a tenant signs at move-in under Delaware law is the tenant-employee disclosure form, which reaches employees of the landlord and no one else.

Deposit notice at signing: The landlord must disclose to the tenant the location of the security deposit account, and a failure to disclose it within 20 days of the tenant's written request forfeits the whole deposit to the tenant (section 5514, subsections b and g). It is owed on request rather than at signing; the deposit cap, the account rules and the return deadlines are on the security-deposits page.

One in-force state hazard disclosure: bed bugs (before signing). Also on the books: lead — enacted but not yet in force; no state duty exists for mold, radon, methamphetamine, asbestos, or any other hazard.

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

Lead (state add-on to the federal rule) — enacted but not yet in force, at signing, at move-in, and on request, in the lease itself (a statute). Delaware has enacted, but not yet started, a lead-safe certification regime for rental units built before 1978. When it begins, every rental agreement on such a unit must state whether the unit and premises have been certified lead safe or lead free, the date of the certification and the name of the lead inspector who issued the certificate; a copy of the certificate must follow within seven days of a tenant's request; the landlord must give the tenant the educational material required by the Department of Health and Social Services and by the United States Environmental Protection Agency before the tenant occupies the unit; and every such agreement must require the tenant to acknowledge receiving that material. None of this binds a landlord today. The code page prints the effective date as a bracketed placeholder because no date is yet fixed, and the format of the disclosures is left to regulations the Department has not written. Threshold: Rental units constructed before January 1, 1978, with construction dated by the building permit or, where no permit was issued, by the start of construction. The certification timetable behind the disclosure separates a small property owner, with 19 or fewer rental units, from a large property owner, with 20 or more. Where the change will be published. A signed acknowledgment is taken. Takes effect by March 1, 2028, or earlier as the section provides: The chapter is implemented on the earlier of two events: twelve months after the Director of the Delaware State Housing Authority publishes a notice in the Register of Regulations that all necessary legislation and appropriations for implementing and enforcing the chapter have been enacted and that final regulations have been promulgated, or March 1, 2028. No such notice has appeared in any issue of the Register since the act was approved on July 21, 2025, and no final regulation implementing the chapter has been promulgated, so even a notice published now would not start the duties for another twelve months. If the duty is not met: When the chapter starts: a civil penalty of $50 a day until a certificate requested by the tenant is provided, which must happen within seven days of the request, and $20 a day until the required educational material is provided.

Mold — no state duty. No Delaware statute or regulation requires a mold disclosure to a tenant, and the State publishes no mold standard, booklet or awareness program. The word does not appear in the landlord-tenant title at all; the two occurrences in the public health title are about molding and molded goods in a feed-sanitation rule and a plastics definition, and the occurrences in the Administrative Code are air-quality, health-protection and professional-regulation rules, none of which reaches a lease. Mold in a rented home is handled, if at all, through the landlord's repair duties, which are on the habitability page.

Bed bugs — in force — a state duty, before signing (a statute). Before renting a dwelling unit, a Delaware landlord must tell a prospective tenant whether an adjacent unit is currently infested with bed bugs or being treated for them. No form, no writing and no acknowledgment is prescribed, no threshold applies, and the duty is owed before the letting rather than at signing. Two duties sit beside it: before renting, the owner or property manager must visually inspect the unit for evidence of bed bugs, and a landlord may not show, rent or lease a vacant unit the landlord knows or reasonably suspects has a current infestation. The rest of the section governs the tenancy rather than the letting: acknowledging a complaint and obtaining an inspection within 120 hours, remedial services within 14 days of a determination, inspection of the units next to, above and below within five days, notice of the pest professional's determination to every affected tenant within 120 hours, which may go by email or a shared portal, and two years of records. Who pays depends on timing: the landlord bears the cost where the tenant reports within 60 days after occupancy or within 30 days of a discovery in an adjoining unit. Knowledge standard: The bar on showing and renting turns on what the landlord knows or reasonably suspects; the adjacent-unit disclosure turns on whether a neighboring unit is currently infested or being treated. The section states no penalty. The only route is the Code's general provision that for any violation of the rental agreement or the Code by either party, the injured party may bring an action in any court of competent civil jurisdiction (section 5117, subsection a).

Radon — no state duty. No Delaware statute or regulation requires a radon disclosure to a tenant. Radon reaches Delaware law on the sales side only: a purchaser of residential property must be notified that the property may present the potential for exposure to radon, the seller must give the buyer any radon test information, and the Real Estate Commission's own rule binds a licensee to obtain that disclosure from the seller and hand it to a buyer before an agreement of sale. The word appears nowhere in the landlord-tenant title or the public health title.

Methamphetamine — no state duty. No Delaware statute requires a landlord to disclose that a unit was once used to make methamphetamine, and no statute bars renting a unit that was contaminated. Operating a clandestine laboratory is a felony and the costs of cleanup and remediation fall on the person convicted, but nothing in that scheme reaches a lease or a prospective tenant, and the State keeps no clean-up standard a landlord must meet before letting. The word appears nowhere in the landlord-tenant title, and the Administrative Code carries no methamphetamine rule at all.

Asbestos — no state duty. No Delaware statute or regulation requires an asbestos disclosure to a tenant. The State's asbestos chapter is about certification and the practice of abatement; it carries no notification, disclosure, tenant or occupant provision anywhere in it. The asbestos rules in the Administrative Code are waste, air-quality, fire, labor and public-facilities rules, none of them a lease duty.

Pesticide, ordnance, pool, pest-control, shared-well and smoking notices — no state duty. Delaware requires no pesticide-application notice, no pest-control-contract disclosure, no military-ordnance or noise-zone notice, no pool-safety notice, no shared-well notice, no utility-shutoff-history disclosure and no smoking-policy disclosure. Smoke and carbon-monoxide detectors appear in the landlord-tenant title only as duties on the tenant not to remove or tamper with a detector the landlord installed; installing and maintaining them is a repair subject and is on the habitability page.

No.

Delaware requires no flood disclosure to a renter of any kind: not a flood-zone notice, not a flood history, not even an advisory that the property may flood or that flood insurance is available. It is a coastal state with none. The seller-side law, the Buyer Property Protection Act, reaches transfers by sale, exchange, installment land sale contract, a lease with an option to purchase or a ground lease of a manufactured housing lot, and residential property improved with dwelling units for one to four families, so an ordinary residential lease sits outside it; and even there the only hazard the statute names by itself is radon, flooding reaching a buyer only through the general duty to disclose material defects and the seller's condition report. The three flood references in the landlord-tenant title are in the manufactured-home community chapters: an exemption from a community owner's duty to regrade standing water in wetlands, flood plains, tidal areas, water recharge areas and recorded drainage systems, and the flood plain study and flood zone map that go to a registered homeowners association 60 days before a scheduled auction. Those are on the manufactured-home page. The public health title carries no flood provision and the Administrative Code no flood disclosure rule.

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

Delaware law says that a property's being, or being suspected of being, psychologically impacted is not a material fact that must be disclosed in a real property transaction, and the rule names landlords, not only licensees. A property is psychologically impacted if it was, or was at any time suspected to have been, the site of a homicide, a suicide or another felony except arson, or if an occupant is or was suspected to be infected with HIV or has been diagnosed with AIDS, or with any other disease that medical evidence shows is highly unlikely to be transmitted through occupying a dwelling place. No cause of action arises against an owner or landlord of real property, or against a licensee, for failing to inquire about, disclose or release that information. Two qualifications matter to a tenant. On a specific written request the owner, landlord or licensee must answer truthfully, to the best of their knowledge. And the impacts tied to HIV, AIDS or a similar disease may never be disclosed, even when the person asking specifically asks about them.

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

The roster is short and sits in a single section: four provisions a rental agreement may not contain, each framed as something the tenant may not be made to agree to, so it reaches clauses that burden the tenant rather than either party's. It sits on top of a general rule that a rental agreement is unenforceable so far as it conflicts with the Code and is not expressly authorized by it, with express severability, so the rest of the agreement stands and the whole lease is never void. A confession-of-judgment provision is separately declared void and unenforceable. Attorney-fee clauses have their own section and are not on this roster, so writing one into a lease is not itself a breach of the roster; the clause is simply unenforceable. Delaware has no general unconscionability provision in the Code and no cure window.

The sanction needs deliberate use and an attempt to enforce the clause.

Sanction as the statute states it: Including a prohibited provision makes that provision unenforceable and nothing more. Damages of an amount equal to three months' rent, together with the costs of suit but excluding attorney's fees, are owed only where the landlord attempts to enforce a provision the landlord knows to be prohibited (section 5301, subsection b). Both conditions must be met: the attempt and the knowledge.

The listed provisions:

• An agreement that the tenant waives or foregoes rights or remedies under the Landlord-Tenant Code.

• An authorization for any person to confess judgment on a claim arising out of the rental agreement.

• An agreement to the exculpation or limitation of any liability of the landlord arising under law, or to indemnify the landlord for that liability or for the costs connected with it.

• A requirement that the tenant declaw a cat as a condition of the rental agreement.

Expressly permitted: One re-allocation is expressly allowed and closely fenced. A tenant may agree to perform specified repairs, maintenance, alterations or remodeling, but only by a conspicuous writing separate from the rental agreement, only where the work primarily benefits the unit, only where it is not needed to bring a non-complying unit up to code, only for adequate consideration separate from the lease or a rent reduction, only in good faith, and never as a condition of any provision of the rental agreement (section 5305, subsection c).

A lease clause charging either party's attorney fees to the other is void.

No provision in a rental agreement providing for the recovery of attorney's fees by either party in any suit, action or proceeding arising from the tenancy is enforceable (section 5111). Delaware is not a reciprocity state and not a prevailing-party state: a fee clause is dead in both directions, so a clause favoring the tenant fails as surely as one favoring the landlord, and no statute awards fees to a prevailing party on its own force. The policy shows through twice elsewhere in the Code: the three months' rent a tenant may recover where a landlord attempts to enforce a prohibited clause comes with the costs of suit but excluding attorney's fees, and the same exclusion appears in the remedy for an unlawful ouster.