Landlord Atlas

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

Verified September 13, 2026 All Indiana topics →

An Indiana lease must carry a flood-plain statement whenever the building's lowest floor, basement included, sits at or below the one-hundred-year flood elevation, and a military-installation statement whenever the property is within three miles of Naval Support Activity Crane, the Lake Glendora Test Facility or Grissom Air Reserve Base or lies in a military impact zoning district.

Cited to IC 32-31-1-11, 32-31-1-20, 32-31-1-21, 32-31-1-21.1, 32-31-1-22, 32-31-1-23 § 32-31-1-20(a)–(c); § 32-31-1-21(a)–(b); § 32-31-1-21.1(a)–(b); § 32-31-1-22(e)–(g) and 28 more cited sources · Verified September 13, 2026

At or before the agreement starts the landlord must also give the tenant, in writing, the names and addresses of an Indiana-resident manager and an Indiana-resident agent for notices and legal papers, and at delivery of the unit must have the tenant sign an acknowledgment that a working smoke detector is installed. Nothing else is required: no written lease below a three-year term, no copy of the signed lease, no tenant-rights document, no move-in checklist, no deposit notice at signing, and no lead, radon, mold, bed-bug, asbestos or methamphetamine disclosure. Three of those four duties state no penalty, and Indiana's cities may not add lease disclosures of their own, though they may run rental registration and inspection programs.

Indiana lease disclosures at a glance

Which law governs Indiana keeps two bodies of landlord-tenant law, and this page depends on the difference. Ten chapters of article 32-31 are the residential landlord-tenant statutes, listed by name in section 32-31-2.9-2; they reach rental agreements for dwelling units in Indiana, less seven exclusions, and they carry the owner and agent disclosure (section 32-31-3-18) and the smoke-detector acknowledgment (section 32-31-5-7). Chapter 1 of article 32-31 is not on that list. It is general property law, and it is where both of Indiana's lease disclosures live: the flood-plain statement at section 32-31-1-21 and the military-installation statement at section 32-31-1-21.1, along with the section preempting local ordinances. Because chapter 1 sits outside the residential definition, the seven exclusions do not cut those two duties down and they bind commercial and agricultural lessors as well. The utility disclosures sit outside article 32-31 altogether, in section 8-1-2-1.2 and in the Utility Regulatory Commission's rules at 170 IAC 15 and 170 IAC 4-5. The statute of frauds is section 32-21-1-1, the conveyance formalities section 32-21-1-13, the electronic-transactions act article 26-2-8, and the seller-disclosure chapter article 32-21-5, which by its own scope clause reaches a lease with option to buy.
Who is covered Two envelopes, and no unit-count threshold anywhere. The flood and military disclosures sit in general property law: the flood duty reaches residential, agricultural and commercial property on its face, and the military duty reaches land assessed as residential or commercial, or used by a tax-exempt nonprofit for educational, literary, scientific, religious or charitable purposes. The residential chapters, which carry the owner and agent disclosure and the smoke-detector acknowledgment, reach rental agreements for dwelling units in Indiana except for seven kinds of arrangement: residence at an institutional, medical, maternity, educational, counseling, religious or geriatric facility; occupancy under a contract of sale; quarters in a fraternal or social organization; transient occupancy in a hotel, motel or other lodging; occupancy conditional on employment in or about the premises; occupancy by a condominium owner or a cooperative proprietary lessee; and occupancy primarily for agricultural purposes, each unless the arrangement was made to dodge the statutes. Four vintage lines matter: the smoke-detector chapter reaches agreements entered into or renewed after June 30, 1999, the flood disclosure agreements entered into or renewed after June 30, 2009, and the military disclosure leases entered into or renewed after June 30, 2023. The water and sewer sub-billing disclosure excludes hotels, motels and similar transient lodging and includes a lot in a mobile home community; the seller's disclosure form reaches a lease with option to buy of no more than four dwelling units.
Written lease, copy and signature rules

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 Indiana statute requires a residential rental agreement to be in writing, and no statute requires the landlord to give the tenant a copy of a signed lease — a negative that rests on the whole of the landlord-tenant article, where the word copy appears in eight sections and none of them is a copy duty. A writing is needed only above the statute of frauds line, which Indiana sets at three years. A lease longer than three years must also be recorded in the miscellaneous record of the county recorder's office within forty-five days of its execution; failing to record does not void the lease between landlord and tenant, but it makes the lease void against a later purchaser, lessee or mortgagee who acquires the property in good faith and for value. Nothing requires the lease or any notice in a language other than English. One written-notice rule about lease terms is worth knowing though it is not a signing-time disclosure: unless the written rental agreement says otherwise, the landlord must give at least thirty days' written notice before modifying the agreement.

Statute of frauds: Indiana's line is three years, not one. The statute of frauds says in its first subsection that it does not apply to a lease for a term of not more than three years; above that the agreement, or a note or memorandum of it, must be in writing and signed by the party the action is brought against (section 32-21-1-1). A lease or memorandum of lease for a term exceeding three years is also treated as a conveyance, which must be in writing, executed or signed by the lessor or landlord, and either acknowledged or proved (section 32-21-1-13).

Format and plain-language rules: Indiana prescribes no plain-language act and no general type-size rule for leases. It has one typography rule in this topic and it belongs to the water and sewer sub-billing disclosure: that disclosure must be printed in a font no smaller than the largest font used anywhere else in the document that carries it, and the statute lists the five documents it may be carried in, the lease among them (section 8-1-2-1.2, subsection m). The flood disclosure carries a clarity standard rather than a format rule: the landlord must clearly disclose the flood-plain fact in the rental agreement, with no size, boldface or placement requirement.

Electronic leases and signatures: Indiana's electronic-transactions act (article 26-2-8) says a record or signature may not be denied legal effect merely 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. It excludes only wills, codicils and testamentary trusts, most of the commercial code, and laws an agency specifically excludes; leases are not excluded, and the conveyance section confirms the point by defining a conveyance to include an electronic record. Indiana has no consent-to-electronic-notice provision in its landlord-tenant article, so there is no separate agreement a landlord must obtain before sending notices electronically.
Owner and agent identity

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

At or before the commencement of the rental agreement the landlord, or a person authorized to make the agreement for the landlord, must disclose and furnish to the tenant in writing the names and addresses of two people: someone residing in Indiana who is authorized to manage the dwelling unit, and someone residing in Indiana who is reasonably accessible to the tenant and authorized to act as the owner's agent for service of process and for receiving and receipting for notices and demands. One person may fill both roles, but both must live in Indiana, which is unusual: an out-of-state manager or agent does not satisfy the section. The statute asks for names and addresses only, not a telephone number or an electronic address, and offers no posting alternative; any writing will do, whether the lease or a separate one. There is no duty to keep the information current. What the statute says instead is that the section is enforceable against any successor landlord, owner or manager. Two things follow from a failure. A person who does not comply becomes the agent of each landlord for service of process, for notices and demands, and for performing the landlord's obligations under the law or the rental agreement. And the tenant is allowed any expenses reasonably incurred to find out the names and addresses that should have been given. There is no damages figure, no fee award, no rent-withholding right and no bar on eviction. Indiana has no statewide landlord or rental registration, but a city, town or county may run a rental registration program, charging no more than five dollars a year for each rental unit community or parcel and requiring a new owner to pay and update the information within thirty days of an ownership change; nothing in that program reaches the tenant.

Threshold: No unit count, building age or owner type. The duty sits in the residential chapters, so it does not reach the seven excluded arrangements, among them transient hotel and motel occupancy and occupancy primarily for agricultural purposes.
Required statements and lease text

No general statement or document is prescribed, but the statutes or rules fix some of what the lease must say, listed here.

Indiana requires no tenant-rights statement, no summary of the landlord-tenant statutes, no agency handout a landlord must give or attach, no general wording every lease must carry and no notice telling the tenant where the law can be read. The lease-content duties Indiana does impose are all conditional and all belong to other rows: the flood and military statements are described in the flood and location rows, and the two utility statements in the utility row. Two documents exist in the neighborhood and neither is a general tenant document. The state's seller's disclosure form is prescribed by the Real Estate Commission and reaches a lease with option to buy of no more than four dwelling units, so it is described with the location disclosures. The state fair-housing poster, eleven inches by fourteen inches with a legend the rule sets out, is displayed at a place of business that takes part in covered activities; it is not handed to a tenant and is not part of a lease.

Listed, but not a general duty counted above:

Broker company written office policy on representation — a state-prescribed document to be handed over or attached; issued by the Indiana Real Estate Commission. At the beginning of an agency relationship, and before the potential seller, landlord, buyer or tenant discloses any confidential information, a licensee must disclose in writing the broker company's written office policy on representation. The duty binds the licensee and runs to the licensee's own client, so it is listed here and not counted as a duty a landlord owes a tenant. Revision: The statute prescribes the disclosure, not a form, so no agency edition or revision date exists; the office policy is the broker company's own document. Given before signing, handed over. Languages: English. Threshold: Only where a licensed broker or salesperson is acting, and only toward that licensee's own client. The prescribing section. (IC 25-34.1-10-13(b))

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

• Where the lowest floor of the structure, basement included, sits at or below the one-hundred-year flood elevation, a clear statement that the structure is in a flood plain (section 32-31-1-21, for agreements entered into or renewed after June 30, 2009).

• Where the property is within a state area of interest near a military installation, a statement that the property is near the installation and may be affected by its operations, and that local laws may restrict use and development (section 32-31-1-21.1, for leases entered into or renewed after June 30, 2023).

• Where the landlord bills tenants separately for water or sewage disposal service and chooses the lease as the place for it, the sub-billing disclosure: a description of the services, an itemized statement of the fees, and the statute's own sentence about the right to complain to the Utility Regulatory Commission (section 8-1-2-1.2, subsections l and m).

• Where the building is master-metered and the owner submeters electricity, a clear statement that the unit is submetered, that electric bills will be based on submeter readings, that electricity for common areas and common facilities is the owner's responsibility and not the tenant's, and a description of the dispute procedure (170 IAC 4-5-12(i)).
Move-in condition report

No.

Indiana requires no move-in condition statement, checklist, inventory or walk-through, no notice of a right to inspect, and no list of the previous tenant's damage. Nor does the deposit statute manufacture one: a deposit may be used for four purposes, the first being to reimburse the landlord for actual damage to the unit or an ancillary facility beyond ordinary wear and tear, and nothing conditions that on a checklist. The only procedural condition on keeping any part of a deposit is the itemized list of damages, which must be mailed to the tenant no more than forty-five days after the tenancy ends; a landlord who misses it owes the tenant the amount withheld plus reasonable attorney fees and court costs. The only inventory in the article runs the other way and is the landlord's option, not a duty: when a tenant dies or is incapacitated the landlord may require the tenant's representative to prepare and sign an inventory of the property being removed.
Hazard disclosures

One in-force state hazard disclosure: smoke-detector acknowledgment signed by the tenant (at move-in). No state duty exists for lead, mold, bed bugs, 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. Indiana adds nothing to the federal lead rule for landlords: no state form, no registration, no certificate and no repeat disclosure. The state's lead law licenses and trains the people who do the work — inspectors, risk assessors, supervisors, workers, clearance examiners and renovation firms — and says in its own words that it may not be read as requiring the abatement of lead hazards in target housing or a child-occupied facility. An owner doing the work in a dwelling the owner owns is outside the licensing chapter unless the dwelling is occupied by someone outside the family or by a child under six with an elevated blood lead level. The rules at 410 IAC 32 are the same program in rule form. The rest of the state's lead law is childhood blood-lead screening and the sharing of that data between agencies.

Mold — no state duty. Indiana has no mold provision of any kind for dwellings: no disclosure, no standard, no remediation duty. The word appears in the property title only in the industrial sense, in the lien and fabricator sections about dies, molds, forms, jigs and patterns, and in the administrative code only in food-sanitation, water-supply and building-material rules. A 2026 bill would have put a duty on landlords to keep premises free of mold, which is a maintenance duty rather than a disclosure, and it died in committee.

Bed bugs — no state duty. Indiana has no bed-bug law at all — nothing in the code and nothing in the administrative code. Bills to create a bed-bug inspection and written-notice procedure for rental units have been introduced in five sessions since 2019 and none has left committee.

Radon — no state duty. Indiana requires no radon disclosure, to a tenant or to anyone else. Its radon chapter is a certification regime from beginning to end: the health department writes rules for certifying people who test for or abate radon, no one may test or abate without certification, fees go to a trust fund, and the chapter ends with a civil penalty and an offense. A 2026 bill would have created a radon disclosure on the sales side, through the licensee representing a seller, and it died in committee.

Methamphetamine — no state duty. No Indiana statute or rule requires a landlord to tell a tenant that a dwelling was used to manufacture methamphetamine. The state's only methamphetamine disclosure is a motor-vehicle rule: a dealer or seller who knows or should know that a vehicle is a methamphetamine vehicle must say so in writing to a buyer or a lessee before selling or leasing it. For real property the duties run to officials, not occupants: the qualified inspector gives the certificate of decontamination to the property owner, the owner files documentation with the state and local health departments, and the decontamination rules require notice to the local health department, the state health department, the person who pumps out the septic system, a demolition contractor and the recipient of a tax deed. The one real-property disclosure sits on the sales side, as an item of the seller's form, and so reaches a lease with option to buy.

Asbestos — no state duty. Indiana requires no asbestos disclosure to a tenant. Its asbestos law accredits and licenses the people who do the work and requires notice of a removal project to the environmental commissioner, with record-keeping duties on the contractor. Nothing in it runs to an occupant.

Smoke-detector acknowledgment signed by the tenant — in force — a state duty, at move-in, in writing (a statute). At the time the landlord delivers a rental unit to a tenant, the landlord must require the tenant to acknowledge in writing that the unit is equipped with a functional smoke detector. This is the only signed acknowledgment Indiana requires anywhere in this topic, and the tenant is the one who signs it. No form is prescribed and the section states no penalty for failing to get the acknowledgment. The duty cannot be waived: the landlord and tenant may not contract out of the smoke-detector requirements in a rental agreement or a separate writing, and a waiver of the chapter is void. The installation and repair duties behind it, including the seven working days the owner, manager or agent has after written notice to repair or replace a detector, are on the habitability page, and the tenant's own duty to test the detector and replace its batteries sits in the tenant-obligations chapter. Threshold: Applies only to a rental agreement entered into or renewed after June 30, 1999. No unit count and no building-age limit. A signed acknowledgment is taken.
Flood disclosure

Yes — a statute requires the landlord to disclose whether the lowest floor sits below a stated elevation to a prospective or current tenant, in the lease itself.

If the lowest floor of the structure, counting a basement, is at or below the one-hundred-year frequency flood elevation, the landlord must clearly disclose in the rental agreement that the structure is in a flood plain. The elevation may be determined by the department of natural resources, by the Federal Emergency Management Agency's flood insurance rate maps, or by approved local flood plain maps: three ways of answering the same question, not three separate triggers. This is a test about the building, not about the parcel. A property inside a mapped special flood hazard area whose lowest floor sits above the base flood elevation is outside the duty, and a house with a basement below that elevation is inside it even where the parcel is not mapped. No form is prescribed, no type size or placement beyond the word clearly, no signature and no acknowledgment. The duty applies to agreements entered into or renewed after June 30, 2009, so it comes round again at each renewal, and it reaches commercial and agricultural leases as well as homes. The section states no remedy of any kind, and the chapter it sits in has no general remedies provision, so nothing in the statute says what happens if the landlord leaves the statement out. The sales side asks a different and looser question: an owner who has personal knowledge that all or part of the property lies within a community's flood plain boundaries as shown on a federal flood insurance rate map must disclose that on the seller's form, which reaches a lease with option to buy of no more than four dwelling units.

Threshold: The lowest floor of the structure, basement included, must sit at or below the one-hundred-year frequency flood elevation. The section reaches rental agreements entered into or renewed after June 30, 2009, for residential, agricultural and commercial property alike, with no unit count and no owner-type carve-out. In force since July 1, 2009.
Disclosures about the property's situation Indiana has one, and it is narrow. For a lease entered into or renewed after June 30, 2023, the lessor must disclose in the lease that the property is located near a military installation within a state area of interest and may be affected to some degree by the installation's military operations, and that local laws may restrict the use and development of the property to promote compatibility with the installation (section 32-31-1-21.1, with a twin duty in the planning title at section 36-7-30.2-15). A state area of interest is land no more than three miles from one of three named installations — Naval Support Activity Crane, the Lake Glendora Test Facility and Grissom Air Reserve Base — or land inside a military impact zoning district. The duty covers land assessed as residential or commercial, and land used by a tax-exempt nonprofit for educational, literary, scientific, religious or charitable purposes. No form is prescribed and the section states no penalty; the liability shield that protects an owner who leaves the equivalent item off the seller's form applies to sales, not to leases. Separately, the seller's disclosure chapter reaches one kind of lease: a lease with option to buy of residential real estate containing no more than four dwelling units, subject to nine exemptions. In such a transaction the owner must complete and sign the Seller's Residential Real Estate Sales Disclosure, State Form 46234, which the Real Estate Commission prescribes and reproduces in its rules, and give it to the prospective buyer before an offer is accepted, with the signed form a condition of enforcing an accepted offer and a further statement due at or before settlement if conditions have changed. The statute now requires items on that form about methamphetamine contamination, proximity to a military installation and to an airport, a locally designated historic district, a conservation easement, a redevelopment lien and a flood plain, and the statute governs where the printed form has not caught up. Nothing else: no sex-offender notice, no notice about a death in the unit, no demolition, condominium-conversion, foreclosure or pending-sale notice, no ordnance or noise-zone notice beyond the military statement, and no shoreline notice.
What need not be disclosed

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.

Indiana's psychologically affected property chapter says an owner or agent is not required to disclose knowledge that a property is psychologically affected, and is not liable for refusing to disclose either that fact or details about it. A property is psychologically affected if a person died on it, or if it was the site of a felony, of criminal organization activity, of the discharge of a firearm involving a law enforcement officer on duty, or of the illegal manufacture or distribution of a controlled substance — or if any of those is reasonably suspected. Two features make the chapter unusually wide. It covers property that is for sale, rent or lease, and it defines the protected other party to include a tenant, a lessee, a prospective tenant and a prospective lessee, so it plainly reaches renting. And it binds the owner, not only a licensed broker, which is the narrower pattern in many states. The chapter draws one line: an owner or agent may not intentionally misrepresent a fact about a psychologically affected property in response to a direct inquiry. Silence is protected; a false answer is not. One overlap is worth knowing: where a lease with option to buy of no more than four dwelling units puts the seller's disclosure form in play, the form's own methamphetamine item requires an answer.
Utility, fee and payment disclosures Indiana's utility disclosures live outside the landlord-tenant article, in the utilities title and the Utility Regulatory Commission's rules, and there are two of them. Water and sewer sub-billing: a landlord who bills tenants separately for water or sewage disposal service, rather than charging a flat fee, must give each tenant a disclosure containing a description of the services to be provided, an itemized statement of the fees that will be charged, and a sentence the statute writes out in full telling the tenant that if the charges exceed what the disclosure describes, or exceed the service provided, the tenant has a right under Indiana law to complain to the Utility Regulatory Commission, with the Commission's telephone number filled in — a number the Commission's own rules supply. The disclosure must be printed in a font no smaller than the largest font used anywhere else in the document carrying it, and it may be placed in one or more of five places: the lease, the tenant's first bill, an association's governing documents, or a separate writing signed by the tenant. The landlord's total charge may not exceed what the landlord paid the utility for the same services, less the landlord's own use, and the only charges permitted on top are a reasonable initial set-up fee, a reasonable administrative fee of no more than four dollars a month, and a reasonable fee for a payment returned for insufficient funds. On a complaint the Commission may order the billing adjusted to comply; the statute provides no damages. The Commission's rules add the operating detail, including seventeen items every sub-bill must show, two-year retention of bills, a tenant's right to inspect them and to get copies within three business days of asking. Electric submetering: where a master-metered building is submetered, every rental agreement must clearly state that the unit is submetered, that electric bills will be based on submeter readings, that electricity for common areas and common facilities is the owner's responsibility and not the tenant's, and must describe the procedure for disputes; each bill must carry eight items including a clear and unambiguous statement that the bill is not from the electric utility. The statute authorizes submetering and caps the charge, but the lease-statement duty exists only in the rule, and the rule states no penalty: the route is a complaint to the owner and then to the Commission, whose authority on such a complaint is limited to deciding whether a violation occurred. Nothing else exists. Indiana has no rule requiring fees to be named in the lease, no total-monthly-payment rule, no receipt duty, no payment-method or payment-location disclosure, no rent-concession, renter's-insurance, smoking-policy or rent-reporting disclosure. Utilities may be allocated by agreement, including an oral one, with no disclosure attached, and an owner charged a local government fee may, but need not, tell tenants about it and seek reimbursement. Late fees are on the late-fee page, application and screening fees on the application-fee page, and deposit amounts and returns on the deposits page.
Lease clauses that are void or prohibited

No enumerated list — Indiana has no roster of prohibited lease clauses. What it has is a chapter-by-chapter pattern: seven chapters of the landlord-tenant article each say that a waiver of that chapter is void, one section adds a subject-specific bar on waiving the smoke-detector requirements, and two more sections ban particular clauses outright, one redefining abandonment and one attorning to a stranger. The pattern has a gap worth stating plainly. Chapter 1 has no anti-waiver provision, and chapter 1 is where both lease disclosures sit, so neither the flood statement nor the military statement is protected against a waiver in the lease; the same is true of the recording chapter, the emergency-possession chapter, the eviction and record chapters and the squatter chapter. There is no unconscionability provision anywhere in the landlord-tenant article.

Sanction as the statute states it: Each provision says the waiver or the clause is void, and stops there. There is no damages figure, no rent multiple, no knowledge requirement, no need for an attempt to enforce, no cure window and no rule voiding the whole agreement. The clause simply falls away.

The general provisions:

• A waiver of the security-deposit chapter by a landlord or tenant is void (section 32-31-3-17).

• A waiver of the exempt-property and storage provisions in section 32-31-4-1, or of section 32-31-4-3(b), by contract or otherwise is void (section 32-31-4-3(c)).

• A waiver of the chapter on access, essential services, entry and the smoke-detector acknowledgment, by a landlord or a tenant including a former tenant, by contract or otherwise, is void (section 32-31-5-1(c)).

• A waiver of the tenant-obligations chapter by a landlord or tenant, by contract or otherwise, is void (section 32-31-7-4).

• A waiver of the landlord-obligations chapter by a landlord or tenant, by contract or otherwise, is void (section 32-31-8-4).

• A waiver of the retaliation chapter by a landlord or tenant, by contract or otherwise, is void (section 32-31-8.5-0.5).

• A waiver of the domestic-violence chapter by a landlord or a current or former tenant, by contract or otherwise, is void (section 32-31-9-1(c)).

• A landlord and tenant may not waive the state's smoke-detector requirements, in a rental agreement or in a separate writing (section 32-31-5-7(b)).

• A rental agreement, oral or written, may not define abandonment differently from the statute, which needs both a failure to pay or offer rent and circumstances in which a reasonable person would conclude the tenants have given up possession (section 32-31-5-6(b), with the same rule for the storage chapter at section 32-31-4-2(c)).

• The attornment of a tenant to a stranger is void and does not affect the landlord's possession, unless the landlord consents or it is made under a judgment or a court order (section 32-31-1-11).
Attorney-fee clauses

No statute addresses attorney-fee clauses in residential leases as such.

Indiana neither converts nor bans an attorney-fee clause. There is no statute turning a one-way landlord fee clause into a mutual one, and no statute making such a clause void, so a lease that makes the tenant pay the landlord's fees stands on its own terms. What the code has instead is a set of one-directional fee grants, each confined to actions under its own section: a tenant who prevails in an action over the landlord's obligations may recover actual and consequential damages, attorney fees and court costs; a landlord who prevails in an action over the tenant's obligations may recover actual damages, attorney fees and court costs; and a landlord who misses the deposit deadlines owes the tenant the amount withheld plus reasonable attorney fees and court costs. Because each grant is tied to its own section, none of them awards fees across a lease dispute generally.
When, how, and what happens on a failure Six duties, and their timing is simple. At or before the rental agreement begins: the names and addresses of the Indiana-resident manager and the Indiana-resident agent, in writing. In the lease itself: the flood-plain statement where the structure's lowest floor sits at or below the one-hundred-year flood elevation, the military-installation statement where the property is within three miles of one of three named installations or in a military impact zoning district, the submetering statement where the building is electrically submetered, and the water and sewer sub-billing disclosure if the landlord chooses the lease as its place rather than the first bill, the governing documents or a separate signed writing. At delivery of the unit: the tenant's written acknowledgment that the unit has a working smoke detector. Nothing repeats annually, nothing may be satisfied by posting, and the landlord-tenant article has no provision about electronic notice at all. Two further notices exist but are not signing-time disclosures: a landlord must give thirty days' written notice before modifying the rental agreement unless the written agreement says otherwise, and a landlord who sells the property may tell the tenant of the conveyance in writing, which is not a duty but the condition of being released from liability for what happens afterwards, with deposit liability lasting a year unless the buyer acknowledges taking it over to the tenant and receives the money. The remedies are thin. Four of the six duties state no consequence at all: the flood statement, the military statement, the smoke-detector acknowledgment and the submetering lease statement. The identity duty carries the strongest sanction, and it is structural rather than monetary: whoever fails to make the disclosure becomes the landlord's agent for service, for notices and for performing the landlord's obligations, and the tenant may recover the expenses of finding out who the landlord is. The water and sewer disclosure is enforced by the Utility Regulatory Commission, which may order the billing adjusted; there is no damages figure and no consumer-protection hook. One acknowledgment is signed in the whole topic, and the tenant signs it.
Can cities add their own rules Indiana preempts local lease-disclosure rules by name and authorizes several other local programs in the same breath, which is why the answer is mixed rather than a flat preemption. A city, town or county may not regulate, by ordinance or otherwise, a landlord's tenant-screening process, security deposits, lease applications, leasing terms and conditions, disclosures concerning the property, the lease or the rights and responsibilities of the parties, the rights of the parties to a lease, or any fees a landlord charges — unless the regulation is authorized by an act of the general assembly. Any ordinance that breaks that rule is void and unenforceable. Local rent regulation is barred on the same terms, and the whole section steps aside for privately owned property that receives government funds or benefits to provide reduced rents for low or moderate income tenants. Three further preemptions sit beside it: local units may not regulate retaliatory acts, may not require a landlord to take part in a housing-choice or similar program, and since March 15, 2026 may not adopt or enforce an ordinance requiring a building's utility consumption data to be reported. From July 1, 2026 a unit may also not prohibit or restrict an owner's use of privately owned residential property as rental property, though generally applicable health and safety rules, building and fire codes and reasonable occupancy standards survive, and an ordinance adopted before January 1, 2026 is exempt until January 1, 2028, when it must comply. A leasing permit may be required only on three conditions: no fee, no expiry except on a change of ownership, and one permit per rental unit community. But the general assembly has authorized a good deal. A unit may run a rental registration program, charging no more than five dollars a year per rental unit community or parcel and requiring updated information within thirty days of an ownership change. A unit may run a rental inspection program, with an exemption for property managed by a professional real estate manager that was inspected in the previous twelve months and carries a written report on eight named systems, and an override where the unit has reason to believe a violation exists. A unit may adopt smoke-detector requirements more detailed or more stringent than the state's. And a unit may penalize a call for law enforcement or emergency help that is not made by or for a victim or a person in an emergency, but the penalty must be assessed against the tenant rather than the landlord and may not exceed two hundred fifty dollars. So the practical answer to whether an Indiana city may require rental registration is yes, and whether it may require its own lease disclosures is no.
How state law refers to the federal rules State law adds nothing to, and refers to nothing in, the federal rules, which are listed further down this page
Changes already signed into law No signed act is waiting beyond any not-yet-in-force duty already stated on this page
Leading court decisions This page rests on the statutes and rules cited below

Cite this page: "Landlord Atlas, Indiana Lease Disclosure Laws & Required Lease Terms (verified September 13, 2026), landlordatlas.com/laws/lease-disclosures/indiana/" — free to cite and quote with a link (how these records are verified). Everything above is cited in the citations section below.

Indiana hazard disclosures at a glance

One row below is an in-force state duty to disclose, hand over, attach or post a hazard notice as part of renting; the federal lead-paint rule applies on top for housing built before 1978. Each row's full text, trigger, threshold and remedy are in the table above.

Hazard Status When Form Prescribed document
Lead (state add-on to the federal rule) None — — —
Mold None — — —
Bed bugs None — — —
Radon None — — —
Methamphetamine None — — —
Asbestos None — — —
Smoke-detector acknowledgment signed by the tenant In force At move-in In writing —

Documents named in the required-statements row: Broker company written office policy on representation (Indiana Real Estate Commission) — listed, not counted.

Federal rules that apply in every state

The federal layer for the lease-disclosures topic, carried once for the whole site. Every row names who it binds: most federal lease attachments bind only a landlord who takes a voucher or holds HUD-assisted or HUD-insured property, and the one rule that binds every landlord (the lead-paint disclosure rule) is a floor that state law may add to. No state record restates these rows; a state record says only where its own law references or extends them. Each row below says who it binds before it says what it requires. The full text of each row, with its citations, is on the 50-state page.

Notes and caveats

Common questions: Indiana lease disclosures

Each answer is the verified value from the table above, restated as a direct answer. Free to quote with a link to this page.

Does Indiana require a landlord to give the tenant a written statement of tenant rights?
No general statement or document is prescribed, but the statutes or rules fix some of what the lease must say, listed here. Indiana requires no tenant-rights statement, no summary of the landlord-tenant statutes, no agency handout a landlord must give or attach, no general wording every lease must carry and no notice telling the tenant where the law can be read.
Does an Indiana landlord have to disclose the owner's name and address?
Yes — a statute requires the landlord to disclose the owner's or managing agent's identity to the tenant, in the lease or in a separate writing. At or before the commencement of the rental agreement the landlord, or a person authorized to make the agreement for the landlord, must disclose and furnish to the tenant in writing the names and addresses of two people: someone residing in Indiana who is authorized to manage the dwelling unit, and someone residing in Indiana who is reasonably accessible to the tenant and authorized to act as the owner's agent for service of process and for receiving and receipting for notices and demands.
Is a move-in inspection checklist required in Indiana?
No. Indiana requires no move-in condition statement, checklist, inventory or walk-through, no notice of a right to inspect, and no list of the previous tenant's damage. Nor does the deposit statute manufacture one: a deposit may be used for four purposes, the first being to reimburse the landlord for actual damage to the unit or an ancillary facility beyond ordinary wear and tear, and nothing conditions that on a checklist.
What hazards must an Indiana landlord disclose to a tenant?
One in-force state hazard disclosure: smoke-detector acknowledgment signed by the tenant (at move-in). No state duty exists for lead, mold, bed bugs, radon, methamphetamine, or asbestos.
Does Indiana require flood disclosure to renters?
Yes — a statute requires the landlord to disclose whether the lowest floor sits below a stated elevation to a prospective or current tenant, in the lease itself. If the lowest floor of the structure, counting a basement, is at or below the one-hundred-year frequency flood elevation, the landlord must clearly disclose in the rental agreement that the structure is in a flood plain.
Does Indiana void or prohibit specific lease clauses?
No enumerated list — Indiana has no roster of prohibited lease clauses. What it has is a chapter-by-chapter pattern: seven chapters of the landlord-tenant article each say that a waiver of that chapter is void, one section adds a subject-specific bar on waiving the smoke-detector requirements, and two more sections ban particular clauses outright, one redefining abandonment and one attorning to a stranger.

Citations

How this record was verified: Direct reading of the Indiana Code, 2026 edition, on the General Assembly's own site: the whole-title file for Title 32 parsed section by section, with all 131 sections of article 32-31 inventoried and read, and article 32-21 chapters 1, 5 and 6 read in full. Eleven further whole titles were parsed section by section for the hazard family and the local-authority picture — Titles 5, 8, 13, 14, 15, 16, 22, 24, 25, 26 and 36 — with every hazard term's hits enumerated and each relevant chapter read: the radon certification chapter, the lead-based-paint licensing chapters, the methamphetamine decontamination chapter, the asbestos accreditation chapter, the utility sub-billing and submetering sections, the statute of frauds and conveyance sections, the electronic-transactions chapter, and the local-government sections on rental registration, inspection, permits and preemption. The code pages carry no currency line, so currency was established from the text itself: the titles read carry credit lines from 104 distinct 2026 public laws, which places them after the Second Regular Session of the 124th General Assembly, adjourned February 27, 2026 with no carryover. The administrative code, 2026 edition, was enumerated through the Assembly's own interface (187 titles) and 125 article files were read across the Department of Health, Fire Prevention and Building Safety Commission, Utility Regulatory Commission, Real Estate Commission, Department of Environmental Management, Civil Rights Commission, Attorney General's consumer protection division, Housing and Community Development Authority and Natural Resources flood articles; article 410 IAC 38 (decontamination of property contaminated with chemicals used in the illegal manufacture of a controlled substance) and 876 IAC 9 (the seller's disclosure form) were read in full. Enactment currency rests on a four-edition section-by-section comparison of Title 32 across the 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026 editions, cross-checked against the complete 2026 public-law roll from the Assembly's own bill-action feed (164 acts, checked for gaps from 1 to 164) and the digests of all 935 bills of the session; dispositions were taken from the bill-action record and the enrolled acts, including Public Law 43-2023 (the military-installation disclosure), Public Law 26-2026 and Public Law 157-2026. Verified September 13, 2026.

What was read to state each absence on this page: