What must a Kansas 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 Kansas statute requires a residential rental agreement to be in writing, and none requires the landlord to give the tenant a copy of the signed lease. The act is permissive about terms: the parties may include rent, the term and any other provisions the act does not prohibit, and where the agreement fixes no definite term the tenancy is week-to-week for a roomer paying weekly rent and month-to-month otherwise. A lease exceeding one year must be in writing and signed. An unsigned written agreement can still take effect by conduct, through the landlord's knowing acceptance of rent without reservation or the tenant's knowing acceptance of possession and payment of rent without reservation, and where an agreement given effect that way states a term longer than one year it is effective for one year only. The only copy the act requires is a copy of the move-in inventory. Kansas prescribes no translation duty, no plain-language act and no type-size rule for leases.

Statute of frauds: Two sections reach a lease. The lease-specific one says that no lease, estate or interest in land exceeding one year in duration may be granted or assigned except by deed or note in writing, signed by the party granting it or by an agent lawfully authorized in writing (section 33-105). The general one bars an action on a contract concerning land, or on any agreement not to be performed within one year of its making, unless it is in writing and signed (section 33-106). The threshold is a lease exceeding one year.

Electronic leases and signatures: Kansas has adopted the uniform electronic transactions act, and its scope section excludes only the creation and execution of wills, codicils and testamentary trusts and most of the commercial code. There is no residential-lease carve-out and no exception for eviction or default notices, so a Kansas lease and any writing on this page may be signed and delivered electronically.

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

At or before the tenancy begins, the landlord, or anyone authorized to enter into a rental agreement on the landlord's behalf, must disclose to the tenant in writing the name and address of the person authorized to manage the premises, and of an owner of the premises or a person authorized to act for the owner in accepting service of process and receiving and receipting for notices and demands. Only a name and an address are required: no telephone number, no posting alternative, and no requirement that any of it sit in the lease. The information must be kept current, and the duty is enforceable against any successor landlord, owner or manager. The consequence is structural rather than monetary: a person who fails to comply becomes an agent of each person who is a landlord, both for service of process and notices and for performing the landlord's obligations under the act and the agreement, spending or making available for that purpose all the rent collected from the premises. The section states no fine and no damages figure. The duty has not been amended since it was enacted in 1975. Kansas has no statewide landlord or rental registration, and a city may not build one out of tenant names: no municipality may require a landlord to give it a list of its tenants, except as the state offender-registration act requires and, after a citation for breaking a public health, safety or welfare ordinance, under a narrow exception that gives the landlord thirty days and does not apply at all where the landlord complies.

No.

Kansas prescribes nothing: no statement of tenant rights, no summary of the act, no handbook or brochure, no agency form, no model lease, no statutory lease wording and no duty to tell the tenant where the act can be read. There is no list of subjects a Kansas lease must cover either. Two rules point the other way, making a permission depend on the lease saying so rather than requiring content: a landlord may charge a termination fee of up to one month's rent when a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault, human trafficking or stalking ends the tenancy under the protected-person section, but only if that fee is written into the agreement, and the rule barring a tenant from applying the deposit to the last month's rent yields to a contrary term in the agreement. House rules work the same way: a rule binds the tenant only if, among other conditions, the tenant had notice of it when entering the agreement, and a later rule that substantially modifies the agreement does not bind the tenant without written consent. The brochure the real estate commission prescribes on brokerage relationships runs to a prospective buyer or seller, never to a tenant.

Yes — the landlord must give a written condition statement, checklist or inventory.

Kansas requires a joint move-in inventory in every tenancy the act governs, whether or not a deposit is taken. Within five days of the initial date of occupancy, or on delivery of possession, the landlord or the landlord's designated representative and the tenant must inventory the premises together and complete a written record detailing the condition of the premises and any furnishings or appliances provided. Duplicate copies must be signed by both as an indication that the inventory was done, and the tenant must be given a copy. No agency prescribes a form. The section states no consequence for skipping it, and the state's appellate courts have said so: the inventory the statute envisions is more than one party's list of needed repairs, it must be a detailed record of the condition of the whole premises prepared and signed by both sides, but the statute recites no penalty for non-compliance, and while a landlord's failure could raise an inference that the damage pre-existed the tenancy, the absence of an inventory does not stop the landlord from putting in evidence of damage done during the tenancy. The deposit section does not mention the inventory, and nothing in it makes a deduction depend on one.

When and who signs: Within five days of the initial date of occupancy, or on delivery of possession. The landlord or the landlord's designated representative and the tenant complete it together, both sign duplicate copies, and the tenant is given a copy.

No in-force state hazard disclosure duty applies at signing beyond the federal lead-paint rule. No state duty exists for lead, mold, bed bugs, 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) — no state duty. Kansas adds nothing to the federal lead-paint rule for landlords. The six statutes that use the words lead-based are all about licensing and money: definitions, licensure or certification to perform lead-based paint activities, qualification requirements, a hazard fee fund and implementation by the firms doing the work. There is no state form, no registration of pre-1978 rental units, no certificate and no re-disclosure on renewal. The one rule that comes close binds someone else: the health department's lead poisoning prevention rules require a renovator, no more than sixty days before beginning renovation in a dwelling built before 1978, to give the owner a pamphlet and a renovation notice and, where the owner does not live there, to give an adult occupant the same, with a signed acknowledgment or proof of mailing. That duty falls on the renovator and fires on renovation, not on a landlord at signing.

Mold — no state duty. Kansas has no mold disclosure, no mold standard for dwellings and no rules for the remediation trade. The word appears in only two statutes in the whole code, one about manufacturing boats by direct molding and one about labeling plastic bottles, and the administrative code carries no entry for it.

Bed bugs — no state duty. The phrase bed bug appears in no Kansas statute and in no administrative rule. There is no disclosure at signing, no notice during the tenancy and no duty to supply educational material.

Radon — no state duty. Kansas has a radon act, but it certifies people rather than telling landlords anything. It covers definitions, a certification program and fees for measurement and mitigation technicians, businesses and laboratories, reports and violations. Its one piece of prescribed wording binds a certified radon measurement business, whose contract with a client must carry a paragraph saying that measurement information is normally provided to the state health department and inviting the client to initial a consent to that disclosure. The data the department receives is confidential and outside the open records act, so Kansas law protects radon results rather than requiring them to be shown to a renter. The health department's radon rules add technician and business requirements and no landlord duty.

Methamphetamine — no state duty. Kansas has no rule about a dwelling that was used to manufacture methamphetamine: no disclosure, no decontamination standard tied to letting the property, and no bar on occupancy. The seven statutes that use the word are the statewide electronic logging system for sales of methamphetamine precursors, run by the board of pharmacy, and an information program for retailers. The only statutes about contaminated property are a voluntary redevelopment program and its fund, which impose no duty to anyone taking a lease.

Asbestos — no state duty. No Kansas statute or rule requires an asbestos disclosure to a tenant. The state's asbestos law is an asbestos control act about licensing and abatement practice, a set of limits on successor liability in asbestos claims, a silica and asbestos claims act about litigation, and a bond provision for testing public buildings. The health department's asbestos control rules are licensing and work-practice rules.

Other hazard notices (pesticide, ordnance, pool, detector, utility) — no state duty. Kansas requires no pesticide-application notice, no military-ordnance notice, no pool-safety notice, no smoke-detector or carbon-monoxide acknowledgment and no utility-hazard notice. The administrative code once carried apartment-house rules on sweeping, rooms over garages, stairways and handrails, open gas heaters and gas-fired water heaters, and all of them were revoked in May 1996.

No.

Kansas requires no flood disclosure from a landlord, and the usual sales-side carve-out does not apply here because Kansas has no residential seller property-condition disclosure statute at all: the state leaves seller disclosure to contract and the common law, and the only brochure the real estate commission prescribes runs to a prospective buyer or seller rather than to a tenant. No statute anywhere in the code uses the phrase flood zone or flood disclosure, and none uses the word floodplain in a disclosure sense. The state's only flood law is the Division of Water Resources permitting regime for floodplain management and for levees and fills, which governs construction rather than lettings.

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

The core roster is short, sits in one section and binds both sides, which is rare: no rental agreement may provide that the tenant or the landlord waives or foregoes rights or remedies under the act, authorizes anyone to confess judgment on a claim arising out of the agreement, agrees to pay either party's attorney's fees, or agrees to exculpate or limit either party's liability arising under law or to indemnify either party for it. The one carve-out lets the tenant agree to limit the landlord's liability for fire, theft or breakage with respect to common areas. A separate section adds a fifth prohibition on the same footing: a tenant may not waive, and a landlord may not require a tenant to waive, the rights the act gives a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault, human trafficking or stalking. Behind the roster sits a general unconscionability provision, which lets a court refuse to enforce an agreement, strike a provision or limit the application of a provision it finds unconscionable, and reaches a settlement waiving a claim under the act as well; both sides get a reasonable chance to show the setting, purpose and effect of the term. One limit on the remedy is settled: the act is complete within itself for the transactions it covers and preempts the field, so a tenant cannot recast a prohibited-clause complaint as a consumer-protection claim to reach a larger recovery.

Using a prohibited clause carries a statutory sanction; the statute's own measure follows.

Sanction as the statute states it: A prohibited provision included in a rental agreement is unenforceable, and where the landlord deliberately uses an agreement containing provisions the landlord knows to be prohibited, the tenant may recover actual damages. There is no multiple of the rent, no minimum, no fee award and no cure period, and the tenant need not show that the landlord tried to enforce the clause. A violation of the protected-person section is different: a court may award statutory damages of one thousand dollars and may also award reasonable attorney fees and costs.

The listed provisions:

• A provision that the tenant or the landlord agrees to waive or forego rights or remedies under the residential landlord and tenant act.

• A provision authorizing any person to confess judgment on a claim arising out of the rental agreement.

• A provision that either party agrees to pay either party's attorney's fees.

• A provision agreeing to the exculpation or limitation of either party's liability arising under law, or to indemnify either party for that liability or its costs, except that the agreement may provide that the tenant limits the landlord's liability for fire, theft or breakage with respect to common areas of the dwelling unit.

• Any provision by which a tenant waives, or a landlord requires a tenant to waive, the rights of a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault, human trafficking or stalking under the protected-person section.

Expressly permitted: A rental agreement may limit the landlord's liability for fire, theft or breakage with respect to common areas of the dwelling unit, and it may impose a termination fee of no more than one month's rent on a protected person who ends the tenancy under the domestic-violence section, but only if the fee is written into the agreement.

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

A Kansas residential rental agreement may not provide that either party agrees to pay either party's attorney's fees, and a provision that does is unenforceable. The ban runs both ways, and nothing replaces it: the act contains no prevailing-party award, no conversion of a one-way clause into a reciprocal one and no fee-shifting default, so in an ordinary dispute each side pays its own lawyer whatever the lease says. The state's appellate courts have fixed the boundary: the provision renders any residential lease clause agreeing to pay either party's fees unenforceable, and there is no similar provision covering commercial leases. The one place Kansas landlord-tenant law does award fees is the protected-person section, where a court may award reasonable attorney fees and costs alongside statutory damages of one thousand dollars for a violation.

State law says nothing either way about local lease-disclosure or lease-content rules.

Kansas preempts on four subjects and authorizes nothing. No political subdivision, including a county, a municipality or a township, may enact, maintain or enforce an ordinance or resolution that would have the effect of controlling the amount of rent charged or the purchase price agreed between the parties, with carve-outs for publicly owned property and for voluntary grant or incentive agreements, and a bar on making such an agreement a condition of a permit, plat, zoning change, classification, conditional use permit or variance. No municipality may require a landlord to give it a list of its tenants' names, except as the offender-registration act requires and, after a citation for breaking a public health, safety or welfare ordinance, under a narrow exception. No city or county may adopt, enforce or maintain a residential property licensing ordinance requiring periodic interior inspections of privately owned residential property for code violations unless the lawful occupant consents, though plan reviews and construction and final occupancy inspections are preserved and an occupant may ask for an inspection. And since July 1, 2026 no city or county may adopt or enforce an ordinance that stops a landlord refusing to let to someone whose rent would be paid in whole or in part through the housing choice voucher program or another assistance program a landlord joins voluntarily, restricts a landlord's ability to use or consider income-qualifying methods, credit scores, credit reports, eviction history, property damage history or criminal history according to the landlord's customarily applied criteria, limits the amount of a security deposit, or requires a landlord to grant tenants an automatic right of first refusal; any such ordinance adopted before that date is null and void. That last act was vetoed on April 8, 2026 and enacted over the veto by both chambers on April 9 and 10. What no Kansas statute does is preempt a local lease-disclosure ordinance by name, and none authorizes one either. No Kansas city has a signing-stage packet on this page. One temporary measure is now spent: a 2026 act barred municipal limits on short-term-rental and vacation-property regulation between May 15 and July 25, 2026 only.

Buettner v. Unruh, 7 Kan. App. 2d 359, 642 P.2d 124 (Kansas Court of Appeals; 1982; residential setting; bears on the move-in condition report): The move-in inventory the statute envisions is more than a list of needed repairs prepared by one party: it requires a detailed record of the condition of the entire premises, prepared and signed by both the tenant and the landlord or the landlord's designated agent. But the section recites no penalty for non-compliance, so while a landlord's failure to take the inventory could raise an inference that the damage pre-existed the tenancy, the absence of an inventory does not prevent the landlord from putting in evidence of damage sustained during the tenancy.

Oak Park Investment Co. v. Lundy's, Inc., 6 Kan. App. 2d 133, 626 P.2d 1236 (Kansas Court of Appeals; 1981; arose from a commercial lease; bears on attorney-fee clauses): This was a commercial lease, and that is the point of the decision for this page. The court held that the residential landlord and tenant act renders unenforceable any provision in a residential lease by which either party's attorney's fees are agreed to be paid, that the clause before it would have been unenforceable had the lease been residential, and that no similar statutory provision covers commercial leases.

Chelsea Plaza Homes, Inc. v. Moore, 226 Kan. 430, 601 P.2d 1100 (Kansas Supreme Court; 1979; residential setting; bears on void or prohibited lease clauses): A tenant may not enlarge the remedy for a prohibited lease clause by recasting it as a consumer-protection claim. The consumer protection act covers a very broad area of transactions while the residential landlord and tenant act covers one small area and is complete within itself for that area, so for all transactions within its purview the residential act controls and preempts the field. The practical effect is that the tenant's recovery stays the actual damages the act allows for a landlord's deliberate use of a prohibited provision.