Landlord Atlas

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

Verified September 13, 2026 All Maine topics →

A Maine lease is unenforceable unless the landlord holds a copy of the total price disclosure, signed by both sides before the tenancy begins.

Cited to 14 M.R.S. §§ 6000, 6015, 6016, 6016-A § 6000(1-A), (1-B), (3-A) and 28 more cited sources · Verified September 13, 2026

That disclosure must set out the rent, every mandatory and optional recurring fee, the utility costs and anything else the tenant will have to pay, in language the general public can follow. Four more things are owed before the tenant signs or pays a deposit: the radon disclosure on the health department's form with a signed acknowledgment, the energy efficiency statement signed by both sides and kept three years, the smoking policy with a written acknowledgment, and word of whether an adjacent unit has bed bugs. A landlord whose building is served by a private well must have it tested every five years, now for a full contaminant list rather than arsenic alone, and pass the results to every tenant within ten days. Maine requires no written lease, no copy of the lease, no move-in checklist, no owner identity notice and no flood, mold, asbestos or methamphetamine disclosure, and a clause making the tenant pay the landlord's legal fees is unenforceable unless it runs to whichever party prevails in a case of wanton disregard.

Maine lease disclosures at a glance

Which law governs Maine's residential rules sit in Title 14: chapter 709 subchapter 1 (sections 6000 to 6016-A) and chapter 710 (sections 6021 to 6030-K), with the security-deposit rules in chapter 710-A. Both chapters are drafted throughout for a lease or tenancy at will agreement, so the disclosure duties bind oral tenancies as well as written ones; section 6017 pulls commercial tenancies, meaning a nonresidential tenancy of premises by a for-profit business entity, out into their own scheme. Two duties in this topic live outside Title 14: the radon and well-water rules are in Title 22, the health and welfare title, and the energy efficiency disclosure statement is prepared under Title 35-A section 10117 by the Efficiency Maine Trust and the Maine State Housing Authority. The sales side is Title 33 chapter 7 subchapter 1-A, whose own scope clause reaches a lease only where the lease carries an option to purchase. The prohibited-clause section works through the Maine Unfair Trade Practices Act, so a banned lease term is both unenforceable and a violation of Title 5 section 207.
Who is covered Statewide, and the duties reach every residential tenancy including a tenancy at will; only commercial tenancies are carved out. Four thresholds apply inside the topic. The cash-receipt duty and the whole security-deposit chapter do not reach a structure containing no more than five dwelling units, one of which the landlord occupies. The radon regime does not reach a building used exclusively for rental under short-term leases of one hundred days or less where no renewal or extension can occur. The well-water testing and disclosure duty reaches only a unit served by a private drinking-water well. The pre-renovation lead notice reaches only a building built before 1978 that contains at least one unit rented for human habitation.
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 Maine statute requires a residential rental agreement to be in writing. The landlord-tenant chapters are written throughout for a lease or tenancy at will agreement, so an oral tenancy is lawful and carries the same disclosure duties; a lease for more than one year must be written and signed to be sued on. Nothing requires the landlord to give the tenant a copy of the signed lease, and no deadline exists. Two duties come close and neither is a lease copy: the total price disclosure must be signed by both parties with a copy provided to each, and the energy efficiency statement must be signed by the tenant and by the landlord, who keeps the signed statement for at least three years. No statute requires a lease, a notice or a disclosure in a language other than English.

Statute of frauds: No action may be maintained on a contract for the sale of land or of any interest in or concerning land, or on any agreement that is not to be performed within one year of its making, unless the agreement or a memorandum of it is in writing and signed by the party to be charged or that party's authorized agent (Title 33, section 51, subsections 4 and 5). A lease for more than one year therefore has to be written; the section states no residential carve-out.

Format and plain-language rules: Maine has no plain-language act for consumer contracts and no general type-size rule for leases. Two format rules are attached to particular duties instead: the total price disclosure must be plain and readily understandable by the general public, and a tenant's waiver of the thirty-day pre-renovation lead notice must be in plain language, must immediately precede the adult tenant's signature, must be printed in no less than twelve-point boldface type and must follow the form the statute sets out or a substantially similar one.

Electronic leases and signatures: Maine's Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (Title 10, chapter 1051) applies to electronic records and signatures relating to a transaction, and the only exclusions are wills, codicils and testamentary trusts and most of the Uniform Commercial Code. There is no landlord-tenant, residential-lease or eviction-notice carve-out, so a lease and the disclosures on this page may be signed and delivered electronically. A transaction under the act remains subject to other substantive law, so the signature duties attached to the total price disclosure and the energy efficiency statement still have to be met, electronically or on paper.
Owner and agent identity

No.

Maine requires no disclosure of the owner's or managing agent's name and address, and has no statewide landlord or rental registration. What it does instead is supply the consequence directly: any person authorized to enter into a residential lease or tenancy at will agreement on behalf of the owner is deemed by statute to be the owner's agent for service of process and for receiving and receipting for notices and demands (section 6023). Nothing has to be written, given or timed, and there is no unit threshold, so there is no duty to fail. The practical effect for a tenant is that serving the person who signed the lease for the owner is good service. The only identity-adjacent rule in the chapters is the content of a cash receipt, which must carry the signature of the person receiving the payment and that person's name printed legibly. Municipalities are not given any registration power over landlords by statute either.
Required statements and lease text

No mandatory statement — the only state instrument is an agency model lease or statement that no landlord is obliged to use.

Maine prescribes no general tenant-rights statement, no code summary, no handbook and no general lease text, and there is no list of subjects a lease must address. The one general item is the Attorney General's model residential lease, which the state must publish and keep current but which no landlord is obliged to use, so what exists is a model document rather than a required one. The state's mandatory documents are all subject-specific and sit in their own rows: the health department's radon disclosure form on the radon row, and the energy efficiency disclosure statement on the utilities, fees and payment row. The only wording the statutes fix anywhere is the tenant's waiver of the thirty-day pre-renovation lead notice and, as an alternative route to the energy disclosure, a single sentence a landlord may put in the rental application telling the applicant of the right to obtain a twelve-month history of energy consumption and its cost from the energy supplier.

The state's model:

Maine Consumer Law Guide, Chapter 16: Model Residential Lease — an agency model no landlord is obliged to use; issued by the Office of the Maine Attorney General. The Legislature ordered the Attorney General, by December 1, 2025, to create and post on the Attorney General's public website a model lease for residential property that complies with current law, including any disclosure and any document required to be attached to a residential lease, and to update it every two years by December 1st of each odd-numbered year. The duty falls on the Attorney General, not on any landlord: no one is obliged to use the model lease, and nothing follows from not using it. The Attorney General met the deadline, and the page carries three documents, the guide chapter with the lease and disclosure, a lease-only version, and a model total price disclosure statement. The next revision is due by December 1, 2027. Revision: Last revised: December 2025, as printed on the face of the chapter. Languages: English. Agency page. (§ 6030-K(1)–(2))
Move-in condition report

No.

Maine requires no move-in condition report, checklist or inventory, and no deposit deduction depends on one. The closest thing in the statutes is a payment receipt rather than a condition record: a landlord who accepts rent or a security deposit in cash, in whole or in part, must give a written receipt at the time the cash payment is accepted, with a separate receipt for each payment, carrying the date of payment, the amount paid, the name of the party for whom the payment is made, the period it covers, whether it is rent or a security deposit, the signature of the person receiving it and that person's name printed legibly; a rent card carrying the same information will do. That duty does not apply to a tenancy in a structure containing no more than five dwelling units, one of which the landlord occupies. The only inspection duties in the chapters are the bed-bug inspections that follow a tenant's notice and the landlord's ordinary right of access.

Deposit notice at signing: Only on request: the landlord must disclose the name of the institution and the account number where the security deposit is held (section 6038, subsection 1). There is no signing-time deposit notice, and the deposit chapter does not reach a structure of no more than five units with one occupied by the landlord. The cap, the return rules and the surety-bond alternative are on the security-deposits page.
Hazard disclosures

Three in-force state hazard disclosures: bed bugs (before signing and on request); radon (before signing, within a stated period, and on request); and private drinking-water well: testing and results to tenants (within a stated period and at move-in). Also on the books: lead — a notice fired by an event during the tenancy, not a signing disclosure; no state duty exists for mold, methamphetamine, or asbestos.

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

Lead (state add-on to the federal rule) — a notice fired by an event during the tenancy, not a signing disclosure, in writing (a statute). Maine has had no lead-hazard disclosure at lease signing since 2011, when both the disclosure subsection and its application clause were repealed. What the state adds to the federal rule is a renovation notice, and it fires on the work rather than on the tenancy. A landlord, or anyone engaged by a landlord, who undertakes any repair, renovation or remodeling activity in a residential building built before 1978 that includes a unit rented for human habitation must give notice of the activity and of the risk of an environmental lead hazard at least thirty days before the work starts, by posting a sign on the building's exterior entry doors and by sending notice by certified mail to every unit in the building. Shorter notice is possible only with the posted sign plus, from one adult tenant of each unit, a written waiver of the thirty days and a written acknowledgment of receipt for that particular activity; the waiver has prescribed wording, in plain language, immediately above the tenant's signature, in at least twelve-point boldface type. Emergency repairs are exempt. Separately, the state keeps a registry of leased lead-safe residential dwellings, but joining it is voluntary and it produces no tenant notice, and the old seller-and-landlord disclosure form section in the health title was repealed by the same 2011 act. Threshold: A residential building built before 1978 that includes one or more units rented for human habitation. Emergency repairs are exempt. If the duty is not met: A person who violates the notice subsection commits a civil violation for which a fine of up to five hundred dollars per violation may be assessed, enforceable in either the District Court or the Superior Court. The subsection does not displace the landlord's repair duties or the rights given by the lead poisoning control law.

Mold — no state duty. No Maine statute or rule requires a mold disclosure to a tenant, and the word does not appear in the landlord-tenant chapters. Mold is a condition question instead, and since July 29, 2026 a sharper one: it is now a breach of the implied warranty of fitness for human habitation to offer for rent a dwelling unit in which a leaking event, or chronic moisture or humidity outside the tenant's control, has produced the growth of mold, bacteria or other biological organisms. A leaking event is defined as a water leak from flooding or from a system or structural failure, such as a failure of a roof, window, door, plumbing system, foundation or appliance. That is a habitability standard, on the habitability page, not something to be disclosed at signing.

Bed bugs — in force — a state duty, before signing and on request (a statute). Before renting a dwelling unit, a landlord must tell a prospective tenant if an adjacent unit or units are currently infested with bed bugs or are being treated for them. On request from a tenant or prospective tenant, the landlord must also give the last date on which the unit being rented, or an adjacent unit, was inspected for bed bugs and found free of them. No form or wording is prescribed and no unit count or building type is carved out. Two companion duties sit beside the disclosure: a landlord may not offer for rent a unit the landlord knows or suspects is infested, and before charging a tenant for help preparing the unit for treatment the landlord must tell the tenant what that compliance may cost. During the tenancy, the landlord must inspect within five days of the tenant's notice and contact a certified pest control agent within ten days of finding an infestation. Knowledge standard: Whether an adjacent unit is currently infested or being treated; the companion bar on offering a unit for rent turns on what the landlord knows or suspects. If the duty is not met: A failure counts as a finding that the landlord has unreasonably failed to take prompt, effective steps to repair or remedy a condition that endangers or materially impairs a tenant's health or safety, and the tenant may recover a penalty of two hundred fifty dollars or actual damages, whichever is greater, plus reasonable attorney's fees. An eviction filed within six months of the tenant asserting these rights raises a rebuttable presumption of retaliation.

Radon — in force — a state duty, before signing, within a stated period, and on request, on an agency document (a statute). Maine runs the most detailed rental radon regime in the country, and it starts with testing rather than paperwork. A landlord had to have each residential building tested by March 1, 2014 and, unless a mitigation system has been installed, every ten years after that when a tenant requests it; a building constructed or first occupied after March 1, 2014 must be tested within twelve months of a tenant occupying it, by a person registered with the health department. The disclosure follows the results. Before a tenant enters into a lease or tenancy at will agreement or pays a deposit, and within thirty days of receiving results for existing tenants, the landlord must give written notice on the form the health department prescribes, covering the date and results of the most recent test, whether mitigation has been performed, the tenant's right to conduct a test and the risk associated with radon; a prospective tenant who asks must be given the same information orally. The form carries an acknowledgment the tenant signs, and its own text says that signing is not a waiver of any rights. It also tells the tenant that a re-test may be requested after ten years unless a mitigation system is installed and maintained, and that at four picocuries per liter or higher mitigation is recommended but not required, in which case either side may end the lease on at least thirty days' notice. If a tenant's own test comes back at or above four picocuries per liter, the landlord must either disclose those results or have a registered test done and disclose those, and results go to the health department within thirty days on its landlord reporting form. A separate voluntary program, the state's gold standard designation, asks a participating landlord to test every two years and to tell tenants in writing once an elevated level has been mitigated; joining it is optional and it is not a general duty. Threshold: A residential building does not include a building used exclusively for rental under short-term leases of one hundred days or less where no lease renewal or extension can occur. Document: Landlords Disclosure To Tenants Of Radon Gas Hazards In A Residential Rental Property (HHE 810), issued by the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Department of Health and Human Services. Revision: HHE-810 (12/2025), as printed in the footer of the form. Agency page. A signed acknowledgment is taken. If the duty is not met: A violation is a civil violation for which a fine of not more than two hundred fifty dollars per violation may be assessed, and a failure to give the written notice, or a falsified test or falsified results, is a breach of the implied warranty of fitness for human habitation.

Methamphetamine — no state duty. Maine requires no methamphetamine disclosure to a tenant, has no contaminated-property registry, sets no decontamination standard in statute and does not bar renting a property that was used as a drug laboratory. Methamphetamine appears in the property law only as one item on the seller's property disclosure statement, and that statement reaches a lease only where the lease carries an option to purchase. The health title's only methamphetamine provision is a retailer-education program.

Asbestos — no state duty. No Maine statute or rule requires an asbestos disclosure to a tenant. The word does not appear in the health title or in the landlord-tenant chapters at all; asbestos is listed only as an item on the seller's property disclosure statement, which does not reach an ordinary lease. The state's asbestos management rules govern abatement work, and the disclosures they require run between the abatement contractor and the building owner.

Private drinking-water well: testing and results to tenants — in force — a state duty, within a stated period and at move-in, in writing (a statute). A landlord whose rental building is served by a private drinking-water well must have the well tested every five years and must give the results to the tenants. Since July 29, 2026 the test is no longer arsenic alone: the water must be tested for arsenic and for the other contaminants or properties the health department's uniform testing recommendation specifies, a list that now names bacteria, nitrates, nitrites, chloride, hardness, copper, iron, pH, sodium, lead, uranium, manganese, fluoride, radon and perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, unless the department decides a particular test is unnecessary on the basis of previous results or credible scientific evidence. Testing must go through a laboratory certified or accredited by the state. Within ten days of being notified of the results the landlord must give each tenant served by that well the results, and within ten days of being notified must tell any new tenant the most recent results for the well that will serve them. No form is prescribed and the section states no penalty. One more obligation sits alongside it: every landlord of a residential building served by a private well must have the well tested for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances no later than January 1, 2027, a one-time requirement enacted with the 2026 broadening. Threshold: Only a unit whose water comes from a private drinking-water well.
Flood disclosure

No.

Maine requires no flood disclosure to a renter. The word flood appears in the landlord-tenant chapters only in the 2026 definition of a leaking event, which is a repair standard. The state did legislate a flood disclosure in 2024, and chose sellers: a seller's property disclosure statement must say whether the property lies wholly or partly within an area of special flood hazard on the effective flood insurance rate map issued on or after March 4, 2002, give the federally designated flood zone and a copy of the relevant map panel, and report, for the seller's period of ownership, flood events, flood-related damage, flood insurance claims with their dates and disaster-related aid with its dates. The scope clause stops short of an ordinary lease: the subchapter applies to the transfer of any interest in residential real property by sale, exchange, installment land contract, lease with an option to purchase or any other option to purchase, the statement is delivered no later than the time the purchaser makes an offer, and the remedy is the purchaser's seventy-two-hour withdrawal right. A tenant with no purchase option gets nothing under it, and the state's floodplain law regulates municipalities and the environmental department rather than leases.
Disclosures about the property's situation No statutory disclosure of this kind
What need not be disclosed None — no statute says a fact about the property need not or may not be disclosed in a rental, or bars a claim over its non-disclosure.
Utility, fee and payment disclosures Maine's fee rules are the strongest in the country and they work before signing rather than inside the lease. Before entering a lease or tenancy at will agreement, the landlord must give the prospective tenant a written disclosure of the costs the tenant will be responsible for paying, covering at a minimum the total cost of rent, any mandatory recurring fee, any optional recurring fee, any utility service costs and any other cost the tenant will have to pay. It must be plain and readily understandable by the general public, and it must be signed by both parties with a copy provided to each. A landlord who cannot obtain the utility service costs for the unit may supply a completed energy efficiency disclosure statement instead. The disclosure is not required where the tenant owes no mandatory or optional recurring fee. The sanction is the sharpest in this topic anywhere: the lease or tenancy at will agreement is unenforceable if the landlord does not receive a signed copy of it. The statute defines its own terms, so a mandatory recurring fee is money other than rent paid on a predetermined recurring basis to meet lease requirements about services or common areas, and it excludes late, missed and insufficient-payment fees, repair costs, utility service costs and charges that reimburse reasonable costs or deter lease violations. An optional recurring fee may be charged only if the landlord gives the tenant written notice, before the fee starts, that the tenant may opt in and may stop paying at any time without penalty, and no lease may be denied or ended because a tenant opts out. The total a landlord, agent or broker may require at the start is capped at the first full month's rent, the deposit and any properly disclosed mandatory recurring fee. Energy: a prospective tenant who will pay utility costs has the right to obtain a twelve-month history of consumption and its cost from the energy supplier, and the landlord must give any tenant who will pay for energy, or anyone who asks in person, the residential rental energy efficiency disclosure statement prepared by the Efficiency Maine Trust and the Maine State Housing Authority. Before the tenant enters into a contract or pays a deposit the landlord must provide the statement, obtain the tenant's signature on it, sign it and keep the signed statement for at least three years; a landlord may instead name each prior energy supplier in the rental application along with the sentence the statute prescribes about the right to a twelve-month history. That duty is in force now, but its remedy is not: from January 1, 2030, a tenant who does not receive a signed statement may end the lease on thirty days' written notice and the landlord may keep no fee or deposit because of it. Smoking: the landlord must give every tenant or prospective tenant a smoking policy disclosure saying whether smoking is prohibited on the premises, allowed on the whole premises or allowed in limited areas, identifying those areas, either in the written lease or in a separate written notice, and must obtain a written acknowledgment before the tenant enters into a contract or pays a deposit; no tenant may bring a private action based solely on the landlord's failure to provide it. Common-area utilities: a landlord may not enter into a lease for a unit in a multi-unit building where the cost of heat, electricity or another utility for common areas is the tenant's sole responsibility unless both parties agree in writing that the tenant pays in return for a stated rent reduction or other fair consideration approximating the actual cost; a waiver is void, and the tenant may recover actual damages or two hundred fifty dollars, whichever is greater, plus fees and costs. Cash payments get a written receipt with seven stated contents, except in an owner-occupied structure of five units or fewer. Where a tenant is offered a surety bond instead of a deposit, the landlord must set out the tenant's rights in writing before the bond is bought. Maine requires no shared-meter, submetering or ratio-billing disclosure, no payment-method disclosure, no receipt for non-cash payments, no rent-concession disclosure, no renter's-insurance disclosure and no rent reporting. Late fees, application and screening fees, rent increases and deposits are on their own pages.
Lease clauses that are void or prohibited

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

Maine's roster sits in one section and is framed as a consumer-protection rule: six enumerated lease, tenancy at will or rule provisions are declared unenforceable and in violation of the Unfair Trade Practices Act, and a general anti-waiver rule makes it an unfair and deceptive trade practice to require a tenant to agree to a provision that waives a tenant right under the landlord-tenant or deposit chapters unless the law specifically allows that waiver during negotiations. The roster binds clauses that burden the tenant rather than either side's clauses. There is no cure window and no general unconscionability provision. The heaviest sanction in Maine law is not aimed at a bad clause at all: a lease is unenforceable where the landlord does not receive a signed copy of the total price disclosure. Three other sections carry their own void-on-waiver language, covering rent increases, increases while a unit is uninhabitable and common-area utility charges. Whether the general anti-waiver rule voids an arbitration clause in a residential lease is an open question the Law Court expressly declined to decide in 2026.

Sanction as the statute states it: A listed provision is unenforceable, and including it is a violation of the Maine Unfair Trade Practices Act, which carries its own enforcement and private-action machinery outside the landlord-tenant chapters. The section states no damages figure for a prohibited clause, no cure window and no whole-lease voidness.

The listed provisions:

• Any provision that has the effect of waiving a tenant right established in the landlord-tenant chapters or the security-deposit chapter, unless the law specifically allows the tenant to waive that right in negotiations with the landlord.

• Any provision that absolves the landlord from liability for the negligence of the landlord or the landlord's agent.

• Any provision that requires the tenant to pay the landlord's legal fees in enforcing the lease or tenancy at will agreement.

• Any provision that requires the tenant to give a lien upon the tenant's property for the amount of any rent or other sums due the landlord.

• Any provision that requires the tenant to acknowledge that the provisions of the lease, including tenant rules, are fair and reasonable.

• Any provision that requires the tenant to pay a fee, penalty or other charge for the act of discontinuing the tenancy, unless the charge recovers reasonable expenses of securing another tenant after the tenant breached the notice requirement, collects unpaid rent, or recovers reasonable expenses of repairing damage the tenant caused; keeping a deposit for a permitted reason is not such a charge.

• Any provision that requires the tenant to pay an optional recurring fee in violation of the opt-in rule or the total price disclosure rule, or a mandatory recurring fee in violation of the total price disclosure rule.

Expressly permitted: A clause awarding attorney's fees to the prevailing party after a contested hearing to enforce the lease, in cases of wanton disregard of the lease's terms, is expressly permitted despite the general ban on making the tenant pay the landlord's fees.
Attorney-fee clauses

A lease clause making a party pay the landlord's attorney fees is void.

A lease provision requiring the tenant to pay the landlord's legal fees in enforcing the lease is unenforceable and its use is an unfair trade practice. The ban runs one way: it reaches only a clause making the tenant pay the landlord's fees, and nothing stops a clause favoring the tenant. One narrow version survives. A clause providing for an award of attorney's fees to the prevailing party after a contested hearing to enforce the lease, in cases of wanton disregard of the lease's terms, is expressly not a violation and is enforceable, so it runs to either side and only in that situation. Maine does not convert a one-way clause into a reciprocal one. Several statutes award fees without any clause at all, and those awards are unaffected by what the lease says: the bed-bug remedy, the common-area utility and utility-shutoff remedies, the rent-increase and uninhabitable-increase remedies, the unlawful-entry remedy and the deposit-account remedy each carry their own fee provision.
When, how, and what happens on a failure Almost everything in Maine happens before signing, and the remedies ladder is deliberately uneven. Five clocks run before the tenancy starts: the total price disclosure, signed by both parties with a copy to each, before entering the lease or tenancy at will agreement; written notice of any optional recurring fee before the fee starts; the energy efficiency statement, signed by tenant and landlord, before the tenant enters into a contract or pays a deposit, with the landlord keeping it three years, and to anyone who asks in person; the smoking policy disclosure with a written acknowledgment, again before contract or deposit; and the radon disclosure on the health department's form, before the lease or deposit, with a signed acknowledgment built into the form. Bed-bug information about an adjacent unit is owed before renting, and the date of the last clean inspection on request. Two duties run during the tenancy rather than at its start: the radon notice within thirty days of results for existing tenants, and the well-water results within ten days of the landlord being notified of them, with a new tenant told the most recent results within ten days. One duty fires on an event: the lead renovation notice, thirty days before the work, by posted sign and certified mail. A cash payment gets a receipt at the moment it is accepted. Nothing recurs annually, nothing fires on a transfer of ownership, and the only recurring cycles are the ten-year radon re-test on tenant request and the five-year well test. The remedies do not match each other and should not be read as if they did. A missing signed total price disclosure makes the whole lease unenforceable. A radon failure is a civil violation with a fine of up to two hundred fifty dollars and a breach of the warranty of habitability. A lead renovation failure is a civil violation with a fine of up to five hundred dollars. A bed-bug failure carries two hundred fifty dollars or actual damages, whichever is greater, plus fees, and a six-month retaliation presumption. A common-area utility charge without the written agreement carries the same two hundred fifty dollar floor plus fees. The well-water section states no penalty at all. The energy statement's remedy does not arrive until January 1, 2030. And the smoking policy disclosure, uniquely, cannot be sued on: a tenant may not maintain a private action based solely on the landlord's failure to give it.
Can cities add their own rules Maine says nothing either way about local lease-disclosure or lease-content rules. Neither landlord-tenant chapter nor the deposit chapter carries a preemption clause or an authorization clause; the one municipal provision in them empowers a municipality to step in when a landlord fails to supply heat, water or electricity, which is an intervention power rather than a license to regulate lease content. The background is home rule: a municipality may exercise any power the Legislature has power to confer and has not denied expressly or by clear implication, an ordinance enacted under that power is presumed valid, and the Legislature is not held to have implicitly denied a power unless the ordinance would frustrate the purpose of a state law. Maine's municipal rent-control chapter was repealed in 1995, so there is neither a rent-control preemption nor a rent-control authorization in the statutes. No Maine city carries a lease packet or signing-time disclosure on this page.
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 Public Law 2025, chapter 411 (L.D. 1471), An Act to Require Energy Efficiency Disclosure Statements for Certain Rental Housing: From January 1, 2030 a tenant who does not receive a signed energy efficiency disclosure statement may end the lease on thirty days' written notice, and the landlord may not keep any fee or security deposit for a lease ended that way. The disclosure duty itself is unchanged and in force today; only the tenant's remedy waits. Text: 14 M.R.S. § 6030-C.
Leading court decisions Neils Point, LLC v. Grady, 2026 ME 72 (Maine Supreme Judicial Court sitting as the Law Court; residential setting; bears on void or prohibited lease clauses): Tenants under a residential lease containing an arbitration clause lost the right to challenge whether their dispute was arbitrable, because they admitted arbitrability, made their own arbitration demand and took part without objection, raising the point only after an adverse award. The court expressly did not decide whether the general anti-waiver rule in the landlord-tenant chapter applies to such a lease or prohibits an arbitration provision in it, so that question is still open in Maine.

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

Maine hazard disclosures at a glance

Three rows below are in-force state duties 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) Event-driven notice only — In writing —
Mold None — — —
Bed bugs In force Before signing and on request Not specified —
Radon In force Before signing, within a stated period, and on request Agency document Landlords Disclosure To Tenants Of Radon Gas Hazards In A Residential Rental Property (HHE 810) — Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Department of Health and Human Services
Methamphetamine None — — —
Asbestos None — — —
Private drinking-water well: testing and results to tenants In force Within a stated period and at move-in In writing —

Documents named in the required-statements row: Maine Consumer Law Guide, Chapter 16: Model Residential Lease (Office of the Maine Attorney General).

Where the published code text differs from the enacted law

On this page, the published edition runs behind the last session.

The health title's published pages are behind the enacted law on one duty here. The state's official pages for Title 22 were generated on January 5, 2026 and still print the older, arsenic-only version of the landlord well-testing section; the 2026 act that broadened it to arsenic plus the department's full contaminant list took effect on July 29, 2026. The description on this page follows the enacted act, not the older page. Nothing else in this topic departs from the published text: the Title 14 landlord-tenant sections were untouched by the 2026 session.

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: Maine 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 Maine require a landlord to give the tenant a written statement of tenant rights?
No mandatory statement — the only state instrument is an agency model lease or statement that no landlord is obliged to use. Maine prescribes no general tenant-rights statement, no code summary, no handbook and no general lease text, and there is no list of subjects a lease must address.
Does a Maine landlord have to disclose the owner's name and address?
No. Maine requires no disclosure of the owner's or managing agent's name and address, and has no statewide landlord or rental registration. What it does instead is supply the consequence directly: any person authorized to enter into a residential lease or tenancy at will agreement on behalf of the owner is deemed by statute to be the owner's agent for service of process and for receiving and receipting for notices and demands (section 6023).
Is a move-in inspection checklist required in Maine?
No. Maine requires no move-in condition report, checklist or inventory, and no deposit deduction depends on one. The closest thing in the statutes is a payment receipt rather than a condition record: a landlord who accepts rent or a security deposit in cash, in whole or in part, must give a written receipt at the time the cash payment is accepted, with a separate receipt for each payment, carrying the date of payment, the amount paid, the name of the party for whom the payment is made, the period it covers, whether it is rent or a security deposit, the signature of the person receiving it and that person's name printed legibly; a rent card carrying the same information will do.
What hazards must a Maine landlord disclose to a tenant?
Three in-force state hazard disclosures: bed bugs (before signing and on request); radon (before signing, within a stated period, and on request); and private drinking-water well: testing and results to tenants (within a stated period and at move-in). Also on the books: lead — a notice fired by an event during the tenancy, not a signing disclosure; no state duty exists for mold, methamphetamine, or asbestos.
Does Maine require flood disclosure to renters?
No. Maine requires no flood disclosure to a renter. The word flood appears in the landlord-tenant chapters only in the 2026 definition of a leaking event, which is a repair standard.
Does Maine void or prohibit specific lease clauses?
Yes — the statute lists the lease provisions that are void or prohibited. Maine's roster sits in one section and is framed as a consumer-protection rule: six enumerated lease, tenancy at will or rule provisions are declared unenforceable and in violation of the Unfair Trade Practices Act, and a general anti-waiver rule makes it an unfair and deceptive trade practice to require a tenant to agree to a provision that waives a tenant right under the landlord-tenant or deposit chapters unless the law specifically allows that waiver during negotiations.

Citations

How this record was verified: Direct reading of the Maine Revised Statutes on the Office of the Revisor of Statutes' own site, chapter by chapter and title by title, with each title's generation date recorded because they differ: Title 14 chapters 709, 710 and 710-A (generated October 20, 2025, the trailer stating the text reflects changes through the First Special Session of the 132nd Legislature and is current through October 1, 2025), Title 22 (generated January 5, 2026), Title 33 (generated October 20, 2025), Title 30-A (generated October 23, 2025), Title 38 (generated October 20, 2025), Title 10 chapter 1051 and 35-A section 10117. Every section of the three residential chapters was read with its credit lines and section history. Because the Title 14 text predates the 2026 adjournment on April 29, 2026, currency was established by an enactment ledger rather than by a code date: all three published Laws of Maine volumes covering 2024 to 2026 were retrieved and converted, and each volume's per-section table of sections affected was extracted for Title 14 sections 6000 to 6099, Title 22 sections 770 to 790, 1300 to 1340 and 2650 to 2670, and Title 33 sections 50 to 60 and 170 to 180; the chaptered-law roll was separately enumerated and checked gap-free for the 131st Legislature's second regular session (chapters 487 to 684) and the 132nd's three sessions (chapters 1 to 17, 18 to 499 and 500 to 775), and the Revisor's own session roll confirms there is no post-adjournment special session. Each volume's title page supplied the general effective date, July 29, 2026 for the 2026 session. The enrolled text of the acts that move a value here was read: PL 2023, c. 594 (total price, recurring fees), PL 2025, c. 411 (the deferred energy remedy), PL 2025, c. 426 (the model lease), PL 2025, c. 746 (well-water testing), PL 2025, c. 515 (mold in the warranty of habitability) and PL 2025, c. 767. The Code of Maine Rules was read from the Secretary of State's agency-rules index: 10-144 C.M.R. chapters 224 and 292 and 06-096 C.M.R. chapters 424 and 425 were each downloaded and term-run with every hit enumerated, and chapters 234 and 293 enumerated by title. Four agency documents were opened and read: the Attorney General's model residential lease and model total price disclosure statement, the health department's radon disclosure form HHE 810 and its landlord radon reporting form, and the residential rental energy efficiency disclosure statement in both live copies. Neils Point, LLC v. Grady, 2026 ME 72, was read in full and its subsequent history checked. Verified September 13, 2026.

What was read to state each absence on this page: