What must a North Carolina 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 North Carolina statute requires a residential rental agreement to be in writing, and no statute requires the landlord to give the tenant a copy of one. A lease of more than three years must be written and signed to be enforceable. A written agreement does matter in two places, not as a duty but as the price of a landlord option: a landlord may charge for water, sewer, electricity or natural gas only under a written rental agreement, and the eviction administrative fees and the capped attorney fee are recoverable only under a written lease. There is no translation duty, no plain-language act and no lease-content roster; the only statute that says what a rental agreement must contain is the Vacation Rental Act, which Article 5 excludes from its own scope.

Statute of frauds: A lease for longer than three years from the making of it is void unless the contract, or a memorandum or note of it, is put in writing and signed by the party to be charged or by someone lawfully authorized (section 22-2). A lease for digging or mining is caught whatever its duration.

Format and plain-language rules: Chapter 42 prescribes no type size, no placement and no plain-language standard for a residential lease. The one typography rule in the neighborhood belongs to the sales side and reaches a lease only where it carries an option to purchase: the mineral and oil and gas rights disclosure must be conspicuous and in boldface type, in the statutory form with its six initialed items (section 47E-4.1, subsection a).

Electronic leases and signatures: North Carolina's version of the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act sits in Article 40 of Chapter 66 and supplies the general answer: an electronic record and an electronic signature are not denied effect because they are electronic, so an electronic lease is good. Nothing more is settled for a residential tenancy, because Chapter 42 contains no electronic-notice provision, no consent mechanism and no carve-out of its own; there is nothing in the landlord-tenant chapter to say whether a particular notice under it may be sent electronically or what a tenant must agree to first.

No.

No North Carolina statute requires a landlord to tell the tenant who owns the property or who manages it, in the lease or anywhere else, and there is no state landlord or rental registration. The law runs the other way: a real estate broker or firm managing a rental for a landlord is not personally liable as a party in a civil action between landlord and tenant solely because the broker or firm failed to identify the landlord in the rental agreement. The statute plainly contemplates a lease that does not name the owner. Because no duty exists, nothing follows from a failure, and there is no rent-withholding route in any event: a tenant may not unilaterally withhold rent before a court decides the right to do so. The only routes by which a North Carolina tenant learns a name and address are tied to a deposit. Within thirty days after the lease term begins the landlord must tell the tenant the name and address of the bank or insurance company holding the deposit or the bond, and where the landlord's interest is transferred and the deposit passes to the buyer, the transferor must notify the tenant by mail of the transfer and of the new owner's name and address. Both are on the security-deposits page.

No.

North Carolina prescribes nothing of this kind. No tenant-rights statement, summary, handbook or brochure must be handed over or attached; no words must appear in a residential lease; no agency is told to publish a model lease. Two things sit nearby and neither changes the answer. The Utilities Commission's rules do require a landlord who resells water, electricity or gas to give each tenant a document set when the lease is signed, but that is a utility duty tied to reselling a service, and it is described with the utility and fee rules. The Real Estate Commission's rules require a broker's own agency agreement with a prospective tenant to be in writing and to carry a fair-housing sentence, and the Commission's agency brochure is a broker-to-consumer document; both bind a licensed broker rather than a landlord under a lease. North Carolina also has no list of subjects a lease must address. Its only lease-content rules are prohibitions, on eviction administrative fees and litigation costs beyond those the statute authorizes, and one conditional term rule about tenant insurance, which is described with the utility and fee rules.

No.

No North Carolina statute requires a move-in condition statement, an inventory, a checklist, a walk-through offer, a notice that the tenant may inspect, or a list of what was charged to the previous tenant. Chapter 42 contains none of them. The Tenant Security Deposit Act does its work at the other end of the tenancy: a landlord who keeps any part of a deposit must account for it in an itemized statement after the tenant leaves, and a willful failure to comply voids the right to retain any of it. There is no move-in record for that accounting to be measured against, which is worth knowing before a dispute rather than after one.

Deposit notice at signing: Within thirty days after the lease term begins the landlord must tell the tenant the name and address of the bank or institution holding the deposit, or of the bond insurer (section 42-50), and on a transfer of the landlord's interest the transferor must mail the tenant the new owner's name and address within thirty days (section 42-54). Deposit limits, the accounting and the remedy are on the security-deposits page.

One in-force state hazard disclosure: lead maintenance-standard package for occupants (when the event the section names occurs and annually). Also on the books: three days' notice to occupants before lead work and water above a maximum contaminant level — a notice fired by an event during the tenancy, not a signing disclosure; and methamphetamine — the state bars renting the affected property instead of requiring disclosure; no state duty exists for mold, bed bugs, radon, or asbestos.

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

Lead maintenance-standard package for occupants — in force — a state duty, when the event the section names occurs and annually, in a signed acknowledgment (an administrative rule). North Carolina adds a real lead duty to the federal one, and it is the state's only signed occupant acknowledgment. An owner or managing agent of a pre-1978 unit who takes the maintenance-standard route, either by choice to earn the statutory protection from liability or because the health department has ordered the standard as the remedy, must give occupants four things: the two federal lead pamphlets on protecting a family from lead in the home and on renovating safely, summaries of any lead-hazard reports prepared for the property, and copies of previous certificates of compliance issued for it. Proof of compliance includes a signed statement by the occupants, if any, acknowledging that the information was provided. The rules set no deadline for handing the package over, but the cadence is annual, because a certificate of compliance expires a year after it is issued and the liability protection depends on repeating the steps yearly where a young child lives or visits regularly. This is not a universal duty at signing: an owner who does not take the maintenance standard owes none of it, and what reaches every landlord is the federal rule, which the site-wide federal page carries. Threshold: Pre-1978 residential housing units whose owner is on the maintenance standard. For a property of five or more units the rules allow statistical sampling instead of inspecting every unit. The rule states no penalty and gives the occupant no remedy. What the owner loses is the protection the statute offers: an owner who has complied with the maintenance standard is not deemed liable to a current or former occupant for lead poisoning after first complying, and that protection depends on repeating the steps each year for units where a child under six has lived or regularly visited in the past year. The health department enforces the lead article under its general enforcement powers.

Three days' notice to occupants before lead work — a notice fired by an event during the tenancy, not a signing disclosure, in writing (a statute and an administrative rule). Three notices fire during a tenancy rather than at signing, and all three run to occupants as well as to the health department. Where remediation has been ordered after a child or pregnant woman has been poisoned, the owner or managing agent must give the dates of the remediation activities at least three days before they start. Where a certificate of compliance has been issued and has not yet expired, the owner must give three days' notice before starting maintenance, renovation or remodeling. And before demolition the owner must give three days' notice to the occupants of any adjacent unit or facility. None of the three states a penalty. The notice that tells an occupant a lead hazard exists in the first place does not come from the landlord at all: the health department gives it, to the owner and to everyone living in, attending or regularly visiting the unit. Threshold: Applies to a unit under a remediation order, and to a unit with a current certificate of compliance where the owner does further work. The section states no penalty for a failure.

Mold — no state duty. No North Carolina statute or rule requires a landlord to disclose mold. The word appears in the landlord-tenant chapter only once, in the list of imminently dangerous conditions a landlord must repair: excessive standing water, sewage or flooding caused by plumbing leaks or poor drainage that contributes to mosquito infestation or mold. That is a repair duty, and it is on the habitability page.

Bed bugs — no state duty. North Carolina has no bed-bug law of any kind reaching a landlord: no disclosure, no history duty, no treatment rule. Neither the General Statutes nor the health rules use the term. An infestation is dealt with as a repair and habitability question.

Radon — no state duty. A North Carolina landlord owes no radon disclosure. Radon appears in exactly one section of the General Statutes, the content list for the seller's residential property disclosure statement, and that statement belongs to a sale; the same chapter says it does not affect the landlord and tenant relationship during a lease. The state's radiation rules govern radon professionals and the approval of proficiency programs, not lessors.

Methamphetamine — the state bars renting the affected property instead of requiring disclosure (a statute and an administrative rule). North Carolina has a methamphetamine regime, and it bars occupancy rather than requiring a word to the tenant. An owner, lessee, operator or other person in control of a residence or place of business who knows it has been used to manufacture methamphetamine must meet the state decontamination standards, and the contaminated property may not be occupied before it is decontaminated under those rules. The notice chain ends with the owner: law enforcement that posts a clandestine-laboratory notice tells the local health department, which then tells the owner of record or the owner's agent that the property was used as a laboratory, that it must be vacated, and that it must be remediated. Nothing in the rules requires anyone to tell a prospective or current tenant, and the paperwork after decontamination goes to the local health department. Knowledge standard: Knowledge that the property has been used for the manufacture of methamphetamine. If the property is rented in breach of the bar: The local health department enforces the decontamination rules under the health chapter's general enforcement powers. No tenant remedy and no damages figure appears anywhere in the rules.

Asbestos — no state duty. No North Carolina statute or rule requires an asbestos disclosure to a tenant. The state's asbestos provisions are an accreditation, permit and fee article with an exposure standard for public areas and a separate regime for schools, a successor-liability article and two occupational-disease sections; the rules are accreditation and work-practice rules. The only asbestos disclosure in state law is an item on the seller's disclosure statement, which belongs to a sale.

Water above a maximum contaminant level — a notice fired by an event during the tenancy, not a signing disclosure (a statute). North Carolina's drinking-water notice is a duty that fires on an event during the tenancy, and it turns on two things being true at once. Where the landlord is charging tenants for the cost of water or sewer service, and the landlord has actual knowledge, from the supplying water system or another reliable source, that the water being supplied to tenants in the property exceeds a maximum contaminant level set under the state's drinking-water article, the landlord must give notice that the water exceeds that level. No form, no deadline and no acknowledgment is prescribed, and the duty is event-driven rather than fixed to signing. A landlord who does not bill for water has no duty under this section. Knowledge standard: Actual knowledge from either the supplying water system or another reliable source. Threshold: No unit count. The condition is that the landlord is charging tenants for water or sewer service; a landlord who does not bill for water owes nothing here however much the landlord knows. The section states no consequence. The residual route is the chapter's general provision that a right or obligation it declares is enforceable by civil action; the two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar infraction elsewhere in the chapter is limited to smoke-alarm and carbon-monoxide-alarm failures, a violation of the article is not negligence in itself, and a tenant may not unilaterally withhold rent.

No.

North Carolina requires no flood disclosure to a tenant, and it is not one of the states where the duty exists on the sales side only: flooding is not even among the subjects the seller's residential property disclosure statement must cover, which run to water supply and sewage, the roof and structure, mechanical systems, wood-destroying insects, zoning and land-use restrictions, and environmental contamination. The phrase special flood hazard area appears nowhere in the General Statutes, and the four provisions that mention flood-prone land are a county stormwater provision, an airport-project permitting provision, a flood-storage restoration provision and the charge of a legislative committee. The one flood reference in the landlord-tenant chapter is a repair item, on standing water, sewage or flooding from plumbing leaks or poor drainage. Floodplain management in North Carolina is done through local ordinances under the state's enabling article, which binds local governments rather than landlords.

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.

North Carolina is one of the few states whose stigma statute is written for renting rather than for selling, and it names landlords. In offering real property for rent or lease it is not a material fact that the property was previously occupied by a person who died or had a serious illness while living there, or that a person convicted of a crime requiring registration under the sex-offender article occupies, occupied or lives near the property. Because those facts are not material, silence about them founds no claim. The proviso is the limit, and it is a real one: no landlord or lessor may knowingly make a false statement about any of those facts. A separate section does related work on the screening side, providing that a prospective or current tenant's, occupant's or guest's criminal record does not make future injury or damage foreseeable by the landlord, and that a landlord has no duty to screen for a criminal record or to refuse to rent because of one.

No enumerated list — North Carolina has no roster of prohibited lease clauses. What it has is four voidness rules, each with its own envelope. The first is the state's main rule on what a residential lease may contain: the bar on putting an unauthorized eviction administrative fee, or an unauthorized out-of-pocket expense or litigation cost, in a lease. Two more article-scoped rules void a term that contradicts the ban on self-help eviction or that waives the retaliatory-eviction protections, and the fourth is a pair of termination sections that carry absolute non-waiver clauses of their own. Article 5, which holds the habitability and fee rules, has no general anti-waiver section. Three provisions do that work instead. A landlord is not released from the habitability duties by the tenant's acceptance of a failure to meet them, whether the acceptance came before, at or after the lease was made, unless a government body has imposed an impediment to repair for a period of up to six months; but the parties may make a later written repair contract if it is supported by consideration beyond the letting itself and is not made to evade the landlord's duties. The tenant's obligation to pay rent and the landlord's habitability obligations are mutually dependent. And a violation of the article is not negligence in itself, while a tenant may not unilaterally withhold rent before a court has decided the right to do so.

Sanction as the statute states it: The provision is void and unenforceable and nothing more follows: no damages figure, no multiple of rent, no sanction for deliberate use and no cure window. The fees section says so in its own words, and the two article-scoped provisions say the offending term is void as against public policy.

The general provisions:

• Any lease or contract provision contrary to the article on ejectment of residential tenants, which bars self-help eviction and governs a landlord's dealings with a tenant's property, is void as against public policy (section 42-25.8).

• Any waiver by a tenant or a member of the tenant's household of the rights and remedies created by the retaliatory-eviction article is void as contrary to public policy (section 42-37.3).

• Putting in a lease, or claiming, any administrative fee for filing a summary ejectment complaint or for money owed other than the fees the statute expressly authorizes is contrary to public policy, though out-of-pocket expenses and litigation costs are treated separately (section 42-46, subsection h, paragraph 3).

• Providing in a lease for the payment of any out-of-pocket expenses or litigation costs for filing a summary ejectment complaint or for money owed, other than those the statute expressly authorizes, is contrary to public policy (section 42-46, subsection h, paragraph 3a).

• Any provision of a residential rental agreement contrary to the fees section is against the public policy of the state and therefore void and unenforceable (section 42-46, subsection h, paragraph 4).

• The military-termination section may not be waived or modified by agreement under any circumstances, and the section giving a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking the right to end a tenancy may not be waived or modified by agreement (sections 42-45 and 42-45.1).

A landlord attorney-fee clause is lawful but capped.

A North Carolina landlord may recover attorney fees from a tenant, but only under a written lease and only up to a cap. On top of late fees and the eviction administrative fees, the landlord may charge and recover actual out-of-pocket expenses, which include reasonable attorney fees actually paid or owed, under a written lease, not exceeding fifteen percent of the amount the tenant owes, or fifteen percent of the monthly rent stated in the lease where the eviction rests on a default other than non-payment. Those expenses may be included in what the tenant must pay to cure a default. Beyond the cap, a landlord who prevails may recover all actual reasonable attorney fees where a court determines that a tenant's appeal of a summary ejectment to district court was frivolous, unreasonable, without foundation, in bad faith or solely for delay; that rule comes from two 2025 acts, both made retroactive to September 9, 2024, and the code page's version of it is garbled. Nothing converts a landlord's fee clause into a mutual one, and no statute awards fees to a prevailing tenant in the ordinary case. The one tenant-side route is discretionary and narrow: in a security-deposit case a court that finds the losing party was in willful non-compliance with the deposit article may award attorney fees as part of the costs.

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

North Carolina's preemption is express but narrow, and reading it as a general bar would be wrong. No county or city may enact, maintain or enforce an ordinance or resolution regulating the amount of rent charged for privately owned single-family or multi-unit residential or commercial rental property, and, since 2024, none may enact an ordinance that prohibits an owner, lessee, sublessee, assignee, managing agent or other person with the right to let a housing accommodation from refusing to rent to a person because the person's lawful source of income to pay rent includes a federal housing assistance program. Four carve-outs let a locality set rent on property it owns, agree with private owners to regulate rent on subsidized properties, restrict rent on properties assisted with community development block grant funds, and adopt ordinances applying to owners or operators that take funding or financial incentives from the locality. Those two subjects, rent amount and source-of-income refusal, are the whole of the preemption. Nothing in North Carolina law preempts a local ordinance about lease disclosures or lease content. A separate statute limits local rental registration and inspection programs, barring a general registration requirement except for properties with more than four verified violations in a rolling twelve months, or two in a rolling thirty days, or in the worst ten percent of properties for crime or disorder, capping a per-property fee at five hundred dollars in twelve months and barring criminal punishment for a registration violation; that is an inspection and registration limit and is on the habitability page. No North Carolina city carries its own lease packet.