What must a Pennsylvania 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 Pennsylvania statute requires a residential lease to be in writing, and an oral tenancy of three years or less is lawful. Above three years the lease must be written and signed, and an unwritten longer lease is not void: it is a lease at will that ripens into a year-to-year tenancy once it has run more than a year and both sides have admitted liability for the rent. No statute requires the landlord to give the tenant a copy of the signed lease, and none requires a lease or any notice in a language other than English. Where the lease is written, the plain-language act applies to it: it must be easy to read and understand, its section captions should be in boldface, and it must carry the consumer-restrictions statement described in the lease-content row.

Statute of frauds: The threshold is three years, not one. Real property may be leased for a term of not more than three years by oral or written agreement (section 201 of The Landlord and Tenant Act of 1951). A lease for more than three years must be in writing and signed by the parties making it; one that is not has the force and effect of a lease at will only, unless the tenancy has continued for more than a year and both sides have recognized it by claiming and admitting liability for the rent, in which case it becomes a tenancy from year to year (section 202). An assignment, grant or surrender of a lease for more than three years must also be in writing and signed, unless it results from operation of law (section 203).

Format and plain-language rules: The Plain Language Consumer Contract Act is Pennsylvania's lease-format regime, and it has been in force for residential leases executed after June 24, 1994 (the Attorney General's statement of policy fixes that date). Every consumer contract must be written, organized and designed so that it is easy to read and understand. The act then sets nine language guidelines a court must consider: short words, sentences and paragraphs; active verbs; no technical legal terms beyond commonly understood ones such as mortgage, warranty and security interest; no Latin, foreign or obsolete words; commonly understood definitions; personal pronouns or the parties' actual or shortened names; no sentence carrying more than one condition; cross-references only where they briefly and clearly describe what is referred to; and no double negatives or exceptions to exceptions. It sets three visual guidelines: type size, line length, column width, margins and spacing that make the contract easy to read; section captions in boldface type; and ink that contrasts sharply with the paper. There is no numeric type size anywhere in the act, and the test is qualitative. The numbers a landlord may have seen quoted, a twenty-five-word average sentence and a sixty-word average paragraph, come from the Attorney General's own test of readability, which is a statement of policy rather than a rule of law. A failure does not void the lease; the consequences are in the void-clause row.

Electronic leases and signatures: Pennsylvania's Electronic Transactions Act of 1999 gives an electronic record the effect of a writing and an electronic signature the effect of a signature in any transaction the parties have agreed to conduct electronically. Its exclusions are wills, codicils and testamentary trusts and most of the Commercial Code; a lease of real property is not excluded, so a residential lease and the statements that must ride in it may be signed and delivered electronically. The Landlord and Tenant Act of 1951 says nothing either way about electronic execution or electronic notice, and Pennsylvania has no landlord-tenant carve-out of the kind several other states attach to default, cure or eviction notices.

No disclosure to the tenant is required; the state has a landlord or agent registration statute instead.

No Pennsylvania statute requires a residential landlord to tell a tenant who owns or manages the property, and nothing in the county filing described here reaches the tenant. The Landlord and Tenant Act of 1951 has no identity section, the state has adopted no uniform residential act, and no rule in the Pennsylvania Code supplies the duty. What Pennsylvania has instead, since September 18, 2026, is a registration owed to the county: the owner of real property that is not owner-occupied must file contact information with the county chief assessor within thirty days of buying it, or when the owner is cited for a violation of a municipal ordinance or code, and must report a change within thirty days. An individual files a name, residential address, telephone number and e-mail address; a business or limited liability company files its own name and address, the telephone number and e-mail of one owner, member or manager, and the name, address, telephone number and e-mail of a person with the authority and ability to repair, maintain or otherwise remedy a problem or municipal code violation at the property. The list is not public: only a municipality may ask for the information, and only on a demonstrated reasonable need that includes a discussion with the owner about maintenance and upkeep, with an affirmation that the use is not commercial. A county may fine an owner up to five hundred dollars for information that is intentionally or knowingly false or not kept current, and a participant in the state's address confidentiality program is excused from filing. The tenant receives nothing from the filing and has no right to see it. Two things sit close to a tenant-facing duty without being it. Where a licensed broker, salesperson or rental listing referral agent handles the rental, including a licensee who is the owner or landlord, a direct employee of the owner or landlord, or the property manager under a management or exclusive leasing agreement, the prospective tenant must be given a signed written statement of the capacity in which the licensee is acting; that statement discloses the licensee's role, never the owner's name or address, and it is described in the lease-content row.

If the landlord fails to comply: a fine or penalty applies. Threshold: Property that is not owner-occupied; the filing is triggered by a purchase or by a municipal ordinance or code citation, and a participant in the state's address confidentiality program is excused.

No — no state document or statement of tenant rights must be handed over; what the state prescribes is text the lease itself must carry.

Pennsylvania prescribes general lease text and no general tenant-rights document. The plain-language act requires every residential lease to carry a statement of consumer restrictions, and the second limb of that statement, the lease's own waivers of the tenant's rights, has to be composed by the landlord from the lease in front of it, because the act fixes no words for it. The Attorney General's own test of readability, the checklist the office applies when a business asks it to preapprove a form, carries the same item, which is the clearest official confirmation that the limb is mandatory. No Pennsylvania statute requires a state summary of rights, a code summary, a handbook or an agency form to be handed to a tenant, and the Attorney General publishes preapproval machinery, an application, a test of readability and illustrations, rather than a model residential lease. The one genuine prescribed document a Pennsylvania tenant may receive, the licensee capacity statement, is owed only where a licensed broker, salesperson or rental listing referral agent handles the rental, so it is listed above with its condition and does not make the state a prescribed-document state. Philadelphia requires its own packet at signing under city law; see the local-authority row.

Required item:

Consumer-restrictions statement (plain-language act) — words or content the lease itself must carry. Every consumer contract, and a residential lease is one, must carry a statement containing two things: a general description of the property that may be taken or affected by reason of a security interest or the contract if the consumer does not meet its terms, and the contract's waivers of a consumer's rights in residential leases. The act supplies a safe-harbor sentence for the first limb but prescribes no words for the second, so the landlord must compose it from the waivers its own lease actually contains. Where Truth in Lending Act disclosures appear on the contract, the statement must come immediately after them. The consequence of leaving it out is a claim for one hundred dollars in statutory damages, actual loss, court costs, reasonable attorney fees and equitable relief, and the lease itself is not voided. Given at signing, inside the lease itself. The statute fixes the substance, not the words. Typography: Where Truth in Lending Act disclosures are made on the contract, the statement of consumer restrictions must appear immediately following them. The act's general visual guidelines (readable type size, line length, column width, margins and spacing; boldface section captions; sharply contrasting ink) apply to the whole document. Threshold: Consumer contracts of fifty thousand dollars or less; commercial leases are excluded. The duty reaches contracts executed after June 24, 1994. (Plain Language Consumer Contract Act § 5(d)(1)(i)–(ii), (d)(2))

Listed, but not a general duty counted above:

Under-seal statement — words or content the lease itself must carry. A lease executed under seal must include a statement substantially similar to the one the act sets out, saying that this is a contract under seal and may be enforced under the twenty-year limitation provision of the Judicial Code. Leaving it out creates an irrebuttable presumption that the parties did not intend to create an instrument under seal, which drops the limitation period from twenty years to the ordinary four. The statement is required only where the parties choose to execute under seal, so it is listed here and not counted. It applies to contracts entered into on or after the 2006 amendment that added it. Given at signing, inside the lease itself. The statute fixes the words. Threshold: Only a lease executed under seal. (Plain Language Consumer Contract Act § 5(d)(3)(i)–(ii))

Consumer Notice Applicable to Leasing — a state-prescribed document to be handed over or attached; issued by the Pennsylvania Department of State, State Real Estate Commission. Where a licensed broker, salesperson or rental listing referral agent deals with a prospective tenant for the purpose of rental only, the licensee must give the prospective tenant a written statement, in the form the statute sets out, saying whether the licensee is the owner or landlord of the property, a direct employee of the owner or landlord, or an agent acting under a property management or exclusive leasing agreement. It is given at the initial interview, meaning the first contact at which a substantive discussion about real estate needs occurs, or, where the licensee requires a rental application, at the time the application is taken and positioned at the beginning of it. The tenant signs to acknowledge receipt, the licensee keeps the signed copy for six months, and a refusal to sign is noted on the form and kept for the same six months. The duty binds the licensee, not the landlord as such, so it is listed here and not counted, and the section states no remedy for the tenant. Revision: No revision date or edition is printed on the face of the form. The copy the Commonwealth serves carries a file date of February 20, 2024, recorded here as that and not as a printed edition. Given before signing and at application, handed over. Languages: English. Threshold: Licensee-handled tenancies only. The section's disclosures do not apply in a commercial lease transaction unless the prospective tenant or the landlord is an individual. Agency page. (Real Estate Licensing and Registration Act § 608(b)(1)–(3), (f) (63 P.S. § 455.608))

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

• A statement of consumer restrictions: a general description of the property that may be taken or affected if the tenant does not meet the lease's terms, and the lease's own waivers of the tenant's rights (Plain Language Consumer Contract Act, section 5, subsection d, paragraph 1). Where Truth in Lending Act disclosures appear on the contract, the statement must follow them immediately.

• Where the lease is executed under seal, a statement that it is a contract under seal and may be enforced under the twenty-year limitation provision of the Judicial Code (Plain Language Consumer Contract Act, section 5, subsection d, paragraph 3). Omitting it creates an irrebuttable presumption that no seal was intended.

• The whole document must be written, organized and designed so that it is easy to read and understand (Plain Language Consumer Contract Act, section 5, subsections a through c).

No.

No Pennsylvania statute requires a move-in condition statement, an inventory, a checklist, a walk-through or a list of the previous tenant's damage, and no rule in the Pennsylvania Code supplies one; the only chapter that regulates residential rental premises as such, the tenement, lodging and boarding house chapter, carries maintenance and sanitation standards rather than any reporting duty. Little turns on the absence. When a landlord withholds escrow money at the end of the tenancy, the burden of proving the actual damage the tenant caused to the premises is on the landlord, whether or not a condition report was ever made, so a landlord who keeps no record of the unit's condition at move-in carries that burden without help.

Deposit notice at signing: Where escrow funds of more than one hundred dollars on a residential lease are deposited, the landlord must notify each tenant who made the deposit in writing of the name and address of the banking institution holding it and the amount, but that section applies only after the second anniversary of the deposit (sections 511.2, subsections a and c, of The Landlord and Tenant Act of 1951). The caps, the interest and the return rules are on the security-deposits page.

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. Pennsylvania adds nothing of its own to the federal lead-paint disclosure rule for rental housing: no state form, no registration, no certificate, no renewal re-disclosure. The Lead Certification Act is an accreditation and certification law for contractors, and its one notification duty runs from a certified contractor to the Department of Health at least five days before a lead-based paint abatement begins; the words tenant, lessee, lease, rental and landlord do not appear in it. The Childhood Blood Lead Test Act binds health care providers, insurers and the Department of Health, and its single reference to landlords is a direction to the Department to write educational materials for them. The Department of Labor and Industry's lead-based paint accreditation chapter is contractor licensing and carries no tenant, landlord or lease duty. Philadelphia requires a lead-safe or lead-free certificate of its own under city law; see the local-authority row.

Mold — no state duty. No Pennsylvania statute or rule requires a mold disclosure to a tenant, and the state has no mold statute of any kind: the word reaches its statute books only through a die, mold and form forfeiture act, hearing-aid ear molds, prosthetics and tax and capital-budget items. Mold reaches a Pennsylvania tenancy through the landlord's ordinary maintenance obligations and local property-maintenance codes, not through anything said at signing.

Bed bugs — no state duty. No Pennsylvania statute or rule requires a bed-bug disclosure, and the state has no bed-bug statute: the only place the word appears in its statute books is a set of capital-budget line items for a bridge over Bedbug Creek. A tenant's answer to an infestation runs through the landlord's maintenance obligations and the local property-maintenance code, not through a disclosure at signing.

Radon — no state duty. Pennsylvania regulates radon testers and mitigators, not landlords. A person certified to provide testing or mitigation services must tell the Department of Environmental Protection, within forty-five days of providing them, the address of the building, the name of its owner and the results of any test, and a failure to do so is a summary offense; the words tenant, landlord, rental and lessee appear nowhere in the act, and the Department's radon certification chapter places its reporting duties on the certified tester and mitigator, never on a landlord. Radon reaches a residential transaction in Pennsylvania only through the seller's property disclosure statement, which asks the seller about hazardous substances and does not reach an ordinary lease.

Methamphetamine — no state duty. Pennsylvania neither requires a landlord to disclose that a property was used as a methamphetamine laboratory nor bars renting one out. Its clandestine-laboratory provisions are criminal restitution rules that make a convicted defendant pay the cost of cleaning up a laboratory; none of them reaches a landlord, a lease or a prospective tenant, and no clean-up certificate or occupancy bar exists. The landlord-tenant act's illegal-drug provision is a ground for ending a tenancy, not a disclosure, and it belongs to the lease-termination page.

Asbestos — no state duty. No Pennsylvania statute or rule requires an asbestos disclosure to a tenant. The state's asbestos provisions are occupational accreditation, abatement-practice and waste rules, and the only place asbestos meets a residential transaction is the seller's property disclosure statement, which asks the seller whether hazardous substances are present and does not reach an ordinary lease.

Other hazard notices (pesticide, pool, ordnance, noise zone) — no state duty. No pesticide-application notice, pool-safety notice, military-ordnance notice, airport or noise-zone notice and no utility-history disclosure runs to a residential tenant in Pennsylvania. The state's pesticide law places no landlord-to-tenant notice duty on anyone, and no chapter of the Pennsylvania Code pairs a hazard of this kind with a tenancy.

No.

Pennsylvania requires no flood disclosure to a tenant. Flood risk is a seller's subject: the Residential Real Estate Transfers Law applies to a transfer of an interest in real property of not less than one nor more than four residential dwelling units, whether by sale, exchange, installment sales contract, lease with an option to purchase, grant or transfer of a unit in a residential condominium or cooperative, so an ordinary lease is outside it and a lease carrying a purchase option is inside it. Where it applies, the seller must complete the State Real Estate Commission's property disclosure statement and deliver a signed and dated copy before the agreement of transfer is signed; that form asks whether the property or part of it is in a flood zone or wetlands area and whether the seller knows of past or present drainage or flooding problems. A willful or negligent failure makes the seller liable for the buyer's actual damages, with a two-year limit, and does not invalidate the transfer. A bill that would create a real tenant flood disclosure, with prescribed lease text, is in committee; this page will change if it passes.

No enumerated list — Pennsylvania has no roster of prohibited lease provisions. What it has is a handful of single-subject void and anti-waiver provisions spread across three acts, plus a consumer-protection act whose remedy is money rather than invalidity. The supplier-choice clause in the landlord-tenant act is the only provision in that act that voids a lease term outright, and it reaches only buildings housing three or more households. The escrow sections and the utility-discontinuance provisions are anti-waiver rules rather than clause bans. The plain-language act voids any waiver of its own rights. There is no general unconscionability provision for residential leases, no ban on exculpation, indemnity, penalty or lien clauses, and no ban on a confession-of-judgment clause for possession, which the landlord-tenant act expressly preserves. What is often said about Pennsylvania, that a lease violating the plain-language act is unenforceable, is not the law: the act says a violation will not void a contract or otherwise affect its validity.

A penalty is owed, but the contract stands.

Sanction as the statute states it: Each of the listed provisions makes the offending clause void and unenforceable and stops there; none carries damages, a rent multiple or a cure window. The separate money remedy sits in the plain-language act: a landlord whose lease fails the readability test owes the tenant the value of any actual loss, one hundred dollars in statutory damages (or the total amount of the contract where that is less than one hundred dollars), court costs, reasonable attorney fees and any equitable relief the court orders, and the violation is also a violation of the Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law. That claim must be brought as an individual action, within four years of the date the contract was last signed, and it fails if all parties have finished what the contract required, if the consumer wrote the offending part, or if the landlord made a good faith and reasonable effort to comply. The act says in terms that a violation will not void a contract or otherwise affect its validity, so the money is owed and the lease stands.

The general provisions:

• Any provision of a written rental agreement that limits the tenant's right to buy goods and services from a source of the tenant's choosing is void and unenforceable in the courts of the Commonwealth, and the tenant's right to invite employees, business visitors, tradesmen, deliverymen and suppliers, and social guests, family and visitors, may not be waived by the agreement or charged for (section 504-A of The Landlord and Tenant Act of 1951; reaches tenement buildings and multiple dwelling premises, meaning housing for three or more households, including mobile home parks).

• Any attempted waiver by a tenant, by contract or otherwise, of the escrow-cap section is void and unenforceable (section 511.1, subsection f; residential rentals only).

• Any attempted waiver by a tenant, by contract or otherwise, of the escrow-return section is void and unenforceable (section 512, subsection d; residential leaseholds only).

• A consumer cannot waive the rights given by the plain-language act, and any waiver is void, not just voidable (Plain Language Consumer Contract Act, section 10).

• Any waiver of a tenant's rights under the utility-discontinuance provisions is void and unenforceable (Utility Service Tenants Rights Act, section 10, and its counterpart at 66 Pa.C.S. section 1530).

• No individual unit lease on residential property may be terminated or not renewed because a tenant or a member of the tenant's family took part in a tenants' organization or association (section 205 of The Landlord and Tenant Act of 1951).

Expressly permitted: Pennsylvania expressly preserves several clauses other states void. The landlord-tenant act keeps the landlord's right to recover possession by an amicable action of ejectment, confessing judgment in accordance with the terms of a written agreement, so a confession-of-judgment clause for possession is lawful. The tenant's three-hundred-dollar distraint exemption applies unless the tenant has waived it in writing, and the notice-to-quit period may be shortened or waived where the lease so provides. Nothing in the statutes prohibits an exculpation, indemnity, penalty or lien clause in a residential lease.

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

No Pennsylvania statute turns a one-way landlord fee clause into a reciprocal one, awards fees to the prevailing party in a residential landlord-tenant case, prohibits a landlord's fee clause or caps one, so a one-way clause charging the tenant the landlord's attorney fees is lawful and unregulated. The word attorney appears once in the whole of The Landlord and Tenant Act of 1951, in the abandoned-personal-property procedure, which exposes a landlord who violates it to treble damages, reasonable attorney fees and court costs. The two fee awards a Pennsylvania residential tenant can actually reach are narrow and both run one way, to the tenant: reasonable attorney fees on a plain-language violation, and costs of suit and reasonable attorney fees where a landlord retaliates over a utility complaint.