Landlord Atlas

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

Verified September 13, 2026 All Rhode Island topics →

A Rhode Island landlord must disclose the owner's and manager's name, address and number in writing at or before the start of the tenancy, and must state in the lease every fee beyond the rent, in the same section as the rent, plus which utilities are included and any renters-insurance requirement.

Cited to R.I. Gen. Laws § 34-18-7 (application of the chapter) and 31 more cited sources · Verified September 13, 2026

Where there is no written lease, that fee, utility and insurance information must still be given in writing. Before a tenant is obligated on a pre-1978 unit the landlord owes the full state lead package — the Rhode Island pamphlet with the state insert, current certificates, a chronological listing of inspection reports, the certificate of conformance and a signed stand-alone acknowledgment — and every landlord must be registered with the state health department to file an eviction for nonpayment. A landlord must also disclose outstanding housing code violations before the agreement, and may not lease at all under an uncorrected violation order without handing the tenant a copy. Rhode Island requires no written lease, no copy of the lease, no move-in condition report and no flood, mold, bed-bug, radon, methamphetamine or asbestos disclosure. Four lease clauses are prohibited, and deliberately using a lease that contains one costs up to three months' rent plus fees.

Rhode Island lease disclosures at a glance

Which law governs Chapter 34-18 of the General Laws, the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, carries the residential rules and applies to a rental agreement, wherever made, for a dwelling unit located in Rhode Island. Inside it sit the identity disclosure (section 34-18-20), the fee, utility and insurance disclosures (section 34-18-15), the housing-code-violation disclosure (section 34-18-22.1), the void-clause roster (section 34-18-17), the statewide rental registry (section 34-18-58) and, since July 1, 2026, the survivor early-termination sections. Three bodies outside the chapter carry the rest: the Lead Poisoning Prevention Act (chapter 23-24.6) and the Lead Hazard Mitigation Act (chapter 42-128.1), with their two administrative parts, 216-RICR-50-15-3 and 860-RICR-00-00-2; the Housing Maintenance and Occupancy Code (chapter 45-24.3), which makes it unlawful to lease a building under an uncorrected violation order without giving the tenant a copy; and the Condominium Act's conversion section. The real estate sales disclosures chapter (5-20.8) never reaches a lease — its transfer is a sale, conveyance, exchange or option to purchase. The statute of frauds is section 9-1-4 and electronic signing is chapter 42-127.1.
Who is covered Statewide, for a dwelling unit located in Rhode Island, wherever the rental agreement was made. The chapter excludes eight arrangements unless the parties expressly agree to be governed by it: residence in an institution incidental to detention or to medical, geriatric, educational, counseling or religious service; occupancy by a purchaser under a contract of sale; occupancy by a member of a fraternal or social organization in its structure; transient occupancy in a hotel, motel or other lodging subject to the lodging tax; occupancy by an employee whose right to stay depends on employment substantially for services, maintenance or repair of premises containing more than eleven units; occupancy by the holder of a proprietary lease in a cooperative; commercial letting and the estates governed by chapter 34-18.1; and residence at a transitional housing facility. The lead layer has its own reach: pre-1978 target housing, excluding housing for the elderly or for people with disabilities where no child resides and excluding zero-bedroom units, and excluding a property that holds a lead-free or full lead-safe certificate given to the tenant, a renewal where the lessor complied before and kept proof, and a short-term lease of 100 days or less that cannot be renewed or extended. The city clerk registration reaches only Providence and Warwick.
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 Rhode Island statute requires a residential lease to be in writing; only a lease for longer than a year needs a writing to be enforceable. If the landlord never signs and returns an agreement the tenant signed and delivered, accepting rent without reservation gives it the same effect as if the landlord had signed, and the mirror rule binds a tenant who takes possession and pays rent — but an agreement given effect that way runs for only one year even if it says longer. No statute requires the landlord to give the tenant a copy of the signed lease, and none sets a deadline. There is no translation duty, no plain-language act and no type-size rule. Two placement rules do exist and both belong to particular duties: every fee beyond rent must appear in the same section of the lease as the rent disclosure, and the lead disclosure acknowledgment must be a stand-alone document or its own separate page when it is put in the lease. Where there is no written lease at all, the fee, utility and renters-insurance information must still be given to the tenant in writing, so a Rhode Island oral tenancy still generates required writings.

Statute of frauds: No action may be brought to charge a person on a contract for the sale of land or for the making of a lease of it for a longer time than one year unless the contract, or a memorandum or note of it, is in writing and signed by the party to be charged (section 9-1-4, paragraph 1). A lease of one year or less is enforceable without a writing.

Electronic leases and signatures: Rhode Island's Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (chapter 42-127.1) applies to residential leases: it carves out no landlord-tenant transaction, so an electronic record satisfies a writing requirement and an electronic signature satisfies a signature requirement where both parties have agreed to deal electronically. The landlord-tenant chapter itself says nothing about electronic execution, and its notice section still measures receipt by delivery in hand or by first class mail to the place the person holds out for receiving communications, so notices are safest on paper unless the parties have agreed otherwise.
Owner and agent identity

Yes — a statute and an administrative rule require the landlord to disclose the owner's or managing agent's identity to the tenant, in the lease or in a separate writing.

A landlord, or anyone authorized to make a rental agreement on the landlord's behalf, must disclose to the tenant in writing, at or before the tenancy begins, the name, address and number of the person authorized to manage the premises and of an owner or a person authorized to act for the owner for service of process and for receiving notices and demands. No form is prescribed and the disclosure may sit in the lease or in a separate writing. The information must be kept current, and the duty is enforceable against a successor landlord, owner or manager. A person who does not comply becomes an agent of each landlord for service of process and for performing the landlord's obligations under the chapter and the rental agreement, and for spending the rent collected from the premises on those obligations. Three further layers sit on top. A landlord who is 120 days delinquent on a mortgage secured on the property must tell the tenant the property may be subject to foreclosure, and the tenant keeps paying rent to the landlord until foreclosure; the section states no penalty. A landlord who is not a Rhode Island resident must designate and continuously maintain a resident agent for service of process, notices and demands including minimum housing code violation notices, in a writing naming the agent and the street address of each property and filed with the secretary of state and with the clerk of the city or town, on pain of a civil fine of $100 a month up to $1,200 in a calendar year, or one month's rent where the monthly rent is more than $1,200, payable to the municipality. And every landlord must register with the Department of Health: the names of the individual landlords or the business entity responsible for leasing, an active business, post office box or home address, an active email address, an active telephone number that would reasonably let a tenant make contact, the same details for any property manager, management company or agent for service, and enough information to identify each dwelling unit; a landlord of a pre-1978 rental that is not exempt must also file a valid certificate of conformance for each unit, or evidence of exemption. Registration follows a new acquisition or a new tenant within 30 days and must be renewed by October 1 each year. The fines run from $50 a month for a registration failure and $125 a month for the lead certificate failure, with injunctive relief and further per-violation penalties for repeat failures, and a landlord who is not in compliance may not commence an eviction for nonpayment of rent and must show the court evidence of compliance at filing. In a pre-1978 rental the identity information is owed twice, because the lead disclosure must also name the owner, registered agent or designated person responsible for maintaining the property.

Threshold: The core identity disclosure is unconditioned. The lead package repeats it only for pre-1978 target housing that is not exempt; the registry's certificate filing has the same pre-1978 scope; the agent designation binds only a landlord who is not a Rhode Island resident; and the city clerk registration reaches only property in Providence and Warwick.
Required statements and lease text

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

Rhode Island prescribes no general statement of tenant rights, no handbook, no model lease and no lease wording that every landlord must use. The state does publish a landlord-tenant handbook through its housing agency, but no statute requires a landlord to hand it to a tenant. What the state prescribes instead is lease content: the fees beyond rent, in the same section as the rent, with a statement that more may apply; which utility costs are included and which are the tenant's; and any renters-insurance requirement. Where there is no written lease those three must be given in writing anyway. The documents Rhode Island does prescribe are all about lead, and they are described in the hazard table. The statutory forms in the chapter — the five-day demand for nonpayment and the notice of noncompliance — are eviction notices and belong to the eviction and lease-termination pages.

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

• Every fee beyond the rent that applies to the rental of the unit, disclosed in the same section of the lease as the rent disclosure, with a statement that additional fees may apply; the requirement does not apply where the tenant or the unit receives state or federal subsidies that require a different lease format (section 34-18-15, subsection a, paragraph 1).

• Which utility costs are included in the rent and which are the tenant's responsibility (section 34-18-15, subsection a, paragraph 3).

• Any requirement that the tenant obtain renters insurance (section 34-18-15, subsection a, paragraph 4).

• For a pre-1978 rental that is not exempt: the lead warning statement and the written lead disclosure, whose acknowledgment must be a stand-alone document carrying the property address, or its own separate page when it is included in the lease (216-RICR-50-15-3, section 3.5.3).

• Where there is no written lease, the fee, utility and renters-insurance information must be given to the tenant in writing instead (section 34-18-15, subsection a, paragraphs 2 to 4).
Move-in condition report

No.

Rhode Island has no move-in condition statement, checklist, inventory or walk-through, and no duty to show a tenant the previous tenant's damage list. The chapter does its work at the other end of the tenancy: the landlord must return the deposit less unpaid accrued rent, reasonable cleaning and trash-disposal expenses and physical damage beyond ordinary wear and tear, all itemized in a written notice delivered to the tenant, within 20 days of the later of termination, delivery of possession or the tenant's giving a forwarding address, and a landlord who fails owes twice the amount wrongfully withheld plus reasonable attorney's fees. That is the deposits page.
Hazard disclosures

One in-force state hazard disclosure: lead (before signing, within a stated period, on request, on renewal, and when the event the section names occurs). No state duty exists for 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) — in force — a state duty, before signing, within a stated period, on request, on renewal, and when the event the section names occurs, in a signed acknowledgment (a statute and an administrative rule). Rhode Island's lead duties are among the heaviest in the country, and the state rules say in terms that they are in addition to, not in place of, the federal ones. Before a tenant is obligated under a lease of pre-1978 housing — or before occupancy where the lease is oral — the landlord must hand over the Rhode Island edition of the lead pamphlet with the state insert, the lead warning statement and acknowledgment, any known information about lead paint or lead hazards, a copy of every current lead certificate for the unit and the common areas, a chronological listing of all available lead inspection reports and certificates for the property, instructions on how to get copies of them, the most recent certificate of conformance or affidavit of completion of visual inspection, a notice of deteriorating conditions naming the owner, agent or designated person responsible for maintaining the property, and basic information about the lead rules and how they apply to that property. Copies asked for must arrive within seven days at no charge. The acknowledgment must be a stand-alone document carrying the property address, or its own separate page in the lease, signed and dated by the landlord or agent and by the tenant, and kept for three years or the term of the tenancy, whichever is longer. During the tenancy: a mitigation report, a new certificate of conformance or affidavit, and the results of any lead inspection each reach the sitting tenant within seven days, and the results of a comprehensive environmental lead inspection within five business days of the owner receiving them; a prospective occupant must be told of those results before any lease is signed, or before occupancy where none is, whenever a significant lead hazard exists. Where a lead or unknown-status water service line serves the building, the owner must tell the tenants, and a tenant who asks twice and gets no response within 60 days may end the lease without losing the deposit for doing so. Separately, the owner of a pre-1978 rental that is not lead safe or lead hazard abated must take a lead hazard awareness seminar, evaluate the unit, meet and keep the mitigation standard, and correct a hazard within 30 days of a tenant's notice where an occupant is at risk; a new owner gets 60 days to come into compliance after a visual inspection within 30 business days of taking ownership. Knowledge standard: Any known information about lead-based paint or environmental lead hazards in the dwelling, together with every lead certificate and inspection report the owner holds, whether or not the owner knows of a hazard. Threshold: Pre-1978 target housing. Exempt: a dwelling built after January 1, 1978; a property meeting the lead-safe standards where a certification of lead-free status or a full lead-safe certificate is given to the tenant; a renewal where the lessor complied before and kept proof for three years or the term of the tenancy, whichever is longer; a zero-bedroom unit, or housing for the elderly or for people with disabilities in which no child resides; and a short-term lease of 100 days or less that cannot be renewed or extended. The mitigation duties also exclude condominium common areas, units already lead-safe or lead free, temporary housing and elderly housing, and a tenant in place since January 1, 2004 may not be made to leave because of them. Document: Protect Your Family from Lead in Your Home — the Rhode Island edition, containing the Department of Health insert What You Should Know about the Rhode Island Lead Law, issued by the Rhode Island Department of Health. Revision: The cover of the Rhode Island edition is dated January 2026; the publisher's own file date is May 19, 2026. A Spanish combined edition is published separately. The Affidavit of Completion of Visual Inspection carries the printed stamp LHM-Affidavit_002_06.10.2024 on its face, and the fact sheet About Lead Certificates for Landlords carries no face date, so its tracked value is the publisher's file date of December 10, 2024, labeled as such. Agency page. If the duty is not met: Failing to provide inspection results or educational materials costs a civil penalty of not less than $100 and not more than $500 for each violation, on top of the chapter's administrative fines. The registry adds a fine of at least $125 a month for a missing certificate of conformance and, while the landlord is out of compliance, a bar on filing an eviction for nonpayment of rent. A household with an occupant at risk may bring a private action for an injunction to compel lead-safe compliance and, if it prevails, recovers the costs of the litigation and reasonable attorney's fees. And the statute is explicit that a tenant's receipt of these disclosures is never a bar to relief and can never be used as a defense by an owner, operator or agent.

Mold — no state duty. No Rhode Island statute or rule requires a landlord to disclose mold. The word appears in the General Laws only in places that have nothing to do with buildings — a manufacturer's lien on industrial dies and molds, hearing-aid ear molds, the medical practice act and tax and insurance provisions — and in the seller's disclosure form. Mold in a rental is a repair question under the landlord's maintenance duty and the housing maintenance and occupancy code.

Bed bugs — no state duty. Rhode Island has no bed-bug law: the phrase does not appear anywhere in the General Laws, no rule addresses it, and no act of the last three sessions created a duty. An infestation is handled as a habitability and pest-control question, not a disclosure.

Radon — no state duty. No Rhode Island landlord owes a tenant anything about radon. The radon control chapter licenses and certifies radon professionals, sets inspection standards and requires notification to the state health department, not to an occupant. A 2026 act does add mandatory radon testing, disclosure and mitigation from June 1, 2027, but it sits in the real estate sales disclosures chapter and reaches an agreement to sell residential property, not a lease; landlord-facing summaries are likely to mis-report it.

Methamphetamine — no state duty. Rhode Island has no methamphetamine disclosure, no bar on renting a former laboratory and no cleanup or certification regime. The word appears in the General Laws only in the controlled substances chapter, as part of the drug schedules and the manufacturing offenses.

Asbestos — no state duty. No asbestos disclosure runs to a Rhode Island tenant. The asbestos abatement chapter is about licensing abatement contractors, abatement practice and reoccupancy permits; a 2026 act tidied its obsolete language without adding any landlord or tenant duty. Asbestos appears in the seller's disclosure form, which reaches sales rather than leases.

Pesticide, pool, ordnance and pest-contract notices — no state duty. No pesticide-application notice, pool-safety notice, military-ordnance or noise-zone notice or pest-control-contract disclosure runs to a Rhode Island residential tenant. The two condition-based disclosures Rhode Island does have — an outstanding minimum housing code violation, and the bar on leasing a building under an uncorrected violation order without giving the tenant a copy of it — are about the building's legal status rather than a hazard, and they are described with the other situation disclosures.
Flood disclosure

No.

Rhode Island requires no flood disclosure to a tenant — nothing about a flood zone, a flood history, flood insurance or elevation. The state's flood provisions are zoning, building-code, freshwater-wetlands and insurance rules, none of which touches a rental agreement. The sales side does not reach a lease either: the real estate sales disclosures chapter defines a transfer as the sale or conveyance, exchange of, or option to purchase real estate, defines an agreement to transfer as an agreement meant to move real estate from a seller to a buyer, limits real estate to vacant land or a house or building of one to four dwelling units, and puts the duty on the seller before any agreement to transfer is signed. There is no lease-with-option hook of the kind some states use to pull a rental into the sales form.
Disclosures about the property's situation Rhode Island's situation disclosures are condition- and event-driven, and they have teeth. First, a landlord must tell a prospective tenant, before entering into any residential rental agreement, of any outstanding minimum housing code violations on the building, and must deliver a copy of any new notice of violation to each residential tenant of the affected building within 30 days of receiving it, unless every violation is corrected to the enforcing agency's satisfaction inside that window; the section itself states no penalty. Second, and this is where the penalty lives, it is unlawful for the owner of a building served with a notice of violation or an order to sell, transfer, mortgage, lease or dispose of it until the notice or order has been complied with, or until the owner first gives the lessee a true copy of it and at the same time notifies the enforcing officer in writing of the intent to lease, naming the person it is proposed to lease to; a lessee who has actual or constructive notice of the order is bound by it from the date of the lease. Third, a landlord 120 days delinquent on a mortgage on the property must warn the tenant that it may be subject to foreclosure. Fourth, a landlord who sells in good faith to a bona fide purchaser is released from later liability only from the moment the tenant gets written notice of the conveyance naming the buyer with an address and telephone number and certifying compliance with the housing maintenance and occupancy code, and a manager stepping down owes the mirror notice; a purchaser of a property of four or fewer dwelling units takes subject to the same obligations to the tenant. Fifth, on a condominium conversion the declarant must give every residential tenant and subtenant in possession notice of the conversion and the public offering statement at least 120 days before they must leave — a full year for a tenant who has lived there ten years or more or who is 62 or older — hand delivered or sent by prepaid mail, with rents frozen during the notice period, a 60-day right of first refusal and 180 days of price protection, and failure to give the notice is a defense to an action for possession. Rhode Island requires no sex-offender notice, no death-in-the-unit disclosure, no demolition-intent notice and no ordnance or noise-zone notice.
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 Rhode Island's fee and utility package is new law, in force since January 1, 2025, and it reaches a tenancy with no written lease as well as one with a lease. If fees beyond the rent apply to the rental of a unit, the lease must disclose them in the same section as the rent disclosure and must say that additional fees may apply; the requirement does not apply where the tenant or the unit receives state or federal subsidies that require a different lease format. Where there is no written lease, the landlord must give the tenant a written list of all fees beyond the rent. Any change in required fees must be disclosed in writing at least 30 days before it takes effect. In any lease the landlord must disclose which utility costs are included in the rent and which are the tenant's responsibility, and again, where there is no written lease, the information must be given in writing. If the tenant is required to carry renters insurance, that requirement must be stated in the lease, or in writing where there is none. The remedy is direct: if the landlord fails on any of those four, the tenant may recover any fees paid for the unit that were not disclosed as required. Separately, a landlord may not charge a convenience fee on a rent payment at all, unless the landlord also accepts a form of payment that carries no such fee. Rhode Island requires nothing else here: no shared-meter, submetering or proportionate-billing disclosure, no rent receipt, no rent-payment-location duty, no rent-concession disclosure, no smoking-policy disclosure and no rent reporting. Application and screening fees are their own page, where the state bans an application fee outright and limits what a background check may cost; deposits, with the one-month cap and the 20-day itemized return, are on the deposits pages; rent-increase notice is on the rent-increase page; and no Rhode Island statute in this topic touches late fees.
Lease clauses that are void or prohibited

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

The roster is four items long and sits in one section, framed as things a rental agreement may not provide that the tenant does, so it reaches clauses that burden the tenant rather than either party's clauses. Three further provisions scattered through the chapter do the same work for particular subjects: no instrument may let a landlord take rent free of the duty to maintain the premises; no rental agreement may waive the security deposit section; since July 1, 2026 any waiver of the survivor early-termination protections is void and unenforceable. Separately, the chapter's own unconscionability section lets a court refuse to enforce an unconscionable agreement or provision, or limit it, and reaches an unconscionable settlement of a chapter right as well. House rules are policed separately: one adopted mid-tenancy that substantially modifies the bargain is invalid without the tenant's written consent. One drafting point worth knowing: the waiver section added in 2026 carries a heading naming two sections while its operative sentence reaches three, and the operative sentence governs.

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

Sanction as the statute states it: A prohibited provision included in a rental agreement is unenforceable. If a landlord deliberately uses a rental agreement containing provisions known to be prohibited, the tenant may recover, on top of actual damages, an amount up to three months' periodic rent and reasonable attorney's fees. The trigger is the deliberate use of the agreement — unlike some states, Rhode Island does not also require the landlord to have tried to enforce the clause.

The listed provisions:

• A provision by which the tenant agrees to waive or forego rights or remedies under the residential landlord and tenant chapter (section 34-18-17, subsection a, paragraph 1).

• A provision authorizing any person to confess judgment on a claim arising out of the rental agreement (section 34-18-17, subsection a, paragraph 2).

• A provision by which the tenant agrees to pay the landlord's attorney's fees inconsistent with the chapter (section 34-18-17, subsection a, paragraph 3).

• A provision by which the tenant agrees to the exculpation or limitation of any liability of the landlord arising under law, or to indemnify the landlord for that liability or the costs connected with it (section 34-18-17, subsection a, paragraph 4).

• Any rental agreement, assignment, conveyance, trust deed or security instrument permitting the receipt of rent free of the landlord's obligation to maintain the premises (section 34-18-18).

• Any waiver of the security deposit section (section 34-18-19, subsection h).

• Since July 1, 2026, any waiver of the survivor early-termination, no-refusal and lock-change sections (section 34-18-67).
Attorney-fee clauses

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

A Rhode Island rental agreement may not provide that the tenant agrees to pay the landlord's attorney's fees inconsistent with the residential landlord and tenant chapter. The ban runs one way — it reaches a clause making the tenant pay the landlord's fees, not a clause running the other way — and it is qualified: a fee term that tracks a fee award the chapter itself authorizes is not caught. There is no reciprocity provision, no general prevailing-party rule for residential lease disputes and no cap. Fee awards exist statute by statute and each one runs to the tenant: deliberate use of a prohibited clause, a deposit wrongfully withheld, an unlawful ouster or a willful interruption of essential services, and an at-risk household's action to compel lead-safe compliance. A landlord who deliberately uses a lease containing the prohibited fee clause faces the same three months' rent and fee exposure as for any other prohibited provision.
When, how, and what happens on a failure Rhode Island times its duties to the start of the tenancy rather than to the signature, and several of them survive into the tenancy. At or before the tenancy begins: the owner and manager identity in writing, kept current and binding on successors. Before entering into the agreement: the outstanding housing code violations, and — where the building is under a violation order — a true copy of the order to the tenant with written notice of the intent to lease to the enforcing officer. Before the tenant is obligated, or before occupancy where the lease is oral: the lead package, acknowledged on a stand-alone document or its own page in the lease, signed and dated by both and kept three years or the term of the tenancy, whichever is longer. In the lease, or in writing where there is none: the fees beyond rent in the same section as the rent, which utilities are included, and any renters-insurance requirement. During the tenancy: a fee change 30 days before it takes effect; a mitigation report, certificate, affidavit or inspection result within seven days; comprehensive inspection results within five business days; a copy of a new housing code violation notice within 30 days unless cured; a foreclosure warning at 120 days' mortgage delinquency; notice of a sale or a change of manager; and a condominium-conversion notice at least 120 days before the tenant must leave, or a year for a long-standing or older tenant. A person notifies another by taking steps reasonably calculated to inform them in the ordinary course, and a notice is received when it comes to the person's attention or is delivered in hand or sent by first class mail to the place held out for receiving communications. The remedies are concentrated: the lead package carries $100 to $500 per violation, registry fines, the bar on filing a nonpayment eviction, a private injunction with costs and fees for a household with an at-risk occupant, and the rule that receiving the disclosure is never a defense for the owner; the fee package lets the tenant recover undisclosed fees; the identity duty makes the non-complier the landlord's agent for service and for performing the landlord's obligations out of collected rent; and missing the conversion notice is a defense to possession. Three duties state no consequence at all — the foreclosure warning, the housing-code-violation disclosure, and the shoreline disclosure that arrives in 2027 — though leasing under an uncorrected violation order is itself unlawful.
Can cities add their own rules

Partly — state law preempts local rules on some subjects and leaves others to the locality or open.

Rhode Island points both ways, in the state statute itself. On the authorizing side, the state directs every owner leasing property in Providence or Warwick to register a name, home address with zip code and telephone number with that city's clerk; it runs the housing maintenance and occupancy code through local enforcing officers, whose violation notices drive two of the disclosures on this page; and it makes the municipality the payee of the fine for failing to designate a resident agent. On the preempting side, one subject is expressly closed: no municipality or housing agency may compel a landlord or a landlord's agent to make any inquiry, or to compile, disclose, report or provide any information, about the immigration or citizenship status of a tenant, prospective tenant, occupant or prospective occupant, or take any action based on it. Beyond that, the chapter says nothing either way: there is no general preemption of local lease-disclosure or lease-content ordinances and no rent-control preemption. No Rhode Island city carries its own lease packet on this page.
How state law refers to the federal rules Rhode Island says twice, in its own rules, that its lead disclosure duties are in addition to and not in place of the federal ones, and the enabling statute requires the state rules to incorporate the federal disclosure requirements as a minimum and then adds to them: copies of any outstanding notice of violation, the results of any lead inspection, and educational materials the health department prepares. The state also enforces the federal lead program itself, the federal environmental agency having delegated that authority to the department in 1999 and the renovation, repair and painting program in 2010. The federal warning statement and the federal pamphlet are the federal layer; what Rhode Island adds is the state insert, the certificate and inspection-report copies, the chronological listing, the seven-day free-copy duty, the owner-identity item, the stand-alone acknowledgment, the certificate of conformance, the registry filing and the inspection-result notices.
Changes already signed into law P.L. 2026, ch. 165 (House Bill 8110 Substitute A), with its Senate twin ch. 166, signed June 18, 2026, with effect from January 1, 2027: Adds a written shoreline access disclosure to the identity section. For any dwelling unit that is shoreline property — real estate abutting the shore — the landlord must give the tenant, before the tenancy begins, a written disclosure stating that the public has the right to access shoreline property and may exercise the rights and privileges of the shore, where shore exists, on wet sand, dry sand or rocky beach up to ten feet landward of the recognizable high tide line; that the landlord must tell the tenant of any public rights-of-way on the property known to the landlord and, on request, provide any documentation of them in the landlord's possession; and that the tenant is advised to contact the coastal resources management council, the municipality or applicable nonprofit organizations to find out whether any public rights-of-way exist. The disclosure may be built into the written rental agreement or delivered as a separate written notice. The section states no penalty. The same act adds a parallel disclosure for short-term rentals, which may be made by a clear and conspicuous display in the listing before booking. Text: P.L. 2026, ch. 165 § 1 (adding R.I. Gen. Laws § 34-18-20(e)).
Leading court decisions This page rests on the statutes and rules cited below

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

Rhode Island hazard disclosures at a glance

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

Hazard Status When Form Prescribed document
Lead (state add-on to the federal rule) In force Before signing, within a stated period, on request, on renewal, and when the event the section names occurs Signed acknowledgment Protect Your Family from Lead in Your Home — the Rhode Island edition, containing the Department of Health insert What You Should Know about the Rhode Island Lead Law — Rhode Island Department of Health
Mold None — — —
Bed bugs None — — —
Radon None — — —
Methamphetamine None — — —
Asbestos None — — —
Pesticide, pool, ordnance and pest-contract notices None — — —

Where the published code text differs from the enacted law

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

The state's published code is one session behind the law. The landlord and tenant chapter's section index still stops at section 34-18-62, but sections 34-18-63 through 34-18-67 — the survivor early-termination sections, including the landlord's strict-confidence duty and the provision voiding any waiver of them — have been in force since July 1, 2026. Section 34-18-20 still prints only subsections (a) through (d), although a 2026 act adds a shoreline access disclosure as subsection (e) from January 1, 2027. The values on this page were taken from the enrolled acts, not from the code pages, until the code catches up.

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: Rhode Island 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 Rhode Island require a landlord to give the tenant a written statement of tenant rights?
No general statement or document is prescribed, but the statutes or rules fix some of what the lease must say, listed here. Rhode Island prescribes no general statement of tenant rights, no handbook, no model lease and no lease wording that every landlord must use.
Does a Rhode Island landlord have to disclose the owner's name and address?
Yes — a statute and an administrative rule require the landlord to disclose the owner's or managing agent's identity to the tenant, in the lease or in a separate writing. A landlord, or anyone authorized to make a rental agreement on the landlord's behalf, must disclose to the tenant in writing, at or before the tenancy begins, the name, address and number of the person authorized to manage the premises and of an owner or a person authorized to act for the owner for service of process and for receiving notices and demands.
Is a move-in inspection checklist required in Rhode Island?
No. Rhode Island has no move-in condition statement, checklist, inventory or walk-through, and no duty to show a tenant the previous tenant's damage list. The chapter does its work at the other end of the tenancy: the landlord must return the deposit less unpaid accrued rent, reasonable cleaning and trash-disposal expenses and physical damage beyond ordinary wear and tear, all itemized in a written notice delivered to the tenant, within 20 days of the later of termination, delivery of possession or the tenant's giving a forwarding address, and a landlord who fails owes twice the amount wrongfully withheld plus reasonable attorney's fees.
What hazards must a Rhode Island landlord disclose to a tenant?
One in-force state hazard disclosure: lead (before signing, within a stated period, on request, on renewal, and when the event the section names occurs). No state duty exists for mold, bed bugs, radon, methamphetamine, asbestos, or any other hazard.
Does Rhode Island require flood disclosure to renters?
No. Rhode Island requires no flood disclosure to a tenant — nothing about a flood zone, a flood history, flood insurance or elevation. The state's flood provisions are zoning, building-code, freshwater-wetlands and insurance rules, none of which touches a rental agreement.
Does Rhode Island void or prohibit specific lease clauses?
Yes — the statute lists the lease provisions that are void or prohibited. The roster is four items long and sits in one section, framed as things a rental agreement may not provide that the tenant does, so it reaches clauses that burden the tenant rather than either party's clauses.

Citations

How this record was verified: Direct reading of the Rhode Island General Laws on the General Assembly's own host, one file per section. The residential landlord and tenant chapter (34-18) was read from its section index, sections 34-18-1 through 34-18-62, with sections 34-18-7, -8, -13, -14, -15, -16, -17, -18, -19, -20, -22.1, -22.2, -22.3, -23, -25, -34, -57, -58, -59, -61 and -62 read in full. Sections 34-18-63 through 34-18-67, in force since July 1, 2026, were read from the enrolled Public Law because the code host has not yet absorbed them; the same is true of the shoreline subsection added to section 34-18-20. Also read in full: chapter 42-128.1 and its section 8 (lead hazard mitigation), chapter 23-24.6 and its sections 15, 16 and 28 (lead poisoning prevention), the chapter 23-61 index (radon control), sections 5-20.8-1, -2 and -6 (real estate sales disclosures), section 9-1-4 (statute of frauds), the chapter 42-127.1 index (electronic transactions), section 45-24.3-17 (housing maintenance and occupancy code), section 34-36.1-4.12 (condominium conversion) and section 34-30.1-2. The code pages carry no edition banner, so currency was taken from each section's own history line; that reading established that the codified text is one session behind and has not absorbed the 2026 session, and every 2026 value here was read from the enrolled Public Law itself, whose inserted and struck text is marked on the page. The Rhode Island Code of Regulations was read at part level on the Secretary of State's rules host: 216-RICR-50-15-3 (lead poisoning prevention, periodic refile effective January 4, 2022) in full, and 860-RICR-00-00-2 (lead hazard mitigation, amendment effective January 2, 2019) in full. Enactment currency rests on the gap-checked roll of the 2026 Public Laws, 427 chapters numbered 1 through 427 with no gaps, each candidate chapter opened rather than read from its caption, cross-checked against the General Assembly's own full-text search of the Public Laws text for chapter 34-18, chapter 42-128.1, chapter 23-24.6, chapter 5-20.8 and lead hazard across 2024, 2025 and 2026. The General Assembly adjourned sine die on June 11, 2026 with no carryover. The three prescribed documents were opened on the Department of Health's own host and read, with their face revisions and publisher dates recorded. No Rhode Island court decision was read for this topic: the case search was blocked and no value here rests on a decision. Verified September 13, 2026.

What was read to state each absence on this page: