Landlord Atlas

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

Verified September 13, 2026 All South Carolina topics →

A South Carolina landlord owes a tenant one disclosure at signing: the name and address of an owner of the premises or of a person authorized to act for the owner, in writing at or before the tenancy begins.

Cited to S.C. Code § 27-40-110 and 28 more cited sources · Verified September 13, 2026

There is no duty to give the tenant a copy of the lease, no move-in condition report, no tenant-rights statement, no required lease contents, no flood disclosure and no hazard disclosure of any kind, and the state's lead law bars renting a posted, unremediated unit to a family with children rather than requiring anything to be disclosed. Three lease clauses are void: a waiver of rights under the Act, a confession of judgment and a clause exculpating or indemnifying the landlord, while a genuine liquidated-damages clause for lost rent on an early termination is expressly allowed. Including a prohibited clause makes it unenforceable and nothing more; money follows only if the landlord used it knowing it was prohibited and tried to enforce it, capped at the deposit for deliberate use and at three months' rent for malicious use. The state's prescribed condition-disclosure form, with its flood and contamination questions, reaches a tenant only under a lease with an option to purchase.

South Carolina lease disclosures at a glance

Which law governs One chapter carries almost everything: chapter 27-40 of the South Carolina Code, the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act of 1986, which is a close copy of the uniform act and was last substantively amended in 1999. It supplies the single signing-time disclosure of the owner's or agent's identity in section 27-40-420, the prohibited-clause roster in section 27-40-330, the unconscionability power in section 27-40-230, the deposit rules in section 27-40-410 and the notice machinery in section 27-40-240. Three other chapters matter at the edges. Chapter 27-50, the Residential Property Condition Disclosure Act, prescribes a form and applies to a sale, an exchange, an installment land sale contract or a lease with an option to purchase, so it reaches a tenant only in that last shape. Section 58-37-50 in the public utilities title puts a written notice of a meter conservation charge on the landlord of a unit whose energy-efficiency work is being repaid through the meter. The statute of frauds sits in section 32-3-10 and the electronic-transactions act in chapter 26-6. The state lead article in chapter 44-53 bars renting certain unremediated units rather than requiring any disclosure.
Who is covered The Act applies to a rental agreement, wherever made, for a dwelling unit located in the state, and a dwelling unit includes a landlord-owned mobile home but not property leased for the sole purpose of being renovated by the tenant. Nine occupancies are outside it: institutional residence incidental to detention or to medical, geriatric, educational, counseling or religious service; occupancy by a purchaser under a contract of sale; fraternal or social organization housing; transient occupancy in a hotel, motel or other accommodation subject to the accommodations sales tax; occupancy by an employee conditioned on employment in and about the premises; occupancy by a condominium owner or a cooperative proprietary lessee; premises used primarily for agricultural purposes; premises under the vacation time sharing plan act; and a charitable or emergency protective shelter. Three duties carry their own thresholds: the deposit-standards statement applies only where the landlord rents more than four adjoining dwelling units and uses different standards for different tenants; the prescribed condition-disclosure form applies only to residential property of one to four dwelling units transferred by sale, exchange, installment land sale contract or a lease with an option to purchase; and the meter conservation charge notice is owed only to a subsequent tenant of a unit already subject to a recorded notice.
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.

Nothing in South Carolina law requires a residential lease to be written: the Act defines a rental agreement as all agreements, written or oral, and a landlord and tenant may include whatever terms the chapter and other law do not prohibit. Where no term is fixed, the tenancy is week to week for a roomer who pays weekly rent and month to month in every other case. There is no duty to give the tenant a copy of a signed lease, and no language, plain-language or type-size rule anywhere in the chapter. What the Act does supply is a cure for a lease one side never signed: if the landlord does not sign and deliver an agreement the tenant signed and delivered, accepting rent without reservation gives it the same effect as if the landlord had signed, and if the tenant does not sign, accepting possession and paying rent without reservation does the same; but an agreement given effect that way is good for only one year however long its stated term.

Statute of frauds: No action may be brought to charge a person on a contract or sale of lands, tenements or hereditaments or any interest in or concerning them, or on an agreement not to be performed within one year of its making, unless the agreement, or a memorandum or note of it, is in writing and signed by the party to be charged or a person lawfully authorized by that party (section 32-3-10, items 4 and 5). The threshold a lease is ordinarily tested against is one year, and the sanction is that no action may be brought rather than that the agreement is void.

Electronic leases and signatures: South Carolina's electronic-transactions act makes an electronic record satisfy a law requiring a record to be in writing and an electronic signature satisfy a law requiring a signature, subject to the condition that the record can be retained and reproduced by everyone entitled to it (sections 26-6-70 and 26-6-80). An electronically signed South Carolina residential lease is therefore valid. The carve-out is about notices rather than the lease: the act does not apply to a notice required by law about default, acceleration, repossession, foreclosure, eviction or the right to cure under a rental agreement for an individual's primary residence. The landlord-tenant act itself predates electronic mail and contains no electronic-notice provision, so its notices run by hand delivery or by registered or certified mail.
Owner and agent identity

Yes — a statute requires 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 enter into a rental agreement on the landlord's behalf, must disclose to the tenant in writing at or before the tenancy begins the name and address of an owner of the premises or of a person authorized to act for the owner as agent, among other things for service of process and for receiving and receipting notices and demands (section 27-40-420). This is the only general signing-time disclosure South Carolina has. Read closely, it asks for less than most states: name and address only, no telephone number and no electronic mail address; owner or agent in the alternative, so naming the agent alone complies; no separate limb for the person who manages the premises; and no form, no posting alternative and no signed acknowledgment. The information must be kept current and the section binds any successor landlord, owner or manager, which is why South Carolina needs no separate notice when the property is sold. The consequence is structural rather than monetary. A person who signs a rental agreement for a landlord and does not comply becomes the landlord's agent for service of process, for receiving notices and demands, and for performing the landlord's obligations out of all rent collected from the premises and kept by that person; and the Act's definition of landlord itself checks in a manager of the premises who fails to disclose, so the non-discloser carries every duty the chapter imposes on a landlord. No damages figure, fee award or eviction bar attaches, and the general rule is simply that a right or obligation declared by the chapter is enforceable by action. There is no threshold, and South Carolina has no statewide landlord or rental-property registration.

If the landlord fails to comply: the non-complying manager or agent becomes the landlord's agent for notices and service of process and for performing the landlord's obligations, as the section states.
Required statements and lease text

No.

South Carolina prescribes no tenant-rights statement, summary, handbook, pamphlet or model lease, and no statute tells a landlord to say where the Act can be read. It also prescribes no words that must appear in a lease: the Act fixes defaults instead, supplying a fair market rent where none is agreed, making rent payable without demand or notice at the time and place agreed, and setting a week-to-week or month-to-month term where none is stated. House rules are the one thing that must be notified rather than recited: a landlord's rule binds the tenant only if, among other conditions, the tenant has notice of it when entering into the agreement or when it is adopted, and a rule adopted later that substantially modifies the tenant's bargain does not bind a tenant who, after notice of the right to object, objects in writing within thirty days of its promulgation. The nearest thing to a prescribed disclosure runs through a real estate licensee rather than a landlord: a brokerage firm and the licensees working under it owe a customer, which by definition includes a tenant, a duty to disclose known material facts about the property or the transaction, but there is no form for it, because the commission's brokerage-relationship disclosure requirements expressly do not apply to a transaction regarding the rental or lease of property. That duty binds a licensee rather than every landlord, so it is not counted.
Move-in condition report

No.

South Carolina has no move-in condition statement, inventory, checklist or walk-through duty of any kind, and no consequence attaches to the absence of one. The deposit section does not condition anything on a move-in record: a landlord may withhold amounts for accrued rent and for damage caused by the tenant's noncompliance, and the only paperwork the section demands comes at the end, an itemized written notice of the amounts withheld given within thirty days after the tenancy ends and possession is delivered, or after the tenant demands the deposit, whichever is later.

Deposit notice at signing: One signing-time deposit notice exists, and it is about standards rather than amounts: a landlord who rents more than four adjoining dwelling units on the premises and uses different standards to calculate deposits for different tenants must, before the rental agreement is concluded, either post a statement of those standards in a conspicuous place on the premises or where rent is paid, or give each prospective tenant a statement of them (section 27-40-410, subsection c). The deposit amount, the thirty-day itemized notice and the penalty for wrongful withholding are on the security-deposits page.
Hazard disclosures

No in-force state hazard disclosure duty applies at signing beyond the federal lead-paint rule. Also on the books: lead — the state bars renting the affected property instead of requiring disclosure; 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) — the state bars renting the affected property instead of requiring disclosure (a statute). South Carolina adds no lead disclosure to a lease. Its lead statute works the other way round: where a child lives in a dwelling in which a lead-based hazard has been identified, the health agency posts notice of the hazard on the dwelling, gives written notice to the householder, and orders the property owner to remediate within a reasonable time, with a contested-case appeal for the owner. A person must then not rent or offer for occupancy to be occupied by children a dwelling that has been posted and ordered remediated until the identified hazards are remediated, and where the hazard comes to light while a family with children is already living there, that family must not be evicted for that reason. There is no state pamphlet, form, registration or certificate, and the article does not reach items that are exempt under federal law. The federal lead disclosure that applies to housing built before 1978 is described on the federal page. Threshold: The ban bites only where the unit has been posted and ordered remediated after a lead-based hazard was identified in a dwelling where a child resides, and only where the unit is to be occupied by children. In force since June 7, 2005. If the property is rented in breach of the bar: A knowing violation is a misdemeanor triable in the magistrates' courts, with each day's violation a separate offense, and a civil penalty of up to one thousand dollars a day may be imposed (sections 44-53-1480 and 44-53-1485). Two limits ship with it: a violation of the article does not give rise to a private cause of action, although evidence of non-compliance stays admissible on the standard of care, and the article's provisions are contingent on state appropriations or other financial support.

Mold — no state duty. No South Carolina statute or regulation requires a mold disclosure to a tenant. The word does not appear in the landlord-tenant act or anywhere in the health or environmental titles, and the handful of appearances in the regulations concern feed and seed standards, archives, education and revenue. The only mold lease text the state has ever had on paper was in a bill that died in committee.

Bed bugs — no state duty. South Carolina law says nothing about bed bugs. The term appears nowhere in the landlord-tenant act, nowhere in the health and environmental titles, and nowhere in the whole South Carolina Code of Regulations. There is no history disclosure, no treatment notice and no inspection duty.

Radon — no state duty. There is no radon duty on a South Carolina landlord: no test, no lease text, no brochure and no zone rule. Radon does not appear in the landlord-tenant act or in the health and environmental titles at all, and in the regulations it appears only in radioactive-material licensing, air quality and drinking-water rules, and as one line on the sales-side condition disclosure form.

Methamphetamine — no state duty. South Carolina has no clandestine drug-laboratory regime. Every appearance of methamphetamine in the health and environmental titles is criminal or scheduling, and the words clandestine and drug lab appear nowhere in them. Because there are no decontamination standards, there is no contaminated-property register, no bar on renting an affected unit and nothing a landlord must disclose. The only place the word appears outside waste rules is as a line on the sales-side condition disclosure form.

Asbestos — no state duty. No asbestos notice is owed to a South Carolina tenant. The state licenses asbestos abatement projects and the people who carry them out, and a separate chapter governs asbestos and silica claims, but none of it imposes an owner-to-occupant notice, and the abatement and accreditation regulations speak to contractors rather than to landlords.

Contamination disclosure: a sale-side form, not a lease duty — no state duty. The one contamination disclosure South Carolina prescribes asks the owner about lead-based paint, lead hazards, asbestos, radon gas, methane gas, storage tanks, hazardous and toxic materials, environmental contamination, toxic mold and methamphetamine production, but it is owed on a sale, an exchange, an installment land sale contract or a lease with an option to purchase, never on an ordinary lease; it is described in the location-disclosure row. Nothing else in this family exists: no pool notice, no military ordnance or noise-zone notice, no pesticide notice, no smoking-policy disclosure and no utility-history disclosure.
Flood disclosure

No.

An ordinary South Carolina lease carries no flood disclosure. The word flood does not appear in the landlord-tenant act at all, and its appearances in the health and environmental titles are soil and water conservation, the statewide resilience plan and disaster-relief fund, forestry, water resources and coastal provisions, none of which speaks to an occupant. The state's flood questions live in the sales-side condition disclosure form, which asks the owner about flood hazards, wetlands, flood-hazard designations, flood zones or flood risk, current public or private flood insurance, insurance claims filed during ownership, flood repairs not filed with insurance, federal flood disaster assistance received during ownership, and any beach nourishment assessment, each keyed to the owner's actual knowledge with a no-representation option. That form is owed on a sale, an exchange, an installment land sale contract or a lease with an option to purchase, so a plain lease never fires it; it is described in the location-disclosure row.
Disclosures about the property's situation South Carolina's one prescribed disclosure document is a conveyancing instrument with a lease-shaped edge. The Residential Property Condition Disclosure Act applies to residential real property of at least one and not more than four dwelling units transferred by sale or exchange, by installment land sales contract, or by a lease with an option to purchase contract, and the Act calls the recipient of the statement a purchaser, a word it defines to include a tenant. The owner must furnish a written disclosure statement in the form the Real Estate Commission prescribes by rule, delivered before the contract is signed by both sides or as the contract otherwise provides, and the commission must post the form for free downloading on its own site. The statement covers the property's systems and condition and includes the presence, buried or covered, of lead-based paint, asbestos, radon gas, methane gas, an underground storage tank, hazardous or toxic material or other environmental contamination, with toxic mold and methamphetamine production named on its describe line; any existing rental, rental management, vacation rental or other lease contract in force at closing together with the tenant's outstanding utility charges; any meter conservation charge; and the governance of a homeowners association. An owner may answer that no representations are made. A failure to give the statement does not void the agreement, create a defect in title or justify delaying the closing, and the liability limb runs against an owner who knowingly discloses false, incomplete or misleading material information, with attorney's fees. Fifteen transfer types are excluded and none of them is a lease with an option. The Act expressly does not affect the landlord-tenant relationship between the parties to a lease with an option during the lease, and their rights under the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act stay in force until ownership transfers. Separately, a contract of sale or transfer of real property lying wholly or partly seaward of the coastal setback line or the jurisdictional line must carry a statement that the property is or may be affected by the setback line, the baseline and the seaward corners of habitable structures, together with the department's most recent local erosion rate; that requirement is regulatory only and does not affect the legality of an instrument that breaches it, and it speaks of a sale or transfer rather than a lease. Nothing else exists: no sex-offender notice, no death-in-the-unit notice, no demolition or conversion notice, no foreclosure or pending-sale notice and no military noise-zone or ordnance notice. Where the landlord sells, a written notice of the conveyance to the tenant is a condition of the seller's release from liability rather than a right of the tenant, and the seller stays liable for the deposit unless it is transferred to the buyer and the tenant is told in writing a reasonable time after the transaction.
What need not be disclosed

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.

An owner is not required to disclose the fact or suspicion that a property may be or is psychologically affected, and no cause of action may arise against an owner in a covered transaction for failing to disclose that the property was occupied by an individual infected with a virus or other disease medical evidence shows is highly unlikely to be transmitted by living there, that an occupant died or how, or public information from the sex offender registry (section 27-50-90). The shield does not cover an intentional misrepresentation made in response to a direct inquiry. Its scope follows the disclosure Act itself, so it reaches a sale, an exchange, an installment land sale contract or a lease with an option to purchase rather than a plain lease. For a plain lease the point is academic in South Carolina: a landlord has no disclosure duty about the property's history to be shielded from.
Utility, fee and payment disclosures South Carolina places one real utility disclosure on a landlord, and it sits in the public utilities title rather than the landlord-tenant act. Where an electricity or natural gas provider financed energy efficiency and conservation measures for a rental unit and recorded a notice of meter conservation charge in the county records, the provider may keep recovering its costs through a charge on the account for that unit, and the landlord must give a subsequent tenant a written notice of the meter conservation charge in the same way the Act requires other notices to be given. If the landlord does not, the tenant may deduct from the rent, for no more than one half of the term of the rental agreement, the amount of the meter conservation charge the tenant paid. No form is prescribed and no number of days is fixed; the tenant living there when the work is done has separate rights to the results of the energy assessment and must agree before the charge attaches. Two smaller signing-time rules complete the picture. A landlord who rents more than four adjoining dwelling units and uses different standards to calculate deposits for different tenants must post a statement of those standards on the premises or where rent is paid, or give each prospective tenant a statement of them, before the agreement is concluded; a landlord who does not may not take deductions for damage out of the difference between that tenant's deposit and the lowest deposit required of any other tenant in a comparable unit. And rent is payable at the dwelling unit, at the beginning of a term of a month or less and otherwise in equal monthly installments at the start of each month, unless the tenant is notified otherwise in writing, so a landlord who wants rent paid elsewhere must say so in writing. Nothing else in this family exists: no shared-meter, submetering or ratio-billing disclosure, no duty to describe fees in the lease, no first-page total-payment rule, no rent receipt duty, no concession disclosure, no renter's-insurance notice, no smoking-policy disclosure and no rent-reporting notice. Late charges are part of rent by definition, so they are on the late-fee page; deposits are on the security-deposits page.
Lease clauses that are void or prohibited

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

The roster is short, closed and gathered in one section: a rental agreement may not provide that the tenant waives or forgoes rights or remedies under the Act, authorizes anyone to confess judgment on a claim arising out of the agreement, or agrees to exculpate or limit the landlord's liability arising under law or to indemnify the landlord for it. All three are framed as things the agreement may not provide that the tenant does, so the roster reaches clauses that burden the tenant. A bona fide liquidated damages clause fixing the loss of rent on an early termination is expressly outside the section. Two provisions stand beside the roster. No instrument of any kind may let a landlord take rent free of the duty to keep the premises fit and habitable. And the court may refuse to enforce a rental agreement it finds was unconscionable when made, sever or limit an unconscionable provision, or refuse to enforce a settlement in which a party waived or agreed to forgo a claim or right under the Act where that settlement was unconscionable when made, after a hearing on its setting, purpose and effect. Every duty under the Act, and every act that must be done before a right or remedy is exercised, carries an obligation of good faith.

Two tiers of sanction apply; the statute's own measure follows.

Sanction as the statute states it: Including a prohibited provision makes that provision unenforceable and does nothing more; there is no damages figure and no cure window for inclusion alone. Money follows only where the landlord both used the clause knowing it was prohibited and attempted to exercise the rights it created. If that use was deliberate, the tenant may recover actual damages plus an amount not exceeding the security deposit, plus reasonable attorney's fees. If the use was malicious, the tenant may recover actual damages plus an amount not exceeding three months' periodic rent, plus reasonable attorney's fees. Both tiers need the attempt to exercise as well as the state of mind.

The listed provisions:

• A provision that the tenant agrees to waive or forgo rights or remedies under the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act (section 27-40-330, subsection a, item 1).

• A provision authorizing any person to confess judgment on a claim arising out of the rental agreement (section 27-40-330, subsection a, item 2).

• 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 27-40-330, subsection a, item 3).

• A rental agreement, assignment, conveyance, trust deed, mortgage or security instrument may not permit the receipt of rent free of the obligation to keep the premises in a fit and habitable condition (section 27-40-340).

Expressly permitted: The same section expressly preserves one clause many states void: it does not operate to invalidate bona fide liquidated damage provisions that establish the amount of damages for loss of rent resulting from a premature termination of a lease (section 27-40-330, subsection c).
Attorney-fee clauses

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

South Carolina has no prevailing-party rule for residential tenancies: the phrase does not appear in the Act. Nothing turns a one-way landlord's fee clause into a reciprocal covenant, and nothing prohibits one, so such a clause stands unless it is drafted as a waiver of a right under the Act or is unconscionable. What the Act does instead is award fees remedy by remedy, gated on willfulness or bad faith, and they run both ways. A tenant may recover fees on the prohibited-clause tiers, where a deposit was wrongfully withheld, where the landlord's noncompliance was willful, on the essential-services remedy, on an unlawful ouster, on an abuse of access and on a retaliation claim. A landlord may recover fees where the tenant's defense or counterclaim is without merit and not raised in good faith, where the tenant's noncompliance other than nonpayment is willful and the landlord is represented by an attorney, on the remedy after termination, on a holdover not in good faith, where lawful access is refused and where a retaliation defense is meritless. Either party may recover on a willful failure to deliver possession.
When, how, and what happens on a failure South Carolina asks a landlord to do very little at signing, and prices the few duties it does impose without damages figures. The identity disclosure is due in writing at or before the tenancy begins, must be kept current and binds successors; the deposit-standards statement is due before the agreement is concluded and may be posted instead of handed over; the meter conservation charge notice is due to a subsequent tenant of an affected unit; house rules bind only if the tenant had notice of them at signing or on adoption; and a landlord who wants rent paid somewhere other than the unit must notify the tenant in writing. Nothing recurs annually or at renewal, nothing requires a signed acknowledgment, and there is no notice-on-sale duty, because the identity section already binds a successor. Notice is given by taking steps reasonably calculated to inform the other party, and a tenant receives a notice when it is delivered in hand or mailed by registered or certified mail to the place the tenant has held out or, failing that, the last known residence; proof of mailing is notice without proof of receipt, and time is computed by the state rules of civil procedure. The Act predates electronic mail and provides for none, and the electronic-transactions act separately keeps eviction and right-to-cure notices outside the electronic regime. The remedies are structural. A failure to disclose the owner or agent makes the non-discloser the landlord's agent for service and notices and for performing the landlord's obligations out of rent collected, and the Act's own definition of landlord checks a non-disclosing manager in. A failure to give the deposit-standards statement costs the landlord the right to take damage deductions from the difference between that tenant's deposit and the lowest comparable one. A failure to give the meter conservation notice lets the tenant deduct the charge from rent for up to half the term. A rule the tenant was not notified of is simply unenforceable. The rent-payment-place rule states no penalty at all: the statutory default governs. Beyond those, the general provision is that a right or obligation declared by the Act is enforceable by action unless the section creating it says otherwise.
Can cities add their own rules

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

Nothing in the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act preempts or authorizes local lease-content or disclosure ordinances; the chapter has no home-rule clause at all. The one express preemption in this area is about the amount of rent and nothing else: no county or municipal corporation may enact, maintain or enforce an ordinance or resolution regulating in any way the amount of rent to be charged for privately owned single-family, multiple-unit residential or commercial rental property, though a locality may still regulate property it owns and may enter agreements with private owners that set rents (section 27-39-60; the rent rules are on the rent-increase page). A separate section of the Act settles conflicts with older state chapters rather than with local ordinances, and it leaves the rent preemption standing. The municipal and county government titles carry no landlord provisions, no rent-control language and no rental registration; their nearest neighbors are an accommodations-tax reporting duty on real estate agents and a zoning rule protecting a nonconforming use when a pre-existing manufactured home is replaced. No South Carolina city appears on this page's locality layer.
How state law refers to the federal rules State law adds nothing to, and refers to nothing in, the federal rules, which are listed further down this page
Changes already signed into law No signed act is waiting beyond any not-yet-in-force duty already stated on this page
Leading court decisions Rivers v. Smith, decided February 19, 2025 (not yet in an official reporter) (South Carolina Supreme Court; residential setting; bears on owner and agent identity): In describing who the landlord is under the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, the court said that the more common situation is that a property management company operating under an agency contract with the owner is the landlord, and that the Act specifically contemplates this, citing the definition of landlord and the identity-disclosure section. The observation is made in the course of a different holding, but it reads the two sections exactly as this page states them: a manager who does not disclose is the landlord for the Act's purposes.

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

South Carolina hazard disclosures at a glance

No row below is an in-force state duty to disclose, hand over, attach or post a hazard notice; the federal lead-paint rule still applies to 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) Bar on renting, not a disclosure — — —
Mold None — — —
Bed bugs None — — —
Radon None — — —
Methamphetamine None — — —
Asbestos None — — —
Contamination disclosure: a sale-side form, not a lease duty None — — —

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: South Carolina 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 South Carolina require a landlord to give the tenant a written statement of tenant rights?
No. South Carolina prescribes no tenant-rights statement, summary, handbook, pamphlet or model lease, and no statute tells a landlord to say where the Act can be read. It also prescribes no words that must appear in a lease: the Act fixes defaults instead, supplying a fair market rent where none is agreed, making rent payable without demand or notice at the time and place agreed, and setting a week-to-week or month-to-month term where none is stated.
Does a South Carolina landlord have to disclose the owner's name and address?
Yes — a statute requires 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 enter into a rental agreement on the landlord's behalf, must disclose to the tenant in writing at or before the tenancy begins the name and address of an owner of the premises or of a person authorized to act for the owner as agent, among other things for service of process and for receiving and receipting notices and demands (section 27-40-420).
Is a move-in inspection checklist required in South Carolina?
No. South Carolina has no move-in condition statement, inventory, checklist or walk-through duty of any kind, and no consequence attaches to the absence of one. The deposit section does not condition anything on a move-in record: a landlord may withhold amounts for accrued rent and for damage caused by the tenant's noncompliance, and the only paperwork the section demands comes at the end, an itemized written notice of the amounts withheld given within thirty days after the tenancy ends and possession is delivered, or after the tenant demands the deposit, whichever is later.
What hazards must a South Carolina landlord disclose to a tenant?
No in-force state hazard disclosure duty applies at signing beyond the federal lead-paint rule. Also on the books: lead — the state bars renting the affected property instead of requiring disclosure; no state duty exists for mold, bed bugs, radon, methamphetamine, asbestos, or any other hazard.
Does South Carolina require flood disclosure to renters?
No. An ordinary South Carolina lease carries no flood disclosure. The word flood does not appear in the landlord-tenant act at all, and its appearances in the health and environmental titles are soil and water conservation, the statewide resilience plan and disaster-relief fund, forestry, water resources and coastal provisions, none of which speaks to an occupant.
Does South Carolina void or prohibit specific lease clauses?
Yes — the statute lists the lease provisions that are void or prohibited. The roster is short, closed and gathered in one section: a rental agreement may not provide that the tenant waives or forgoes rights or remedies under the Act, authorizes anyone to confess judgment on a claim arising out of the agreement, or agrees to exculpate or limit the landlord's liability arising under law or to indemnify the landlord for it.

Citations

How this record was verified: Direct reading of the South Carolina Code of Laws on the Legislative Council's own host, whose master page states that the Code there is current through the 2025 session and is not the official version. Chapter 27-40, the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, was pulled whole and all forty-six sections read with every history line enumerated; chapter 27-50 (residential property condition disclosure), chapter 27-39 (the rent preemption), chapter 32-3 (the statute of frauds), chapter 40-57 (real estate licensing), chapter 58-37 (energy efficiency and the meter conservation charge) and chapter 26-6 (electronic transactions) were read in full. Because the code host's currency predates the 2026 sine die of May 14, 2026, an enactment check was mandatory: the enacted-act roll for 2025 and 2026 was parsed to 273 entries covering acts 1 to 274 of the 126th General Assembly, with one ordinal, act 259, absent from the list as served; every one of the 273 acts was then opened at its own bill page, 273 of 273, and its enrolled text searched for the citation patterns of chapters 27-40, 27-50, 27-35, 27-37, 27-39, 44, 48, 40-57, 6, 5 and 32-3 and for the terms radon, asbestos, methamphetamine, bed bug, mold, lead-based, floodplain, flood zone, landlord, rental agreement and disclosure. Exactly three acts touch chapter 27-40 and each was read from its enrolled text; disposition was taken from each bill's own history block. Because there is no code-wide search on the host, the hazard negatives rest on a full enumeration: Titles 44 and 48 pulled chapter by chapter, 125 documents, and Titles 5 and 6 pulled whole, 47 chapter files. The administrative reading covers the entire South Carolina Code of Regulations, 107 chapter files plus the 18 environmental part-files, 125 documents, current through State Register volume 50, issue 3, effective March 27, 2026; regulation 105-14, the prescribed disclosure form, was read in full. Rivers v. Smith (S.C., February 19, 2025) was read in full text in a central court-database run. Verified September 13, 2026.

What was read to state each absence on this page: