Selling a house with lead paint in Maryland: the federal disclosure, the MDE registry, and what a buyer takes on

Maryland has one of the oldest housing stocks on the East Coast. The rowhomes in Baltimore City, the brick colonials in Silver Spring and Takoma Park, and the ramblers in Dundalk and Glen Burnie were built before lead paint was banned in 1978, and nearly all of them have it under the top coat somewhere. The paint is not what stops these houses from selling. Three other things do: a federal disclosure form that sellers skip and then regret, a state rental registry that follows a house long after the last tenant left, and a lender’s appraiser who will not close over a chipping windowsill. This is what each of them requires and how to sell the house without a scraper.

The federal disclosure every pre-1978 seller owes

Under the Residential Lead-Based Paint Hazard Reduction Act, codified at 42 U.S.C. 4852d, anyone selling a house built before 1978 must do three things before the buyer is bound by the contract. Give the buyer the EPA pamphlet, Protect Your Family From Lead in Your Home. Give them a signed disclosure that states what you know about lead paint or lead hazards in the house, and attach any report or inspection you have ever received. Give them ten days to have the house tested at their own cost, a window the buyer can shorten or waive in writing. Both sides sign, the agent signs if there is one, and you keep the form for three years after closing.

Two points trip sellers up. First, the law requires disclosure of what you know, not testing. If you have never had the house tested and have no report, you check the box that says so and you are done. Second, nothing in Maryland’s own disclosure law excuses you. Sellers who use the Section 10-702 disclaimer and sell as-is still owe the federal form, because the federal rule sits on top of the state one. We cover what the disclaimer does and does not do on our code violations article. A missing lead form is one of the few paperwork failures that can unwind a sale after closing, so sign it even when you are selling to us.

What Maryland adds when the house was ever a rental

Maryland went further than most states in 1994 with the Reduction of Lead Risk in Housing Act, now Title 6, Subtitle 8 of the Environment Article. Every rental dwelling built before 1978 must be registered with the Maryland Department of the Environment, renewed every year, and must pass a risk reduction inspection by an MDE accredited inspector each time a tenant moves out and before the next one moves in. The scope used to stop at houses built before 1950. Since January 1, 2015 it reaches every pre-1978 rental, which pulled in tens of thousands of split levels and ranchers that landlords never thought of as lead houses.

If you live in the house and always have, none of this applies to you. If the house was rented at any point, the registry history is now part of the title story. A buyer’s attorney, and any landlord buyer, will ask for the MDE registration certificates and the passing inspection reports for each turnover. An owner who registered and passed keeps the Act’s limits on liability if a child who lived there is later found with high blood lead. An owner who never registered does not, and that exposure does not vanish when the deed changes hands, because the suit names whoever owned the house when the child lived there. Our tenant occupied rental article covers what else transfers with a rental at closing.

Why Baltimore City buyers ask harder questions

Most of Maryland’s lead poisoning cases, and most of the lawsuits that followed, came out of Baltimore City rowhouses rented in the 1980s and 1990s. Expect to be asked whether the house was ever rented, whether it was registered, whether any tenant ever raised a lead complaint and whether the Health Department ever issued a violation notice. Answer from records, not memory, and if you inherited the house and do not know, say that. Our Baltimore City page covers the other city specific issues, ground rents and vacant building notices, that tend to travel with these houses.

If you decide to fix it first

Lead paint that is intact and not on a friction surface is not a hazard under either the federal or the Maryland standard. The problem spots are always the same: window sashes and jambs that grind on each other, door frames, porch floors and railings, and anywhere paint is chipping or chalking. Painting over intact paint is allowed. Dry sanding, open flame stripping and power washing old paint are not, because they put lead dust in the soil and the ductwork.

Anyone you pay to disturb paint in a pre-1978 house must hold lead certification under the federal Renovation, Repair and Painting rule, which in Maryland is administered by MDE through its accredited contractor program. A handyman who sands a window for cash is working illegally and leaves you with the dust. Real abatement, meaning window replacement, encapsulation or component removal with a clearance dust test at the end, is a line item that rarely comes back in the sale price on a house that needs other work too.

What a retail buyer’s lender does

An FHA appraiser inspecting a house built before 1978 is required to note any chipping, peeling or defective paint, inside or out, and the loan will not close until that paint is stabilized and reinspected. In practice this means the seller scrapes and paints every flagged surface, or credits the buyer enough to do it, or the deal collapses a week before settlement. Conventional and VA loans are looser, but the buyer’s home inspector will photograph the same windowsills and the buyer will come back with a repair request.

Selling the house as-is instead

We buy pre-1978 houses with the paint exactly as it is, including houses that were rented and never registered, houses with an old MDE violation in the file, and houses where the windows have not been opened in a decade because they are painted shut. You give us the address and tell us what you know. We look at the house in person or on video and send a written offer within a day with the math shown against a listing. You still sign the federal disclosure form, because that part is law and we will not ask you to skip it, and we waive the ten day inspection window in writing so the contract moves. A licensed Maryland title company handles settlement and two to three weeks is typical. After closing, the registration, the accredited contractor and the clearance test become our problem. Our as-is page covers what we do and do not ask you to fix, which is nothing.

A house with lead paint is a normal Maryland house. Sign the federal form, pull whatever MDE records exist if the house was ever rented, and decide whether you want to spend a season stabilizing windows for an appraiser or sell the house as it stands. Either path works. Only one of them has a date on it.