What to Inspect Before Signing a Lease

Before you sign, test the heat, hot and cold water, electricity, plumbing, locks, and smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, and look for leaks, mold, and pests; habitability laws such as California's require a landlord to provide these basics. Ask for the disclosures you are owed before the lease binds you, such as the federal lead paint disclosure for housing built before 1978 and any flood or bed bug notice your state requires. Any repair the landlord promises should go into the lease or a signed addendum with a completion date.

What should you test at the showing?

California's Department of Real Estate (DRE) tells renters to inspect a unit with the landlord or its agent before deciding to rent, using a written checklist and photos. That gives you a chance to ask for repairs before move-in and protects you from being held responsible for conditions that were already there. Bring a phone charger to test outlets and a flashlight for cabinets.

If you are still comparing places, our apartment hunting guide covers verifying the landlord before you pay anything.

Which of these does the law require?

Most of the checklist matches what state law makes the landlord provide. California is one example:

• A unit can be legally uninhabitable if it substantially lacks working heat, plumbing with hot and cold running water, working gas facilities, a working electrical system, or a weatherproof roof, walls, windows, and doors, or if it is not free of rodents and vermin when the tenancy starts.
• The landlord must provide dead bolt locks on main entry doors, locking devices on windows, smoke detectors in bedrooms, and carbon monoxide detectors in a unit with fuel-burning appliances or an attached garage.
• For leases entered into, amended, or extended on or after January 1, 2026, California Civil Code section 1941.1 generally requires the landlord to provide a working stove and refrigerator. You may voluntarily agree at signing to supply and maintain your own refrigerator; this exception does not cover the stove. The landlord cannot require this agreement as a condition of renting. The lease must include a checkbox acknowledgment that the landlord must provide a working refrigerator, but you have requested to supply and maintain your own. It must also say the landlord will install a working refrigerator at the end of 30 days' written notice if you no longer want to keep yours.
• Visible mold growth that a health officer or code enforcement officer judges to be more than superficial mildew can make a unit substandard.

Texas sets out the locks in detail. A landlord there generally must provide a window latch on each exterior window, a keyed dead bolt or doorknob lock plus a keyless bolting device and a door viewer on each exterior door, and a pin lock plus a handle latch or security bar on each sliding glass door. It must rekey the locks within 7 days after each new tenant moves in, put a smoke alarm in each bedroom, and test the alarms when your tenancy begins.

In California, these are the landlord's duty even when the lease says nothing about them, because the implied warranty of habitability applies to every residential tenancy. See your right to a habitable home for how the rules work in other states and what to do if the landlord does not make repairs.

Which disclosures should you get before signing?

Lead paint. If the building was built before 1978, federal rules require the landlord, before you are bound by the lease, to give you the EPA pamphlet "Protect Your Family From Lead in Your Home," disclose any lead-based paint or lead hazards it knows about, give you any available records or reports, and include a Lead Warning Statement in or attached to the lease. Home buyers get 10 days to test for lead, but renters get no such period; you can still request a certified paint inspection, which the landlord may decline. The rule does not cover housing built after 1977, zero-bedroom units such as efficiencies and lofts unless a child under 6 lives or is expected to live there, leases of 100 days or less with no renewal, or housing a certified inspector has found free of lead-based paint. Note any chipping or peeling paint on your checklist; lead paint protections for tenants covers how repairs must be done.

Flooding. Three examples of state rules:

• Texas: at or before signing, the landlord must give you a written notice, signed by both of you, saying whether it knows the unit is in a 100-year floodplain, and a second notice if it knows the unit flooded in the past five years. If it skips a required notice and a flood damages your belongings so badly that repair or replacement would cost at least half their market value, you can give the landlord written notice of termination within 30 days of the loss. The lease ends only when you surrender possession, meaning you move out and return control of the unit to the landlord.
• New York: the lease must say whether the unit is in a federally mapped 100-year or 500-year floodplain and describe any flood damage the landlord knows or reasonably should know about. It must also tell you that flood insurance is available to renters through the National Flood Insurance Program and that standard renters insurance usually does not cover flood damage.
• California: in leases signed after July 1, 2018, a landlord that knows the unit is in a special flood hazard area or an area of potential flooding must tell you.

Bed bugs.

• California: before a new tenancy begins, the landlord must give you written information about bed bugs, and it cannot show or rent a unit where bed bugs have been found until they are eradicated.
• New York City: owners must give new tenants a form disclosing the past year's bed bug infestation history.
• Maine: a landlord cannot offer a unit it knows or suspects has bed bugs, must tell you if an adjacent unit is infested or being treated, and on request must tell you the last date the unit or an adjacent unit was inspected and found free of bed bugs.

Where your state requires no disclosure, ask about past flooding, leaks, and pest treatments yourself and get the answers in writing. In New York, before you sign a lease that makes you pay for heating or cooling, you can ask in writing for up to two years of past bills at no charge.

How do you get promised repairs into the lease?

1. List every problem with photos on an inspection checklist, and ask the landlord or agent to sign it with you, as the DRE recommends.
2. Write down what will be fixed and by what date. The DRE lists any promise by the landlord to make repairs, including the date by which they will be completed, among the terms a rental agreement should include.
3. Put the promise in the lease or a signed addendum rather than relying on a text or a conversation. If you change the printed lease, New York's attorney general advises that both parties initial each change.
4. Agree on what happens if the date passes, such as a rent credit for each week of delay or your right to cancel and get your payments back.
5. Inspect again at move-in and record anything still unfixed on your move-in checklist.

For where the inspection falls among your notice, application, and moving dates, see the move-out timeline.