The Massachusetts Lead Law: Buying and Selling a Pre-1978 Home

Lead paint is not a niche concern in Greater Boston. It is a default condition. The housing that gives these towns their character — the 1920s colonials, the Victorians, the post-war capes — almost all predates the 1978 federal ban on lead in residential paint. If you are buying here, the question is not whether the house might have lead paint. It is what the law requires you to do about it.

Two separate laws, doing different things

People merge these, and they should not be merged, because one governs the sale and the other governs living there.

The federal disclosure rule (Title X, the Residential Lead-Based Paint Hazard Reduction Act) governs the transaction. A seller of a pre-1978 home must disclose known lead-based paint and hazards, hand over any reports they have, provide the EPA pamphlet, and give the buyer a ten-day opportunity to conduct a lead inspection unless the buyer waives it in writing.
The Massachusetts Lead Law (M.G.L. c. 111, §§ 189A–199B, with regulations at 105 CMR 460) governs the property. It requires that a residential property built before 1978 in which a child under six lives be brought into compliance — deleaded, or placed under interim control.

The first one is a paperwork obligation that runs at the sale. The second is an ongoing obligation that attaches to whoever owns the home while a young child is living in it.

The Property Transfer Notification

Massachusetts adds its own form on top of the federal one. Before a buyer signs a purchase and sale agreement, the seller or the seller's agent must give them the Property Transfer Notification — the state's plain-language explanation of the Lead Law, the owner's obligations, and the buyer's rights — along with any lead inspection reports, Letters of Compliance, or Letters of Interim Control that exist for the property.

For a buyer, the practical value of this is the ten-day window. A lead inspection is a separate specialty from the general home inspection, performed by a licensed lead inspector, and it produces a room-by-room report identifying every lead-painted surface. Whether to order one is a real decision and it depends almost entirely on who is going to live there.

When compliance is actually required

The trigger is a child under six occupying the home. Not the age of the house, not the sale itself.

That means:

If you buy a 1910 house and no one under six lives there, nothing is required of you under the Lead Law.
If you buy the same house and have a four-year-old, or a child turns six-minus-a-day while you own it, the obligation attaches to you as the owner.
If you rent the property out and a family with a young child moves in, the obligation is yours as the landlord — and refusing to rent to a family with young children in order to avoid deleading is illegal discrimination under Massachusetts law. This is enforced, and the penalties are meaningful.

The obligation is the owner's. It does not transfer to the buyer as a condition of sale, and a seller is generally not required to delead before selling. That surprises people on both sides of the table.

Compliance versus interim control

There are two letters, and they are not the same thing.

A Letter of Full Compliance means the lead hazards have been permanently addressed and the property has passed a re-inspection. It does not expire.
A Letter of Interim Control means the immediate hazards have been temporarily stabilised rather than eliminated. It is time-limited and has to be renewed or converted to full compliance.

If a listing advertises that a home is "deleaded," ask which letter, and ask to see it. The difference is a few thousand dollars and a deadline.

How deleading actually gets done

Work is classified by risk, and the classification determines who may do it:

High-risk work — removing or replacing lead-painted surfaces, anything that generates significant dust — must be done by a licensed deleader.
Low- and moderate-risk work — covering surfaces, replacing certain components, some window treatments — may be done by an owner or an owner's agent who has completed the Massachusetts-approved training course.

A licensed lead inspector then re-inspects and issues the letter. The inspector and the deleader must be independent of one another.

The most common approach on a pre-war house is not stripping every painted surface. It is replacing the windows — friction surfaces produce most of the dust that actually poisons children — and encapsulating or covering the rest. That is why a deleading quote and a window-replacement quote so often turn out to be roughly the same project.

The tax credit people forget to claim

Massachusetts offers a state income tax credit for deleading a residential property. For tax years beginning on or after 1 January 2023, the credit is up to $3,000 per unit for bringing a unit into full compliance and up to $1,000 per unit for interim control. It was half those amounts before the 2023 tax legislation raised it.

Claim it on your Massachusetts return; the Department of Revenue publishes the current form and the conditions. If you deleaded and did not claim it, an amended return may still be open to you.

MassHousing also runs a Get the Lead Out loan program for owner-occupants and small landlords, at terms better than a general home improvement loan. If deleading is on your list, price that against a HELOC before you assume the HELOC wins.

What this means for how you write an offer

If you have or plan to have young children and you are buying a pre-1978 home:

1.Use the ten-day lead inspection window, or negotiate it into the timeline explicitly. Do not waive it casually.
2.Ask for any existing lead reports up front. Many homes in these towns have been inspected before, and a prior report saves you a step.
3.If the inspection finds significant lead, get a deleading quote before your inspection contingency expires, not after. A quote is a negotiating position; a suspicion is not.
4.Treat it the way you would treat any other quantified repair — as a number that belongs in the conversation about price, not as a reason to panic. The full explanation of how contingencies carry that weight is in offer contingencies in Massachusetts.

If you do not have young children and do not plan to rent the property to a family that does, the calculus is different. You are buying a future obligation rather than a present one — real, but not urgent, and worth knowing about before you own it rather than after.

For sellers

You are not generally required to delead before selling, but you are required to disclose what you know and to hand over what you have. Two things make the sale go better:

Find the paperwork. If a prior owner deleaded and there is a Letter of Compliance in a file somewhere, it is worth real money and real speed in the negotiation.
Do not guess in writing. "I don't believe there's any lead" on a disclosure form for a 1935 house is not a helpful answer and can become a liability. "Unknown, no inspection has been performed" is accurate and is what the form contemplates.

The seller's guide covers where this sits alongside the rest of the pre-closing paperwork.

Requirements are stated as of 2026 under M.G.L. c. 111 and 105 CMR 460, and the tax credit figures are those in effect for tax years beginning on or after 1 January 2023. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health's Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program and the Department of Revenue are the authorities on the current rules; this is general information, not legal or tax advice.