An Ohio lease agreement is a contract that a landlord uses to rent out their property under certain conditions to a tenant. It includes information like the tenant’s and landlord’s contact details, the property address, pet prohibitions/requirements, health hazards, and security deposit information.
Laws
Required Lease Disclosures
The only disclosure that landlords have to make within their leases is one that’s required by federal law. Ohio landlords must disclose if the property they’re renting was built before 1978 due to the risk of lead poisoning from the presence of lead-based paint (42 U.S. Code § 4852d).
Security Deposit
Ohio law doesn’t have a statute defining a limit as to the amount a landlord may collect as a security deposit from the tenant.
A landlord must pay back the tenant’s security deposit within 30 days from the end of the lease. Note that any security deposit greater than $50 must accrue 5% in interest, and the landlord must pay it annually to the tenant if the tenant lives at the leased property for more than six months (Ohio Revised Code § 5321.16).
Landlord Right of Entry
A landlord must provide a tenant with reasonable notice before entering a property, and reasonable notice is assumed to be at least 24 hours unless there’s evidence indicating otherwise. A landlord can only enter a tenant’s property at a reasonable time (§ 5321.04).
Small Claims Court
A tenant may bring a landlord to small claims court for an amount of no more than $6,000 if the landlord didn’t return their security deposit properly (§ 1925.02).
Sample
Our Ohio residential lease agreement template is available for download as a PDF or Word file:
