Maryland Tenants' Bill of Rights Law 2025: Landlord Duties

That absence is a genuine finding, not a research gap. A landlord shouldn't assume a specific fine or penalty structure exists for this particular requirement simply because other Maryland landlord-tenant obligations carry stated civil penalties.

5. Why "no stated penalty" isn't the same as "no risk"

A missing explicit penalty clause doesn't mean a missing lease attachment is legally inconsequential in every context. A landlord's overall compliance posture, and any dispute involving lease validity or disclosure adequacy, could still be affected by whether required attachments were properly included, even without a dedicated penalty section written specifically for this document.

A landlord treating this requirement as effectively optional because no fine is spelled out is reading the absence of a stated penalty as license, rather than as an area where the consequences simply aren't defined by this specific statute.

6. The strict rule about modifying the document

A landlord may not edit or modify the Tenants' Bill of Rights from the DHCD-published version in any way.

[Cite: Maryland DHCD, Tenants' Bill of Rights program page]

That's an unusually absolute standard for a compliance document. It isn't a guideline suggesting landlords shouldn't materially alter the content; it's a flat prohibition on any modification, which rules out trimming the document, reformatting it, or adding a landlord's own branding or cover page directly onto it.

7. Why using an outdated version creates its own problem

Since DHCD republishes this document annually, attaching last year's version to a new lease risks providing tenants with content that's no longer current, even if the landlord never modified the document itself.

[Cite: Maryland DHCD, Tenants' Bill of Rights program page]

A landlord managing lease signings on a rolling basis throughout the year should build a periodic check into their process, confirming they're still pulling from DHCD's current published version, rather than treating a single downloaded copy as permanently valid.

8. The language requirement worth knowing

The Tenants' Bill of Rights is available in 18 languages, including English, Spanish, Chinese, French, Korean, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Amharic, Russian, Arabic, Haitian Creole, Burmese, Dari, Pashto, Swahili, Tigrinya, Ukrainian, and Urdu.

[Cite: Maryland DHCD, Tenants' Bill of Rights program page]

That breadth of translation matters for a landlord whose tenant population isn't primarily English-speaking, since DHCD has already done the translation work rather than leaving landlords to source or commission their own.

9. Why the document creates no new rights, but still matters

The statute is explicit that this document doesn't create any new rights or protections for tenants; it summarizes rights and protections that already exist under Maryland and federal law, including some established elsewhere within HB 693 itself.

[Cite: Maryland DHCD, "Renters' Rights and Stabilization Act (HB 693) Frequently Asked Questions"]

That framing matters for how a landlord should think about this requirement. The compliance obligation here is entirely procedural, attaching the correct, current, unmodified document, rather than substantive in the sense of granting tenants anything new. Getting the procedure wrong doesn't change what rights a tenant has, but it does mean the tenant wasn't given the disclosure the law requires.

10. What version is current as of this review

As of this review, the version available through DHCD's program page is dated effective October 1, 2025. Whether a version effective October 1, 2026 has since been published wasn't confirmed through available sources at the time of this article's research.

[Cite: Maryland DHCD, Tenants' Bill of Rights program page]

Given the statutory June 1 publication deadline, a landlord should check DHCD's page directly at the time of any lease signing to confirm they're using the actual current version, rather than relying on a version number or date referenced in secondary coverage, including this article.

11. What the document actually covers

The current version organizes tenant rights into eleven topic areas: rental applications, leases and tenancies, rent, utilities, security deposits, condition of rental units, evictions, constructive evictions, tenant right of first refusal, prohibited acts by landlords, and a resources section with legal aid and tenant service contacts.

[Cite: Maryland DHCD, Maryland Tenants' Bill of Rights, effective October 1, 2025]

That scope means a landlord attaching this document is handing a tenant a genuinely comprehensive overview, not a narrow notice about one specific issue. A landlord reviewing the document for the first time may find it worth reading in full themselves, since it summarizes the same body of law that governs the landlord's own obligations across applications, deposits, habitability, and eviction procedure.

12. Why the file naming suggests an earlier version existed

The current document's own file name references "V2," suggesting an earlier version preceded it, even though the document's text itself doesn't explicitly label version numbers or describe what changed between editions.

[Cite: Maryland DHCD, Maryland Tenants' Bill of Rights, effective October 1, 2025]

A landlord who saved an earlier downloaded copy, particularly one dated around the July 1, 2025 attachment start date, should treat that copy as potentially superseded rather than assuming a document without an explicit expiration notice remains current indefinitely.

13. What property managers should do now

The practical starting point is building document retrieval directly into the lease-signing workflow, pulling the current Tenants' Bill of Rights from DHCD's page at or near the time of each signing, rather than keeping a single saved copy on file indefinitely.

Training leasing staff on the strict no-modification rule, no reformatting, no added branding, no trimming, closes the most likely way this requirement gets technically violated even when a landlord believes they're in full compliance.