Connecticut Lease Terms Summary Requirement 2026

It's easy to read coverage of this law as a single change landing on April 1, 2026. It's actually two distinct requirements inside the same section of the act, with different effective dates. The advertising fee-disclosure rule started October 1, 2025, months before the form requirement. The page-one form requirement is the one that starts April 1, 2026. A landlord who's been compliant on one since last fall could still be behind on the other.

[Cite: Public Act 25-44, section 9]

Since October 1, 2025, a landlord can't advertise, display, or offer a rent amount that leaves out periodic or recurring fees or charges a tenant is required to pay. Those mandatory charges have to be prorated and folded directly into the advertised rent figure the tenant sees, rather than disclosed later in the process as an add-on.

[Cite: Public Act 25-44, section 9]

That means a listing advertising $1,500 with a mandatory $75 monthly amenity fee tacked on separately isn't compliant; the advertised figure has to reflect the full $1,575 a tenant would actually owe monthly.

The advertising rule doesn't require every conceivable charge to be baked into the advertised rent. Five specific categories are excepted: payment processing fees, but only at actual cost with no markup; pet fees and pet deposits; variable utility costs that fluctuate with usage; damage-related charges; and certain service fees.

[Cite: Public Act 25-44, section 9]

For a landlord auditing current advertising practices, the practical test is whether a given charge falls into one of these five specific categories. A charge that doesn't fit any of them, and that a tenant is required to pay as a condition of the tenancy, needs to be part of the advertised rent figure rather than listed separately.

The Standardized Rental Terms Summary Form the Department of Housing published covers the essentials a tenant would otherwise have to dig for: the property address, the tenant's name or names, the landlord's information and the name of whoever signed on the landlord's behalf, contact information for the property manager or maintenance contact, the lease term's start and end dates, the rent amount and how often it's due, and any other periodic charges or fees, including a notation if the tenant specifically opted out of an optional charge.

[Cite: Connecticut Department of Housing, Notice OPRHS 2026-005]

That last detail, the opt-out notation, is worth flagging specifically. It suggests the form is meant to create a clear record not just of what a tenant is paying, but of which optional charges they were offered and chose not to take, which could matter if a dispute later arises over what was actually agreed to.

Starting April 1, 2026, the completed form has to be the literal first page of every written rental agreement covered by the requirement. The Department of Housing's guidance to landlords is direct about this: ensure the form is fully completed and placed as page one of each agreement, for both new leases and lease renewals executed on or after that date.

[Cite: Connecticut Department of Housing, Notice OPRHS 2026-005]

A lease that already existed before April 1, 2026 and isn't renewed after that date doesn't need to be retrofitted with the form. A renewal executed on or after the date does need it, even if the underlying tenancy has been ongoing for years.

The form isn't just published in English. The Department of Housing was required to make it available in Spanish as well, and a Connecticut landlord needs both versions available depending on which a given tenant needs. This isn't a suggestion or a best practice; it's built into the statutory requirement for how the Department publishes the form.

[Cite: Connecticut Department of Housing, Notice OPRHS 2026-005]

For a property manager handling leasing paperwork across a portfolio, this means having a process for determining which language version applies to a given tenant, rather than defaulting to a single English-only template for every lease going forward.

Both provisions, the advertising fee-disclosure rule and the page-one form requirement, share the same penalty structure. A landlord who violates either one is liable to the tenant for a civil penalty equal to one month's rent, and a court may additionally award the tenant reasonable attorney's fees and costs.

[Cite: Public Act 25-44, section 9]

That's a meaningfully different exposure than a flat statutory fine. One month's rent scales with the actual rent charged, so the penalty for a violation on a higher-rent unit is correspondingly larger, and the potential attorney's fee award on top of that changes the cost-benefit calculation for a landlord tempted to treat either requirement as optional or low-priority.

Most coverage of Public Act 25-44 focuses on the more visually obvious change, the new form landlords have to attach to every lease starting in April 2026. The advertising fee-disclosure requirement, in force since October 2025, gets far less attention despite already being enforceable for nearly a year by the time the form requirement kicks in.

[Cite: Harris Beach Murtha, insight on Connecticut real estate legislation]

A property manager who's been focused on preparing for the April 2026 form deadline, without separately auditing advertising and listing practices against the October 2025 fee-disclosure rule, may have exposure that's already accrued rather than something still on the horizon.

Even though they have different start dates, the two rules work together to shape a tenant's experience from the first ad they see through the lease they eventually sign. The advertising rule controls what a prospective tenant sees before they ever contact a landlord; the form requirement controls what they see written down once a lease is actually being signed. A landlord compliant on the advertising side but sloppy on the form side, or vice versa, is only halfway compliant with the underlying policy goal of the act.

[Cite: Public Act 25-44, section 9]

The practical checklist splits into two tracks that should both already be underway. On the advertising side, every current listing and any recurring fee structure needs review against the five permitted exceptions, with anything outside those categories folded into the advertised rent figure the tenant actually sees. On the lease side, every new and renewal lease template needs the completed Standardized Rental Terms Summary Form inserted as page one, in the correct language for the tenant involved, before the April 2026 deadline arrives.

Given the shared one-month's-rent penalty and possible attorney's fees on both sides, treating this as two separate compliance projects, rather than one, is worth the extra effort. A landlord who's fully compliant on the newer form requirement but still has legacy advertising practices that predate October 2025 hasn't actually finished the job.