Michigan Residential Lease Agreement

What a Michigan lease must include

Standard lease elements

• Parties and the Michigan county + street address of the rental.
• Lease term — fixed end date or a periodic (month-to-month or year-to-year) tenancy.
• Monthly rent amount, due date, and accepted payment methods.
• Security deposit amount, capped at 1.5× monthly rent and validated at /review.
• Utilities — which the landlord covers and which the tenant pays.
• Occupancy rules, pets, smoking, and entry procedures.
• Default, Demand-for-Possession tiers, and termination language permitted under state law.
• Verbatim Truth in Renting Act notice (12-point bold).
• Signatures of all parties.

Michigan-required disclosures

• Federal lead-paint disclosure and EPA pamphlet for any unit built before 1978. (42 U.S.C. § 4852d; 24 C.F.R. Part 35)
• Truth in Renting Act notice — verbatim, in 12-point boldface or 1/8-inch print, advising the tenant that Michigan law establishes rights and obligations and that the tenant may want to seek assistance from a lawyer. (MCL 554.634)
• Inventory-checklist procedure — landlord must provide two identical blank checklists at move-in; tenant has 7 days to inspect, complete, and return one signed copy. (MCL 554.608)
• Verbatim 4-day forwarding-address notice — must appear in the lease body, advising the tenant that failure to provide a forwarding address within 4 days of moving out relieves the landlord of the itemized-list duty. (MCL 554.611)
• Implied covenants of habitability and fitness — non-waivable except by written modification on a 1-year-or-longer lease, and only as to specific covenants. (MCL 554.139)
• Self-help eviction prohibition — exposure to 3× actual damages or $200 per day of unlawful interference, whichever is greater, plus attorney fees. (MCL 600.2918)
• Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act + 2025 source-of-income protection — landlords may not discriminate based on Section 8, emergency rental assistance, or government benefits, effective April 2, 2025. (MCL 37.2502)

Michigan-specific workflow

• Security deposit capped at 1.5× monthly rent; demanding more is a statutory violation. MCL 554.602.
• Within 14 days of move-in, landlord must give tenant a written notice of the financial institution holding the deposit and the landlord's name and address for receiving notice. MCL 554.603.
• Within 30 days of move-out, landlord must mail an itemized list of damages + check for any balance. Missing the window forfeits the right to retain any portion. MCL 554.609; § 554.610.
• Tenant has 7 days from the postmark to dispute the itemized damages; landlord has 45 days to file suit to retain disputed amounts. MCL 554.612; § 554.613.
• Demand-for-Possession tiers: 7 days for nonpayment, 7 days for breach, 24 hours for serious health/safety or controlled-substance activity, 30 days for at-will / month-to-month termination. MCL 600.5714; § 554.134.
• After 13 months of occupancy, tenant may terminate on 60 days' notice for senior-housing eligibility or physician-certified incapacity. MCL 554.601a.
• Domestic violence / sexual assault / stalking termination available with appropriate documentation; landlord-side rent recovery capped at 2 additional months. MCL 554.601b.
• Late fees: no statewide cap; courts evaluate reasonableness — BuildMyLease soft-warns at 10% of monthly rent.
• Rent control: preempted statewide; no Michigan municipality may regulate private-residential rent. MCL 123.411(2).

Michigan Attorney General — Landlord and Tenant Issues

How a Michigan lease is structured

1. The document opens with parties, the Michigan county, and the rental-property address.
2. The property-location subphase surfaces the verbatim Truth in Renting Act notice + the rent-control preemption + the Elliott-Larsen non-discrimination notice + a single combined major-city overlay informational callout for Detroit, Grand Rapids, Lansing, and Ann Arbor.
3. The term section identifies the arrangement as fixed-term with an end date or as a periodic tenancy with the 30-day at-will notice tier under § 554.134.
4. The rent section sets the monthly amount, due date, accepted payment methods, and the reasonableness-standard late-fee narrative.
5. The security-deposit section captures the deposit amount, validates the 1.5× cap at /review, and surfaces the 14-day landlord-notice obligation, the verbatim 4-day forwarding-address notice, the 30-day itemized return + forfeiture exposure, the 7-day tenant dispute window, and the 45-day landlord suit window.
6. A dedicated inventory-checklist clause renders verbatim § 554.608 procedural language and the 7-day-return statutory notice.
7. Statutory-rights clauses appear unconditionally — habitability covenants, quiet enjoyment, Demand-for-Possession tiers, senior + DV termination rights, SCRA service-member protections, and the self-help eviction prohibition (with 3× / $200-per-day exposure).
8. The document closes with the non-discrimination clause covering Elliott-Larsen and the 2025 source-of-income protection, and the major-city overlay callout — followed by signatures.

BuildMyLease assembles all of this for you in a guided interview.

Free Michigan lease template vs BuildMyLease

Free Michigan lease templates exist, but most omit the verbatim Truth in Renting Act notice, miss the 4-day forwarding-address verbatim language, and don't enforce the 1.5× deposit cap. Here is the honest side-by-side.

Who this is for

This is for

• Michigan landlords managing 1–25 private-market units (single-family, condo, small multi-family).
• Owners who want the 1.5× deposit cap, 30-day return + forfeiture exposure, and verbatim Truth in Renting Act notice baked in without researching each statute.
• Landlords issuing a new fixed-term lease OR a periodic tenancy that needs the 30-day at-will notice framing.
• Owners who want the inventory-checklist obligation and the 4-day forwarding-address language surfaced in the lease itself.

This isn't for

• Mobile-home / manufactured-home park tenancies (separate Michigan statutory regime under MCL 125.2301 et seq.).
• Section 8 / federally subsidized tenancies — those carry separate HAP-contract requirements that this document does not encode.
• Senior subsidized-housing leases that need their own model document beyond the § 554.601a termination right.
• Co-op or condo sublease arrangements with separate board-approval workflows.
• Ongoing eviction or holdover proceedings — those require court forms (Demand for Possession, Summary Proceedings), not a lease.
• Commercial leases.