Indiana Residential Lease Agreement

What a Indiana lease must include

Standard lease elements

• Parties and the Indiana county + street address of the rental.
• Lease term — fixed end date or a periodic (month-to-month) tenancy.
• Monthly rent amount, due date, and accepted payment methods.
• Security deposit amount (no statutory cap; the parties negotiate).
• Utilities — which the landlord covers and which the tenant pays.
• Occupancy rules, pets, smoking, and entry procedures.
• Default, eviction-process language, and 30-day periodic-tenancy termination floor.
• Mandatory smoke-detector tenant acknowledgement under IC 32-31-5-7.
• Self-help-eviction prohibition under IC 32-31-5-6 — landlord may not change locks, remove fixtures, or shut off utilities to dispossess.
• Federal lead-paint disclosure for any unit built before 1978.
• Signatures of all parties.

Indiana-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)
• Smoke-detector tenant acknowledgement — tenant acknowledges the dwelling unit is equipped with functional smoke detector(s) and agrees to maintain them and notify the landlord if any cease(s) to function. (IC 32-31-5-7)
• Self-help eviction prohibition — landlord may not change locks, remove doors / windows / fixtures, or interrupt essential services to dispossess. (IC 32-31-5-6)
• Retaliation prohibition — landlord may not take adverse action in response to the tenant's enumerated protected activities (complaint to a code-enforcement agency, written complaint to the landlord under IC 32-31-5-6 or IC 32-31-8-5, court action under IC 32-31-6 or IC 32-31-8, tenant-organization participation, or testimony against the landlord). (IC 32-31-8.5)
• Domestic-violence / sexual-assault / stalking early-termination right — a tenant who is a "protected individual" may terminate the lease early upon proper documentation; the landlord may not retaliate or refuse to renew based on protected-individual status. (IC 32-31-9-1 et seq.)
• Lock-change requirement — when a protected individual provides documentation, the landlord must change the locks within 48 hours of receiving payment (or permit the tenant to do so). (IC 32-31-9-9)

Indiana-specific workflow

• No statutory deposit cap — the parties negotiate the deposit amount. IC 32-31-3 imposes no ceiling.
• Permitted deductions: accrued rent + damages from tenant noncompliance (excluding ordinary wear) + unpaid utility/sewer charges. IC 32-31-3-13.
• 45-day itemized return after termination of the rental agreement and delivery of possession. IC 32-31-3-12; IC 32-31-3-14.
• Wrongful-withholding remedy: tenant may recover the full security deposit due plus reasonable attorney's fees. IC 32-31-3-12(b). No statutory multiplier.
• Indiana does not require interest on the deposit. The lease may say "without interest" explicitly.
• 10-day notice for nonpayment of rent unless the parties agreed otherwise or the tenant cures. IC 32-31-1-6.
• 30-day written notice required to terminate a month-to-month tenancy (symmetric — same notice both directions). IC 32-31-1-1; IC 32-31-1-2.
• Indiana does not impose a statutory entry-notice timeframe; entry must be at reasonable times.
• Habitability obligations are non-waivable: safe / clean / habitable; comply with health and housing codes; maintain electrical / plumbing / sanitary / HVAC / elevators / appliances. IC 32-31-8-5.
• Late fees follow a case-law reasonableness standard (no statutory cap). BuildMyLease surfaces a soft-warn advisory when the entered fixed late fee exceeds 10% of monthly rent.
• Self-help eviction prohibited. Eviction proceeds through the small-claims or superior court system; Indiana enacted procedural reform under IC 32-31-10 in 2020.
• Tenant obligations include keeping the premises clean, complying with codes, disposing of garbage in designated locations, and not damaging plumbing apparatus. IC 32-31-7-1 et seq.
• Major-city overlays — Indianapolis (Marion County), Bloomington, Fort Wayne, and South Bend each have rental-licensing or tenant-rights ordinances that may apply on top of state law.

Indiana Civil Rights Commission — Landlord/Tenant

How a Indiana lease is structured

1. The document opens with parties, the Indiana county, and the rental-property address.
2. The property-location subphase surfaces a single combined informational callout for the Indianapolis / Bloomington / Fort Wayne / South Bend major-city overlays — each operates its own rental-license / tenant-rights framework but none impose rent stabilization.
3. The term section identifies the arrangement as fixed-term with an end date or as a periodic tenancy with the 30-day termination floor under IC 32-31-1.
4. The rent section sets the monthly amount, due date, accepted payment methods, and surfaces the case-law-reasonableness late-fee posture (no statutory cap).
5. The security-deposit section captures the deposit amount, renders the no-cap framing, the 45-day itemized return with full-deposit + attorney's-fees exposure under IC 32-31-3-12(b), the no-interest-required disclosure, and the IC 32-31-3-13 permitted-deductions list.
6. A dedicated Indiana-disclosures subphase confirms the smoke-detector acknowledgement under IC 32-31-5-7 and surfaces the self-help-eviction prohibition under IC 32-31-5-6, the IC 32-31-8.5 retaliation framework with its enumerated protected activities, and the IC 32-31-9 domestic-violence early-termination right + IC 32-31-9-9 lock-change rule.
7. For 1978-or-earlier construction, the federal lead-paint disclosure block fires automatically.
8. The document closes with the IC 32-31-10 court-based eviction-process narrative, the IC 32-31-1-6 10-day nonpayment-notice rule, the IC 32-31-1-2 holdover-month-to-month language, the SCRA service-member protections, the IC 32-31-8-5 habitability obligations, the IC 32-31-7 tenant obligations, the reciprocal attorney's-fees clause, and the federal Fair Housing non-discrimination clause — followed by the parties' signatures.

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

Free Indiana lease template vs BuildMyLease

Free Indiana lease templates are everywhere, but most miss the mandatory IC 32-31-5-7 smoke-detector acknowledgement entirely, drop in "two times the deposit" boilerplate that does not match Indiana's statutory remedy, and use late-fee figures that ignore the case-law reasonableness backstop. Here is the honest side-by-side.

Who this is for

This is for

• Indiana landlords managing 1–25 private-market units (single-family, condo, small multi-family).
• Owners who want the IC 32-31-5-7 smoke-detector acknowledgement, the 45-day return + full-deposit + attorney's-fees remedy, and the 30-day MTM termination floor baked in without researching each statute.
• Indianapolis / Marion County / Bloomington / Fort Wayne / South Bend owners who want a lease that handles the statewide rules cleanly while flagging the local-overlay layer.
• Landlords issuing a new fixed-term lease OR a periodic tenancy that needs the IC 32-31-1 30-day floor.

This isn't for

• Mobile-home park tenancies (separate Indiana statutory regime).
• Section 8 / federally subsidized tenancies — those carry separate HAP-contract requirements that this document does not encode.
• Indianapolis / Marion County rentals subject to the local rental-license regime — the lease references the obligation but does not encode the licensing workflow.
• Premises with active eviction proceedings — those require court forms (IC 32-31-10), not a lease.
• Active disputes over the IC 32-31-11 eviction-information-disclosure obligation — that is a pre-application screening rule, not a lease term.
• Commercial leases.