Free Florida Rental Application

Florida is unusual twice over. First, no statute regulates what a landlord may charge to process a rental application — a full reading of chapter 83 finds no cap, no itemisation duty, no refund duty. Second, F.S. § 83.425, created in 2023, expressly preempts local governments from regulating “rental agreement applications and fees associated with such applications”, so any city or county ordinance on the subject is superseded. What Florida does cap is something different: the fee a condominium or co-operative association may charge when it has to approve a lease.

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A rental application creates no tenancy; it identifies an applicant and records their consent to be screened. In Florida the statutory attention has gone to two places that are easy to mix up: the legislature has declined to regulate the landlord’s fee and has stopped local governments doing so, while separately capping what a condominium or co-operative association may charge to approve a lease. An applicant renting a condo unit can therefore encounter an unregulated fee and a capped fee in the same transaction. The generator above asks directly whether the unit is in an association, so the document records which regime each charge falls under rather than lumping them together.

• The property applied for and the desired move-in date
• The applicant’s full legal name, date of birth and government ID
• Current and previous addresses with the landlords’ contact details
• Employer, position, gross monthly income and a verification contact
• The landlord’s application fee, and what it covers
• Whether the unit is in a condominium or co-operative
• Any association approval fee, recorded separately from the landlord’s fee
• Written consent to obtain a consumer report, signed and dated
• An address for any adverse-action notice if the application is declined
• A receipt for anything paid, since no statute requires the landlord to itemise

• Conflating the landlord’s fee with the association’s. One is unregulated; the other is capped at $150 per applicant in a condominium and $100 in a co-operative. They are different charges under different statutes.
• Looking for a local ordinance. F.S. § 83.425 preempts local regulation of application fees, so a municipal cap is not available in Florida even where an older one exists on the books.
• Paying a co-op approval fee on a renewal. § 719.106(1)(i) permits no charge at all where the lease is being renewed with the same lessee.
• Assuming “unregulated” means “no records needed”. The absence of a statutory itemisation duty makes the applicant’s own receipt and paperwork more important, not less.
• Reading chapter 83’s background-screening sections as being about you. The screening provisions in § 83.515 concern EMPLOYEE background screening, not tenant applications — a search for “screening” in chapter 83 turns them up and they are a different subject entirely.

Not the landlord’s fee, no. Chapter 83, the Florida Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, contains no cap on an application or screening fee, no itemisation duty and no refund duty. That is a measured absence rather than an assumption: the whole of chapter 83 was read for this, and the terms that would locate such a rule are simply not there in that sense.

The word “screening” does appear in chapter 83, which catches people out. Almost every occurrence is in § 83.515, which is about employee background screening — a different subject with a similar vocabulary. The remaining occurrence is in the § 83.425 preemption list discussed below.

This is the part that distinguishes Florida from most other unregulated states. In several states where the legislature is silent, the protection an applicant actually gets comes from a city or county ordinance. Florida has closed that route.

F.S. § 83.425, created by chapter 2023-314, preempts local regulation of rental agreement applications and the fees associated with them. A pre-2023 municipal ordinance on the subject is superseded, and a new one cannot be enacted.

Many Florida rentals sit inside a condominium or co-operative whose governing documents require the association to approve a lease. Where that is so, the association may charge for processing that approval — and that charge is capped:

• Condominium — F.S. § 718.112(2)(k): the association’s approval fee “may not exceed $150 per applicant”, a figure adjusted for inflation every five years.
• Co-operative — F.S. § 719.106(1)(i): the ceiling is $100 per applicant, and no charge at all may be made where the lease is being renewed with the same lessee.

Note “per applicant” in both. A couple applying together are two applicants, not one.

The two ceilings are different numbers under different statutes, and neither has anything to do with the landlord’s own fee. An applicant for a condo unit may quite properly be asked for an unregulated fee by the landlord and a capped fee by the association in the same week.

Florida carries a separate provision at F.S. § 83.683 addressing rental applications by servicemembers. It sits outside the association rules and outside the preemption, and an applicant who is a servicemember should read it directly rather than assume the general position applies unchanged.

Because Florida imposes no itemisation or refund duty on the landlord’s fee, the applicant’s own record is doing work the statute does not. Note what was paid, to whom, and what each party said it covered — particularly where an association fee and a landlord fee are both in play, because only one of them is subject to a ceiling anyone can check.

Beyond the money, two parts of any application carry legal weight. The consent to obtain a consumer report is what makes screening lawful, and belongs as a distinct signed item. The adverse-action acknowledgement matters because an applicant declined wholly or partly because of a consumer report is entitled under the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (15 U.S.C. § 1681m) to be told so and given the reporting agency’s details; recording an address for that notice at the application stage is the simplest way to ensure it can be delivered. Our guide to how to screen tenants covers the process from the landlord’s side.

Signing one commits nobody to a tenancy. It is worth saying plainly, because the form collects a great deal of personal information at a moment when the applicant badly wants the outcome.

A tenancy begins only if the landlord accepts the application and the parties sign a rental agreement — and in a condominium or co-operative, only once the association has given any approval its documents require. The terms that then govern come from the agreement and the law behind it, not from anything on the application.

An application is the one moment in a tenancy when a stranger’s history is examined, so it is worth knowing what is being looked at. Eviction records are part of most screenings, and what they mean depends on how the process works locally — our guide to Florida eviction notice laws sets out the notices and timelines that produce those records in the first place.

If the application succeeds, the next money question is the deposit, and it is a different question from the fee discussed here: an application fee buys screening, a deposit secures the tenancy and is generally refundable. Florida security deposit laws cover what may be held and when it has to come back.

For everything the application stage does not settle — the obligations that begin once a tenancy starts, and the rules that apply to both parties throughout it — see Florida landlord tenant laws.

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