Massachusetts Rental Application Fee Rules & Lawful Charges
Massachusetts does not cap the rental application fee — on a tenancy § 15B governs it leaves no room for one. M.G.L. c. 186, § 15B(1)(b) says that at or prior to the commencement of a tenancy a lessor may not require a tenant or prospective tenant to pay any amount in excess of four listed items: first month’s rent, last month’s rent, a security deposit capped at one month’s rent, and the purchase and installation cost for a key and lock. An application or screening fee is not among them. Since 1 August 2025 the restriction expressly covers the lessor’s agent and payments made to an agent. § 15B(9) sets the section’s own limit: it does not apply to a lease, rental, occupancy or tenancy of one hundred days or less for a vacation or recreational purpose. This generator produces a record of the lawful move-in payments instead of a fee receipt — deliberately, because inside § 15B there is no lawful fee to receipt. It is built for a tenancy inside the section, and for a short vacation or recreational letting it is not the right instrument.
Massachusetts is the state where the usual question has no useful answer. Landlords arrive asking what the cap on a rental application fee is, and the honest reply is that there is no cap because there is no lawful fee. The reasoning takes one step. M.G.L. c. 186, § 15B(1)(b) provides that at or prior to the commencement of any tenancy, no lessor — and, since 1 August 2025, no agent of the lessor — may require a tenant or prospective tenant to pay any amount in excess of a list of four items. The list is first month’s rent, last month’s rent, a security deposit of no more than one month’s rent, and the purchase and installation cost for a key and lock. Because the operative words are “any amount in excess of the following”, the list is a ceiling on the whole category of pre-tenancy payments rather than a set of permitted examples alongside others. An application fee, a screening fee, a processing fee, a holding fee or an administration fee is an amount in excess of that list, whatever it is called. That is why this page does not give you a fee receipt to fill in. The document a Massachusetts landlord actually needs at this stage is a clear record of the lawful move-in payments, and a written screening process that does not depend on the applicant paying for it. One boundary belongs on that reasoning and it comes from the section itself. § 15B(9) provides that “[t]he provisions of this section shall not apply to any lease, rental, occupancy or tenancy of one hundred days or less in duration which lease or rental is for a vacation or recreational purpose”. Because the whole argument above is built out of § 15B(1)(b), it holds only where § 15B applies. For a short vacation or recreational letting the four-item list is not exhaustive of what may be required, an application or screening fee is not barred by this section, and what does govern the charge is not described on this page. That is a gate, not a doubt: on an ordinary tenancy — the letting this page is written for — the prohibition is exactly as stated.
Build the record
Fill in the fields below and the generator produces a dated PDF you can print, sign and give to the applicant, keeping a copy for your file. Nothing is stored and there is no charge. Fields you leave blank print as a dash so you can complete them by hand.
Why an exhaustive list bans a fee no statute mentions — and what the 2025 amendment changed
Start at the end of the section, because that is where its own limit lives. § 15B(9) is the section’s final subsection and it reads: “The provisions of this section shall not apply to any lease, rental, occupancy or tenancy of one hundred days or less in duration which lease or rental is for a vacation or recreational purpose.” “This section” is § 15B, and subsection (1)(b) — the exhaustive four-item list that produces the prohibition — is part of it. Chapter 186 has no general applicability section of its own, so this subsection is the scope rule for the fee. Two conditions have to be met together before it bites: the letting must be one hundred days or less in duration, and it must be for a vacation or recreational purpose. A short tenancy that is somebody’s home is not excluded, and a long holiday letting is not excluded either. Where both conditions are met, § 15B simply does not reach the arrangement: the list is not exhaustive of what may be required, and an application or screening fee is not barred by this section. This page does not describe what law does govern such a letting, and the record its generator produces — which deliberately has no fee field — is built for a tenancy inside § 15B and is not the right instrument for one outside it. That is a gate, not a doubt about the ban. Which side of it a particular letting falls on is a question of fact about duration and purpose that no page can settle for you. There is no Massachusetts section that says ‘a landlord shall not charge an application fee’. The prohibition is structural, and understanding the structure is what keeps a landlord out of trouble, because it also explains why renaming the charge does not help. Subsection (1)(b) opens: “At or prior to the commencement of any tenancy, no lessor or agent of the lessor may require a tenant or prospective tenant to pay, to the lessor or to an agent of the lessor, any amount in excess of the following”. Two features of that sentence do the work. First, the temporal scope is at or prior to the commencement of any tenancy, which is precisely the window an application sits in — so a payment demanded from a prospective tenant is inside the rule, not outside it, and the express reference to a “prospective tenant” removes any doubt. Second, the operative limit is on any amount in excess of the following, followed by a closed enumeration: (i) rent for the first full month of occupancy; (ii) rent for the last full month of occupancy calculated at the same rate as the first month; (iii) a security deposit equal to the first month’s rent, conditioned on the escrow requirements of subsection (3) and the statement of condition required by subsection (2); and (iv) “the purchase and installation cost for a key and lock”. An enumeration introduced by ‘in excess of’ is a ceiling on the total, so anything outside the four categories is excess by definition. That is why the label on the charge is irrelevant. A “screening fee” is not one of the four; nor is an “application fee”, a “processing fee”, a “credit check fee”, a “holding fee” or an “administrative fee”. The 2025 amendment then closed the remaining route. The pre-amendment text read simply “no lessor may require a tenant or prospective tenant to pay any amount in excess of the following”. As amended by 2025, c. 9, §§ 54 and 55 with effect from 1 August 2025, it reaches an agent of the lessor as a person who may not require the payment, and payments made to the lessor or to an agent of the lessor as payments that may not be required. A landlord who engaged a broker to collect an application fee, or who treated a fee paid to a management company as outside a rule addressed to lessors, is now squarely inside the prohibition on the face of the text. The statute page itself carries both versions side by side with effective-date brackets, which is worth knowing if you are reading it yourself: the first block you encounter may be the superseded one.
Watch: Massachusetts Rental Application Fee Receipt explained
Massachusetts application fee at a glance
Settle this first: can a Massachusetts landlord charge an application fee?
No — on a tenancy § 15B governs. Not because a statute names and bans it, but because § 15B(1)(b) permits only four payments at or before the start of a tenancy and an application fee is not one of them. The statutory words are “any amount in excess of the following” — a closed list, not a set of examples. A landlord looking for the Massachusetts application-fee cap is looking for something that does not exist, because the answer is zero. Establish the gate first, though: § 15B(9) provides that the provisions of the section do not apply to any lease, rental, occupancy or tenancy of one hundred days or less in duration which is for a vacation or recreational purpose, and for such a letting the closed list is not what governs the money
The four things you may require
(i) rent for the first full month of occupancy; (ii) rent for the last full month of occupancy, calculated at the same rate as the first; (iii) a security deposit equal to the first month’s rent, provided it is deposited as subsection (3) requires and the tenant is given the statement of condition subsection (2) requires; and (iv) “the purchase and installation cost for a key and lock”
Who the bar now reaches
as amended by 2025, c. 9, §§ 54 and 55, effective 1 August 2025, the clause reads that no lessor or agent of the lessor may require payment to the lessor or to an agent of the lessor in excess of the list. Both the requiring and the receiving are covered, which closes the broker route
What that leaves for screening
the cost of screening an applicant is the landlord’s own cost. You may still screen, still order reports, and still decline an applicant on lawful criteria — what you may not do is require the applicant to fund it
The four permitted payments, and what this page does not cover
§ 15B(9) — the section’s own scope, and the gate on everything below. “The provisions of this section shall not apply to any lease, rental, occupancy or tenancy of one hundred days or less in duration which lease or rental is for a vacation or recreational purpose.” The four-item list is part of § 15B, so it is exhaustive only where § 15B applies. Both conditions must hold together — one hundred days or less and a vacation or recreational purpose — and chapter 186 supplies no general applicability section, so this is the scope rule for this fee. (i) First month’s rent. Rent for the first full month of occupancy. (ii) Last month’s rent. Rent for the last full month of occupancy, “calculated at the same rate as the first month” — so a last-month payment pitched above the current rent is not within the item. (iii) A security deposit. Equal to the first month’s rent, and expressly conditioned: the deposit must be handled as subsection (3) requires and the tenant must be given the statement of condition required by subsection (2). The permission and the compliance duties travel together. (iv) The purchase and installation cost for a key and lock. A cost item, not a fee — it is the price of the hardware and fitting it. What is not on the list is not permitted at that stage, which is the whole mechanism. And a limit on this page, stated plainly: § 15B is long, and only subsection (1)(b) and its immediate neighbours were read for this page. The deposit machinery — the escrow and interest duties, the statement of condition, the itemization rules, the forfeiture provisions and the treble-damages remedy that Massachusetts is known for — is named here but not described, and a landlord taking a deposit needs to read those subsections properly rather than rely on this page. Subsection (1)(c) separately provides that no lease may impose interest or a penalty for failure to pay rent until thirty days after the rent was due, and (1)(d) bars demanding rent in advance in excess of the current month’s rent, or a deposit in excess of the permitted amount, at any time after the tenancy begins.
How to run a Massachusetts application without charging for it
Take the screening cost out of your pricing model, not out of the applicant
The cost of a credit or tenant screening report is a cost of doing business in Massachusetts. It is the one adjustment landlords moving from other states most often fail to make, and it is not solved by any wording. Budget it per vacancy rather than per applicant, which also removes the incentive to run more reports than the decision needs.
Publish written screening criteria anyway, even though no statute here compels it
Massachusetts does not impose the pre-payment criteria disclosure that fee states impose, because there is no fee to condition. But written, consistently applied criteria remain the practical answer to a fair-housing challenge, and they let you decline an applicant on a stated ground rather than an improvised one. This is a recommendation, not a statutory requirement, and the page marks it as such.
Record the four lawful payments, and nothing beside them
Use one document that lists first month, last month, security deposit and key-and-lock cost. The value of a closed list is that a document mirroring it makes an unlawful fifth item visible. If a line does not correspond to one of the four, it does not belong at this stage.
Route nothing through a broker or agent that you could not take yourself
Since 1 August 2025 the clause names the lessor’s agent both as a person who may not require the payment and as a recipient to whom the payment may not be required to be made. If a management company or broker is collecting anything from your applicants, the question is whether it is one of the four items — not whose account it lands in.
If you take a deposit, take on its machinery at the same time
Item (iii) permits a security deposit only on the conditions attached to it: the escrow handling in subsection (3) and the statement of condition in subsection (2). Those were not read in full for this page and are more demanding than most states’. Do not treat the permission as freestanding.
About the Massachusetts move-in payment record
The generator above deliberately has no application-fee field. Massachusetts does not permit the charge, and a form inviting a landlord to record one would be inviting the violation this page exists to prevent. What it produces instead is a record of the four payments § 15B(1)(b) allows at or before the start of a tenancy, together with the parties, the unit, the date and method of payment, the screening criteria applied, and the outcome. It also asks, explicitly, whether any application, screening, processing or holding fee was charged by the landlord or by any agent — and if the answer is yes, the generated document prints a caution saying so, because a record that quietly captured an unlawful charge would be worse than no record. Massachusetts prescribes no form for any of this; the document is a private record, not a statutory form, and it is not captioned as one. What this record assumes, stated plainly. It is built for a tenancy inside § 15B, and its shape — a closed list of four payments and no fee field — only makes sense there. § 15B(9) puts a lease, rental, occupancy or tenancy of one hundred days or less in duration that is for a vacation or recreational purpose outside the section altogether. For a letting of that kind this document is not the right instrument: the four-item list is not the limit of what may lawfully be required, an application or screening fee is not barred by this section, and a record built to show that none was taken is documenting the wrong thing. The form is deliberately not being redesigned to accommodate that case — putting a fee line on a Massachusetts document would invite the violation this page exists to prevent on the overwhelming majority of lettings that use it. Establish which kind of letting yours is first, and if it is a short vacation or recreational one, use a document written for it. Nothing is stored and there is no charge.
What a Massachusetts landlord should be able to show
- That no application or screening fee was required, by you or by an agent. Since 1 August 2025 § 15B(1)(b) reaches both the lessor and the lessor’s agent, and payments made to either.
- That every pre-tenancy payment corresponds to one of the four permitted items. First month, last month, a security deposit not exceeding one month’s rent, and the purchase and installation cost for a key and lock.
- That the last month’s rent was calculated at the first month’s rate. Item (ii) says so in terms, so a higher figure is not within the item.
- That any key-and-lock charge reflects actual purchase and installation cost. Item (iv) is a cost item; it is not a route to a general move-in fee.
- Written screening criteria, applied consistently. Not required by this subsection, but it is what supports a lawful decline and answers a discrimination question.
- Where a security deposit was taken, that its own conditions were met. Item (iii) is expressly conditioned on the subsection (3) handling requirements and the subsection (2) statement of condition.
- The date each payment was received and how. The rule is about what may be required at or prior to the commencement of the tenancy, so timing is part of the analysis.
- Your adverse-action record where a report drove a rejection. Federal law applies in Massachusetts as everywhere, and it is unaffected by the state fee rule.
- That the letting is one § 15B reaches. Subsection (9) provides that the section does not apply to any lease, rental, occupancy or tenancy of one hundred days or less in duration which is for a vacation or recreational purpose — so the duration and the purpose of the letting are part of the record.
- A note of any local requirement you are also meeting. Municipal rules were not researched for this page.
Common mistakes with Massachusetts application fees
- Searching for the Massachusetts application-fee cap. There is no cap because there is no permitted fee. § 15B(1)(b) sets a closed list of four pre-tenancy payments and an application fee is not among them.
- Renaming the charge. The list is introduced by “any amount in excess of the following”, so a processing fee, administration fee, credit-check fee or holding fee is excess by definition. The label is not the test; membership of the four categories is.
- Collecting the fee through a broker or management company. The 2025 amendment names the lessor’s agent as a person who may not require the payment, and names payment to an agent as within the bar. This was the most common workaround and it is now addressed on the face of the text.
- Reading the superseded text on the statute page. The published section carries both versions with effective-date brackets, and the pre-1-August-2025 wording appears first. A landlord who reads only that block will miss the agent provisions entirely.
- Charging a last month’s rent above the first month’s rate. Item (ii) requires it to be “calculated at the same rate as the first month”.
- Treating the key-and-lock item as a move-in fee. It is the purchase and installation cost for a key and lock, which is a real, evidenced cost, not a round-number administrative charge.
- Taking a security deposit without its statutory machinery. Item (iii) permits the deposit only on the conditions in subsections (2) and (3), and Massachusetts deposit law is among the most demanding in the country.
- Assuming the fee-in-lieu-of-deposit proviso creates a chargeable fee today. The 2025 text authorises the executive office to promulgate regulations permitting such a fee, on conditions. Whether those regulations exist was not researched here, and in any case it is a substitute for a deposit offered to an approved applicant, not an application fee.
- Concluding that because you cannot charge, you should not screen. Nothing in § 15B restricts screening itself. It restricts who pays for it.
- Carrying a fee-state process into Massachusetts unchanged. Landlords operating in several states most often breach this rule by importing a standard application packet that has a fee line on it.
- Assuming § 15B reaches every letting you run. Subsection (9) takes the whole section off any lease, rental, occupancy or tenancy of one hundred days or less in duration that is for a vacation or recreational purpose. On such a letting the four-item list is not exhaustive and this section does not bar an application or screening fee. That does not weaken the prohibition on an ordinary tenancy; it means the classification question — duration and purpose, both of them — comes first, and it is a question of fact about your letting. The trap runs the other way too: a short tenancy that is somebody’s home is not excluded, and a vacation letting longer than one hundred days is not excluded either.
Can a Massachusetts landlord charge a rental application fee?
No, on a tenancy § 15B governs. M.G.L. c. 186, § 15B(1)(b) provides that at or prior to the commencement of any tenancy, no lessor or agent of the lessor may require a tenant or prospective tenant to pay, to the lessor or to an agent of the lessor, any amount in excess of four listed items. An application fee is not one of them, so requiring one is requiring an amount in excess of the list.
It is worth being precise about the form of the argument, because landlords reasonably ask where the ban actually is. There is no sentence in Massachusetts law reading “application fees are prohibited”. The prohibition is produced by an exhaustive list plus the words “in excess of”. That is why the answer does not change if the charge is described differently, and why it does not change if the money is small.
And it is why one further boundary belongs on the answer, drawn by the section itself. § 15B(9) provides that “[t]he provisions of this section shall not apply to any lease, rental, occupancy or tenancy of one hundred days or less in duration which lease or rental is for a vacation or recreational purpose”. Because the prohibition is manufactured out of § 15B(1)(b), it exists only where § 15B applies. Chapter 186 has no general applicability section, so subsection (9) is the scope rule for this fee, and it is the last subsection of the section — easy to miss if you stop reading at the list.
Two conditions have to hold together. The letting must be one hundred days or less in duration, and it must be for a vacation or recreational purpose. A three-week tenancy that is somebody’s home is not excluded. A six-month holiday letting is not excluded either. Where both conditions are met, § 15B does not reach the arrangement at all: the four-item list is not exhaustive of what may be required of that occupant, and an application or screening fee is not barred by this section. What does govern the money in that situation is not described on this page, and this page does not pretend otherwise.
Read that as a gate, not as a doubt. On an ordinary residential tenancy — the letting this page is written for — the answer above is unqualified, and everything that follows applies to you exactly as stated. The classification is a question of fact about your own letting, turning on its duration and on why the occupant is there, and it is not one this page can settle for you. It also decides whether the record this page generates is the right document at all: that record is built for a tenancy inside § 15B, and it deliberately has no place to write down an application fee, so for a short vacation or recreational letting it is the wrong instrument rather than a permissive one.
What can a Massachusetts landlord charge before the tenancy starts?
Four things, and only four. Rent for the first full month of occupancy. Rent for the last full month of occupancy, calculated at the same rate as the first month. A security deposit equal to the first month’s rent, provided the deposit is handled as subsection (3) requires and the tenant is given the statement of condition required by subsection (2). And the purchase and installation cost for a key and lock.
The third item deserves particular care, because the permission and the obligations are a package. Massachusetts security-deposit law carries escrow, interest, statement-of-condition and itemization duties, with well-known consequences for getting them wrong. This page names those provisions but does not set them out; only subsection (1)(b) and its immediate neighbours were read for it, and a landlord intending to take a deposit needs the deposit subsections themselves.
Does the ban apply to brokers and property managers?
Since 1 August 2025, yes, and on the face of the text. The clause was amended by 2025, c. 9, §§ 54 and 55 to read that no lessor or agent of the lessor may require payment to the lessor or to an agent of the lessor in excess of the list. Both halves matter: the amendment covers the person doing the requiring and the person receiving the money.
Before the amendment, the clause addressed only what a lessor could require, which left an argument that a fee charged by a broker in its own right sat outside it. That argument no longer has a textual foothold. For a landlord using a management company, the practical test is simply whether each item the applicant is asked to pay falls within the four permitted categories — not whose invoice it appears on.
If I cannot charge for screening, how should I screen?
Exactly as you would elsewhere, at your own cost. Nothing in § 15B limits what a Massachusetts landlord may investigate or what criteria it may apply; the restriction is on making the applicant pay for it. In practice that changes the economics rather than the process, and it tends to push landlords toward screening fewer applicants more deliberately rather than running a report on everyone who enquires.
Two things are worth keeping even though no Massachusetts statute conditions a fee on them. Written screening criteria, applied consistently, remain the best answer to a fair-housing challenge and let you decline on a stated ground. And the federal adverse-action process still applies in full whenever a consumer report contributes to a rejection — that obligation comes from federal law and is untouched by the state rule on fees. Our Massachusetts tenant screening laws guide covers what you may consider and what a denial requires.
Where the fee rule sits in the rest of Massachusetts law
§ 15B(1)(b) is the front door of a much larger section about money held from tenants. Once a tenancy begins, the rules that matter are the deposit rules — how the money is held, what must be given to the tenant and when it must come back. Those are set out in Massachusetts security deposit laws, which is the page to read before you accept item (iii) from anyone.
For the wider framework — notice periods, entry, habitability and termination — see Massachusetts landlord-tenant laws.
Bottom line
A Massachusetts landlord may not charge a rental application fee or a tenant screening fee on a tenancy § 15B governs. There is no section that bans them by name. The bar comes from the shape of M.G.L. c. 186, § 15B(1)(b), which says that at or prior to the commencement of a tenancy no lessor may require a tenant or prospective tenant to pay any amount in excess of four listed things: first month’s rent, last month’s rent, a security deposit of no more than one month’s rent, and the purchase and installation cost for a key and lock. The list is exhaustive. An application fee is not on it, so it may not be required. Since 1 August 2025 the bar reaches the lessor’s agent as well, and payments made to an agent — so routing a fee through a broker does not solve it. The practical consequence for a landlord is that the cost of screening is yours to bear, and the document you need at application is a record of lawful move-in charges, not a fee receipt. Check the gate before you rely on any of that. § 15B(9) provides that the provisions of the section “shall not apply to any lease, rental, occupancy or tenancy of one hundred days or less in duration which lease or rental is for a vacation or recreational purpose”. For such a letting the four-item list is not exhaustive of what may be required and this page’s answer does not hold — and the record below, which has no fee field at all, is not the right instrument for it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can a landlord charge an application fee in Massachusetts?
No, on a tenancy § 15B governs. M.G.L. c. 186, § 15B(1)(b) permits only four payments at or prior to the commencement of a tenancy – first month’s rent, last month’s rent, a security deposit equal to the first month’s rent, and the purchase and installation cost for a key and lock. An application fee is not among them. Subsection (9) sets the section’s own limit: the provisions of § 15B do not apply to any lease, rental, occupancy or tenancy of one hundred days or less in duration which is for a vacation or recreational purpose. Whether a particular letting meets both of those conditions is a question of fact about the letting that this page does not answer.
Is a tenant screening fee treated differently from an application fee in Massachusetts?
No. The list in § 15B(1)(b) is introduced by the words ‘any amount in excess of the following’, so any charge outside the four categories is prohibited whatever it is called, including a screening, processing, credit-check or administration fee – on a letting § 15B reaches. Subsection (9) takes the section off a lease, rental, occupancy or tenancy of one hundred days or less in duration that is for a vacation or recreational purpose.
Does the Massachusetts application fee ban apply to short vacation rentals?
Not under this section. § 15B(9) provides that the provisions of the section shall not apply to any lease, rental, occupancy or tenancy of one hundred days or less in duration which lease or rental is for a vacation or recreational purpose. Both conditions must hold together – a short tenancy that is somebody’s home is not excluded, and a vacation letting longer than one hundred days is not excluded. Where they do hold, the four-item list is not exhaustive of what may be required and this section does not bar an application or screening fee. What does govern the charge in that situation was not researched for this page, and the record this page generates – which has no fee field – is built for a tenancy inside § 15B and is not the right instrument for such a letting.
Can a Massachusetts broker or property manager charge an application fee?
Not since 1 August 2025. As amended by 2025, c. 9, §§ 54 and 55, the clause provides that no lessor or agent of the lessor may require payment, to the lessor or to an agent of the lessor, in excess of the four permitted items.
What is the maximum security deposit in Massachusetts?
Item (iii) of § 15B(1)(b) permits a security deposit equal to the first month’s rent, and conditions it on the deposit being handled as subsection (3) requires and the tenant being given the statement of condition required by subsection (2).
Can a Massachusetts landlord charge for keys or locks?
Item (iv) permits the purchase and installation cost for a key and lock. It is a cost item rather than a fee, so the amount should reflect what the hardware and its installation actually cost.
Can a Massachusetts landlord charge a fee instead of a security deposit?
The 2025 text authorises the executive office of housing and livable communities to promulgate regulations permitting an agreed fee in lieu of a security deposit, subject to conditions including a one-month total cap and that the option be voluntary. Whether such regulations have been made was not researched for this page, so this should not be treated as a currently available option without checking.
If I cannot charge a screening fee, can I still run a background check in Massachusetts?
Yes. Nothing in § 15B restricts screening or the criteria a landlord applies; it restricts what a landlord may require the applicant to pay before the tenancy starts. The federal adverse-action requirements continue to apply when a consumer report contributes to a denial.
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