Free Virginia Rental Application Fee Receipt

Virginia’s application fee rule is one of the most frequently mis-stated in the country, and the mis-statement runs against the landlord rather than for them. Almost every summary reports that Virginia caps rental application fees at fifty dollars and stops there. The statute does not stop there. The fifty-dollar ceiling in § 55.1-1203 is expressly exclusive of the actual out-of-pocket amounts a landlord pays to a third party for background, credit or other pre-occupancy checks — which means the cap governs the landlord’s own fee and the genuine cost of the reports sits on top of it. A landlord who reads the popular summary and charges fifty dollars inclusive of a thirty-dollar screening product has recovered twenty dollars for their own time on a rule that entitled them to fifty. That is a real loss created by a bad summary. The corollary matters just as much in the other direction: what rides on top is the amount actually paid out, evidenced by an invoice, not a comfortable estimate and not a marked-up figure. Two further pieces complete the picture. HUD-regulated and public housing units carry a different and lower figure — thirty-two dollars — on the same exclusive-of basis. And the application deposit is a distinct instrument that may be taken in addition to the fee, refundable, with the excess over the landlord’s actual expenses due back to the applicant together with an itemization, within twenty days ordinarily and within ten days where the applicant paid in cash or by certified check, cashier’s check or money order. Two refund clocks selected by the applicant’s payment method is an unusual design and it is the detail most likely to be missed by a landlord who has read only the headline. One thing precedes all of it, and it is where the classification actually begins. § 55.1-1203 is a section of the Virginia Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, so it governs what that chapter governs. § 55.1-1201 puts eight tenancies and occupancies outside the chapter and separately exempts transient lodging — a hotel, motel, extended stay facility, vacation residential facility, boardinghouse or similar — where the person does not reside there as a primary residence, or does so for ninety consecutive days or less. So the first question is not whether the fifty-dollar or thirty-two-dollar figure applies but whether either does, because outside the chapter there is no cap in it at all. On an ordinary residential tenancy everything below applies exactly as stated; whether yours is one is a question of fact this page cannot decide for you.

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.

Watch: Virginia Rental Application Fee Receipt explained

▶ Watch overview

The generator above produces a dated receipt for the money taken from an applicant. Virginia prescribes no form for this, so what you get is not a statutory form and is not captioned as one. It records the parties and the unit, the amount received with its date and payment method, what the money was for, the screening company used, the criteria applied, the outcome, and the refund position with its trigger. Two things it deliberately does not do. It does not print the statutory figures, because a number fixed into a form is a number that goes stale in it. And it carries a single amount field rather than splitting your own fee from the third-party pass-through — that split is the distinction the cap turns on, so record it in the detail field and keep the vendor invoice with the file, because the invoice is what evidences the pass-through if the charge is ever questioned. And one thing it assumes. It is written for a letting the Virginia Residential Landlord and Tenant Act governs; § 55.1-1201 puts eight tenancies and occupancies outside that chapter and separately exempts transient lodging that is not a primary residence or is one for ninety consecutive days or less, and the record does not ask which yours is, because that is a question of fact about the property rather than a field. Nothing is stored and there is no charge. Fields left blank print as a dash.

• That your letting is one the Virginia Residential Landlord and Tenant Act governs. § 55.1-1203 is a section of that chapter, and § 55.1-1201 puts eight tenancies and occupancies outside it and separately exempts transient lodging that is not a primary residence, or is one for ninety consecutive days or less.
• That your own application fee was within the applicable cap. Fifty dollars generally, thirty-two dollars for a HUD-regulated or public housing unit.
• Which figure applied, and why. The unit’s status is what selects between them, so the record should say what the unit is rather than leaving the number unexplained.
• That any amount above the cap was an actual out-of-pocket third-party cost. Background, credit or other pre-occupancy checks, evidenced by what you were actually charged.
• The identity of the third party you paid. A pass-through with no named payee is difficult to characterise as an out-of-pocket amount paid to a third party.
• The fee and the pass-through as separate lines. A blended total cannot demonstrate compliance with a cap that applies to only one of its components.
• Any application deposit taken, as a distinct item. It is refundable and it is not the application fee.
• The method by which the deposit was paid. Cash, certified check, cashier’s check or money order puts the refund on the ten-day clock rather than twenty.
• Your actual expenses set against the deposit. The refundable excess is the deposit less those expenses, so the expenses have to be capable of statement.
• The itemization you provided with the refund. The itemization accompanies the money; a refund alone does not discharge it.
• Your adverse-action record where a report drove a rejection, and a note of any local rule. Federal consumer-report law applies alongside § 55.1-1203, and Virginia local ordinances were not researched for this page.

• Treating fifty dollars as everything you may collect. The cap is exclusive of actual out-of-pocket amounts paid to a third party for background, credit or other pre-occupancy checks. This is the most common error in Virginia guidance and it costs landlords money by under-stating their entitlement.
• Reading the exclusion as permission to add a mark-up. What sits on top of the cap is the amount actually paid out. A padded or estimated figure is not an out-of-pocket amount, so the excess falls back inside the capped fee.
• Charging fifty dollars on a HUD-regulated or public housing unit. The figure for those units is thirty-two dollars, and the difference is an overcharge rather than a rounding.
• Blending the fee and the report cost into one number. A single total cannot show that the capped component stayed within its cap, which is exactly what you would need to show if challenged.
• Charging a pass-through when you screened in-house. With no third party there is no out-of-pocket amount paid to one, and the fifty dollars is the whole of it.
• Treating the application deposit as part of the fee. It is a separate, refundable instrument, and the fee rules do not govern its return.
• Running one refund deadline for every deposit. Cash, a certified check, a cashier’s check or a money order halves the period to ten days, and nothing about those instruments announces that it has done so.
• Refunding the excess without an itemization. The itemization is part of the obligation, not a courtesy that accompanies it.
• Deducting expenses you cannot state. The refundable amount is the excess over your actual expenses, so an expense you cannot itemize is an expense you cannot keep.
• Classifying the unit two ways when the first classification is three-way. Before the fifty-dollar and thirty-two-dollar figures comes the question whether the Virginia Residential Landlord and Tenant Act reaches the letting at all. § 55.1-1201 puts eight tenancies and occupancies outside the chapter and separately exempts transient lodging that is not a primary residence, or is one for ninety consecutive days or less — and outside the chapter there is no cap in it, so treating the fifty dollars as binding there both over-states the duties and under-states what may be charged.
• Confusing the thirty-two dollar HUD figure with the chapter’s HUD conflict rule. The figure is a variant ceiling inside § 55.1-1203. The conflict rule is in § 55.1-1201(A): public housing occupancy is subject to the chapter, but where the chapter is inconsistent with HUD regulations, those regulations control. They are different things.
• Citing subsection (D) for the fee cap, or applying the pre-collection notice duty today. Both belong to the version of the section effective 1 July 2027, which is not yet law.

Fifty dollars — but that is the ceiling on the landlord’s own application fee, and it is not the ceiling on what an applicant may lawfully be asked to pay. Va. Code § 55.1-1203 caps the application fee at fifty dollars exclusive of actual out-of-pocket amounts paid to a third party for background, credit or other pre-occupancy checks. Those third-party amounts are additional to the capped fee.

The practical statement of the rule is therefore in two parts: a Virginia landlord may charge up to fifty dollars as its own fee, plus the genuine cost of the reports it bought from somebody else. A landlord who paid a screening vendor thirty-eight dollars for a credit and criminal package may recover that thirty-eight dollars and still charge its fifty-dollar fee.

Where the unit is HUD-regulated or is public housing, the figure the section gives is thirty-two dollars rather than fifty, on the same exclusive-of basis. That is a different number for a different class of unit, not a discretionary reduction, and it is a fact about the property that has to be settled before a fee is quoted.

One boundary belongs on both figures, and it comes before either of them. § 55.1-1203 is a section of the Virginia Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, so it reaches what the chapter reaches and no further. § 55.1-1201, captioned “Applicability of chapter; local authority”, provides at subsection C that eight tenancies and occupancies are not residential tenancies under the chapter: residence at a public or private institution if incidental to detention or to medical, geriatric, educational, counseling, religious or similar services; occupancy by a member of a fraternal or social organization in the portion of a structure operated for the organization’s benefit; occupancy by an owner of a condominium unit or a holder of a proprietary lease in a cooperative; occupancy in a campground; occupancy by a tenant who pays no rent under a rental agreement; occupancy by an employee whose right to occupy a multifamily dwelling unit is conditioned on employment in and about the premises, or a former employee whose occupancy continues less than sixty days; occupancy under a contract of sale where the occupant is the purchaser or a person who succeeds to his interest; and occupancy in a recovery residence.

Subsection D adds a separate transient-lodging gate. A hotel, motel, extended stay facility, vacation residential facility, boardinghouse or similar transient lodging is exempt from the chapter where overnight sleeping accommodation is furnished for consideration and the person does not reside there as his primary residence; and lodging in which a person resides as his primary residence for ninety consecutive days or less is likewise not subject to the chapter. The limb that balances it is in the same subsection and is easy to lose: where a person resides there as his primary residence for more than ninety consecutive days, or is subject to a written lease for more than ninety days, the lodging is subject to the chapter.

Read that as a gate, not as a doubt. The consequence is that the first classification a Virginia landlord makes is three-way rather than two-way: inside the chapter, inside it on a HUD-regulated or public housing unit, or outside the chapter entirely. Inside, the cap and the clocks below apply exactly as stated. Outside, the chapter does not reach the arrangement at all, so on the face of it there is no cap in this chapter on that letting — which means guidance that offers only the fifty and thirty-two dollar figures over-states the duties such a landlord owes and under-states what it may charge. Which side of the line a particular property falls on is a question of fact about the letting, and this page cannot settle it for you.

A separate HUD point sits at chapter level and should not be blended with the thirty-two dollar figure. § 55.1-1201(A) provides that occupancy in a public housing unit or other dwelling unit is subject to the chapter, but that where the chapter’s provisions are inconsistent with the regulations of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, those regulations shall control. That is a conflict rule about which body of law prevails. The thirty-two dollars is a variant ceiling inside § 55.1-1203 itself.

Because the popular summary of Virginia law drops it, and dropping it is expensive. “Virginia caps application fees at fifty dollars” is the sentence that appears in most guidance, and a landlord who relies on it will treat fifty dollars as an all-in figure. If the screening product cost thirty dollars, that landlord has recovered twenty dollars for its own time and administration on a statute that entitled it to fifty plus the thirty. Nothing about that outcome is required by Virginia law; it is produced entirely by an incomplete summary.

The exclusion cuts the other way as well, and the limit is worth stating plainly. What sits on top of the capped fee is an actual out-of-pocket amount paid to a third party. Each element of that description is load-bearing. It has to be actual, so an estimate does not qualify. It has to be out-of-pocket, so an internal cost allocation does not qualify. It has to have been paid to a third party, so a landlord that screens in-house has nothing to add. And it has to relate to background, credit or other pre-occupancy checks, so unrelated administrative costs do not travel with it.

The evidential consequence is that the vendor invoice becomes part of the landlord’s legal position rather than a bookkeeping detail. If the invoice says thirty-eight dollars and the receipt says forty, the difference is not a pass-through; it is part of the landlord’s own fee, and the landlord’s own fee is what the cap measures. Keeping the two lines separate on the receipt is not formality — it is the only way a blended charge can ever be shown to have complied.

It is a separate, refundable instrument that a landlord may take in addition to the application fee. It is not a screening charge and it is not a security deposit. Its defining feature is that it is the applicant’s money except to the extent of the landlord’s actual expenses: whatever the deposit exceeds those expenses must go back.

Two duties attach to that return, and both are frequently missed. The first is the itemization. The refund has to be accompanied by an itemization of the expenses that were set against the deposit, so a landlord that cannot state its expenses cannot justify retaining any part of the money. A check with no explanation is an incomplete performance even where the arithmetic behind it is correct.

The second is the deadline, and Virginia does something unusual with it. The ordinary period is twenty days. But where the deposit was paid in cash, or by certified check, cashier’s check or money order, the period is ten days. The applicant’s choice of payment instrument selects the landlord’s deadline, which means a landlord operating a single twenty-day habit will be late on every fast-clock deposit and will have no reason to notice. Recording the payment method on the day the money arrives is the whole of the fix, and it takes a field on a form.

Only up to its actual expenses, and only if it can itemize them. The refundable amount is defined as the excess over the landlord’s actual expenses, which makes the retained portion the thing that has to be justified rather than the returned portion. That is a different posture from a security deposit, where the tenancy has run and there is a condition report to argue about. Here the tenancy may never have started at all, and the landlord’s expenses are whatever it actually spent processing the application.

It follows that an expense you cannot describe is an expense you cannot keep. It also follows that the application deposit is a poor place to park money you might want later for some other purpose. If it is not an actual expense of processing this application, it is not covered by the retention, and the clock on returning it is already running.

Virginia has enacted a second version of § 55.1-1203 that takes effect on 1 July 2027, and the Code page carries both versions side by side. It is not law today and this page does not describe it as such, but a landlord building a process now should know what it does, because the change is procedural and process changes are cheaper to design in than to bolt on.

Two things happen. The fee cap is renumbered from subsection (C) to subsection (D) — which matters mainly for citation hygiene, because a source citing (D) for the cap is describing the future text, and a source citing (C) is describing the text in force. And a new duty is added: before collecting anything from an applicant, the landlord must give written notice of the fees to be charged, the tenant selection criteria, the criteria that will automatically result in a denial, the consumer reporting agency the landlord will use, and the applicant’s rights in relation to the report.

That is a disclosure duty rather than a new limit on the money, and its practical weight falls on landlords who have never written their selection criteria down. Criteria that exist only as judgement cannot be disclosed in advance, and automatic-denial criteria in particular have to be articulated as rules before they can be stated to an applicant. A landlord who documents its criteria now will find the 2027 duty is a printing exercise; one who does not will find it is a policy project.

The criteria you apply to an application are the same criteria that govern the screening decision, and federal consumer-report and adverse-action rules apply to that decision whatever Virginia says about fees. They are also the criteria the 2027 version of the section will require you to disclose before you collect. Our guide to Virginia tenant screening laws covers what you may consider and what a denial requires.

An application deposit is not a security deposit, and the two are governed by different rules with different clocks and different itemization duties. See Virginia security deposit laws for the money taken at signing and its return at the end of a tenancy.

For the wider framework — notice periods, entry, maintenance and termination — see Virginia landlord-tenant laws.

Published by Tenant Screening Background Check

Established 2004 · 20+ Years · All U.S. States & Territories · Statute-Based · Attorney-Reviewed

A Private Eye Reports™ service trusted by landlords, property managers, and attorneys.