Free Washington Application Screening Fee Receipt

Ask what Washington’s maximum rental application fee is and you will get no useful answer, because the state does not regulate the charge that way. There is no flat dollar ceiling in RCW 59.18.257. What the section does instead is more demanding than a number: it requires a notice to the applicant prior to obtaining any information about them, given in writing or by posting, and it specifies four things that notice must contain. The landlord must state what will be checked. It must state the criteria that may result in the applicant being denied. If a consumer report is used it must give the name and address of the consumer reporting agency and tell the applicant of their rights to obtain a free copy of the report in the event of a denial or other adverse action and to dispute the accuracy of what it contains — three required elements in one limb, not just the agency’s name. And it must say whether the landlord will accept a comprehensive reusable tenant screening report — a report the applicant has already paid for and can present to multiple landlords. That fourth item is the one that goes missing from most Washington checklists, and it is not optional; if the answer is yes, the landlord may still run its own report but may not charge the applicant for it. Screening costs may be charged only if that notice was given, and the amount then runs on two separate tracks. A landlord who obtains screening from a screening service charges by reference to what that screening costs. A landlord who does its own screening may charge only its actual costs — which the section says include long-distance calls and time spent calling landlords, employers and financial institutions — and no more than the customary costs charged by a screening service in the general area. Around that sit three further duties: a written adverse-action notice stating the reasons, in the format the statute sets out, whenever the landlord takes any adverse action; a statement on the home page of any rental website saying whether reusable reports are accepted; and, for a breach of subsection (1), liability of up to one hundred dollars together with the prevailing party’s court costs and reasonable attorneys’ fees. And a separate section, RCW 59.18.253, governs the other money a landlord may be tempted to take before a lease exists: a waiting-list fee or deposit is unlawful; a holding fee is capped at 25 percent of the first month’s rent, with screening costs expressly outside that cap; and a receipt together with a written statement of the conditions for retaining the money is due immediately upon payment. One question comes before all of it. Both sections are sections of chapter 59.18 RCW, so they reach what that chapter reaches, and RCW 59.18.040 — “Living arrangements exempted from chapter” — takes nine arrangements outside it, including residence in a hotel, motel or other transient lodging, housing provided to seasonal agricultural employees in conjunction with their employment, occupancy by an employee whose right to occupy is conditioned on employment in or about the premises, and institutional residence merely incidental to detention or to medical, religious, educational or similar services. The exemption has its own limit written into it: an arrangement established primarily to avoid the chapter is governed by the chapter regardless. Whether a particular letting is one of the nine is a question of fact about how it is run, and this page cannot decide it; on a letting the chapter covers, everything below applies as written.

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. Because the notice has to be given before you obtain any information about the applicant, print it once before you start screening and again once the outcome is known. Nothing is stored and there is no charge. Fields you leave blank print as a dash so you can complete them by hand.

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The generator above produces the receipt for the screening charge together with the record of the RCW 59.18.257 notice — when it was given relative to obtaining any information about the applicant, and what its four parts said. Washington prescribes no form, so this is not a statutory form and is not captioned as one. It records the parties and the unit, the amount taken, whether the screening was bought from a service or conducted in-house and what it actually cost, the consumer reporting agency used, the criteria disclosed, the answer given on comprehensive reusable tenant screening reports, and the outcome. Deliberately, it prints no dollar ceiling, because Washington sets none and a hard-coded figure would invent a rule the statute does not contain. And one thing it assumes. It is written for a letting chapter 59.18 RCW governs; RCW 59.18.040 exempts nine living arrangements from that chapter, 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 chapter 59.18 RCW governs. RCW 59.18.257 and RCW 59.18.253 are sections of that chapter, and RCW 59.18.040 — ‘Living arrangements exempted from chapter’ — lists nine arrangements the chapter is not intended to govern, unless one was established primarily to avoid its application.
• A notice given before you obtained any information about the applicant. In writing or by posting. Not with the decision and not with the receipt — before the enquiry, because that is the moment the statute names; the right to charge then rests on the same notice having been given.
• That the notice stated what would be checked. The scope of the enquiry, matching what you actually ran rather than a narrower description of it.
• That the notice stated the criteria that may result in denial. Specific enough to be a real disclosure, because a standard nobody can articulate is also a fair-housing exposure.
• That the notice gave the consumer reporting agency’s name and address, and stated the applicant’s rights. Where a consumer report is used, the limb requires all four: name, address, the right to a free copy of the report on a denial or other adverse action, and the right to dispute the accuracy of what it contains. Those rights are content of your notice, not just a reason for naming the agency.
• That the notice answered the reusable-report question — and that your website home page answers it too. Whether you will accept a comprehensive reusable tenant screening report — and ‘no’ is a complete answer, but silence is not one. If you maintain a website advertising the rental or as a source of information for tenants, the same statement must appear on the property’s home page. If you answered yes, be able to show the applicant was not charged for your own report.
• Which amount track you were on. Screening bought from a service, or conducted by you in-house; the two are limited differently and the record should say which.
• What the screening actually cost. The vendor invoice on the service track; your actual costs on the self-screening track.
• On the self-screening track, what the customary charge in the general area is. Your in-house charge may not exceed the customary costs charged by a screening service in the general area, so note what you compared against — and remember your actual costs include long-distance calls and the time you spent calling landlords, employers and financial institutions.
• Your adverse-action notice for any adverse action you took. Not only denials driven by screening: approving on conditions counts. It must state the reasons and follow the format the section prescribes, plus anything chapter 19.182 RCW requires. Federal consumer-report rules apply alongside and do not substitute for it.
• Your holding-fee and waiting-list position under RCW 59.18.253. No waiting-list fee or deposit at all; a holding fee no greater than 25 percent of the first month’s rent, with screening costs recorded outside that figure; and the receipt plus the written statement of retention conditions you gave immediately upon payment, which is what any retention of the money depends on.

• Looking for a dollar cap and concluding there is no rule. Washington regulates the charge through a written pre-notice and a two-track cost limit rather than a flat ceiling. The absence of a number is not the absence of regulation, and it is the most common misreading of this state.
• Timing the notice to the charge instead of to the enquiry. The statute requires it prior to obtaining any information about the prospective tenant. Screening first and disclosing afterwards breaches the section on its own terms, and it separately means the charge was not permitted when it was taken.
• Naming the agency and stopping there. Where a consumer report is used the notice needs the agency’s name and address, and it must tell the applicant of their right to a free copy of the report on a denial or other adverse action and their right to dispute its accuracy. Three of the four elements are what most checklists drop.
• Omitting the reusable-report answer — or leaving it off your website. The fourth required content is whether you will accept a comprehensive reusable tenant screening report. Most published Washington checklists cover the first three parts and stop, which is how this one goes missing. The same answer must also appear on the home page of any website you use to advertise the rental.
• Saying yes to reusable reports and then billing for your own. A landlord that indicates it will accept a reusable report may still run its own screening report, but the applicant may not be charged for it. Declining reusable reports is lawful; failing to answer the question at all is the defect.
• Publishing denial criteria too vague to disclose anything. Stating that applicants are assessed on their overall suitability does not tell an applicant what may result in denial, and an unarticulated standard is applied unevenly by definition.
• Charging in-house screening at what a screening service would charge you. On the self-screening track the limit is your actual costs, subject to a further ceiling at the customary local screening-service charge. Actual cost binds first.
• Assuming self-screening is the profitable option. It is the more tightly limited track, not the looser one, and it puts the burden of evidencing both actual cost and the local customary figure on you.
• Charging a fee — or taking a deposit — to put someone on a waiting list. RCW 59.18.253 makes requiring either unlawful outright; a refundable deposit for a list place is prohibited just as a fee is.
• Taking a holding fee without a written statement of the conditions for keeping it. A receipt and that written statement are due immediately upon payment, and the landlord’s right to keep the money if the applicant walks away depends on having furnished the statement. Without it, the money goes back.
• Stating the holding-fee exclusion backwards. Screening costs are excluded from what counts as a holding fee, by the definition in subsection (4). Screening money is outside the 25 percent; it is not counted within it, and it does not have to fit inside that quarter of a month’s rent.
• Ignoring the local layer. Seattle and other Washington cities regulate tenant screening and application handling extensively, and those ordinances were not researched for this page. A municipal rule can add duties on top of RCW 59.18.257.
• Assuming the notice duty reaches every arrangement you let. Both sections sit in chapter 59.18 RCW, and RCW 59.18.040 puts nine living arrangements outside that chapter — residence in a hotel, motel or other transient lodging; housing for seasonal agricultural employees provided in conjunction with the employment; occupancy by an employee whose right to occupy is conditioned on employment in or about the premises; institutional residence merely incidental to detention or care; occupancy under an earnest money agreement or contract of sale; a seller’s post-closing possession; an owner-condemnee agreement; a single-family residence let incidentally to an agricultural land lease; and agreements with the department of natural resources. That does not weaken the duty on a letting the chapter covers; it means the classification question comes first, and it is a question of fact about your property. The trap runs the other way too: an arrangement established primarily to avoid the chapter is governed by it regardless.

Washington does not set one. RCW 59.18.257 contains no flat dollar ceiling on what a landlord may charge to screen an applicant, and a page that answers this question with a figure has invented a rule the statute does not contain.

One boundary belongs on that answer, and it comes before everything else on this page. RCW 59.18.257 and RCW 59.18.253 are both sections of chapter 59.18 RCW, the Residential Landlord-Tenant Act, so they reach what the chapter reaches and no further. RCW 59.18.040, captioned “Living arrangements exempted from chapter”, provides that nine living arrangements “are not intended to be governed by the provisions of this chapter, unless established primarily to avoid its application, in which event the provisions of this chapter shall control”: residence at an institution, public or private, where residence is merely incidental to detention or the provision of medical, religious, educational, recreational or similar services, including correctional facilities, licensed nursing homes, monasteries and convents and hospitals; occupancy under a bona fide earnest money agreement to purchase or contract of sale of the dwelling unit, where the tenant is or stands in the place of the purchaser; a written rental agreement by which a seller retains possession after closing, on the three conditions the section sets; residence in a hotel, motel or other transient lodging whose operation is defined in RCW 19.48.010; a rental agreement under chapter 47.12 RCW where occupancy is by an owner-condemnee; a rental agreement for a single-family residence incidental to a lease of land to be used primarily for agricultural purposes; a rental agreement providing housing for seasonal agricultural employees while provided in conjunction with that employment; a rental agreement with the state department of natural resources on public lands governed by Title 79 RCW; and occupancy by an employee of a landlord whose right to occupy is conditioned upon employment in or about the premises.

Read that as a gate, not as a doubt. Where your letting is one the chapter covers — the ordinary residential tenancy this page is written for — every duty below binds exactly as stated, and the trap runs in your favor as well as against you, because an arrangement established primarily to avoid the chapter is governed by it anyway. Where the letting is one of the nine, chapter 59.18 does not govern the arrangement at all and this page does not describe what does. Which side of the line a particular property falls on is a question of fact about how it is run — whether a lodging house is transient lodging within RCW 19.48.010, whether an employee’s occupancy really is conditioned on employment in or about the premises — and it is not one this page can settle for you.

What the statute does instead is regulate two other things: when you may act, and what the charge may be measured against. The first is the pre-notice, which is due prior to obtaining any information about a prospective tenant and which is also the condition of charging screening costs at all. The second is a two-track cost limit that depends on whether you buy screening or perform it yourself. Neither produces a number that can be printed on a form, which is why this page prints none.

The practical reading is that a Washington landlord’s exposure is almost never about the size of the charge. It is about whether the notice was given before the enquiry, whether it contained all four of its required parts in full, whether any adverse action was notified in the form the statute prescribes, and whether the amount can be tied to what the screening actually cost.

Four things — and the statute’s own trigger is earlier than the money. The notice is due prior to obtaining any information about a prospective tenant, in writing or by posting. Charging screening costs is then permitted only if that notice was given, so the sequence is notice, enquiry, charge:

What will be checked. The scope of the enquiry — the categories of information you will obtain about the applicant. The description has to match the screening you actually run; a notice that describes a narrower check than you perform is a written statement contradicted by your own conduct.

The criteria that may result in denial. This is the substantive half of the notice. It obliges you to decide in advance what would disqualify an applicant and to say so before you take their money. It is also the point at which screening policy and fair-housing practice meet: criteria nobody can state precisely are criteria that get applied differently to different applicants.

If a consumer report is used: the agency’s name and address, and the applicant’s rights. This limb has four elements and most guidance carries one. The notice must give the name and address of the consumer reporting agency, and it must state the prospective tenant’s rights to obtain a free copy of the consumer report in the event of a denial or other adverse action and to dispute the accuracy of information appearing in it. Those rights are required content of your document, not merely the reason the agency is named — so a notice that identifies the agency and stops has failed this limb three times over. The limb is conditional: it applies where a consumer report is used.

Whether you will accept a comprehensive reusable tenant screening report. This is the part most Washington guidance leaves out. A reusable report is one the applicant has already obtained and can present to more than one landlord during a search, so accepting one spares the applicant paying repeatedly for substantially the same screening. The statute does not require you to accept it. It requires you to say whether you will, and a clear declining answer satisfies the duty while silence does not.

Answering yes carries one restriction that is easy to miss and lands directly on the money this page is about: a landlord that indicates its willingness to accept a comprehensive reusable report may still access its own tenant screening report about the applicant, as long as the prospective tenant is not charged for the landlord’s own report. Say yes and then bill for your own screening, and you have taken money you may not keep.

The same question also has to be answered somewhere else entirely. Any landlord who maintains a website advertising the rental of a dwelling unit, or as a source of information for current or prospective tenants, must include a statement on the property’s home page saying whether or not it will accept a comprehensive reusable tenant screening report — with the identical no-charging rider attached. That duty is continuous rather than per applicant, and it binds essentially every landlord with a listing site.

It depends which of two tracks you are on, and they are limited differently.

If you use a screening service, the charge follows the cost of the screening you obtained. Your vendor invoice is the evidence, and it is the natural document to itemize the receipt against.

If you screen the applicant yourself, you are on the tighter track. You may charge only your actual costs, and the amount charged may not exceed the customary costs charged by a screening service in the general area. Two limits apply and both bind: the ceiling is the customary figure, but if your actual costs are lower than that figure, your actual costs are what you may charge. The statute is explicit about what those actual costs include — costs incurred for long distance phone calls, and for time spent calling landlords, employers and financial institutions — so the base is not as bare as it looks.

A landlord who violates subsection (1) of RCW 59.18.257 may be liable to the prospective tenant for an amount not to exceed one hundred dollars. Read that precisely: it is a discretionary ceiling rather than a fixed award, and it is scoped to subsection (1) rather than to the section as a whole.

The hundred dollars is not the measure of the risk, and the reason is in the very next sentence of the statute: the prevailing party may also recover court costs and reasonable attorneys’ fees. That is the real exposure, and it runs both ways. A defensible record of the notice and the charge is what keeps you on the right side of a fee-shifting provision, which is a different calculation from budgeting for a small statutory sum repeated across vacancies.

Adverse-action notice is required whenever the landlord takes an adverse action — not only where screening produced a denial. The statute’s own prescribed form makes the breadth plain: alongside rejected it lists approved with conditions, including an increased deposit, a qualified guarantor, last month’s rent, and an increased monthly rent. So a landlord who approves an applicant subject to a co-signer owes the notice.

The notice must be in writing, must state the reasons for the adverse action, and must contain the information the section sets out in a substantially similar format, including any additional information required under chapter 19.182 RCW. Federal consumer-report duties apply to the same decision, but a notice drafted only to satisfy them is not the notice this section prescribes. The agency you identified in the pre-notice is the one the applicant will approach for the file, which is one reason the naming requirement and the adverse-action requirement operate as a pair rather than as two separate boxes.

These are governed by a different section, RCW 59.18.253, and the two answers are opposite.

A waiting-list fee or deposit is unlawful. The section makes it unlawful to require a fee or deposit from a prospective tenant for the privilege of being placed on a waiting list, so a refundable deposit for a list place is prohibited just as a fee is. It is not a capped practice that must be kept modest.

A holding fee is permitted but capped at 25 percent of the first month’s rent. And here is the detail that is constantly stated backwards: screening costs are excluded from what counts as a holding fee — the carve-out is drafted into the definition in subsection (4) rather than as a rider on the cap. Screening costs are not counted inside the 25 percent. A landlord does not have to fit the screening charge and the holding fee together inside a quarter of a month’s rent; the screening charge sits outside that limit entirely, governed by RCW 59.18.257 instead.

The section’s caption is “Deposit to secure occupancy by tenant — Landlord’s duties — Violation”, and the duties matter more than the cap. A landlord who charges a fee or deposit to hold a unit, after the unit has been offered to the prospective tenant, must provide a receipt together with a written statement of the conditions, if any, under which the fee or deposit may be retained — immediately upon payment.

That statement is what the money hangs on. If the prospective tenant does occupy the unit, the landlord must credit the amount to the tenant’s first month’s rent or to the security deposit. If they do not occupy it, the landlord may keep up to the full amount only so long as it is in accordance with the written statement of conditions furnished when the money was charged. A landlord who took a holding fee inside the cap but gave no written conditions has no lawful basis to keep any of it when the applicant withdraws.

The section carries its own remedy, and it is heavier than the one in RCW 59.18.257. A violation exposes the landlord to the amount of the fee or deposit charged, plus an amount not to exceed two times that fee or deposit, with court costs and a reasonable attorney’s fee to the prevailing party. There are further conditions in the section on money taken where a unit is held under a tenant-based rental assistance program; they were outside what this page set out to cover and are not described here.

The denial criteria you disclose in the pre-notice are the same criteria that govern the screening decision itself, and the federal rules on consumer reports and adverse action apply to that decision whatever the RCW says about the charge. Our guide to Washington tenant screening laws covers what you may consider and what a denial requires.

A screening charge is not security, and a holding fee is not a deposit either. The deposit regime is separate, with its own rules on what may be held and how it comes back. See Washington security deposit laws for the money taken at signing.

For the wider framework, including notice periods and entry, see Washington landlord-tenant laws.

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