Free Colorado Rental Application Fee Receipt

Colorado is easy to describe in one line and hard to comply with in practice. The one line is that there is no cap: the Rental Application Fairness Act, at C.R.S. §§ 38-12-901 to 38-12-905, nowhere states a maximum application fee. What it states instead is that you may not charge the fee at all unless the entire amount goes on your costs of processing the application, which converts the question from what may I charge into what can I show I spent. That much is widely reported. What is much less widely reported, and what this page is organised around, is the second sentence of the section. § 38-12-903(2)(a) requires the fee to be the same amount for every applicant for the same dwelling unit, and — if you are offering more than one unit for rent at the same time — the same amount for applicants across every unit you are then offering. That is an obligation a landlord can breach without any bad intent whatsoever, simply by running a cheaper screening product on a small property and a fuller one on a larger property in the same week, or by adjusting a fee mid-vacancy when a vendor changes its pricing. It also sits in tension with the actual-cost basis, because actual costs vary from applicant to applicant and the fee is not allowed to. Colorado supplies the reconciliation itself, in the average-cost basis at § 38-12-903(1)(b), but taking that route brings its own duty: you have to be able to explain to the applicant how the average was derived. Around those two rules sit a receipt duty owed to every paying applicant, a costs disclosure or itemization, a twenty-day remittance clock that runs from processing rather than from any decision you make, an outright bar on charging where a portable tenant screening report is supplied, and a remedy in § 38-12-905 of two thousand five hundred dollars plus costs and attorney fees, collapsing to fifty dollars if you cure within seven calendar days of being told. Everything below is written from the certified 2026 text of those sections.

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 disclosure has to be made before the fee is accepted, print it once for the applicant before you take the money 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.

Watch: Colorado Rental Application Fee Receipt explained

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The generator above produces the receipt § 38-12-903(3)(b) requires you to give every prospective tenant who pays an application fee, together with a place to record the costs position that § 38-12-903(3)(a) and § 38-12-903(4) turn on. Colorado does not prescribe a form, so this 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 method, the screening company used, the criteria applied, the outcome, and the refund position. Two things it deliberately does not do. It does not print a dollar ceiling, because the Act contains none and a number invented for a form is a number a landlord would rely on. And it is not, by itself, the average-cost explanation: if your fee is set on the average expense per prospective tenant, § 38-12-903(3)(a) requires you to include information about how that average is determined, which is a short written statement you prepare once and attach. Remember the paper rule. An electronic receipt is permitted unless the applicant requests a paper one, so the printable output here is what satisfies that request. Nothing is stored and there is no charge. Fields left blank print as a dash.

• That the entire fee went on processing costs. § 38-12-903(1) permits the charge only on that condition, so the spend is the justification for the charge.
• Which basis you used, actual or average. § 38-12-903(1)(a) and (1)(b) are alternatives, and the disclosure duty differs depending which you chose.
• How an average fee was determined. Required expressly by § 38-12-903(3)(a): the population, the period, the components and the resulting figure.
• That every applicant for the same unit was charged the same amount. The first limb of § 38-12-903(2)(a).
• That every applicant for any other unit offered at the same time was charged the same amount. The second limb, and the one that reaches across your live inventory.
• The receipt you issued to each paying applicant. § 38-12-903(3)(b), on paper where paper was requested.
• The disclosure of anticipated expenses, or the itemization of actual ones. § 38-12-903(3)(a) requires one or the other for every paying applicant.
• The date the application was processed. It starts the twenty-calendar-day remittance clock in § 38-12-903(4).
• The amount remitted, when and how. The duty is to remit the remaining amount with a good-faith effort inside that window.
• That the portable-report advisement was published before any screening step. § 38-12-904(1.5)(d) and its placement and type-size rules in (1.5)(e).
• That no fee was charged where a portable tenant screening report was supplied. § 38-12-903(2)(b), and no access or use charge under § 38-12-904(1.5)(c).
• Your denial notice where an application was refused. § 38-12-904(2) requires written reasons, and the consumer report plus a dispute advisement where one was obtained.
• Any local requirement you are also meeting. No municipal ordinance was researched for this page.

• Charging different amounts for different properties on the market at once. § 38-12-903(2)(a) reaches every unit you are offering for rent at the same time, not just the unit applied for. A cheaper fee on the small holding and a fuller one on the larger building breaches it while both are listed.
• Varying the fee mid-vacancy. Two applicants for the same unit charged two different amounts is the plainest possible breach of the first limb, and a vendor price change partway through a letting is the usual cause.
• Pricing on actual cost while several units are live. Actual expense varies by applicant, and the equal-fee rule does not permit the fee to vary with it. This is what the average-cost basis in § 38-12-903(1)(b) is for.
• Using the average basis without being able to explain the average. § 38-12-903(3)(a) requires information about how the average was determined. An unexplained average is an unjustified fee.
• Building margin, overhead or a deterrent into the fee. The permission in § 38-12-903(1) is conditional on the entire amount covering processing costs. Anything above that is money you have to remit under § 38-12-903(4).
• Skipping the receipt because the payment was online. § 38-12-903(3)(b) requires a receipt for any fee received from every prospective tenant. Electronic is fine — until the applicant asks for paper, at which point paper is owed.
• Treating the disclosure and the receipt as the same document duty. They are separate paragraphs, (3)(a) and (3)(b), and doing one does not discharge the other.
• Running the twenty days from your decision. § 38-12-903(4) runs the good-faith effort from processing the application. A landlord who sits on a file for a fortnight before deciding has already spent most of the window.
• Charging a fee anyway when a portable tenant screening report is supplied. § 38-12-903(2)(b) removes the fee entirely in that case, and § 38-12-904(1.5)(c) forbids charging for access to or use of the report.
• Publishing the portable-report advisement in the wrong place, or too small. § 38-12-904(1.5)(e) specifies the locations and, for three of them, twelve-point bold-faced type.
• Assuming the § 38-12-904(1.5)(f) opt-out applies because you are small. It has two conditions and both must hold: not accepting more than one application fee at a time for the unit, and refunding the total fee within twenty calendar days of written communication declining to enter into a lease.
• Ignoring a complaint for a week. § 38-12-905(3) turns a two thousand five hundred dollar exposure into a fifty-dollar penalty if the violation is cured within seven calendar days of notice. Nothing else on this page has that leverage.

No. There is no dollar cap anywhere in the Rental Application Fairness Act. What § 38-12-903(1) says instead is that a landlord shall not charge a prospective tenant a rental application fee unless the landlord uses the entire amount of the fee to cover the landlord’s costs in processing the application.

That drafting matters. It is not a ceiling you must stay under; it is a permission that exists only while the money is being spent on the thing it was collected for. A fee is lawful in whatever amount your processing genuinely costs, and unlawful to the extent it exceeds that — which is why § 38-12-903(4) then requires the unused remainder to be remitted rather than treating an overcharge as a fine-able offence in itself.

The section gives you two ways to compute the figure. § 38-12-903(1)(a) allows the actual expense you incur in processing that application. § 38-12-903(1)(b) allows the average expense you incur per prospective tenant in the course of processing multiple applications. Both are permitted; they are not equally easy to live with, for reasons the next section sets out.

§ 38-12-903(2)(a) prohibits charging a prospective tenant a rental application fee in an amount different from a fee charged to another prospective tenant who applies to rent either the same dwelling unit, or — if the landlord offers more than one dwelling unit for rent at the same time — any other dwelling unit offered by the landlord.

Read the second limb slowly, because it is the one that surprises people. It is not confined to the unit the applicant applied for. While you have more than one unit on the market simultaneously, the comparison set is every unit you are then offering. A landlord with a studio, a two-bedroom and a house all advertised in the same week is running a single permitted fee amount across all three, not three fee amounts calibrated to three properties.

Two things follow, and both are easy to get wrong without any intention to do so.

First, differential pricing by property type breaches it. Charging less on a cheaper unit feels generous and is exactly what the subsection forbids while both units are offered at the same time. So does charging more for a larger property on the theory that its applicants require deeper screening.

Second, changing the fee during a live vacancy breaches the first limb. If your screening vendor raises its rate on the first of the month and you pass that through immediately, applicants for the same unit before and after that date have been charged different amounts. The subsection compares amounts charged to applicants for the same unit; it does not ask whether each figure was independently justifiable at the time.

The practical answer is to treat the fee as a published number that changes on a cycle rather than a cost that floats. Set it, apply it everywhere, review it between lettings, and record the date any new figure took effect.

By using the average-cost basis in § 38-12-903(1)(b), and by writing down how you derived the average. That is the reconciliation Colorado itself supplies, and it is the single most useful thing on this page.

The tension is real. Actual costs are not uniform: an applicant with an out-of-state rental history may need an extra search; a co-applicant or guarantor adds a report; a vendor’s per-pull price differs between products. Price on strict actual expense with three units advertised and you will charge different applicants different amounts, which the equal-fee rule prohibits. Price on the average expense per prospective tenant and the number is the same for everyone by construction.

Taking that route engages § 38-12-903(3)(a)’s second sentence: where the landlord charges an amount based on the average cost of processing the application, the landlord shall include information regarding how that average rental application fee is determined. So the price of the workable option is transparency about the arithmetic.

A worked example makes the shape of it clear. Suppose over the previous quarter you processed forty applications. Your screening vendor billed a credit and eviction package on every one, a criminal search on most, and a small number attracted an additional county search. You total the vendor invoices attributable to those applications, divide by forty, and arrive at a per-applicant average. That average, and nothing else, becomes your fee. The written explanation you owe under § 38-12-903(3)(a) says which quarter you averaged, how many applications were in the population, which cost components were included, and what the resulting figure is. It fits on half a page and it is the same document for every applicant.

Two cautions about it. The average must be an average of costs you actually incur in processing applications — the subsection speaks of the expense the landlord incurs per prospective tenant in the course of processing multiple rental applications, not of a budgeted allowance. And when the average changes, the fee changes for everyone from a stated date, not for the next applicant through the door, or you have recreated the equal-fee problem you used the average to solve.

Two separate documents, under two separate paragraphs, and satisfying one does not satisfy the other.

A receipt, to everyone. § 38-12-903(3)(b) requires the landlord to provide every prospective tenant with a receipt for any application fee received. There is no threshold and no exception for online payment. The landlord may provide an electronic receipt unless the prospective tenant requests a paper receipt, in which case a paper receipt is owed. That is a request the applicant can make at any point, so the ability to print one matters even in an entirely digital process.

A costs statement, in one of two forms. § 38-12-903(3)(a) requires the landlord to provide any prospective tenant who has paid a fee with either a disclosure of the landlord’s anticipated expenses for which the fee will be used or an itemization of the landlord’s actual expenses incurred. Either discharges it. A disclosure of anticipated expenses can be prepared once and issued at payment; an itemization of actual expenses has to wait until the spending is known. Most landlords will find the anticipated-expenses disclosure simpler, and it pairs naturally with the receipt in a single handover at the point of payment.

If the fee is set on the average basis, the average-methodology information rides on the same document. Practically, that means one page given to every applicant: what the fee is, what it will be spent on, and how the figure was derived.

§ 38-12-903(4) provides that a landlord who receives a rental application fee and does not use the entire amount to cover the costs of processing the application shall remit the remaining amount to the prospective tenant, and shall make a good-faith effort to remit that amount within twenty calendar days after processing the application.

Three details in that sentence do real work.

The trigger is arithmetic, not rejection. The duty arises whenever the whole fee was not consumed by processing costs. It applies to an approved applicant just as much as a rejected one. If your fee is set at the average and this applicant’s processing happened to cost less than the average, there is a remainder, and it is owed.

The clock runs from processing. Not from the decision, not from move-in, not from the applicant asking for their money back. A landlord who takes a fortnight to reach a decision after the screening came back has already used most of the twenty days.

The standard is a good-faith effort. The subsection asks for the effort within the window rather than guaranteed receipt of funds, which is realistic where an applicant has moved on and is not answering. What it makes essential is a record: the date you attempted the remittance, the method, the amount, and any subsequent attempts. A good-faith effort you cannot evidence is indistinguishable from no effort at all.

Where the prospective tenant provides a portable tenant screening report. § 38-12-903(2)(b) prohibits charging a rental application fee in that case, and § 38-12-904(1.5)(c) separately prohibits charging the applicant a fee to access or use the report.

The surrounding machinery is in § 38-12-904(1.5). A landlord shall accept a portable tenant screening report from a prospective tenant, subject only to the conditions the subsection allows the landlord to impose: that the report was completed within the previous thirty days; that it is made available to the landlord at no cost to access or use in the application process; and a statement from the prospective tenant that there has been no material change to the information in it — name, address, bankruptcy status, criminal history or eviction history — since it was generated. Those are the conditions the statute lists, and a landlord who invents further ones is adding requirements the subsection does not contain.

A definition sits behind all of this at § 38-12-902(2.5): a portable tenant screening report is a consumer report prepared at the request of the prospective tenant, from a consumer reporting agency, carrying specified information about the applicant and the date through which that information is current.

§ 38-12-904(1.5)(d) requires that, prior to taking any action relating to tenant screening for which the landlord would expect to collect an application fee, the landlord advise the prospective tenant, using substantially similar language, of two things: that the applicant has the right to provide a portable tenant screening report as defined in § 38-12-902(2.5); and that if the applicant does so, the landlord is prohibited from charging a rental application fee or from charging a fee for the landlord to access or use the report.

The timing word is the one to notice. The advisement is owed before any screening action for which you would expect to collect a fee. It is not a disclosure you attach to a receipt after the money is in, because by then the applicant has already lost the choice the advisement exists to give them.

§ 38-12-904(1.5)(e) then tells you where it has to go, requiring the advisement in a location and by a method reasonably likely to reach prospective tenants, including any of the following: in advertisements and other public notices of the unit’s availability, displayed in at least twelve-point, bold-faced type unless the size, format or display requirements of the advertisement make that impracticable, in which case the font and size must match the rest of the notice; on the home page of a website maintained by the landlord or the landlord’s agent, including a property management company, in at least twelve-point bold-faced type; in a paper or online rental application, in at least twelve-point bold-faced type; or orally, directly to the prospective tenant, with a written confirmation of receipt by the prospective tenant.

The oral route is the one to be careful with. It is permitted, but it requires the applicant’s written confirmation that they received the advisement, which is a document you have to obtain and keep. For most operations, putting the advisement in the application form and on the website is considerably less work than collecting confirmations.

Yes, on strict conditions. § 38-12-904(1.5)(f) exempts a landlord from the requirements in (1.5)(a) to (1.5)(e) — that is, from the duty to accept a portable report and from the advisement and placement duties — where the landlord does both of the following.

• Does not accept more than one application fee at a time for a dwelling unit or, if the unit is rented to more than one occupant, does not accept more than one application fee at a time from each prospective tenant or tenant group for the unit.
• Refunds the total amount of the application fee to each prospective tenant within twenty calendar days after written communication, from either the landlord or the landlord’s agent or from the prospective tenant, declining to enter into a lease agreement for the unit.

Both limbs, together. This is a genuine alternative model rather than a small-landlord exemption: it describes an operation that processes one application at a time and returns the whole fee — not merely the unused part — when the letting does not proceed. A landlord who queues several applicants for one unit does not qualify, however small the portfolio, and a landlord who refunds only the unspent balance does not qualify either.

Note also what the opt-out does not touch. It is an exemption from (1.5)(a) to (1.5)(e). The fee rules in § 38-12-903 — the cost limit, the equal-fee rule, the receipt, the disclosure, the remittance duty — sit outside it and continue to apply.

§ 38-12-905(1) provides that, subject to the exceptions in subsections (3) and (5), a landlord who violates any provision of the part is liable to the aggrieved prospective tenant for two thousand five hundred dollars, plus court costs and reasonable attorney fees.

Two features of the enforcement structure are worth planning around.

There is a pre-suit notice, and it is short. § 38-12-905(2) requires a person intending to file such an action to notify the landlord of that intention not less than seven calendar days before filing.

There is a cure window of the same length, and it is decisive. § 38-12-905(3) provides that a landlord who corrects or cures a violation not more than seven calendar days after receiving notice of it shall pay the aggrieved prospective tenant a penalty of fifty dollars but is otherwise not liable for the damages in subsection (1). The difference between the two outcomes is a week of attention. That is the single strongest argument for having a named person who opens complaints about fees on the day they arrive.

§ 38-12-905(4) runs the other way: a person who purposefully and in bad faith brings a meritless claim under the part is liable for the landlord’s court costs and reasonable attorney fees in defending it. And § 38-12-905(5) carries a heavier structure for violations of the income provisions in § 38-12-904(1)(c) and (1)(d) — an initial fifty-dollar penalty, and, where the violation is not cured under subsection (3), a statutory penalty of two thousand five hundred dollars in addition to that initial penalty and to any economic damages, court costs and attorney fees, with no requirement to exhaust administrative remedies.

A new disclosure duty inside the application form itself. The certified 2026 text carries § 38-12-904(1.7), added by HB 26-1196, with an editor’s note recording that the subsection is effective January 1, 2027.

From that date, a landlord shall include in all rental applications: a notice to prospective tenants regarding the information and data the landlord will attempt to access when conducting a tenant screening; a general description of the factors the landlord will consider when evaluating an application, including credit history, rental history, income and criminal background where applicable; and whether the landlord uses a third-party tenant screening service, and if so the name of that service.

The subsection adds that nothing in it requires a landlord to adopt or disclose fixed disqualifying criteria — so this is a description of what you look at, not a published scoring rubric you are then bound by.

Because this page is written from the 2026 edition, treat the date as the operative planning point: the application form you are using now will need this content added before the start of 2027, and it sits alongside, not instead of, the portable-report advisement already required by § 38-12-904(1.5)(d). One further change is already in force rather than pending: HB 25-1236 repealed § 38-12-904(1.5)(b)(II) with effect from 1 January 2026, removing one of the conditions a landlord could previously impose on a portable report. Guidance written before that date may still list it.

The fee pays for screening, and § 38-12-904(1) constrains what that screening may take into account. This is not a fee rule, but a landlord who charges lawfully and then screens unlawfully has still breached the same part, and § 38-12-905 attaches to any provision of it.

In outline: where rental or credit history is used as a criterion, the landlord shall not consider any rental or credit history beyond seven years immediately preceding the date of the application. Where criminal history is used, the landlord shall not consider an arrest record from any time, nor any conviction that occurred more than five years before the date of the application — with express exceptions for certain methamphetamine manufacturing and distribution offences, offences requiring registration as a sex offender, and offences described in the parts of title 18 the subsection identifies.

The income provisions are stricter still. For an applicant seeking to rent with the assistance of a housing subsidy, the landlord shall not consider or inquire about the applicant’s amount of income except to determine that annual income equals or exceeds two hundred per cent of the portion of the annual rent the applicant is to pay, and shall not consider a credit score, adverse credit event, or lack of a credit score unless federal law requires it. For an applicant without a subsidy, the same two-hundred-per-cent limit applies to the whole annual rent, and the landlord shall not require an applicant to have income exceeding it. § 38-12-904(1.8) makes a violation of those income provisions unlawful discrimination on the basis of amount of income under C.R.S. § 24-34-502(1)(q), with the enforcement and penalties of that regime available in addition to anything in this part.

Finally, § 38-12-904(2) requires a written denial notice stating the reasons for a denial; where the application resulted in the landlord obtaining a consumer report, a copy of that report and an advisement of the applicant’s right to dispute its accuracy with the consumer reporting agency; and, where a proprietary screening system prevents the specific criteria being cited, a copy of the screening company’s report with only the proprietary information redacted. The notice may be electronic unless a paper one is requested, and the landlord shall make a good-faith effort to provide it not more than twenty calendar days after deciding to deny.

Everything above is Colorado law. The screening the fee pays for is also governed by a federal consumer-reporting regime, and this page describes that layer in general terms only — it was not researched from primary sources here, and nothing in this section should be read as a verified statement of federal requirements.

In broad outline: where a landlord obtains a consumer report about an applicant and that report contributes to a decision to reject them, to charge them more, or to impose different terms, federal law generally requires the applicant to be told, and to be given what they need to identify the reporting agency and dispute what it holds. That is the adverse-action framework, and it operates independently of the Colorado denial notice, not as a substitute for it. The practical consequence is that a single well-drafted denial letter usually has to satisfy both: the state requirement to state reasons and supply the report, and the federal requirement to identify the agency and explain dispute rights.

Separately, federal fair-housing law governs the substance of screening decisions across protected characteristics. That has an obvious contact point with the equal-fee rule: charging different applicants different amounts is a fee problem under § 38-12-903(2)(a), and doing so in a pattern that tracks a protected characteristic is a considerably more serious problem under a different body of law entirely. Uniform pricing is not only the statutory requirement here; it is also the practice that keeps the two questions apart.

An application fee is not a deposit and should never share a ledger line with one. Money taken to consider an applicant is governed by § 38-12-903; money taken to secure performance under a tenancy is a deposit with its own limits and its own return obligations. See Colorado security deposit laws for the money taken at signing.

What you may lawfully consider in the screening the fee pays for, and what a denial requires once a consumer report has driven it, are treated at greater length in our guide to Colorado tenant screening laws, which covers the § 38-12-904 criteria and the denial-notice duty in detail.

For the wider framework of the tenancy — notice periods, entry, repairs, rent increases and termination — see Colorado landlord-tenant laws.

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