Rental Application Fee Laws by State

No Alabama statute regulates rental application or tenant-screening fees in any form – no cap, no actual-cost limit, no receipt/itemization duty, no refund duty, no portable-report rule.

— Ala. Code §§ 35-9A-101 to 35-9A-603 (Alabama Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act) – all 48 sections examined; the only money-in-advance rule is § 35-9A-201 (security deposits)

Alaska’s URLTA contains no rental-application or screening-fee provision of any kind.

— AS 34.03.010 to 34.03.380 (Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act) – all 43 sections examined, silent

Arizona’s residential landlord-tenant act does not regulate application or screening fees; the nearest provision, A.R.S. § 33-1321(B), governs nonrefundable fees UNDER A RENTAL AGREEMENT, not fees taken from an applicant before tenancy.

— A.R.S. tit. 33, ch. 10, §§ 33-1301 to 33-1381 (Arizona Residential Landlord and Tenant Act) – 51 live sections examined

Arkansas has no statutory regulation of rental application or screening fees; the Residential Landlord-Tenant Act of 2007 as enacted contains no such provision.

— Ark. Code Ann. §§ 18-17-101 to 18-17-913 (Arkansas Residential Landlord-Tenant Act of 2007), enacted by Acts 2007, No. 1004 (HB 2540)

Application screening fee capped at actual out-of-pocket cost AND at a hard ceiling of thirty dollars ($30 (Cal. Civil Code § 1950.6)) per applicant, CPI-adjustable annually since 1 Jan 1998 (so the real 2026 ceiling is materially above $30); itemized receipt required; no fee where no unit is or will be available; and since AB 2493 the landlord must either refund the entire fee to every applicant not selected, or run a first-qualified-applicant process — a process with several statutory conditions, including considering completed applications in the order received, giving the applicant the screening criteria in writing with the application form, approving the first applicant who meets those criteria, and not charging the fee unless and until the application is actually considered. Separately, where no reference check or credit report is actually performed, any unused part of the fee must be returned.

Rental application fee regulated – actual-cost limit, equal-fee rule, disclosure and refund duties.

— C.R.S. §§ 38-12-903 / 904 / 905

Landlord may not charge a processing/application fee; a tenant screening fee is permitted but capped at $50 (Conn. Gen. Stat. § 47a-4d) adjusted for CPI (ban on application fees plus a capped screening fee).

DOLLAR CAP: a landlord may charge a creditworthiness application fee not exceeding THE GREATER OF 10 percent of the monthly rent or $50, (25 Del. C. § 5514(d); 25 Del. C. § 5310 (assurance money); see also § 5311 (no nonrefundable fee as a condition of occupancy)) must furnish a receipt on receipt of the fee, must keep complete records of all application fees for at least 2 years, and overcharging entitles the tenant to DOUBLE the amount charged. Separately, a prospective landlord may not charge more than the SPECIFIC COST of any credit or other investigation, may not take ‘assurance money’, and must retain each application record for 6 months (Consumer Protection Unit enforcement). The operative ceiling on any given application is the LOWER of the two limits.

$50 (D.C. Code § 42-3505.10 (‘Tenant screening’)) application fee cap (CPI-adjustable annually from 1 Jan 2024), no other fee before lease signing, only ONE application fee where the same provider’s units are applied for within 30 days unless more than one screening is actually required, and a refund of the ENTIRE fee within 14 days where no screening is conducted for any reason, and an extensive pre-fee written disclosure duty (fees, screening criteria, automatic-denial criteria, unit availability, response time, dispute and complaint rights).

NO statewide regulation of a landlord’s application or screening fee – and Florida expressly PREEMPTS local governments from imposing one. BUT where a CONDOMINIUM association must approve a lease its approval fee ‘may not exceed $150 (F.S. § 83.425 (preemption); F.S. § 718.112(2)(k) (condo approval fee cap); F.S. § 719.106(1)(i) (co-op cap); F.S. § 83.683 (servicemember application-processing deadline – a timing duty, not a fee rule)) per applicant’ (CPI-adjusted every 5 years), and for a COOPERATIVE the ceiling is ‘$100 per applicant’, with no charge at all on renewal with the same lessee. Do not conflate the two.

Georgia imposes no cap, cost limit, refund duty or disclosure duty on rental application or screening fees; the state’s own housing agency handbook describes them as ordinarily non-refundable even on denial.

— O.C.G.A. tit. 44, ch. 7 (Landlord and Tenant) – a free official unannotated Code exists but only as a session-bound application with no citable URL, so the quoted text is Release 86 (Nov 2022), public domain, as transformed and posted by Public.Resource.Org

Cost-recovery only (no flat cap): fee limited to actual cost; the applicant must be 18 or older OR an emancipated minor; a receipt and itemized breakdown are owed UPON REQUEST by the applicant; and the 30-day refund clock runs from when the landlord submitted the screening requests, not from application or payment.

— HRS § 521-46

Idaho does not regulate rental application or screening fees; its only fee statute, I.C. § 55-305, requires that fees be ‘reasonable’ and be stated in the rental agreement, and by its terms runs to ‘a residential TENANT’ / ‘the TENANT of a rental property’, not to an applicant who has not yet rented.

— I.C. § 55-305 (Limitation on fees for tenants of a rental property); I.C. §§ 6-301 to 6-324 and §§ 55-301 to 55-315 examined in full; § 55-306 (local preemption)

TWO DISTINCT PROVISIONS AND THE SPLIT MATTERS.

IN FORCE NOW: if a prospective tenant supplies a qualifying reusable tenant screening report (prepared within the previous 30 days by a consumer credit reporting agency at the applicant’s request and expense, available to the landlord at no cost, covering the landlord’s consistently-used criteria), the landlord MAY NOT CHARGE a fee to access it OR an application screening fee at all; the landlord may still run its own additional report but not charge for it.

ENACTED BUT NOT YET IN FORCE: from 1 January 2027, a $50 (765 ILCS 705/30 (Reusable tenant screening report) – IN FORCE; 765 ILCS 705/35 (Rental fee transparency and limitations) – DELAYED) cap on any rental application fee including background checks, exceeded only where a third-party check actually costs more AND the landlord fronts the cost AND bills the applicant with receipts within 14 days (otherwise the fee is waived), plus an anti-renaming clause, a private right of action, and an exemption for owner-occupied premises of 6 units or fewer.

No Indiana statute regulates application or screening fees, AND Indiana expressly VOIDS any local ordinance regulating the screening process, lease applications, or ‘any fees charged by a landlord’.

— IC 32-31 (Landlord-Tenant Relations) – examined, silent; IC 32-31-1-20(c) is the preemption clause

Nothing in Iowa’s Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Law regulates application or screening fees.

— Iowa Code ch. 562A (Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Law) – examined in full, silent; ch. 562B (manufactured home communities) also checked

Nothing in the Kansas Residential Landlord and Tenant Act or the general landlord-tenant sections regulates application or screening fees.

— K.S.A. ch. 58 art. 25, comprising §§ 58-2501 to 58-2534 (general landlord-tenant) and the Kansas Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, §§ 58-2540 to 58-2573 (plus 58-2574) – all 74 live sections examined, silent

No Kentucky statute regulates application or screening fees; the opt-in URLTA text itself contains no fee provision, and since 2024 localities may not adopt conflicting landlord-tenant ordinances.

— KRS ch. 383 (Rental of Property; FED; URLTA at KRS 383.500-383.715) – all 96 sections examined, silent. Related but not a fee rule: KRS 383.198 (2024) barring conflicting local ordinances; KRS 383.500 authorising cities/counties to enact URLTA ‘in their entirety and without amendment’.

Regulated WITHOUT a dollar cap and WITHOUT a remedy: a lessor may not require payment of an application fee unless, BEFORE accepting it, the lessor gives written notice of (1) the amount of the fee, (2) whether it considers credit scores, employment history, criminal history or eviction records, and (3) that the applicant may share a statement of 200 words or less explaining financial hardship from a declared disaster or emergency and its effect on their credit, employment or rental history, with that notice referencing the COVID-19 pandemic and hurricanes. No cap, no refund duty. Exempts owner-occupied buildings of no more than four units, and subsection D grants lessors and their agents blanket IMMUNITY from all causes of action for violations.

— La. R.S. 9:3258.1 (‘Residential lease application requirements’)

Application fee is banned; landlord may charge one actual-cost screening check, must give the applicant a copy, and may charge only one such fee per 12-month period.

— 14 M.R.S. § 6030-H

De-facto $25 (Md. Code, Real Property § 8-213) non-refundable ceiling: any fee other than a security deposit that EXCEEDS $25 must be returned within 15 days of occupancy or of a decision that no tenancy will occur, less only the portion actually expended on a credit check or other application expenses; failure means liability for TWICE the fees. The lease application must itself explain this. EXEMPT: landlords offering four or fewer units at one location, and seasonal and condominium rentals.

Effective ban: at or prior to commencement of a tenancy a lessor or the lessor’s agent may require only (i) first month’s rent, (ii) last month’s rent, (iii) a security deposit up to one month’s rent, and (iv) the cost of a key and lock – an application or screening fee is not on the exhaustive list and so may not be required. The section does not reach a lease, rental or tenancy of one hundred days or less for a vacation or recreational purpose, which falls outside it entirely.

— M.G.L. c. 186 § 15B(1)(b)

Michigan law does not regulate rental application fees or tenant screening/credit-check fees – no cap, no actual-cost limit, no refund, receipt, disclosure or portable-report duty. Michigan’s only fee-to-applicant rule is the SECURITY DEPOSIT cap, which is a different subject.

— 1972 PA 348, MCL 554.601-554.616 (Landlord and Tenant Relationships / security deposits) and the Truth in Renting Act, 1978 PA 454, MCL 554.631-554.641 – examined, silent

Regulated WITHOUT a dollar cap: no screening fee where the landlord knows no unit is or will be available; a written receipt on request; the fee may not be used, cashed or deposited until prior applicants are resolved; the fee must be RETURNED if the applicant is rejected for a reason not disclosed or if a prior applicant takes the unit, and any unused portion must be returned if no reference check or report was actually obtained; the screening service and the rental criteria must be disclosed in writing BEFORE the fee is accepted; rejection notice within 14 days; landlord liable for the fee plus a civil penalty up to $100 (Minn. Stat. § 504B.173).

Nothing in the Mississippi Residential Landlord and Tenant Act regulates application or screening fees; the deposit statute expressly CARVES OUT payments ‘made to secure the execution of a rental agreement’.

— Miss. Code Ann. §§ 89-8-1 to 89-8-45 (Residential Landlord and Tenant Act), all 23 sections – examined, silent; § 89-8-21(1) is the carve-out

No Missouri statute regulates application or screening fees; a 2025 act instead PREEMPTS local ordinances restricting a landlord’s use of credit reports, criminal or eviction history, or limiting security deposits.

— RSMo ch. 441 (Landlord and Tenant) and ch. 535 (Landlord-Tenant Actions) – all 95 sections examined, silent. Related but not a fee rule: § 441.043.2(2) and (3).

Montana law does not regulate rental application fees or tenant screening/credit-check fees at all – no cap, no actual-cost limit, no refund duty, no receipt duty, no criteria-disclosure duty, no portable-report duty.

— MCA tit. 70 ch. 24 pts. 1-4 (Residential Landlord and Tenant Act of 1977, §§ 70-24-101 to 70-24-442) and MCA tit. 70 ch. 25 pts. 1-2 (Residential Tenants’ Security Deposits, §§ 70-25-101 to 70-25-206) – examined, silent

No Nebraska statute regulates rental application or tenant-screening fees – the URLTA is silent (no cap, no cost limit, no receipt duty, no refund duty).

— Neb. Rev. Stat. §§ 76-1401 to 76-14,110 (Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act) – examined, silent

Regulated WITHOUT a dollar cap: a landlord must refund any application, credit-report or background-check fee if it rents the unit to a different applicant and did not perform the activity the fee paid for, and may not charge any such fee for a MINOR household member.

— NRS 118A.306

Regulated WITHOUT a dollar cap: BEFORE collecting any fee as part of the rental application or renewal process the landlord must disclose in writing to prospective tenants the amount of the fee and any satisfactory criminal-background-and-credit-check requirement; if the fee is collected but the unit is NOT rented to that applicant, the landlord must return everything beyond the actual cost of the documented background check, credit check and reasonable administrative costs within 30 days. Remedy is unusually narrow – return of all application monies plus court costs only, with no multiple damages.

— RSA 540-A:3, VIII (remedy at RSA 540-A:4, IX(f))

A landlord shall not require an application or similar fee exceeding $50 (N.J.S.A. 46:8-18.1) to apply to lease a residential rental property. The cap is CPI-indexed annually from 1 January 2027. It does NOT apply to one- or two-family dwellings, nor to New Jersey Real Estate Commission licensees unless the licensee is the landlord. Penalties escalate at $500, $750 and $1,000.

SCREENING fee capped at $50 (NMSA § 47-8-19.2), and the owner “shall not charge any other fees to process an application” — so a separate application fee on top of screening costs is not permitted. Charging at all is conditional: the owner must give written or digital notice AND the applicant must agree in writing to pay, a written or digital receipt must be provided, and the fee may not be charged where the owner knows or should know no unit is or will be available. Where prior applicants are still in process the owner may collect the fee but must defer banking it — placing a hold on a card, or waiting to deposit — until those applicants have all been screened and rejected, or offered the unit and declined. The whole fee must be returned within thirty calendar days if a prior applicant takes the unit or if the owner did not obtain a credit report, make a reference check, use a screening service or process the application. One screening fee per applicant per ninety days across all properties under the same ownership (SB 267 § 4, background checks — a separate section from the fee provision above).

Near-total ban: except where a statute or regulation provides for it, no payment, fee or charge may be demanded for processing, reviewing or accepting an application — and the bar reaches any other payment, fee or charge before or at the beginning of the tenancy, so a move-in, administrative or lease-preparation fee is caught too. The exception is background and credit checks, whose cumulative fee may not exceed the ACTUAL COST or twenty dollars ($20 (N.Y. Real Property Law § 238-a(1))), whichever is LESS; the fee must be waived if the applicant supplies a check conducted within the past 30 days; and the landlord may not collect it without giving the applicant a copy of the check plus the vendor’s receipt or invoice. Carve-outs exist for CCRCs, assisted living, adult care facilities and certain co-ops.

No North Carolina statute regulates application or screening fees; Chapter 42 reaches only security deposits, pet deposits and late fees.

— N.C.G.S. Chapter 42 (Art. 5 Residential Rental Agreements; Art. 6 Tenant Security Deposit Act §§ 42-50 to 42-56; § 42-46 late fees) – examined, silent

No North Dakota statute regulates application or screening fees.

— N.D.C.C. ch. 47-16 (Leasing of Real Property), incl. 47-16-07.1 security deposits – examined, silent

No Ohio statute regulates application or screening fees.

— O.R.C. Chapter 5321 (Landlords and Tenants), incl. 5321.16 security deposits – examined, silent

No Oklahoma statute regulates application or screening fees.

— 41 O.S. Title 41 (Landlord and Tenant), incl. the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act §§ 41-101 to 41-136 and § 41-115 damage/security deposits – examined, silent

Regulated WITHOUT a flat dollar cap: an applicant screening charge may not exceed the landlord’s average actual cost or the customary amount charged by screening companies; receipt and screening confirmation required; ONE screening charge per applicant per 60-day period; written criteria and notice required before the fee is taken; 30-day refund if the unit is filled first or no screening was done; damages of twice the charge plus $250 (ORS 90.295 (and ORS 90.297(1), which bars any other applicant fee or deposit)).

No Pennsylvania STATE statute regulates application or screening fees. The only regulation is MUNICIPAL (Philadelphia) and must not be reported as state law.

— Landlord and Tenant Act of 1951, Act of Apr. 6, 1951, P.L. 69, No. 20 (68 P.S. §§ 250.101 to 250.510-B) – examined in full, silent

No Puerto Rico statute caps, bans or conditions a rental application or tenant screening fee. The lease chapter of the Civil Code of 2020 was read in full and contains no fee provision of any kind, and the territory’s credit-reporting statute reaches reporting agencies rather than landlords — it never mentions rental housing.

— Código Civil de Puerto Rico de 2020, Arts. 1331–1350 (31 L.P.R.A. §§ 10101–10173) – lease chapter examined in full, silent; Ley 364-2000, “Ley de Agencias de Informes de Crédito” (7 L.P.R.A. §§ 2031 et seq.) – no housing provision of any kind

Outright ban on rental application fees, with a narrow carve-out: no fee may be charged if the applicant supplies a state criminal background check or credit report issued within the last 90 days; otherwise the charge may not exceed the ACTUAL COST of obtaining the check, and the applicant must be given a copy.

— R.I. Gen. Laws § 34-18-59 (‘Fair limitation on rental application fees’)

No South Carolina statute regulates rental application or tenant-screening fees; the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act is silent.

— S.C. Code Ann. tit. 27, ch. 40 (Residential Landlord and Tenant Act), §§ 27-40-10 to 27-40-940 – examined in full, silent

No South Dakota statute regulates rental application or tenant-screening fees.

— SDCL ch. 43-32 (Lease of Real Property) examined in full, and additionally ALL of SDCL Title 43 (Property) – silent

No application or screening fee provision exists. Verified by reading all five part indexes of the Tennessee URLTA (47 sections) plus ch. 7 Leases and ch. 35 Rent Control; the only fee language in the Act is the late fee. Note the Act applies ONLY in counties over 75,000 population per the 2010 federal census (§ 66-28-102(a)), and where it applies it preempts the entire field of landlord-tenant regulation (§ 66-28-102(e)), so a local cap would also fail.

— Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 66-28-102(a), (e); tit. 66 ch. 28 generally

Regulated WITHOUT a dollar cap: Texas sets no limit on the amount, but CONDITIONS the right to keep it – at the time the applicant is given a rental application the landlord must make available a printed notice of its tenant-selection criteria and the grounds for denial and take a signed acknowledgment, and IF IT REJECTS THE APPLICANT WITHOUT HAVING MADE THAT NOTICE AVAILABLE IT MUST RETURN THE APPLICATION FEE AND ANY APPLICATION DEPOSIT. Bad-faith retention exposes the landlord to $100 (Tex. Prop. Code tit. 8 ch. 92 subch. I (‘Rental Application’): § 92.351(1-a) (defines ‘application fee’ as a nonrefundable sum given to offset the costs of screening an applicant); § 92.3515(a)-(f); § 92.354 (liability); § 92.355 (anti-waiver)) plus three times the amount wrongfully retained plus attorney’s fees. The right is non-waivable.

Regulated WITHOUT a dollar cap: BEFORE accepting an application fee or any other payment from a prospective renter the owner must disclose in writing a good-faith estimate of rent and each fixed non-rent expense, the type of each use-based non-rent expense, the scheduled availability date, THE ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA the owner will use (including criminal history, credit, income, employment and rental history), and the money-recovery process; and must return ALL money paid within 5 business days on written demand where the estimate did not match the rental agreement.

NOTE the refund trigger is an estimate/agreement MISMATCH, not a general refund-on-rejection right, and there is no dollar cap and no actual-cost limit.

— Utah Code § 57-22-4(3) and (4) (Utah Fit Premises Act)

Outright ban for RESIDENTIAL rentals – a landlord shall not charge an application fee to any individual in order to apply to enter into a rental agreement for a residential dwelling unit. The same subsection expressly preserves fees for commercial and other nonresidential property, so the ban is not general. It is also confined by the chapter it sits in: 9 V.S.A. § 4452 puts several occupancies outside chapter 137 — among them mobile-home lots, occupancy by a condominium owner or a cooperative proprietary lessee, institutional occupancy, and transient hotel or motel occupancy during the time the occupancy is subject to the rooms tax. Those exclusions are not a free pass: § 4452(a) opens “Unless created to avoid the application of this chapter”.

— 9 V.S.A. § 4456a

Application fee capped at $50, (Va. Code § 55.1-1203(C) (current); renumbered to § 55.1-1203(D) in the version effective 1 July 2027) exclusive of actual out-of-pocket amounts paid to a third party for background, credit or other pre-occupancy checks; $32 for HUD-regulated or public housing units. A refundable application DEPOSIT may be taken in addition, and the excess over the landlord’s actual expenses must be refunded with an itemization within 20 days — or within 10 days where the deposit was paid in cash or by certified cheque, cashier’s cheque or postal money order AND the failure to rent is due to the landlord’s rejection of the application.

Regulated WITHOUT a flat dollar cap: a landlord may charge screening costs ONLY after giving written notice of what will be checked, the denial criteria, and whether it will accept a comprehensive REUSABLE tenant screening report — and, where a consumer report is used, the agency’s name and address AND the applicant’s rights to a free copy on denial and to dispute its accuracy. The right to charge is conditional on that notice being complete; a self-screening landlord may charge only actual costs not exceeding the customary local screening-service charge; adverse-action notice required; a violator “may be liable … for an amount not to exceed one hundred dollars” (RCW 59.18.257 (and RCW 59.18.253 for waiting-list and holding fees)), plus costs and reasonable attorney fees to the prevailing party. Separately, a waiting-list fee is unlawful and a holding fee is capped at 25% of first month’s rent (which expressly EXCLUDES screening costs).

NO cap, ban, actual-cost limit, receipt duty or refund duty. West Virginia merely DEFINES ‘application fee’ and excludes it from the security-deposit regime ONLY IF the parties expressly agree in writing that it is nonrefundable – a written-disclosure condition, not a fee regulation.

— W. Va. Code §§ 37-6A-1(2) and 37-6A-1(14)

No general application-fee cap. The section is titled Credit and background checks: the landlord may recover its ACTUAL COST up to $25 (Wis. Stat. § 704.085) for a credit check; may not charge it where the applicant supplies a report less than 30 days old BEFORE the landlord orders one; and may charge a separate amount, again capped at its actual cost up to $25, for a background check on “a prospective tenant who is not a resident of this state” — the charge is tied to the applicant being a non-resident, not to where the check is run.

No Wyoming statute regulates rental application or tenant-screening fees.

— Wyo. Stat. Ann. tit. 1, ch. 21, art. 12 (Residential Rental Property), §§ 1-21-1201 to 1-21-1211 – examined in full, silent