Free California Application Screening Fee Receipt
California caps the application screening fee at your actual out-of-pocket cost — expressly including the reasonable value of your own time as well as the screening product — and at a per-applicant ceiling of thirty dollars that the landlord may itself adjust each year in line with CPI increase since 1998, so the figure printed in Civil Code § 1950.6 is not today’s number and no adjusted one is published there. Since AB 2493 you must also choose your process up front: either rent to the first qualified applicant, or return the whole fee to everyone you did not select, within 7 days of choosing a tenant or 30 days of the application, whichever comes first. All of that runs on a residential letting by an owner of residential rental property or their agent; § 1940, the applicability provision of the Civil Code chapter § 1950.6 sits in, puts transient hotel, motel and residence-club occupancy outside it. This generator produces the itemized receipt § 1950.6 requires, and records which process you are running.
California has regulated the application screening fee for a long time, and the familiar summary — a small statutory cap plus a receipt duty — is now both incomplete and, in its most-quoted detail, wrong. It is wrong on the number because the ceiling in Civil Code § 1950.6 may be adjusted annually by the landlord for CPI increase running from 1998, so the thirty-dollar figure printed in the code has not been the operative figure for many years; anyone quoting it flat is quoting a number the statute itself lets the landlord move. Note who does the moving: no adjusted figure appears in the code or is published by the state, so a landlord that charges above the printed base must be able to show its own computation from that base. And it is incomplete because AB 2493 added something structurally different from a cap. A California landlord must now decide, before taking any screening fee, whether it will rent to the first applicant who meets the qualification criteria it hands each applicant in writing with the application form, or whether it will return the entire fee to every applicant it does not select — within seven days of selecting a tenant or thirty days of the application being submitted, whichever comes first. There is no third option in which you screen a field of applicants, keep all the fees, and pick whoever you prefer. That decision changes how a vacancy is advertised, how applications are date-stamped and queued, and what your criteria have to say, so it is not something to resolve when the applications are already in. The constants around it are the ones California has always imposed, and three of them are routinely missed: the fee is limited to what gathering the information actually cost you, including the reasonable value of your own time; an itemized receipt showing both those out-of-pocket expenses and that time is due; a copy of the consumer credit report is owed to the applicant within seven days of your receiving it whenever a fee was paid; any part of the fee you did not use comes back if you ran no reference check and obtained no credit report; and no fee may be taken at all when there is nothing to rent. One question comes before all of them. § 1950.6 is a section of Civil Code chapter 2, “Hiring of Real Property”, and it is drafted around a residential letting: the landlord it binds is an owner of residential rental property or their agent, and the applicant is someone asking to rent a residential housing unit. The chapter’s own applicability provision, § 1940, applies it to persons who hire dwelling units located in this state but excludes transient occupancy in a hotel, motel, residence club or other facility subject to the transient occupancy tax, and occupancy at a hotel or motel where the innkeeper keeps a right of access to and control of the unit and offers the five services that subdivision lists. Whether a particular property is one of those is a question of fact about how it is let, and this page cannot settle it; on an ordinary residential tenancy everything below applies as written.
Build the record
Fill in the fields below and the generator produces a dated PDF you can print, sign and give to the applicant, keeping a copy for your file. Nothing is stored and there is no charge. Fields you leave blank print as a dash so you can complete them by hand.
AB 2493 is a choice about your whole vacancy process, not a form to fill in
Start one step before the choice, with who and what § 1950.6 reaches. The section defines its own field: it engages when a landlord or their agent receives a request to rent a residential property, “landlord” means an owner of residential rental property, the screening fee is defined by reference to the rent or lease of residential rental property, and an “applicant” is someone asking to rent a residential housing unit (or a guarantor or cosignor). It also sits in Civil Code chapter 2, “Hiring of Real Property”, whose applicability provision § 1940 applies the chapter to all persons who hire dwelling units located in this state — tenants, lessees, boarders, lodgers and others however denominated — while excluding from “persons who hire” transient occupancy in a hotel, motel, residence club or other facility where that occupancy is or would be taxable under Revenue and Taxation Code § 7280, and occupancy at a hotel or motel where the innkeeper retains a right of access to and control of the unit and offers all five listed services to all residents. The two gates are not identical, and the section’s own definitions are the more direct of them: § 1940 frames chapter applicability around persons who hire, whereas § 1950.6 governs the applicant before any tenancy exists. Subdivision (l) adds a third boundary in a different direction — the section is not intended to preempt provisions or regulations governing the collection of deposits and fees under federal or state housing assistance programs, so a program’s own fee rules are not displaced by it. None of that is a doubt about the duties. On a residential letting by an owner or their agent they bind exactly as set out below; the classification is a question of fact about the property and no page can settle it for you. The two options are genuinely different businesses, and only one of them lets you keep the fees. The first-qualified-applicant route has four conditions, not two, and the two that get dropped are the ones about money. You must provide your screening criteria to the applicant in writing, together with the application form — publishing them on a listing, or having them settled internally, does not discharge that; it is a delivery duty with a named recipient, a required medium and a required moment. Completed applications are then considered against those criteria in the order received, and the first applicant who meets them is approved. Third, an applicant may not be charged a screening fee unless or until their application is actually considered — so on this route you may not take everyone’s money at the front of the queue and work down it. Fourth, where fees are nonetheless collected inadvertently because applications came in concurrently, each applicant whose application is not considered must be refunded within seven days (or, at that applicant’s discretion only, have the fee applied to an application for another unit you offer). What you get in return is a single, narrow retention rule: you are not required to refund an applicant whose application was denied, after consideration, because they did not meet your established screening criteria. Under the alternative, you keep your discretion and pay for it. You may screen everyone, weigh them against each other, and choose — but every applicant you did not select gets their entire screening fee back, regardless of the reason, and there is a clock on it: within 7 days of selecting an applicant for tenancy, or 30 days of when the application was submitted, whichever occurs first. Not the unspent portion; the whole fee. Note which way that clock can run — the thirty-day limb starts at submission, so it can expire before the unit is let. For a landlord filling one unit from a field of applicants, that converts screening from a cost-recovery exercise into a real cost of doing business, and the arithmetic gets worse the more applicants you screen. What the rule removes is the middle position that most landlords were operating. Screening a queue, retaining every fee, and selecting on preference is precisely the practice the amendment addresses. A landlord who continues it has not committed a paperwork error; it has taken fees it is now obliged to return. The practical consequence is that the decision has to be visible in your documents. If you are running first-qualified-applicant, the criteria have to go out in writing with the application form rather than merely being advertised, your applications need an arrival time, and your criteria need to be objective enough that “qualified” is a question with an answer. If you are not, your receipt should tell the applicant they will be refunded in full if they are not selected, and by when. And on either route, two duties run independently of the choice: where a fee has been paid you owe the applicant a copy of the consumer credit report within seven days of receiving it, and if you performed no personal reference check and obtained no credit report you owe back whatever part of the fee you did not use. The record this page generates asks which route you are on for exactly that reason — it is the first question, not a detail.
Watch: California Rental Application Fee Receipt explained
California application fee at a glance
Settle this first: what is the actual California cap?
Two limits, and whichever binds first. The fee may not exceed your actual out-of-pocket cost of obtaining the information — a base the statute says includes the tenant screening or credit reporting service and the reasonable value of the time you or your agent spent obtaining information on the applicant — and it may not exceed a per-applicant ceiling. That ceiling is printed in the statute as thirty dollars, but the same sentence lets the landlord or its agent adjust it annually, commensurate with an increase in the Consumer Price Index, beginning 1 January 1998. This page deliberately does not state a current dollar amount, and no source publishes one: the adjustment is a computation you make and must be able to show from the thirty-dollar base. Quoting the un-indexed number as the cap is the single most common error in California guidance. And settle one thing before either ceiling. § 1950.6 defines itself around residential rental property let by an owner of it or their agent, and it sits in Civil Code chapter 2, “Hiring of Real Property”, whose applicability provision § 1940 excludes transient occupancy in a hotel, motel, residence club or other facility taxable under Revenue and Taxation Code § 7280, and occupancy at a hotel or motel where the innkeeper retains a right of access to and control of the unit and offers all five of the services that subdivision lists. Which side of that line a particular letting falls on is a question of fact about the property that this page cannot answer for you
The two ceilings
your actual out-of-pocket cost of gathering information about the applicant — which the statute says includes the tenant screening or credit reporting service and the reasonable value of the time you or your agent spent obtaining it — and the statute’s per-applicant ceiling of thirty dollars as you yourself adjust it for CPI increase since 1998. The lower of the two is what you may charge
The AB 2493 choice
either operate a first-qualified-applicant process — criteria given to the applicant in writing with the application form, applications considered in the order received, and no fee charged unless or until an application is actually considered — or return the entire screening fee to every applicant not selected within 7 days of selecting a tenant, or 30 days of the application being submitted, whichever occurs first. This is a decision about your whole vacancy process and it must be made before you take the first fee, not after you pick a tenant
The duties that never change
an itemized receipt showing both the out-of-pocket expenses and the time spent; a copy of the consumer credit report to the applicant within seven days of your receiving it, whenever a fee was paid; the return of any unused part of the fee where you ran no personal reference check and obtained no credit report; and no fee at all where no unit is available or will become available. All attach regardless of which process you chose
What § 1950.6 requires, the chapter it sits in, and the figure this page will not give you
§ 1940 — the chapter’s applicability provision. § 1950.6 sits in Civil Code Title 5, chapter 2, “Hiring of Real Property”, and § 1940 is that chapter’s first section: “Except as provided in subdivision (b), this chapter shall apply to all persons who hire dwelling units located within this state including tenants, lessees, boarders, lodgers, and others, however denominated.” Subdivision (b) excludes from “persons who hire” anyone maintaining transient occupancy in a hotel, motel, residence club or other facility where that occupancy is or would be subject to tax under Revenue and Taxation Code § 7280, and occupancy at a hotel or motel where the innkeeper retains a right of access to and control of the dwelling unit and the hotel or motel provides or offers all of five listed services to all residents — safeguarding of personal property under § 1860, central telephone service under filed tariffs, maid, mail and room services, occupancy for periods of less than seven days, and food service from a food establishment on or adjacent to the premises operated by or affiliated with the innkeeper. Subdivision (d) adds that nothing in § 1940 limits the application of any provision of the chapter to tenancy in a dwelling unit unless that provision is so limited by its own terms. § 1950.6’s own field, which is the more direct gate. The section engages when a landlord or their agent receives a request to rent a residential property; “landlord” means an owner of residential rental property; the screening fee is defined by reference to the rent or lease of residential rental property; and an “applicant” is one who asks to rent a residential housing unit, or agrees to act as guarantor or cosignor. § 1940 is framed around persons who hire, while § 1950.6 governs the applicant before a tenancy exists, so the section’s own definitions do the closer work. Subdivision (l) — housing assistance programs. The section “is not intended to preempt any provisions or regulations that govern the collection of deposits and fees under federal or state housing assistance programs”. The cost limit. The screening fee may not exceed the landlord’s actual out-of-pocket costs of gathering information concerning the applicant, including but not limited to the cost of using a tenant screening service or a consumer credit reporting service and the reasonable value of time spent by the landlord or their agent in obtaining information on the applicant. Both heads count: the vendor invoice is not the whole base. The ceiling, and who adjusts it. The section also sets a per-applicant maximum of thirty dollars, and provides that the landlord or their agent may adjust that thirty dollars annually, commensurate with an increase in the Consumer Price Index, beginning on 1 January 1998. This page does not print a current figure, and neither does the code. The statute as published prints the thirty-dollar base and nothing else, so there is no published adjusted figure to look up — the adjustment is a computation the landlord makes, and a landlord charging above the base needs its own record of that computation from the 1998 base and of which year’s figure it applied. The receipt. A receipt for the fee is required, personally or by mail (or by email where landlord and applicant agree), and it must itemize the out-of-pocket expenses and the time spent obtaining and processing the information about the applicant. The unused-amount refund. If the landlord performs no personal reference check and obtains no consumer credit report, any amount of the fee not used for the purposes the section authorises must be returned. This does not depend on which AB 2493 route you are on. The copy of the report. Where an application screening fee has been paid, a copy of the consumer credit report must be provided to the applicant who is its subject, by personal delivery, mail or email, within seven days of the landlord receiving the report. It is triggered by payment of the fee, not by a denial or an adverse action. The availability bar. No screening fee may be charged where the landlord knows or should have known that no rental unit is available at that time or will be available within a reasonable period of time. The AB 2493 duty. Either first-qualified-applicant — criteria supplied to the applicant in writing with the application form, applications considered in the order received, no fee charged unless or until an application is actually considered, and a seven-day refund where a fee is inadvertently collected from an applicant whose application is not considered — or the return of the entire screening fee to every applicant not selected, regardless of reason, within 7 days of selecting an applicant for tenancy or 30 days of when the application was submitted, whichever occurs first. Who counts as an applicant: the section’s definition reaches anyone who agrees to act as a guarantor or cosignor, so the per-applicant ceiling and the refund duties run for them too.
How to take a California screening fee correctly
Choose your process before you advertise, and say which one it is
AB 2493 makes first-qualified-applicant versus refund-the-unselected a decision that governs the whole vacancy. Deciding after the applications arrive is deciding too late, because the applicants’ expectations and your refund exposure were both fixed when you took their money.
Write objective qualification criteria, and hand them to each applicant with the form
The first-qualified-applicant route only works if “qualified” is answerable without discretion — a stated income multiple, a stated credit threshold, a stated rental-history standard. Then note the delivery duty, because it is the one landlords miss: the criteria must be provided to the applicant in writing, together with the application form. Posting them on a listing and handing out a bare form does not satisfy it.
Time-stamp every application on arrival — and do not charge until you reach it
Order is what makes the process work, and it is the fact you will need to show if a disappointed applicant asks why someone else got the unit. Record the date and time received on the record itself. On the first-qualified-applicant route the timing also governs the money: an applicant may not be charged unless or until their application is actually considered, so collecting the whole queue’s fees on arrival is the practice the clause forbids. Where concurrent submissions cause a fee to be taken from someone whose application is never considered, refund it within seven days.
Set the fee from your real cost, and compute the ceiling yourself from the printed base
The fee is limited both by your actual out-of-pocket cost and by the indexed ceiling. Your cost base is the screening service plus the reasonable value of the time you or your agent spent obtaining information on the applicant — the vendor invoice alone understates it. For the ceiling, the code prints thirty dollars and no adjusted figure, and the statute gives the adjustment to you: work it from that base commensurate with CPI increase since 1 January 1998, and keep the computation and the year you applied it to. Do not use the printed number as your cap and do not assume it as your entitlement.
Give an itemized receipt, hand over the credit report, and refund on the clock that applies
The receipt is required in any event, and it must itemize the out-of-pocket expenses and the time spent. Where a fee was paid, the applicant is also owed a copy of the consumer credit report within seven days of your receiving it. If you performed no reference check and obtained no report, the unused part of the fee goes back. And if you took the discretion route, every unselected applicant is owed the full fee back within 7 days of your selecting a tenant or 30 days of their application, whichever comes first — budget for it as a cost of the vacancy rather than discovering it at the end.
About the California screening fee record
The generator above produces the itemized receipt § 1950.6 requires, together with the record of which AB 2493 route you are operating. California 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 and the actual cost it was set against — remember that the statutory cost base and the required itemization both cover your out-of-pocket expenses and the time spent — the screening company used, the criteria applied, the outcome, and the refund position. Deliberately, it prints no dollar ceiling: the printed figure is one the landlord may adjust annually for CPI increase and any number hard-coded into a form would be wrong within a year. And one thing it assumes. It is written for a residential letting by an owner of residential rental property or their agent, which is the field § 1950.6 defines for itself; § 1940 puts transient hotel, motel and residence-club occupancy outside the chapter the section belongs to, 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.
What § 1950.6 requires you to be able to show
- That the letting is one § 1950.6 reaches. The section is written around a request to rent residential property, a landlord who is an owner of residential rental property or their agent, and an applicant seeking a residential housing unit; it sits in Civil Code chapter 2, whose applicability provision § 1940 excludes transient hotel, motel and residence-club occupancy on the terms it states.
- An itemized receipt for the screening fee. Itemized, not a bare acknowledgement of the amount — and itemized under both of the statute’s heads: the out-of-pocket expenses and the time spent obtaining and processing the information.
- Evidence that the fee did not exceed your actual out-of-pocket cost. The vendor invoice is part of it, but the statutory base also includes the reasonable value of the time you or your agent spent obtaining information on the applicant, so record that too.
- The ceiling you applied, and the computation behind it. The code prints a thirty-dollar base and no adjusted figure; the adjustment is one you make commensurate with CPI increase since 1 January 1998, so the defensible record shows your own arithmetic and the year it applies to.
- Which AB 2493 route you are operating. First-qualified-applicant, or full refund to everyone not selected. There is no third option.
- That your qualification criteria went to the applicant in writing with the application form. Objective enough that a first qualified applicant can be identified, and delivered with the form — publishing them is not the duty.
- The date and time each application was received, and when it was considered. The ordering fact the first-qualified-applicant route runs on — and the fact that shows no fee was charged before the application was actually considered.
- That a unit was available or would become available. No fee may be charged where the landlord knows or should have known that no unit is available at that time or will be available within a reasonable period of time.
- The refunds you made, to whom, and on what clock. On the discretion route this is every unselected applicant, in full, within 7 days of selecting a tenant or 30 days of the application, whichever comes first. Separately, the unused part of any fee comes back where no reference check was performed and no credit report obtained.
- That the applicant got a copy of the consumer credit report within seven days. Where a screening fee has been paid, § 1950.6 requires the copy by personal delivery, mail or email within seven days of your receiving the report — on every application, not only on a rejection. Federal adverse-action law applies alongside this and does not replace it.
- A note of any local ordinance you are also meeting. California cities regulate tenancies heavily and municipal codes were not researched for this page.
Common mistakes with California screening fees
- Quoting the dollar figure printed in the code as the current cap. The statute lets the landlord adjust that thirty-dollar base annually for CPI increase since 1998, so the printed number has not been the operative ceiling for many years. This is the most common error in California guidance, and it under-states what a landlord may lawfully recover as well as mis-stating the law. The corollary is the second half of the trap: there is no published adjusted figure to go and find, so a landlord charging above the base has to be able to show its own computation.
- Screening a field of applicants, keeping every fee, and choosing freely. That is the middle position AB 2493 removed. Either the first qualified applicant gets the unit, or the unselected applicants get their fees back in full.
- Deciding the route after the applications arrive. The refund exposure was fixed when the fees were taken, so a decision made late is a decision made under the wrong assumptions.
- Refunding only the unspent portion on the discretion route. The obligation is the entire screening fee to every applicant not selected, not the balance after your costs — and it is on a clock: within 7 days of selecting a tenant or 30 days of the application being submitted, whichever occurs first.
- Assuming the unused-amount refund only matters on the discretion route. It is a free-standing duty: if you performed no personal reference check and obtained no consumer credit report, whatever part of the fee you did not use comes back, whichever route you are on. A first-qualified-applicant landlord who fills the unit from applicant number one and never runs the checks it charged the queue for owes that money.
- Publishing your criteria instead of delivering them. A first qualified applicant cannot be identified against a subjective standard, so vague criteria defeat the route you chose them for — and objective criteria on a listing page still miss the duty, which is to provide them to the applicant in writing together with the application form.
- Charging when there is nothing to rent. No fee may be taken where no unit is available or will become available.
- Giving a bare receipt, or itemising only the vendor charge. The requirement is an itemized receipt, and the statute names two heads to itemize: the out-of-pocket expenses and the time spent obtaining and processing the information about the applicant.
- Setting the fee at the ceiling regardless of cost. The actual-cost limit binds independently, so a fee at the adjusted maximum is unlawful if gathering the information cost less. Measure that cost the way the statute does, though: it includes the reasonable value of your own or your agent’s time as well as what the vendor charged.
- Relying on guidance that predates 2025. If it does not mention the first-qualified-applicant option, it describes a regime that no longer applies.
- Ignoring the local layer. California municipalities regulate rental practice extensively, and a city rule can sit on top of § 1950.6.
- Assuming the section reaches every arrangement you let. § 1950.6 is drafted around residential rental property let by an owner or their agent, and it sits inside Civil Code chapter 2, whose applicability provision § 1940 excludes transient occupancy in a hotel, motel, residence club or other facility taxable under Revenue and Taxation Code § 7280 and hotel or motel occupancy on the innkeeper-control terms it lists. That does not weaken the rule on a residential tenancy; it means the classification question comes first, and it is a question of fact about your property. The same caution runs the other way: subdivision (l) leaves federal and state housing-assistance-program deposit and fee rules in place rather than displacing them.
How much can a California landlord charge to screen an applicant?
Two limits apply and the lower one binds. The fee may not exceed the landlord’s actual out-of-pocket cost of gathering information concerning the applicant, and it may not exceed the per-applicant ceiling in Civil Code § 1950.6.
One boundary belongs on that answer, and it comes before everything else on this page. § 1950.6 defines its own field, and it is a residential one: the section engages when a landlord or their agent receives a request to rent a residential property, it defines “landlord” as an owner of residential rental property, it defines the screening fee by reference to the rent or lease of residential rental property, and it defines an “applicant” as someone who asks to rent a residential housing unit or who agrees to act as a guarantor or cosignor. The section also sits inside a chapter with its own applicability provision. leginfo prints the hierarchy above the text: Division 3, Part 4, Title 5 “Hiring”, chapter 2 “Hiring of Real Property” — and § 1940, the chapter’s first section, applies it to all persons who hire dwelling units located within this state, including tenants, lessees, boarders, lodgers and others however denominated, while excluding from “persons who hire” transient occupancy in a hotel, motel, residence club or other facility where that occupancy is or would be subject to tax under Revenue and Taxation Code § 7280, and occupancy at a hotel or motel where the innkeeper retains a right of access to and control of the dwelling unit and offers all five of the services that subdivision lists.
Read that as a gate, not as a doubt. On an ordinary residential letting by an owner or their agent, everything on this page applies exactly as stated. The two gates are also not identical, and the section’s own definitions are the closer of them: § 1940 is framed around persons who hire, whereas § 1950.6 governs the applicant before any tenancy exists. And a third boundary runs in a different direction: subdivision (l) provides that the section is not intended to preempt provisions or regulations governing the collection of deposits and fees under federal or state housing assistance programs, so a program’s own fee rules survive alongside it. Which of those descriptions fits a particular property is a question of fact about how it is let, and it is not one this page can answer for you.
The cost limit is wider than most landlords assume, and the width is in their favor. The statute says the base includes, but is not limited to, the cost of using a tenant screening service or a consumer credit reporting service and the reasonable value of the time spent by the landlord or its agent in obtaining information on the applicant. So the vendor invoice is a floor under your cost figure rather than the whole of it — and the receipt the section requires has to itemize both heads.
That ceiling is where nearly all published guidance goes wrong. The statute prints thirty dollars per applicant, and the very next sentence says that thirty dollars may be adjusted annually by the landlord or their agent commensurate with an increase in the Consumer Price Index, beginning on 1 January 1998. Nearly three decades of possible adjustment sit between the printed number and today’s. A page quoting the printed figure flat is quoting a number the statute itself allows the landlord to move.
Note carefully who moves it. The adjustment is a permission granted to the landlord, not an index published by the state, and the code carries no adjusted figure at all — look up § 1950.6 as currently published and you will find thirty dollars and nothing else. That means a landlord charging more than the base cannot point at somebody’s table; it has to have computed the adjustment from the 1998 base itself and be able to show the working and the year it used. This page does not tell you a current figure, and no source can hand you an authoritative one.
What did AB 2493 change for California landlords?
It made the way you choose a tenant determine whether you may keep the screening fees. Since that amendment, a California landlord must either operate a first-qualified-applicant process — renting to the first applicant who meets qualification criteria the landlord has provided to the applicant in writing together with the application form — or return the entire screening fee to every applicant who was not selected, regardless of the reason, within 7 days of selecting an applicant for tenancy or 30 days of when the application was submitted, whichever occurs first.
That deadline is worth reading twice, because the two clocks run from different events and the earlier one governs. The thirty-day limb starts when the application was submitted, not when you decide, so on a slow vacancy it can expire before you have chosen anyone at all.
The significance is that the previously ordinary practice sits outside both options. Screening a field of applicants, retaining all of their fees, and then selecting on preference is neither renting to the first qualified applicant nor refunding the unselected. A landlord operating that way is not committing a documentation error; it is holding money it is obliged to return.
When can a California landlord not charge a screening fee at all?
Where the landlord knows or should have known that no rental unit is available at that time, or will be available within a reasonable period of time. The bar addresses collecting fees against a vacancy that does not exist, and it operates independently of the cap and of the AB 2493 choice. Recording the unit and its expected availability date on the receipt is the straightforward way to show the position at the time the fee was taken.
Separately, three duties apply to every screening fee regardless of route, outcome or amount. The receipt must be itemized, and the statute names what to itemize: the out-of-pocket expenses and the time spent obtaining and processing the information about the applicant. Where a fee has been paid, a copy of the consumer credit report must reach the applicant by personal delivery, mail or email within seven days of the landlord receiving it — that one is triggered by payment, so it fires on ordinary approvals as well as rejections, and federal adverse-action law is a different and narrower obligation that does not discharge it. And if the landlord performs no personal reference check and obtains no consumer credit report, it must return whatever part of the fee it did not use for the purposes the section authorises.
One further point on who all of this runs for: the section defines an applicant to include anyone who agrees to act as a guarantor or cosignor, so the per-applicant ceiling and these refund and delivery duties apply to them as well.
Where the screening fee sits in the rest of California law
The criteria you publish are the same criteria that govern the screening decision, and the federal rules on consumer reports and adverse action apply to that decision whatever California requires about fees. Our guide to California tenant screening laws covers what you may consider and what a denial requires.
A screening fee is not security, and California draws that line expressly — the deposit regime in Civil Code § 1950.5 is separate, with its own cap and its own return clock. See California security deposit laws for the money taken at signing.
For the wider framework, including notice periods and entry, see California landlord-tenant laws.
Bottom line
California limits the screening fee twice over, and the number everyone quotes is the wrong one. Civil Code § 1950.6 caps the fee at your actual out-of-pocket cost — which the statute says expressly includes both the screening service you buy and the reasonable value of your own time spent obtaining information on the applicant — and at a printed per-applicant ceiling of thirty dollars that the landlord may itself adjust annually, commensurate with an increase in the Consumer Price Index, beginning 1 January 1998. No adjusted figure is published in the code, so the arithmetic is yours to do and to document, and this page states no dollar ceiling. The bigger change is AB 2493. A California landlord must now either run a first-qualified-applicant process — giving each applicant the criteria in writing together with the application form, taking applications in order, charging no one until their application is actually considered, and renting to the first who qualifies — or return the entire screening fee to every applicant not selected within 7 days of selecting a tenant or 30 days of the application being submitted, whichever occurs first. That choice has to be made before you take the first fee. Three duties then apply whichever route you are on: an itemized receipt showing out-of-pocket expenses and time spent, a copy of the consumer credit report to the applicant within seven days of your receiving it, and the return of any part of the fee you did not use where you performed no personal reference check and obtained no credit report. And you may not charge at all when no unit is or will be available. Check the gate before any of that. § 1950.6 reaches a residential letting by an owner of residential rental property or their agent — that is how the section defines “landlord”, “applicant” and the fee itself — and it sits in Civil Code chapter 2, “Hiring of Real Property”, whose applicability provision § 1940 puts transient hotel, motel and residence-club occupancy outside the chapter. Subdivision (l) separately declines to preempt the deposit and fee rules of federal or state housing assistance programs.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the maximum rental application fee in California?
Civil Code § 1950.6 limits the screening fee to the landlord’s actual out-of-pocket cost of gathering information about the applicant – which expressly includes the reasonable value of the landlord’s or agent’s own time as well as the screening or credit reporting service – and to a per-applicant ceiling of thirty dollars that the landlord or its agent may itself adjust annually, commensurate with an increase in the Consumer Price Index, beginning 1 January 1998. So the figure printed in the code is not the operative one, and no adjusted figure is published there either: the landlord computes the adjustment from that base and should keep the working. This page states no current amount. Note the gate on all of it: § 1950.6 is written around residential rental property let by an owner or their agent, and it sits in Civil Code chapter 2, ‘Hiring of Real Property’, whose applicability provision § 1940 excludes transient occupancy in a hotel, motel, residence club or other facility subject to the transient occupancy tax and hotel or motel occupancy where the innkeeper retains access and control and offers five listed services. Which one a particular letting is, is a question of fact about the property that this page does not answer.
Does a California landlord have to refund a screening fee?
In three situations. On the discretion route the landlord must return the entire fee to every applicant not selected, regardless of reason, within 7 days of selecting an applicant for tenancy or 30 days of when the application was submitted, whichever occurs first. On the first-qualified-applicant route, a fee inadvertently collected from an applicant whose application is not considered must be refunded within seven days. And on either route, if the landlord performed no personal reference check and obtained no consumer credit report, it must return whatever part of the fee it did not use. A landlord is not required to refund an applicant denied, after consideration, for failing its established screening criteria.
What is the first qualified applicant rule in California?
It is one of the two routes AB 2493 permits, and it has four conditions. The landlord provides its screening criteria to the applicant in writing together with the application form; completed applications are considered against those criteria in the order received; the first applicant who meets them is approved; and no applicant is charged a screening fee unless or until their application is actually considered. Publishing the criteria is not the same as providing them with the form, and taking the whole queue’s fees on arrival is what the fourth condition forbids.
Does a California landlord have to give a receipt for a screening fee?
Yes. Civil Code § 1950.6 requires a receipt for the fee, given personally or by mail – or by email where the landlord and applicant agree – and it must itemize the out-of-pocket expenses AND the time spent by the landlord or its agent to obtain and process the information about the applicant. A receipt naming only the vendor charge carries one of the two heads the statute names.
Can a California landlord charge a screening fee when no unit is available?
No. The section bars charging a screening fee where the landlord knows or should have known that no rental unit is available at that time or will be available within a reasonable period of time.
Does a California landlord have to give the applicant a copy of the credit report?
Yes, and it is triggered by the fee rather than by a denial. Where an application screening fee has been paid, § 1950.6 requires the landlord to provide a copy of the consumer credit report to the applicant who is its subject, by personal delivery, mail or email, within seven days of the landlord receiving the report. That is a separate duty from federal adverse-action notice, which is narrower and differently triggered, and complying with the federal one does not discharge this.
Can a California landlord charge more than the screening actually cost?
No. The actual out-of-pocket cost limit binds independently of the ceiling, so a fee set at the adjusted maximum is still unlawful if gathering the information cost less. Measure that cost as the statute does, though: it includes the reasonable value of the time the landlord or its agent spent obtaining information on the applicant, not only what a vendor charged.
Screen California tenants thoroughly before move-in
A solid tenant relationship starts with thorough screening. Tenant Screening Background Check has been verifying renters since 2004 — credit, eviction filings, criminal background, and employment — across all 50 states and DC.
Related Resources
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.
