Free California Rental Application

A California screening fee is governed by Civil Code § 1950.6, and it is constrained in more ways than most people realise. The fee may not exceed the landlord’s actual out-of-pocket cost, and separately may not exceed a statutory ceiling that started at thirty dollars per applicant, which the section permits the landlord to adjust for inflation each year since 1 January 1998. An itemised receipt is required. No fee may be charged where no unit is available and none will become available within a reasonable period. And since AB 2493 the landlord must either take the first qualified applicant or return the entire fee to every applicant who is not selected.

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A rental application is not a lease and creates no tenancy. It is the document by which a stranger gives a landlord enough information to be screened, and the point at which the applicant consents to that screening. In California the fee attached to it is regulated more tightly than in most states, and the regulation has moved twice in two years, so a form printed before 2025 will not reflect what the section now requires. The generator above collects the identity, address, employment and reference detail a landlord needs, records what fee is being charged and whether a receipt was given, and captures the screening consent and adverse-action acknowledgement separately from the rest, because those are the parts that carry legal weight.

• The property applied for and the date the applicant wants to move in
• The applicant’s full legal name, date of birth and government ID
• Current and previous addresses with the landlords’ contact details
• Employer, position, gross monthly income and a verification contact
• The fee charged, and what the landlord says it covers
• Whether an itemised receipt was given — § 1950.6 requires one
• Whether the landlord confirmed a unit is available or will become available
• Which selection process applies, since AB 2493 makes it first-qualified or refund
• Written consent to obtain a consumer report, signed and dated
• An address for any adverse-action notice if the application is declined

• Quoting a flat $30 ceiling. That is the 1998 base. § 1950.6 adjusts it annually for CPI, so the binding figure today is materially higher — and a landlord who charges $30 when its actual cost was $18 has still overcharged, because the actual-cost limit applies as well.
• Assuming the fee is simply non-refundable. Since AB 2493 an applicant who was not selected may be owed the entire fee back, unless the landlord ran a first-qualified process.
• Paying where no unit is available. § 1950.6 does not permit a fee where there is no unit available and none will become available.
• Not asking for the itemised receipt. It is required, and without it the actual-cost limit cannot be checked by anyone.
• Using a pre-2025 form. The section was amended operative 1 January 2025 and again effective 1 January 2026. A form that predates those changes does not reflect the selection-process duty at all.

The lower of two limits. Civ. Code § 1950.6 caps the screening fee at the landlord’s actual out-of-pocket cost of obtaining the screening, and separately at a statutory ceiling. Whichever is lower is what may lawfully be charged.

The ceiling is where nearly every summary goes wrong. The statute states thirty dollars per applicant, and then provides for that amount to be adjusted annually for changes in the Consumer Price Index, commencing 1 January 1998. Almost three decades of adjustment separate the printed figure from the operative one.

It is easy to read the ceiling as the whole rule. It is not. The fee may not exceed the landlord’s actual out-of-pocket cost of obtaining the screening, and that limit binds even where it falls well below the ceiling.

A landlord whose screening provider charges eighteen dollars may charge eighteen dollars. The existence of a higher statutory ceiling does not entitle it to round up to the ceiling. This is also why the itemised receipt the section requires matters so much in practice: without an itemisation there is no way for an applicant, or anyone else, to test whether the actual-cost limit was respected.

Before 2025 the common experience was straightforward and one-sided: several applicants each paid a fee, one was chosen, and the rest had simply spent the money. AB 2493 changed the arrangement.

A California landlord must now do one of two things. It may operate a process under which the first qualified applicant is selected — that is, it applies its criteria in order and takes the first person who meets them. Or, if it wants to keep discretion over who it picks, it must refund the entire screening fee to every applicant who was not selected.

The change was approved on 29 September 2024 and became operative on 1 January 2025, and the section as it currently reads was further amended effective 1 January 2026. Any application form or guidance written before that does not reflect it.

For an applicant, the practical question after a rejection is simply: which process were you in? For a landlord, it is a choice to make deliberately before collecting a single fee, because the two routes have very different consequences at the end of a search.

§ 1950.6 does not permit a screening fee where there is no rental unit available and none will become available within a reasonable period. That closes off the practice of collecting fees to maintain a list against vacancies that may never arise.

It is worth asking the question directly before paying, and worth recording the answer. The generator above has a field for the property and the desired move-in date for that reason: an application that names a specific unit and date is harder to characterise afterwards as a speculative waiting-list entry.

Two parts of a rental application do legal work and the rest is administration. The first is the consent to obtain a consumer report. Screening is lawful because the applicant authorised it, so that authorisation should be a distinct, signed item rather than a line buried in a paragraph of small print.

The second is the adverse-action acknowledgement. If an application is declined wholly or partly because of something in a consumer report, the applicant is entitled under the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (15 U.S.C. § 1681m) to be told that and to be given the reporting agency’s details so they can see and dispute the underlying information. Recording an address for that notice at the point of application is the simplest way to make sure it can actually be delivered.

Everything else — identity, addresses, employment, income, references — exists so the screening can identify the right person and so the landlord can verify what the applicant has said. Our guide to how to screen tenants covers the process from the landlord’s side.

Signing one commits nobody to a tenancy. It is worth being explicit about that, because the document collects a great deal of personal information and is signed at a moment when an applicant badly wants the outcome, which is not a moment anyone reads carefully.

A tenancy begins only if the landlord accepts the application and the parties sign a rental agreement. If that happens, the terms of the tenancy — rent, deposit, the length of notice either side must give — are set by that agreement and by the law that governs it, not by anything in the application.

An application is the one moment in a tenancy when a stranger’s history is examined, so it is worth knowing what is being looked at. Eviction records are part of most screenings, and what they mean depends on how the process works locally — our guide to California eviction notice laws sets out the notices and timelines that produce those records in the first place.

If the application succeeds, the next money question is the deposit, and it is a different question from the fee discussed here: an application fee buys screening, a deposit secures the tenancy and is generally refundable. California security deposit laws cover what may be held and when it has to come back.

For everything the application stage does not settle — the obligations that begin once a tenancy starts, and the rules that apply to both parties throughout it — see California landlord tenant laws.

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