Free Colorado Rental Application Fee Receipt
Colorado sets no dollar ceiling on a rental application fee. It does something harder to comply with. Under the Rental Application Fairness Act you may not charge the fee unless the whole of it goes on your costs of processing the application — and under § 38-12-903(2)(a) you must charge every applicant for the same unit, and every applicant for any other unit you are offering at the same time, the identical amount. Those two rules pull against each other, and the way Colorado reconciles them is the average-cost basis in § 38-12-903(1)(b). Every paying applicant is owed a receipt and a costs disclosure; anything unspent goes back with a good-faith effort within twenty calendar days after processing. This generator produces the receipt and records the cost basis behind it.
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.
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. 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.
The cost limit and the equal-fee rule pull in opposite directions — and the average-cost basis is how Colorado lets you satisfy both
Start with the shape of § 38-12-903(1), because it is not a cap. It provides 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 rental application. The permission to charge is conditional on the destination of the money. A fee of any size is lawful if the whole of it is genuinely consumed by processing costs; a fee of any size is unlawful to the extent it is not. That is why § 38-12-903(4) exists as the correction mechanism rather than as an afterthought: a landlord who receives a fee and does not use all of it on processing costs shall remit the remainder. The subsection then names two permitted ways of computing the figure, and they behave very differently. Under § 38-12-903(1)(a) the landlord’s costs may be based on the actual expense incurred in processing that application. Under § 38-12-903(1)(b) they may instead be based on the average expense incurred per prospective tenant in the course of processing multiple applications. The first is precise and self-documenting: the vendor charged you a specific amount for this applicant, and the invoice proves it. The second is a portfolio figure that smooths across applicants. Now put the equal-fee rule next to them, and the problem becomes obvious. § 38-12-903(2)(a) says you may not charge an amount different from the amount charged to another prospective tenant applying for the same dwelling unit, or — where you offer more than one dwelling unit for rent at the same time — for any other dwelling unit you are offering. Actual costs are not uniform. A credit-and-eviction package on one applicant may cost you less than the same package on an applicant with an out-of-state history requiring an extra county search; a co-signer adds a report; a vendor changes its rate card on the first of the month. If you price strictly on actual expense and you have three units on the market, you will end up charging different applicants different amounts, and the equal-fee rule does not care that each figure was independently justifiable. The average-cost basis is the reconciliation, and Colorado attaches a condition to it. § 38-12-903(3)(a) provides that where a landlord charges an amount based on the average cost of processing the rental application, the landlord shall include information regarding how that average rental application fee is determined. So the route that makes the equal-fee rule workable is also the route that obliges you to show your arithmetic. In practice that means writing down, once, the population of applications you averaged over, the period, the cost components included, and the resulting figure — and being willing to hand that explanation to an applicant. It is a small document, and having it is the difference between a defensible fee and an unexplained one. One more consequence, because it is the one landlords miss. If the average moves, the fee has to move for everyone at once, not for the next applicant only. A landlord who raises the fee from one figure to another partway through a vacancy has, on the face of § 38-12-903(2)(a), charged two different amounts to applicants for the same unit. The safe practice is to review the average on a fixed cycle, change it between vacancies rather than during one, and record the date the new figure took effect.
Watch: Colorado Rental Application Fee Receipt explained
Colorado application fee at a glance
Settle this first: how much may a Colorado landlord charge?
Exactly what it costs you, and not a cent of margin. § 38-12-903(1) is drafted as a prohibition rather than a cap: a landlord shall not charge a rental application fee unless the landlord uses the entire amount of the fee to cover the landlord’s costs in processing the application. There is no dollar figure anywhere in the section. The permitted basis is either the actual expense incurred in processing that application — § 38-12-903(1)(a) — or the average expense per prospective tenant across multiple applications, § 38-12-903(1)(b). A fee set to make money, to discourage casual applicants, or to cover general office overhead is not a fee measured by either of those bases, and the section does not permit it
The equal-fee rule, and it is wider than the same unit
§ 38-12-903(2)(a) bars charging an amount different from the fee charged to another applicant for the same dwelling unit — and, where you offer more than one unit for rent at the same time, from the fee charged to an applicant for any other unit you are then offering. One number across the whole of your live inventory, for as long as it is live
A receipt for everyone, and a costs disclosure with it
§ 38-12-903(3)(b) requires a receipt for any application fee received, from every prospective tenant — electronic is fine unless the applicant asks for paper, in which case paper is owed. § 38-12-903(3)(a) separately requires either a disclosure of anticipated expenses or an itemization of actual ones, plus, on an average-cost fee, how the average was determined
Twenty days, and the clock starts at processing
§ 38-12-903(4): a landlord who does not use the entire fee on processing costs shall remit the remaining amount, making a good-faith effort within twenty calendar days after processing the application. Not twenty days from the decision, not from move-in, not from the applicant asking — from processing
The Rental Application Fairness Act, section by section
§ 38-12-901 — short title. The part is the “Rental Application Fairness Act”. § 38-12-902 — definitions. Includes “landlord” (owner, manager, lessor or sublessor of a dwelling unit), “amount of income”, and the definition of a “portable tenant screening report” — a consumer report prepared at the request of a prospective tenant. § 38-12-903 — rental application fee, limitations. (1) no fee unless the entire amount covers processing costs, computed on actual expense (1)(a) or average expense per prospective tenant across multiple applications (1)(b). (2)(a) no fee in a different amount from that charged to another applicant for the same unit, or — where more than one unit is offered for rent at the same time — for any other unit offered. (2)(b) no fee where the applicant supplies a portable tenant screening report under § 38-12-904(1.5). (3)(a) every paying applicant gets either a disclosure of anticipated expenses or an itemization of actual ones, plus, on an average-cost fee, how the average is determined. (3)(b) a receipt for any fee received, from every prospective tenant, electronic unless paper is requested. (4) remit the unused remainder, good-faith effort within twenty calendar days after processing. § 38-12-904 — consideration of applications. Seven-year look-back on rental and credit history; restrictions on criminal history including a bar on considering arrest records and convictions older than five years, with listed exceptions; income rules capped at two hundred per cent of the annual cost of rent; a duty to accept a portable tenant screening report; the advisement duty and its placement rules; the (1.5)(f) opt-out; and, at (2), a written denial notice stating the reasons, with a copy of the consumer report and a dispute advisement where one was obtained, on a good-faith effort within twenty calendar days of the decision. § 38-12-905 — violations. Two thousand five hundred dollars plus court costs and reasonable attorney fees; seven calendar days’ pre-suit notice; cure within seven calendar days of notice reduces liability to a fifty-dollar penalty; a bad-faith meritless claim exposes the claimant to the landlord’s costs and fees. What this page did not research. No Colorado case law. No municipal ordinance — Denver and Boulder both regulate rental housing and neither was examined. The consumer-reporting definitions cross-referenced by the part, at C.R.S. § 5-18-103 and § 5-18-106, were not read. Federal requirements are described in general terms only.
How to take a Colorado application fee correctly
Fix one fee amount for everything you have on the market
§ 38-12-903(2)(a) makes the amount uniform across applicants for the same unit and, while you have more than one unit offered for rent at the same time, across every unit you are offering. Decide the number before the first listing goes up, apply it to all of them, and do not vary it because one property is cheaper to screen for or because an applicant looks like more work.
Choose the actual-cost or the average-cost basis deliberately, and write down which
Actual expense under § 38-12-903(1)(a) is the cleanest evidence but is hard to square with the equal-fee rule when several units are live. Average expense per prospective tenant under § 38-12-903(1)(b) solves that, at the price of the duty in &se