Free Louisiana Rental Application Fee Receipt

Most state application-fee rules answer the question how much. Louisiana’s answers a different one. La. R.S. 9:3258.1, captioned “Residential lease application requirements”, sets no ceiling on the fee at all. What it does is make the fee conditional on a written notice that has to exist, and has to have been given, before the money changes hands. The operative sentence is a prohibition with a condition attached: a lessor “shall not require payment of an application fee unless, prior to accepting the payment, the lessor gives written notice of all of the following” — and then four items follow. Read that way, the section is a sequencing rule. The disclosure is not a piece of paperwork that accompanies the transaction; it is the thing that makes the transaction permissible, and it has to come first. Three features of the section repay attention beyond that headline. The disclosure about your screening criteria is narrower than landlords expect — it is a yes-or-no statement about four named categories, not a duty to publish your standards or your cut-offs. The third and fourth elements together create something no other kind of fee disclosure asks for: you must tell the applicant that they may share a short statement about financial hardship arising from a declared disaster or emergency, and the notice in which you tell them that must itself reference the COVID-19 pandemic and hurricanes. And subsection D removes every private remedy for a breach, which is unusual enough that it changes how a landlord should think about the whole section. That last point deserves saying carefully, because it is the point on which a page like this one can most easily mislead. The absence of a cause of action does not turn the duty into a suggestion in the drafting sense — the statute still says a lessor shall not require the payment without the notice. What it does mean is that this page cannot tell you what happens if you skip it, because the statute does not say, and the honest answer is that nothing in § 3258.1 supplies a consequence. Everything below is written to that standard: the duty is described from the retrieved text, the four elements are set out as the statute sets them out, the two scope limits are separated, and where the section is silent this page says it is silent rather than filling the gap.

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.

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The generator above produces a dated record of a Louisiana application fee: the parties and the unit, the amount received with its date and method, the screening company used, the criteria categories applied, the outcome, and a note of the disclosure that preceded the payment. Louisiana prescribes no form for any of this, so what it produces is your own record and is not captioned as a statutory form. What it is not. It is not the § 3258.1 notice. That notice has to exist and to have been given before the fee was accepted, and a receipt issued at or after payment cannot discharge a duty the statute places earlier in the sequence — keep the notice as its own document and use the receipt to record that it was given. Deliberately, it prints no permitted-fee figure and no cap, because the section contains neither, and it prints no penalty language and no refund promise, because subsection D removes the cause of action and the section creates no refund duty. Nothing is stored and there is no charge. Fields left blank print as a dash.

• That a written notice existed before the fee was accepted. Subsection A conditions the fee on notice given “prior to accepting the payment”, so the date is as much part of compliance as the content.
• The amount of the application fee, as stated in the notice. Element (1) requires the amount; a range or a ‘from’ figure does not state it.
• Your yes-or-no answer on each of the four named categories. Credit scores, employment history, criminal history and eviction records — element (2) asks whether you consider them in deciding whether to rent or lease.
• That the notice told the applicant about the two-hundred-word hardship statement. Element (3): a good-faith statement about financial hardship from a state or federally declared disaster or emergency and its effect on credit, employment or rental history.
• That the same notice referenced the COVID-19 pandemic and hurricanes. Element (4) is a content requirement in its own right and is the one most often omitted.
• The date and method by which the notice was delivered. Paper, in person, or electronically under the route subsection B permits.
• The date, amount and method of the payment. The sequence only demonstrates itself if both dates were recorded.
• Which version of the disclosure this applicant received. If you revise the notice, keep the versions; the question is what this applicant was given.
• Whether subsection C reaches you. Property to be used as the lessee’s primary residence, and not an owner-occupied building of no more than four units.
• Your federal adverse-action record where a consumer report drove a denial. That obligation is independent of § 3258.1 and was not researched from primary sources for this page.
• Any parish or municipal requirement you are also meeting. Local ordinances were not researched here, and New Orleans regulates rental housing under its own scheme.

• Looking for a cap that does not exist. § 3258.1 says nothing about how much the fee may be. A Louisiana template that prints a maximum figure has invented it.
• Giving the disclosure with the receipt. The notice is required “prior to accepting the payment”. A disclosure that arrives with, or after, the money is in the wrong place in the only sequence the section regulates.
• Putting the disclosure in the lease. A lease is signed by the applicant who succeeded, weeks after the fee was taken, and never reaches the applicants who did not. The notice belongs at the front of the application.
• Charging through a portal that takes payment before the disclosure screen. Online application flows are the most reliable way to get the order wrong, because the payment step is usually built first and the disclosures bolted on afterwards.
• Dropping the reference to the COVID-19 pandemic and hurricanes. Element (4) requires the hardship notice to reference both. It reads like commentary and is a listed element.
• Treating element (2) as a duty to publish your screening standards. It is a yes-or-no disclosure about four named categories, not a requirement to state your minimum score, your income rule or your look-back period.
• Assuming you must act on a hardship statement. The section requires you to tell the applicant they may share one. It does not say what you must do with it, and this page does not say either.
• Reading the exemption as a size test. It is “owner-occupied buildings consisting of no more than four units”. A four-unit building you do not live in is not exempt.
• Forgetting the primary-residence limb. Subsection C reaches lessors of property to be used as a lessee’s primary residence. That is a separate question from the exemption, and it is answered first.
• Treating subsection D as permission to ignore the section. The absence of a private cause of action is not the same thing as the absence of the duty, and it says nothing about the federal obligations that govern the screening your fee pays for.
• Assuming the immunity travels beyond this Section. Subsection D is worded as immunity from causes of action for alleged violations of this Section. Whether other law could reach the same conduct was not researched for this page and is left open rather than answered.

No. La. R.S. 9:3258.1 sets no cap on the application fee, and it contains no figure of any kind except the two-hundred-word limit on the applicant’s hardship statement. The amount appears in the section only as something you have to disclose.

That is worth stating flatly because it is the question most landlords arrive with, and because the answer is not the usual one. Across this family of state rules the common pattern is a ceiling — a dollar figure, or an actual-cost limit, or a ban. Louisiana chose none of those. It left pricing to you and regulated the moment before payment instead.

The practical consequence is that pricing an application fee in Louisiana is a commercial decision rather than a compliance one. What is not a commercial decision is the notice. Charging a modest fee without the required written notice puts you outside the section just as surely as charging a large one, because the section’s condition is about the notice, not the number.

Four things, in writing, before the payment is accepted. Subsection A provides that a lessor “shall not require payment of an application fee unless, prior to accepting the payment, the lessor gives written notice of all of the following” — and the word all is doing real work, because a notice covering three of the four has not satisfied the condition.

(1) The amount of the application fee. Stated as a figure, for this application. If you run properties at different price points, the notice this applicant receives has to carry the amount that applies to them.

(2) Whether you consider credit scores, employment history, criminal history, or eviction records in deciding whether to rent or lease to the applicant. Four named categories, and the required answer is whether you consider them. This is not a duty to publish your standards.

(3) That the applicant may share, in good faith, a statement of two hundred words or less explaining that they have experienced financial hardship resulting from a state or federally declared disaster or emergency, and how that hardship impacted their credit, employment, or rental history. The statement is the applicant’s to offer; what the section requires of you is telling them it is available.

(4) That the notice regarding the statement of financial hardship shall reference the COVID-19 pandemic and hurricanes. This is a requirement about the content of your own notice. It is listed as an element alongside the other three, and it is the one most commonly missing from Louisiana application packs.

Because the statute says so, in terms, as element (4) of the list. The section was added by Acts 2021, No. 422, and the reference is a legislative choice about how the hardship provision is to be explained to applicants rather than a description of when the section applies.

Two misreadings follow from skipping past it. The first is treating the reference as optional color — a bit of context a well-drafted notice might include. It is not; it sits in the same enumerated list as the amount of the fee. The second is reading it as a limit on the hardship provision itself, as though only pandemic-related or hurricane-related hardship counted. Element (3) describes hardship “resulting from a state or federally declared disaster or emergency” in general terms; element (4) tells you what your notice must reference. Those are different sentences and they should not be merged.

For a landlord, the drafting answer is simple and worth doing once. Write the hardship paragraph so that it states the applicant’s freedom to share the statement, describes the hardship in the statute’s own general terms, and names the COVID-19 pandemic and hurricanes as the reference the section requires. Then stop revising it.

The section does not say so, and this page will not say so on its behalf. What element (3) requires is that your written notice tell the applicant they may share such a statement. It does not impose a duty to solicit one, to wait for one before deciding, to weigh it, to give it any particular effect, or to explain what weight it received.

That is a deliberately narrow answer, and it is narrow because the retrieved text is narrow. It is also worth separating from two adjacent questions this page did not research. Whether declining to read a statement an applicant did send interacts with any other body of law is not addressed here. And whether considering it is sound practice is a business judgement, not a statutory one — a landlord who is going to be told about a hurricane-driven gap in an applicant’s rental history has some reason to decide in advance how they will handle it, rather than in the moment.

What you should not do is build a process that promises more than the statute requires and then fails to deliver it. A notice that says you will “take into account” any hardship statement has made a representation of your own, going beyond element (3), and it is your own representation you will then be measured against.

Prior to accepting the payment. That phrase is the whole timing rule, and it is stricter than the way most application processes are actually built.

Consider the three common flows. In person or by post: the disclosure goes into the application pack the applicant is handed or sent, and the fee is taken only once they have it. That is straightforwardly in order. By email: the disclosure is sent as its own message or attachment before any payment link, and the sent record is the evidence. Also in order. Through an online portal: this is where landlords go wrong, because portals are usually built payment-first. If the applicant reaches a card screen before the disclosure screen, or receives the disclosure on the confirmation page, the notice was not given prior to accepting the payment. The fix is a sequencing change in the flow, not a wording change in the notice.

Subsection B allows electronic delivery: the notice “may be delivered, stored, and presented by electronic means if the electronic means meet the requirements of the Louisiana Uniform Electronic Transactions Act, as provided in R.S. 9:2601 et seq.” That Act was not read in preparing this page, so nothing here describes what it requires. The point to carry away is that the electronic route is expressly available and is expressly conditioned — not that any email will do.

Subsection C answers this in one sentence with two limbs: the Section “shall apply to all lessors of property to be used as a lessee’s primary residence except for owner-occupied buildings consisting of no more than four units”.

The first limb is about the property’s intended use. The section reaches lettings of property to be used as the lessee’s primary residence. On the face of the words, a short-stay letting, a holiday property or a second home is not that. This limb is answered before the exemption is reached, and it is the one landlords skip.

The second limb is the exemption, and it has two conditions, not one. The building must be owner-occupied and must consist of no more than four units. Both have to hold. A duplex in which you live is exempt. A fourplex you own and rent out entirely is not — the unit count alone does not carry it. A twelve-unit building you live in is not exempt either, because the unit count fails. This is a narrower exemption than the small-landlord carve-out some other kinds of rule use, and it should not be assumed from size alone.

The section defines neither “owner-occupied” nor “primary residence”, and no case law was researched for this page, so a marginal case — a unit occupied by an entity owner’s principal, say, or a building occupied part of the year — is genuinely unresolved here. Where the answer is close, complying is cheap: the notice costs a page.

The section provides none, and it goes further than silence. Subsection D reads: “No person shall have a cause of action against a lessor or a lessor’s agents or employees for any alleged violation of this Section, and a lessor and a lessor’s agents and employees are hereby immune from any and all causes of action for alleged violations of this Section.”

There is no damages figure in the section, no statutory multiple, no fee-shifting provision, no refund trigger and no administrative enforcement mechanism. This page therefore states no consequence, and a Louisiana guide that supplies one — a refund duty, a penalty, a deadline — is describing something that is not in this statute.

Three things follow that are worth holding separately in your head.

The duty is still stated as a duty. Subsection A says a lessor shall not require payment without the notice. Subsection D removes the private claim; it does not rewrite subsection A into a recommendation. That distinction matters if you are deciding what your own written policy should say, or what you will tell a manager to do.

The immunity is worded around this Section. It bars causes of action “for alleged violations of this Section”. Whether any other body of law — Louisiana or federal — could reach the same conduct on some other footing was not researched for this page, and this page answers that neither yes nor no. Treat it as an open question rather than as settled in your favor.

Nothing in subsection D touches the federal screening rules. The consumer-report and fair-housing obligations that govern what you do after the fee is paid are a separate framework with their own consequences, and a Louisiana immunity clause about this Section is irrelevant to them.

A fee taken at a showing. An applicant views a unit, likes it, and offers to pay the application fee on the spot. If the disclosure is in the pack you handed them at the door, you are in order. If it is back at the office and you take the money now, the notice was not given prior to accepting the payment. The practical answer is to carry the disclosure with the applications, not to rely on sending it afterwards.

Two applicants for the same unit, one of whom already applied in the spring. Nothing in § 3258.1 limits how often a fee may be charged, or requires you to waive a second fee for a returning applicant, or ties the fee to your actual screening cost. What it does require is that this application be preceded by the notice. A returning applicant needs the notice again, because the condition attaches to requiring the payment, not to the person.

An applicant sends a two-hundred-word hardship statement about a hurricane. Your notice told them they could, which is what element (3) required of you. The section does not tell you what to do next. Decide your approach as a matter of policy before the situation arises, apply it consistently to every applicant, and be careful that your notice did not promise a treatment you do not in fact give.

Records that prove an order of events, because an order of events is the only thing this section regulates. Four facts together do that work: the version of the disclosure this applicant received, the date and method by which it went out, the date and amount of the payment, and the method of payment.

Two habits make that easy. First, version your disclosure. If you revise the wording, keep the superseded versions and note which applicants received which — the question a year later is what this applicant was given, not what your current template says. Second, record the delivery, not just the document. A disclosure sitting in your template folder proves that a document exists; a dated sent record, a signed acknowledgment or a portal timestamp proves that it reached this applicant before the money did.

Keep the screening record alongside it — who you used, what was ordered, what came back, what you decided — because that is the record the federal layer asks about, and it is convenient to have both halves of the file in one place even though they answer to different law.

Everything above is Louisiana law about a disclosure. Federal law governs the screening the fee pays for, it was not researched from primary sources for this page, and what follows is general orientation to be checked before it is relied on rather than a statement of verified law.

In broad terms, when a landlord obtains a consumer report on an applicant and then denies the application, charges more, or imposes different terms because of what the report said, federal fair-credit-reporting law requires an adverse-action notice identifying the agency that supplied the report, stating that the agency did not make the decision, and telling the applicant they may obtain a copy of the report and dispute what it contains. That duty is independent of § 3258.1 and is untouched by subsection D. It is also the reason element (2) of the Louisiana notice is worth answering accurately rather than defensively: a landlord who tells applicants they do not consider credit scores, and then denies one on the strength of a credit report, has created an inconsistency between their own disclosure and their own file.

Federal fair-housing law applies to the screening decision itself, prohibiting discrimination on protected grounds in the terms, conditions and availability of housing, and Louisiana has its own human rights framework as well; neither was researched from primary sources here. The practical point for a fee page is that consistency is what makes a screening process defensible. Charging every applicant the same disclosed fee while applying different standards to different applicants is not a compliance position, and the disclosure Louisiana requires makes your stated criteria categories a matter of record.

An application fee is not security. Money taken to secure performance is deposit money and answers to a different set of rules on holding and return. See Louisiana security deposit laws for the money taken at signing, and keep the two clearly apart in your accounting as well as your paperwork.

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 separate questions from the fee itself. Our guide to Louisiana tenant screening laws covers that ground, including the federal rules that apply whatever the state requires about disclosure.

For the wider framework of the tenancy — the lease, notice, entry and the obligations that follow occupancy — see Louisiana landlord-tenant laws.

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