Free Maine Application Screening Fee Receipt
Maine prohibits the rental application fee outright. Under 14 M.R.S. § 6030-H the only charge that survives is a screening check billed at actual cost, the applicant must be given a copy of it, and no applicant may be charged more than once in any twelve-month period. This generator produces the record of what you charged and what it actually cost; giving the applicant their copy and tracking the twelve-month window are duties that need a record of their own.
Maine belongs to a small group of states that answered the application-fee question by removing the fee rather than pricing it. Under 14 M.R.S. § 6030-H a landlord may not charge an application fee, and because it is a prohibition rather than a ceiling there is no compliant version of it at a lower number. What the section preserves is the landlord’s ability to recover the cost of actually screening the applicant: one screening check, charged at what it actually cost, with a copy of that check given to the applicant, and no more than one such charge for the same applicant in any twelve-month period. Those four elements are the whole of the permitted charge, and each of them is a condition rather than a suggestion. In practice the rule reshapes the front end of a Maine vacancy more than the numbers suggest. A landlord who has been charging a flat application fee has to stop, and then decide whether to recover the screening cost at all — because recovering it means producing an invoice-backed figure, delivering the report copy, and keeping a record good enough to answer the question of whether this applicant has already been charged inside the last year. A landlord operating several buildings has to answer that last question across the portfolio, not per property, because the limit follows the applicant. None of that is difficult, but it is different work from writing a number on an application form, and it is the work the statute actually requires. This page describes what the verified rule establishes and is deliberately explicit about where it stops — it does not state a penalty, a refund trigger or a delivery deadline, because the summarized rule does not establish any of those.
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.
The line that decides everything in Maine: banned fee, or recoverable screening cost
Every practical question under § 6030-H reduces to classifying the charge. If what you are collecting is money for receiving, processing, reviewing, considering or holding an application, it is an application fee and it is prohibited. If it is the actual cost of a screening check on that applicant, it is permitted, subject to its two conditions. There is no third category, and importantly there is no partial category — a single charge that bundles the screening cost together with an administrative component is not a permitted screening charge with a small problem in it. It is a charge that includes prohibited money. The classification is decided by what the money pays for, not by what the line on your form calls it. Renaming an application fee as an administrative fee, a processing charge, a paperwork contribution or a document handling cost changes nothing at all; the prohibition follows the substance. By the same token a genuine screening cost does not become unlawful because your application form happens to describe it loosely. The safest drafting is the plainest: name the screening vendor, name the check, and state the cost you were invoiced. Actual cost is a ceiling with an evidence requirement built into it. The figure you may charge is the figure the screening check cost you. If a vendor charges you a given amount for a report on this applicant, that is your number. If you buy screening on a subscription or a bundled package, the honest answer is your per-check cost under that arrangement, and you should be able to show the arithmetic. What actual cost is not: a rounded-up figure, a market rate, the highest of your vendors’ prices, an allowance for your time reviewing the report, or a margin. A charge above your invoice is not a small over-recovery — the excess is money the section does not permit you to take. The copy duty is the condition most often missed, because it is affirmative. The applicant is to be given a copy of the screening check their money paid for. Given, not made available; not held for collection; not produced later if asked. Build it into the same step as the decision so it cannot be forgotten, and record the date and the method by which it went out. The twelve-month limit is a record-keeping duty disguised as a pricing rule. Only one such fee may be charged per applicant in any twelve-month period. The limit attaches to the applicant, so a person who applied for one of your units in March and applies for a different one in September has already been charged inside the window. For anyone managing more than one building the practical consequence is that the record has to be searchable across the whole portfolio by applicant, not filed per vacancy — because a per-property file cannot answer the question the statute asks.
Watch: Maine Rental Application Fee Receipt explained
Maine application fee at a glance
Settle this first: can a Maine landlord charge an application fee?
No. The application fee is banned, and the amount is irrelevant. § 6030-H does not set a ceiling a landlord can price under — it removes the charge. A fee for processing, considering, receiving or holding an application is unlawful at any figure, including a small one and including one you would have refunded. One qualifier travels with that: the ban runs on an application to rent a dwelling unit, a term § 6030-H(1) takes from § 6021(1), where it covers mobile homes, apartments, buildings and other structures, including their common areas, “which are rented for human habitation” — so this is a residential rule, and a commercial letting is not within it. What survives is narrower than most landlords assume: a screening check, charged at your actual cost, with a copy given to the applicant and one such charge per applicant per twelve months. Everything on this page follows from the difference between a fee that was banned and a cost that may be recovered
The ban
the application fee itself is prohibited. There is no lawful amount for a charge whose purpose is to process or consider an application, so relabelling a capped fee as a small one does not rescue it
The one survivor, at actual cost
a screening check may be charged, and only at actual cost. That is your out-of-pocket figure for the check itself — not a rounded-up number, not your time, and not an allowance for the administration around it
Two duties that attach to the charge
the applicant must be given a copy of the screening check, and the charge may be made only once per applicant in any twelve-month period. Both attach to the same charge; what follows from breaching either is not stated in the rule verified for this page, and is not invented here
What § 6030-H establishes, and what this page will not tell you
The prohibition. A rental application fee may not be charged. The section removes the charge rather than limiting it, so no amount is compliant. The permitted charge. A landlord may charge for one screening check, and only at its actual cost. The copy duty. The applicant must be given a copy of the screening check the charge paid for. The frequency limit. Only one such fee may be charged per applicant in any twelve-month period. The enactment. The section was added by PL 2023 c. 346 § 1 as a new provision, and the verified ledger row records no amendment since. And now the limits of this page, stated plainly. The summarized rule this page works from does not state a penalty for breach — no damages figure, no multiple, no fee-shifting provision was established, and none is asserted here. It does not state a refund trigger: nothing in the verified rule says the screening charge becomes refundable if the applicant is rejected, if the unit is let to someone else, or if the screening is never run, so this page does not claim any of those. It does not state a deadline for delivering the copy of the screening check, only that it must be given. It does not establish a duty to publish screening criteria, nor any first-qualified-applicant rule of the kind some states have adopted. It says nothing this page can rely on about holding deposits or money taken to reserve a unit. And the section was not re-read verbatim in preparing this page, so nothing above is presented as a quotation and none of the section’s finer mechanics are restated. Where you need certainty on any of those points, read the section as currently published by the Legislature and take advice on your own facts.
How to handle a Maine application charge correctly
Remove the application fee from your form, your listing and your software
This is the step landlords skip because it looks like a formality. It is the substance of the rule. Any line that charges money for receiving or considering an application has to go — from the printed packet, from the online application, from the listing copy and from whatever template your management software populates. Reducing the amount does not comply, because the section prohibits the charge rather than pricing it.
Decide whether you are recovering the screening cost at all, and price it from the invoice
Recovering the screening cost is optional; doing it lawfully is not. If you charge, the figure is your actual cost for that check — taken from the vendor invoice or from a documented per-check cost under your subscription, never rounded up and never padded with your own time. A landlord who cannot produce that figure is safer not charging at all.
Check the twelve-month history for this applicant across your whole portfolio
Before you take anything, ask whether this person has been charged a screening fee by you inside the last twelve months — for this unit or any other. The limit follows the applicant, so the check has to run across every property you manage, not just the vacancy in front of you. If they have been charged, screen at your own cost.
Run the check, then give the applicant their copy as part of the same step
The copy duty is affirmative, so treat delivery as part of running the check rather than as a follow-up. Send it with the decision, record the date it went out and how, and keep proof. An applicant who has to ask for it has already been given something less than the section requires.
Record the charge, the cost it was set against, and the copy, in one place
The record that answers a later question needs four facts together: what you charged, what the check actually cost you, that the copy was given and when, and the date that starts this applicant’s twelve-month clock. Kept per applicant rather than per vacancy, that record answers every question the section asks.
About the Maine screening charge record
The generator above produces a plain record of a Maine screening charge: the parties and the unit, the amount charged with its date and method, what the screening actually cost with its vendor invoice reference, the screening company used, and the outcome. Two duties it does not capture for you, and they are the two that decide whether the charge was lawful: the date and manner in which you gave the applicant their copy of the screening check, and the running twelve-month history that determines whether this applicant may be charged at all. Both need a record of their own. Maine prescribes no form for any of this, so what the generator produces is a landlord’s own record and is not captioned as a statutory form. Deliberately, it prints no permitted-fee figure and no cap: there is no lawful application fee in Maine, and the permitted screening charge is whatever the check actually cost you, which is a number only your invoice can supply. It likewise prints no penalty language and no refund promise, because the verified rule establishes neither. Nothing is stored and there is no charge. Fields left blank print as a dash.
What a Maine landlord should be able to show
- That no application fee was charged. The section prohibits it outright, so the first thing your paperwork should demonstrate is its absence.
- The actual cost of the screening check. The vendor invoice, or a documented per-check cost under a subscription, is what turns your charge into a permitted one.
- That the amount charged did not exceed that cost. Actual cost is a ceiling, so the two figures on your record should match.
- Which screening check the charge paid for. Name the vendor and the product; a charge that cannot be tied to a specific check is hard to defend as a screening cost.
- That the applicant was given a copy of the screening check. Given, not offered — with the date and the method by which it went out.
- The date that started this applicant’s twelve-month period. The limit runs from a charge, so the date of the charge is the fact you need.
- A portfolio-wide search by applicant, not by property. The limit follows the person across every unit you manage, so a per-vacancy file cannot answer it.
- That the charge was made once, not once per unit applied for. An applicant considering two of your units inside the window is still one applicant.
- Your adverse-action record where a screening report drove a rejection. Federal consumer-report law applies alongside § 6030-H and was not researched from primary sources for this page.
- A note of any local rule you are also meeting. Municipal ordinances were not researched for this page, and Portland regulates rental housing under its own scheme.
Common mistakes with Maine application charges
- Treating § 6030-H as a cap and charging a smaller application fee. It is a prohibition. There is no compliant application fee in Maine at any amount, so trimming the number solves nothing.</