Free New Hampshire Rental Application Fee Receipt
New Hampshire is a regulated state with no dollar cap, which is an unusual combination and the reason so much published guidance gets it wrong in both directions. RSA 540-A:3, VIII does not tell you what to charge. It tells you when you must say it — clearly, in writing, to prospective tenants, before you collect any fee as part of the application or renewal process — and what has to come back if you take the fee and do not rent the unit to that applicant: everything above the actual cost of the documented background check, the credit check, and reasonable administrative costs, within 30 days of receipt. This generator builds the written record on both sides of that line: the disclosure that has to precede the money, and the cost accounting that justifies whatever you keep.
Most state application-fee rules are about a number. New Hampshire’s is not, and that is why summaries of it tend to be either far too permissive or far too strict. There is no statutory maximum. A landlord in Manchester and a landlord in Berlin may each set whatever fee the market will bear, and neither is capped by RSA 540-A:3, VIII. What the paragraph does instead is bracket the fee with two duties. In front of it sits a disclosure: before you collect any fee as part of the rental application or renewal process, you must clearly disclose, in writing, to prospective tenants, the amount of the fee and the requirement for a satisfactory criminal background and credit check, if any. Behind it sits a refund: if the fee is collected from an applicant but the unit is not rented to that applicant, you must return any amount beyond the actual cost of the documented background check, credit check, and/or reasonable administrative costs, within 30 days of receipt. The paragraph then adds a savings clause that is easy to skim past and worth reading twice, because it protects you: nothing in it requires you to conduct a criminal background or credit check at all, and nothing in it prohibits you from renting to an applicant who does not pass one. The consequence for a landlord is that the compliance question is never “is my fee too high?” It is “did I put the amount in writing before I took it, and can I document what I spent?” The rest of this page is about those two questions, the unusually narrow remedy that sits behind them, and the federal screening rules that apply to the report the fee pays for whatever the state requires about the money.
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 disclosure is the fee’s licence to exist — and RSA 540-A:4, IX(f) is why getting it wrong costs you the whole fee, not the difference
Start with the sequencing word, because it is the entire duty. The paragraph opens “Prior to collecting any fee”. Not at the time of, not upon request, not in the lease. The written disclosure has to be in the applicant’s hands before your hands are on the money, which means it belongs in the listing, in the application form itself, or in a separate written notice handed over or sent before payment. A receipt cannot cure it, because a receipt by definition comes after. This is the single most common way a compliant-looking New Hampshire process fails: the landlord discloses the fee accurately, and discloses it second. Then read what the disclosure has to contain, because it is two items and the second is routinely missed. The amount of the fee is the obvious one. The other is “the requirement for a satisfactory criminal background and credit check, if any”. If you condition tenancy on passing a background check or a credit check, the applicant is entitled to know that in writing before paying for the privilege of being screened. The words if any matter: they mean the item is conditional, not optional. If you have such a requirement, disclose it. If you genuinely have none, there is nothing to disclose on that limb — but that is a statement about your process, and a landlord who in fact rejects applicants for failing a check has such a requirement whether or not the application form uses the word. Now the refund, which is a subtraction and not a rebate. The trigger is narrow and factual: the fee was collected from an applicant, and the unit was not rented to that applicant. It does not matter why. The applicant withdrew, you chose someone else, the unit came off the market, the sale fell through — the trigger is simply that this applicant did not get this unit. What comes back is “any amount beyond the actual cost of the documented background check, credit check, and/or reasonable administrative costs”. Three retainable categories, each with a qualifier doing real work. Actual cost, not your list price. Documented background check and credit check, which is an evidentiary word: an undocumented cost is not a retainable one. And reasonable administrative costs, which is the limb that distinguishes New Hampshire from the stricter cost-recovery states — your own time and processing may be recovered, but the adjective is a constraint, and an administrative charge that dwarfs the screening it administers is not going to read as reasonable. Work it as arithmetic and the shape is obvious. A seventy-five dollar fee, a thirty-eight dollar documented screening product, and twelve dollars of defensible processing cost leaves twenty-five dollars going back to a rejected applicant within thirty days. The same seventy-five dollar fee where you never ordered the report because the applicant withdrew the next morning leaves seventy-five dollars going back, less only whatever administrative cost you actually and reasonably incurred on a file you barely opened — which is close to nothing. The fee is not a deposit against your general overhead. It is a pass-through with a narrow margin you have to be able to evidence. And here is why the paperwork is worth more than the fee. RSA 540-A:4, IX(a) subjects a landlord who violates any provision of RSA 540-A:3 to the civil remedies of RSA 358-A:10, with costs and reasonable attorney’s fees, and treats each day a violation continues after a temporary order as a separate violation. Subparagraph IX(f) then carves paragraph VIII out of that scheme: a landlord who violates VIII “shall be subject only to returning to the applicant all monies provided by the applicant as part of their application, plus court costs.” Read the word only and you will be tempted to relax; read the words all monies and you should not. The remedy is not the excess you failed to refund. It is everything the applicant handed over as part of their application. A landlord who spent forty dollars screening an applicant, kept forty dollars, and simply never made the pre-collection disclosure has, on the face of IX(f), no documented-cost defence to keeping any of it — because the violation is the missing disclosure, and the answer to it is return of all monies. The narrow remedy and the broad object are the same sentence. And read how far the carve-out actually goes, because it is narrower than it looks. IX(f) opens “notwithstanding the provisions of subparagraph (a)”. It displaces IX(a) and nothing else, so it caps the money a paragraph VIII violation costs you and does not limit RSA 540-A:4 as a whole. Two unqualified paragraphs of the same section still reach a violation of RSA 540-A:3, VIII included. III provides that any proceeding under the subdivision “shall not preclude any other available civil or criminal remedy”. XI provides that no action for possession may be maintained against a tenant who proves a violation of RSA 540-A:3 — except for nonpayment of rent, violation of a substantial obligation of the rental agreement or lease, or violation of the subdivision — within six months of an action the tenant instituted, nor may the landlord take any other action in reprisal. XI is not academic here: paragraph VIII’s trigger reaches a fee taken as part of the renewal process, and a person paying a renewal fee is a sitting tenant. Take an undisclosed renewal fee, meet a 540-A petition, then file for possession, and you are inside XI.
Watch: New Hampshire Rental Application Fee Receipt explained
New Hampshire application fee at a glance
Settle this first: is there a maximum application fee in New Hampshire?
No. There is no dollar figure anywhere in RSA 540-A:3, VIII. What the paragraph regulates is disclosure and refund, not price. You may set the fee, but you must clearly disclose it in writing before you collect it, and if the unit is not rented to that applicant you must return any amount beyond the actual cost of the documented background check, credit check, and/or reasonable administrative costs within 30 days of receipt. So the practical ceiling is not legislated — it is whatever you can document. A fee set well above your real costs is not unlawful to charge; it is simply money you will be handing back on every application that does not end in a tenancy
The disclosure comes first, in writing, and covers two things
prior to collecting any fee as part of the rental application or renewal process, you must clearly disclose in writing to prospective tenants (1) the amount of the fee and (2) the requirement for a satisfactory criminal background and credit check, if any. Two items, one document, and it has to exist before the money moves
What comes back, and what you may keep
if the fee is collected but the unit is not rented to that applicant, you return any amount beyond the actual cost of the documented background check, the credit check, and/or reasonable administrative costs. New Hampshire is one of the states that expressly lets you keep reasonable administrative cost — but only reasonable, and only if you can show it
The monetary remedy is narrow; the section is not
RSA 540-A:4, IX(f) takes paragraph VIII out of the general RSA 358-A:10 remedy in IX(a). A landlord who violates VIII is subject only to returning all monies provided by the applicant as part of their application, plus court costs — no multiple damages, no attorney’s fees, and the object is all monies, not the overcharge. But IX(f) is drafted “notwithstanding the provisions of subparagraph (a)”, so it displaces IX(a) only. III preserves any other available civil or criminal remedy, and XI bars a possession action — and any reprisal — against a tenant who proves a violation of RSA 540-A:3, subject to its three exceptions and its six-month window