Free West Virginia Rental Application Fee Receipt
West Virginia sets no cap, no ban and no refund duty on a rental application fee. What it does is define the fee in § 37-6A-1(2) and then, in § 37-6A-1(14), exclude it from “security deposit” only where “the parties expressly agree, in writing, that a pet fee or application fee is nonrefundable”. That single proviso is the whole of West Virginia’s application-fee law, and it is a drafting condition rather than a price rule: get the writing right and the fee sits outside article 6A; get it wrong and there is a serious argument the money is deposit money, with everything that follows. This generator records the fee, the date and the nonrefundability agreement it was taken under — which is the fact the statute actually turns on.
West Virginia is the odd row in any table of state application-fee rules, and the reason it gets reported badly is that it does not belong in the table at all. There is no cap. There is no ban. There is no actual-cost limit, no receipt duty, no refund duty, no criteria-disclosure duty and no deadline of any kind. A summary that records West Virginia as ‘no rule’ is closer to right than one that records a figure — but it still misses the thing that actually matters to a landlord, because West Virginia does say something about application fees, and what it says has teeth of a peculiar kind. Before the definitions, one sentence settles what they are definitions for. § 37-6A-6 is the article’s own application provision, and subsection (a) says the article’s provisions apply to all residential rental premises or units used for dwelling purposes. There is no exclusions section in article 6A and no list of arrangements carved out of it; the reach is stated inclusively. But it is stated, and it is where the rest of this page begins: the definitional condition below is a condition that operates on a residential dwelling letting. A commercial letting is not premises used for dwelling purposes, and nothing in article 6A speaks to it. The only other limit in the section is about time rather than category — subsection (b) says the article does not apply to agreements for the payment of security deposits entered into before it took effect. § 37-6A-1 is then the definitions section of that same residential rental security deposit article. Definition (2) tells you what an application fee is, in words wide enough to catch almost any money taken at the front of a tenancy: any deposit of money, however denominated, paid to a landlord or their agent for the purpose of being considered as a tenant for a dwelling unit. Definition (14) then tells you what a security deposit is, and lists three things it does not include — rent, a pet fee, and an application fee — with a proviso attached to the last two: provided that the parties expressly agree, in writing, that the pet fee or application fee is nonrefundable. That proviso is the whole of West Virginia’s application-fee law, and it is a drafting condition rather than a fee regulation. It does not tell you what to charge, when to charge it, what to do with it or what to give the applicant. It tells you that whether the money you have just taken sits inside or outside an entire statutory regime depends on a sentence in your own paperwork. That makes it more useful to a landlord than a cap would be, and easier to get wrong, because most application forms do not contain the sentence at all. This page is built around that consequence. It sets out both definitions from the retrieved text, explains what ‘expressly agree, in writing’ asks of your documents, walks through what article 6A would require of the money if the exclusion did not apply, and then — this part matters — sets out honestly why that last question is genuinely contested rather than settled. Two readings of the same definitions both sit on the face of the text, no West Virginia provision resolves them, and no case law was located. A page that resolved it for you would be inventing certainty, so this one does not.
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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 whole of West Virginia’s rule is a proviso, and the proviso is about your paperwork
Start with the article’s own reach, because the definitions are conditions that operate on it. § 37-6A-6 is captioned “Application and effective date of this article”, and subsection (a) reads: “The provisions of this article shall apply to all residential rental premises or units used for dwelling purposes.” That is drafted inclusively — article 6A has no exclusions section, and no arrangement is named as carved out of it — and the only other limb, subsection (b), is temporal rather than categorical: the article does not apply to agreements for the payment of security deposits entered into before its effective date. Read that as the ground the rest of this page stands on. Everything below — the definition of an application fee, the proviso that decides whether it is a security deposit, and the contested consequence of missing that proviso — is machinery that engages on a residential dwelling letting. Premises that are not residential rental premises or units used for dwelling purposes are not reached by this article at all, and this page does not describe what governs them. Then read the two definitions in the order the section puts them, because the second one is where the work happens. § 37-6A-1(2): “‘Application fee’ means any deposit of money, however denominated, which is paid by a tenant to a landlord, lessor or agent of a landlord for the purpose of being considered as a tenant for a dwelling unit.” § 37-6A-1(14): “‘Security deposit’ means any refundable deposit of money that is furnished by a tenant to a landlord to secure the performance of the terms and conditions of a rental agreement, or as security for damages to the leased premises. Security deposit does not include: (A) Rent; (B) a pet fee; or (C) application fee: Provided, That the parties expressly agree, in writing, that a pet fee or application fee is nonrefundable.” Notice the asymmetry in that list. Rent is excluded flatly. The pet fee and the application fee are excluded subject to the proviso. Whatever else is arguable about the sentence, the drafter plainly attached a condition to those two items and to no other. ‘However denominated’ closes the relabelling route before it opens. A great deal of state fee law can be worked around by renaming the charge; this definition cannot. If money is taken so that someone may be considered as a tenant for a dwelling unit, it is an application fee for the purposes of this article whether your form calls it a processing charge, an administration fee, a screening charge, a reservation sum or a holding amount. The label is expressly irrelevant. That cuts both ways: it means you cannot escape the proviso by renaming, and it also means you should not assume a charge with a different name is outside the definition when you are deciding what your paperwork needs to say. ‘Expressly agree, in writing’ is three requirements, not one. There must be agreement, which implies both parties rather than a unilateral notice. It must be express, which is the opposite of implied from conduct, from custom, or from the fact that nobody asked for the money back. And it must be in writing. A verbal assurance at a showing, a line in a listing, a policy on your website, or a practice you have always followed satisfies none of those three, however genuine. The cheapest compliance step available anywhere in this family of state rules is a single signed sentence on the application form, and West Virginia is the state where that sentence does the most work. And it has to say nonrefundable. The proviso is not satisfied by an agreement that the fee exists, that it is due on submission, or that it covers screening costs. The thing the parties must expressly agree is that the fee is nonrefundable. A form that recites a fee amount and takes a signature has recorded the payment; it has not recorded the agreement the proviso describes. What is at stake if the writing is missing is the reason any of this matters. If the exclusion does not operate, the argument available to an applicant is that the money is a security deposit within the meaning of the article — and article 6A is not a light regime. § 37-6A-2(a) requires that upon termination of the tenancy and within the applicable notice period, any security deposit held by the landlord, minus deductions, “shall be delivered to the tenant, together with a written itemization” of those deductions. § 37-6A-3 requires the landlord to maintain and itemize deduction records for one year after the tenancy ends and to let those records be examined, or provide a copy, within seventy-two hours of a written request. § 37-6A-4 makes any rental-agreement provision waiving rights under the article unenforceable, and gives the tenant actual damages and reasonable attorney’s fees if a landlord sues to enforce one. And § 37-6A-5(a) provides that where a landlord fails to comply with the article and the noncompliance “is willful or not in good faith”, the tenant is entitled to judgment for the amount of any unreturned security deposit plus damages “for annoyance or inconvenience resulting from the landlord’s nonconformance equal to one and a half times the amount wrongfully withheld, unless the tenant owes rent to the landlord, in which case, the court shall order an amount equal to any amount awarded to the tenant pursuant to this subsection to be credited against any rent due to the landlord”. The closing proviso matters to the size of the exposure: where rent is owed, the award is set off against it. Now the honest part, and it is the part most pages skip. That chain depends on a premise the statute does not confirm: that an application fee outside the exclusion actually falls inside the definition of security deposit. The same definition requires the money to be a refundable deposit, and to be furnished “to secure the performance of the terms and conditions of a rental agreement, or as security for damages to the leased premises” — neither of which is an obvious description of money paid to be considered for a unit. Definition (2) also describes the fee as paid “by a tenant”, while definition (16) defines a tenant as a person entitled under a rental agreement to occupy a dwelling unit to the exclusion of others, including a roomer, which an unsuccessful applicant never becomes. And § 37-6A-2 runs from “termination of the tenancy”, an event that never occurs for an applicant who is turned down. Both readings sit on the face of the text, nothing in the article resolves them, and no case law was located. The practical conclusion is not that one side wins. It is that the writing is what keeps you out of the argument entirely, and the writing costs a sentence.
Watch: West Virginia Rental Application Fee Receipt explained
West Virginia application fee at a glance
Settle this first: does West Virginia cap or ban the rental application fee?
Neither. It does not regulate the amount at all. Nothing in § 37-6A-1, or anywhere else in chapter 37 articles 6 and 6A, sets a ceiling, imposes an actual-cost limit, requires a receipt, or requires any part of the fee back. Know first where the article bites, because everything below stands on it. § 37-6A-6(a) provides that the article’s provisions “shall apply to all residential rental premises or units used for dwelling purposes”. That is an inclusive reach, not a list of exceptions — article 6A contains no exclusions section — but it is a real boundary: it is on a residential dwelling letting that the definitions below operate at all. What West Virginia does on such a letting is classify. § 37-6A-1(2) defines the fee; § 37-6A-1(14) excludes it from “security deposit” only if the parties expressly agree, in writing, that it is nonrefundable. So the compliance question a West Virginia landlord faces is not what to charge. It is what the paperwork says, and whether it says it clearly enough to keep the money out of the deposit regime in article 6A
The definition is deliberately wide
“Application fee” means “any deposit of money, however denominated” paid to a landlord, lessor or agent “for the purpose of being considered as a tenant for a dwelling unit”. Renaming it a processing charge, a holding sum or an administration fee changes nothing — however denominated forecloses that
The exclusion is conditional, and the condition is a writing
§ 37-6A-1(14) excludes an application fee from “security deposit” “Provided, That the parties expressly agree, in writing, that a pet fee or application fee is nonrefundable”. No writing, no exclusion on the face of the proviso — which is why this is a drafting rule rather than a fee rule
What follows is contested, and the page says so
if the fee is not excluded, the argument is that it is a security deposit and answers to § 37-6A-2 (return within the notice period, with a written itemization), § 37-6A-3 (records) and § 37-6A-5 (remedy). The counter-argument sits in the same definition, which speaks of a refundable deposit securing performance of a rental agreement. Both readings are on the text; neither is resolved
What article 6A actually says, and what this page will not decide for you
§ 37-6A-1(2)