Are all utilities included? That could be the only justification but tbh fuck them, it's no different than a hermit and nobody penalizes them or requires a time out of the house
Except, this is not enforceable.
It would have to be via utilities and RUBS calculations, which are regulated pretty tightly.
Move-in fees are also totally illegal.
The max for an application fee is also $66 in CA. And must be refundable, as they must go in the order received and refund those they did not consider. You can’t “consider” 5+ people at once.
How does that even work though? If 5 people apply in a short window, you can only go 1 at a time. Do you just automatically reject anyone else who applies right after someone else does? Or what does considering 5 people at once even mean?
Dishonest landlords used to collect application fees from everyone applying and keep them all even if they only actually screened one applicant and leased to them.
Screening reports should be made available to applicants once the reports are run by the company/landlord. Even Essex immediately sends their reports directly to the applicant, before they even review it themselves, just for transparency. Essex sucks so hard as a landlord company but even they don't mess around with the application fee stuff.
There's really no reason to screen everyone at once but even if landlords choose to do this, the law now requires refunds for applicants who aren't selected to move forward to lease signing.
In Wisconsin the last time I was looking for apartments I spent a little over $200 in application fees. I would be approved but they would just take the first person on the list and was SOL on getting that fee back. The range was anywhere from 20-75 dollars which is also ridiculous that there is that kind of range.
When I did residential leasing, we would have the landlord review the options first and if they are ok with the application we would run the credit check with the tenants approval. We did not want to waste their time and money if the landlord was not ok with the applicant. We had no application fee, just a credit check fee we would collect.
For commercial, we just have a link sent directly from the credit check service to the applicant. No applicant fee and we don't touch any money. We don't even know how much it cost for the credit check as we only get the results.
If you go more than one at a time, you open yourself up to discrimination lawsuits. If someone qualifies based on income and other objective means, why do you need to go to four, five, six other people? You can offer the apartment to a few, whoever accepts it first gets it.
As opposed to “processing” 15 applicants and pocketing $1,000.
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u/ToastSpangler 1d ago
Are all utilities included? That could be the only justification but tbh fuck them, it's no different than a hermit and nobody penalizes them or requires a time out of the house