What can a landlord charge for a rental application in Alabama?

The Alabama Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act begins at the tenancy, and its one limit on money taken up front applies to security for a tenant's obligations under a rental agreement, capped at one month's periodic rent apart from amounts for pets, changes to the premises, or increased liability risks. The act mentions a rental application once, and only to say that an intentional misrepresentation of a material fact in one is a ground for ending a lease already signed. Alabama also has no law on money paid to hold a home before signing, no portable screening report rules, no state duty to notify an applicant who is turned down, and no rental fee-transparency law. Silence is not permission: it means the terms of the landlord's own application, along with federal consumer reporting law where a credit or background report is involved, are what govern.

Alabama application & screening fees at a glance

Cite this page: "Landlord Atlas, Alabama Application & Screening Fee Laws (verified August 26, 2026), landlordatlas.com/laws/application-fees/alabama/" — free to cite and quote with a link (how these records are verified). Everything above is cited in the citations section below.

Notes and caveats

• Silence, not permission — Every answer for Alabama at the application stage is that state law does not address the question. That is different from a law saying a charge is allowed. Where no state rule exists, what applies is the landlord's own application terms, general contract law, and federal law where a consumer report is used.
• The security deposit limit is a different rule — Alabama's one-month limit on money held as security is often described as a deposit cap. It applies to security for a tenant's obligations under a rental agreement and to prepaid rent, and its exceptions for pets, changes to the premises, and increased liability risks are exceptions to that limit. It is not a rule about what an applicant pays before there is a lease.
• Federal law still applies to screening reports — Where a landlord uses a credit, background, or eviction report from a reporting company, federal consumer reporting law sets duties around the report and around notifying an applicant who is turned down because of it. Those are federal duties. Alabama adds none of its own.
• Little room for local rules — The landlord-tenant act is the exclusive law governing rights and obligations under a residential rental agreement and supersedes county and municipal ordinances relative to residential landlords and to the landlord-and-tenant relationship, and a separate provision bars local governments from controlling the amount of rent charged for private property. Neither provision names application fees, and no Alabama city or county rule on them was identified.
• No published figure to track — Because Alabama sets no cap and no cost-based limit, there is no annually published dollar figure to check. Nothing about the amount changes from year to year as a matter of state law.
• Nothing changed in 2025 or 2026 — Neither the 2025 nor the 2026 regular session amended the Alabama Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act or enacted any rule on application or screening charges. The 2026 session closed on April 9, 2026, and the legislature next convenes in January 2027.
• Short-term rental marketplaces are a separate question — A 2026 proposal on damage guarantees offered through online property-sharing marketplaces, which would have been administered by the Commissioner of Insurance, did not become law. It concerned damage cover on a shared-property booking rather than charges to apply for a standard residential tenancy, and it would not have changed anything on this page.
• About the application fee rule — Alabama sets no limit on what a landlord may charge someone to apply for a home, and no statute otherwise addresses application money. The one limit the landlord-tenant act places on money taken up front applies to security for a tenant's obligations under a rental agreement, which it caps at one month's periodic rent apart from amounts for pets, changes to the premises, or increased liability risks. That limit is tied to a tenancy that already exists, so it does not reach money paid by an applicant before any rental agreement is made, and its exceptions are carve-outs from the security limit rather than permission to charge an applicant. What an applicant pays is set by the landlord's own terms and by market practice.
• How the cost limit works — No Alabama statute ties a charge paid by an applicant to what the landlord actually spends on credit, background, or eviction reports. The landlord-tenant act never uses the words screening or credit report, and the section that caps money taken up front reaches only security for a tenant's obligations under a rental agreement. The amount charged and its relationship to any report cost are left to the landlord's own terms.
• Screening charges — Alabama places no conditions on charging an applicant for tenant screening. There is no rule about who may charge, no limit on charging more than one applicant or charging the same applicant more than once, no requirement that the landlord actually obtain a report after taking the money, and no written notice or vacancy that must exist first. The landlord-tenant act says it applies only to the residential landlord and tenant relationship and does not reach the screening step. Federal consumer reporting law governs the reports themselves, but that is federal law and not an Alabama duty.
• What the receipt duty covers — No Alabama statute requires a landlord to give a receipt for application or screening money. The only writing the landlord-tenant act requires at the front of a rental is a statement of the name and business address of the person authorized to manage the premises and of an owner or the owner's agent for service, and that statement is owed to the tenant at or before the tenancy begins rather than to an applicant. The act's only itemization duty comes at the end of a tenancy and concerns the security deposit.
• When money must come back — Alabama law names no circumstance in which application or screening money must be returned. There is no return duty where the applicant is never screened, where the home is rented to someone else, where the charge exceeds what any reports cost, or where the applicant withdraws. The refund machinery in the landlord-tenant act covers the security deposit and prepaid rent, both of which assume a rental agreement is already in place.
• Refunds — Because Alabama imposes no duty to return application or screening money, it sets no deadline, no amount, and no method for doing so. Whether any part of the money comes back, and on what terms, depends on what the landlord's application says. The deadlines that do appear in the landlord-tenant act, such as the sixty days for returning or accounting for a security deposit, run from the end of a tenancy and do not reach application money.
• What must be disclosed up front — Alabama requires nothing to be told an applicant before money changes hands. There is no duty to publish the standards used to judge an application, to explain what the charge pays for, or to state the applicant's rights. The landlord-tenant act's one early disclosure runs to the tenant at or before the tenancy begins and covers only the names and business addresses of the manager and of an owner or the owner's agent for service.
• Denial notices — Alabama sets no state duty to notify an applicant who is turned down, and no duty to give reasons or a copy of any report relied on. The landlord-tenant act mentions a rental application only in the opposite direction: an intentional misrepresentation of a material fact in a rental agreement or application is a ground for ending a lease already entered into and cannot be cured. Notice duties that follow a denial based on a consumer report come from federal law rather than from Alabama law.
• Reusable screening reports — Alabama has no law on portable or reusable tenant screening reports. A landlord is not required to accept a report an applicant already holds, there is no rule about charging when such a report is used, and no period is set for how long one stays current. The landlord-tenant act's definitions cover sixteen terms and none of them concerns applicants, screening, or reports.
• Money to hold a unit — No Alabama statute addresses money paid to hold a home while a lease is prepared or signed. There is no limit on the amount, no requirement to put the arrangement in writing, and no rule on what happens to the money if the lease is signed, if the applicant backs out, or if the landlord rents to someone else. The section that governs money held as security, and prepaid rent, applies where a rental agreement exists; it does not speak to a payment made to reserve a home before there is one.
• Advertising and fee transparency — Alabama has no rental fee-transparency law. Nothing requires an advertised rent to include the mandatory fees a resident will have to pay, nothing requires those fees to be listed separately, and nothing bans undisclosed fees in rental advertising. The landlord-tenant act treats all payments made to or for the benefit of the landlord under the rental agreement as rent and attaches no disclosure duty to them. The state's real estate licensing rules, which are the only state rules touching how rental property is advertised and how money in a rental transaction is held, govern a broker's trust accounts and how a listing identifies the broker, not the price advertised. Alabama's general deceptive trade practices law applies to business dealings at large; its text does not address rental application charges, and no official Alabama materials apply it to them.
• Penalties — Alabama attaches no penalty to anything a landlord does at the application stage, because it imposes no duty there. The landlord-tenant act's money remedies attach to other duties: a landlord who does not mail a security deposit refund or an itemized accounting within sixty days of the end of the tenancy owes the tenant double the original deposit, and a landlord who tries to enforce a lease term the landlord knows the act prohibits owes actual damages plus up to one month's periodic rent and reasonable attorney's fees. Neither reaches money paid by an applicant.

Common questions: Alabama application & screening fees

Each answer is the verified value from the table above, restated as a direct answer. Free to quote with a link to this page.

How much can a landlord charge for a rental application fee in Alabama?

No statutory cap on application fees.

Does an application fee have to be refunded in Alabama?

No statutory refund duty.

Does a landlord have to give a receipt for an application fee in Alabama?

No statutory receipt duty for application money.

Does Alabama have a reusable tenant screening report law?

No statute on reusable screening reports.

Can a landlord charge a holding deposit in Alabama?

No statute on holding deposits.

Citations

• Ala. Code § 35-9A-201 · § 35-9A-201(a) (verified 2026) Official source
• Ala. Code § 35-9A-161 · § 35-9A-161(a) (verified 2026) Official source
• Ala. Code § 35-9A-102 · § 35-9A-102(c) (verified 2026) Official source
• Ala. Code § 35-9A-202 · § 35-9A-202(a) (verified 2026) Official source
• Ala. Code § 35-9A-201 · § 35-9A-201(b) (verified 2026) Official source
• Ala. Code § 35-9A-421 · § 35-9A-421(a) (verified 2026) Official source
• Ala. Code § 35-9A-141 · § 35-9A-141 (verified 2026) Official source
• Ala. Code § 35-9A-141 · § 35-9A-141(12) (verified 2026) Official source
• Ala. Admin. Code ch. 790-X-3 (Alabama Real Estate Commission), revised February 14, 2026 · r. 790-X-3-.03 (verified 2026) Official source
• Ala. Code § 35-9A-201 · § 35-9A-201(f) (verified 2026) Official source
• Ala. Code § 35-9A-163 · § 35-9A-163(b) (verified 2026) Official source
• Ala. Code § 35-9A-121 · § 35-9A-121 (verified 2026) Official source
• Ala. Code § 11-80-8.1 · § 11-80-8.1(b) (verified 2026) Official source

How this record was verified: Direct read of the Alabama Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, Code of Alabama chapter 35-9A, all forty-eight sections, as published by the Alabama Legislature's official Code of Alabama service, together with Alabama Code Section 11-80-8.1; a reading of the Alabama Real Estate Commission's rules on brokers' handling of money and on advertising, Alabama Administrative Code chapters 790-X-2 and 790-X-3 as revised February 14, 2026; and a review of the 2025 and 2026 regular sessions, including the full text of the one 2026 bill that touched rental charges, for changes to any of these rules.