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

Two limits apply at once: the fee may not exceed the landlord's actual out-of-pocket cost of gathering the applicant's information, and in no case may it exceed a base of $30 per applicant, which the landlord may raise annually in line with increases in the Consumer Price Index running from January 1, 1998.

Does an application fee have to be refunded in California?

Yes — in California at least one circumstance requires application-stage money to be returned. Any unused portion must be returned where the promised reference check or credit report was not done; a fee taken inadvertently from an applicant whose application is not considered must be refunded within seven days; and under the second permitted process the entire fee returns to every applicant not selected within seven days of choosing a tenant or thirty days of the application, whichever comes first.

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

Yes — California requires a receipt for application-stage money.

Does California have a reusable tenant screening report law?

A landlord may choose to accept reusable tenant screening reports but is never required to; a landlord who does accept one may charge the applicant neither a fee to access the report nor an application screening fee.

Can a landlord charge a holding deposit in California?

No statute on holding deposits.

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

Verified August 25, 2026 All California topics →

Check your municipality. California does not preempt local rent regulation — city or county ordinances may impose rent caps, notice rules, and fee limits that are stricter than the state-level rules on this page and are not covered here. Verify your municipality's ordinances before relying on any figure below. Verified local pages: Berkeley , Beverly Hills , Culver City , Hayward , Inglewood , Los Angeles , Los Angeles County (unincorporated) , Mountain View , Oakland , Pasadena , Pomona , Richmond , Sacramento , San Francisco , San Jose , Santa Ana , Santa Monica , West Hollywood .

What the state record says

California has a statewide rent cap. The Tenant Protection Act (AB 1482) limits annual increases on covered units to the lesser of 5% plus regional CPI or 10%, with at most two increases per 12 months. Many units are exempt, and stricter local rent-control ordinances control where they exist. The cap is codified at Civ. Code § 1947.12. It is measured against the lowest rent in the prior 12 months and is in effect through 2030. Exempt: housing with a certificate of occupancy within 15 years (a rolling window); most single-family homes and condos not owned by corporations or REITs, where the exemption requires the statutory written disclosure to the tenant; and owner-occupied duplexes.

Legislative changes ahead — not yet in force. The rules on this page reflect the law in force today. The following measure would change it:

SB 681 (2025-2026, Wahab) — Would remove the reasonable value of the landlord's own time from what an application screening fee may cover, leaving only the actual out-of-pocket costs of conducting the screening. The same bill would add a new section barring fees not specified in the rental agreement, pet fees and parking fees, capping late fees at 2 percent of the monthly rental rate and only once rent is seven or more days overdue, and capping total fees at 5 percent of the monthly rental amount.Status: Listed as an active bill in the committee process. It passed the Senate on June 4, 2025 by 28 votes to 10 and went to the Assembly, where it was referred to the Housing and Community Development and Judiciary Committees on June 16, 2025 and a July 2 hearing was postponed on June 27, 2025. No further action is recorded. (checked 2026-08-25).

Measure that did not become law. The following recent proposal failed and is not law — noted here because failed bills are sometimes still described as if enacted:

AB 1248 (2025-2026, Haney) — Would have added a new Civil Code section limiting a tenant in a new tenancy to paying rent and a set list of charges, and requiring anyone advertising or offering residential property for rent to include all required fees in the advertised price. It did not become law and the section it would have added does not exist.Status: Ordered to the inactive file at the author's request on June 3, 2025 and recorded as having died on the inactive file on February 2, 2026. (checked 2026-08-25).

California limits a rental application screening fee to the landlord's actual out-of-pocket screening costs and, on top of that, to a base of $30 per applicant that the landlord may raise each year in line with the Consumer Price Index, and it surrounds the fee with rules on when it may be collected, what must be refunded, and what the applicant must receive.

Cited to Cal. Civ. Code § 1950.6 (b) and 25 more California statutes · Verified August 25, 2026

No fee may be taken when the landlord knows no unit is available, and a fee may be collected only while the landlord offers one of two processes: considering completed applications in the order received under written screening criteria handed out with the application form and approving the first qualified applicant, or returning the entire fee to everyone not selected within seven days of choosing a tenant or thirty days of the application, whichever comes first. Whenever a fee is paid, the applicant is owed an itemized receipt and a copy of any consumer credit report within seven days of the landlord receiving it, and state credit reporting law adds its own denial-notice duties on top of the federal ones. A landlord need not accept a reusable tenant screening report, but one who does accept a qualifying report may charge neither a fee to access it nor an application screening fee. California does not regulate holding deposits and does not require advertised rent to include mandatory fees.

California application fees at a glance

Application fee cap	Two limits apply at once: the fee may not exceed the landlord's actual out-of-pocket cost of gathering the applicant's information, and in no case may it exceed a base of $30 per applicant, which the landlord may raise annually in line with increases in the Consumer Price Index running from January 1, 1998. California sets no single published dollar maximum. The statute fixes a $30 base and allows the landlord or their agent to adjust it each year in line with increases in the Consumer Price Index, so the ceiling rises over time and no state office is directed to calculate or publish a yearly amount. The most recent figure published by a California state agency is $62.02, given as of December 2023 in the Department of Real Estate's landlord-tenant guidebook. Whatever the ceiling, the actual out-of-pocket cost limit still applies, and that cost may include the reasonable value of the time the landlord or their agent spent obtaining the information.
Fee limited to actual screening cost	Yes
Screening charge rules	A fee may not be charged when the landlord knows or should know no unit is available or will become available within a reasonable time, and it may be collected only while the landlord is offering one of two set application processes. The first permitted process considers completed applications in the order received under the landlord's established screening criteria, gives those criteria to the applicant in writing together with the application form, approves the first applicant who meets them, and charges no fee unless and until an application is actually considered. The second returns the entire fee to any applicant not selected, for any reason, within seven days of selecting a tenant or thirty days of the application, whichever comes first. The landlord must be offering one of the two at the moment the money is collected. Guarantors and cosigners count as applicants and may each be charged. A landlord may accept and rely on a consumer credit report an applicant brings, but is not obliged to. The fee is not treated as security under the security deposit statute and is not an advance fee under Section 10026 of the Business and Professions Code.
Receipt required	Yes
Refund required in some circumstances	Yes
Refund rules	Any unused portion must be returned where the promised reference check or credit report was not done; a fee taken inadvertently from an applicant whose application is not considered must be refunded within seven days; and under the second permitted process the entire fee returns to every applicant not selected within seven days of choosing a tenant or thirty days of the application, whichever comes first. Where multiple applications arrive at once and a fee is collected from someone whose application is then not considered, the landlord may offer, as an alternative to the seven-day refund, to apply the money to an application for another unit the landlord offers, and that choice belongs to the applicant. Under the first permitted process there is no refund duty toward an applicant who was actually considered and then denied for not meeting the landlord's established screening criteria. Separately, a landlord who accepts reusable tenant screening reports may not charge a screening fee at all to an applicant who supplies one.
Disclosure before collecting	A landlord using the first-qualified-applicant process must give the applicant the established screening criteria in writing together with the application form, and any landlord seeking an investigative consumer report about an applicant must notify them in writing within three days of first requesting it. The written screening criteria duty rides on the first of the two permitted application processes; a landlord using the process that refunds the fee to everyone not selected is not required by the fee statute to hand over written criteria. The investigative consumer report notice is separate and must name the agency preparing the report, state that the report will cover the applicant's character, general reputation, personal characteristics, and mode of living, and summarize the applicant's inspection rights under Section 1786.22. The applicant must also be given a box to check to request a copy of the report, which must then be sent within three business days of the landlord receiving it.
Denial-notice duties (state law)	California imposes its own denial-notice duties where a rental decision rests on a consumer credit report, and it separately requires the applicant to receive a copy of that report within seven days whenever a screening fee was paid, whatever the outcome. State law defines an adverse action to include a determination on an application for the hiring of a dwelling unit that is adverse to the applicant, and it treats rental screening as a permissible purpose for obtaining a consumer credit report. Anyone taking such an action based in whole or in part on a consumer credit report must give written notice of it, identify the reporting agency by name, address, and telephone number, state that the decision rested in whole or in part on the report, and give written notice of the applicant's right to a free copy of the report within sixty days and to dispute its accuracy or completeness. A defense is available to a landlord who shows they maintained reasonable procedures to comply. Where the decision rests on an investigative consumer report, the landlord must advise the applicant and supply the agency's name and address. The seven-day copy of the consumer credit report is owed whenever a screening fee was paid, without the applicant asking and regardless of whether they were approved. Federal fair credit reporting duties run alongside these state duties.
Reusable screening reports	A landlord may choose to accept reusable tenant screening reports but is never required to; a landlord who does accept one may charge the applicant neither a fee to access the report nor an application screening fee. To qualify, the report must have been prepared within the previous thirty days by a consumer reporting agency at the applicant's own request and expense, must be available to the landlord at no cost to access or use, and must be supplied directly to the landlord or through a third-party service that regularly provides such reports. It must prominently state the date through which its information is current and must cover the applicant's name, contact information, verification of employment, last known address, and the results of an eviction history check. A landlord may require the applicant to state that nothing in the report has materially changed. Where a city, county, or city and county policy conflicts with the reusable report statute, the policy giving applicants greater protection applies, so local rules may go further than the state rule.
Holding deposits	No statute on holding deposits
Rental fee-transparency rules	No rental fee-transparency statute
Penalty for violation	The application screening fee statute and the reusable report statute each set duties without attaching any penalty of their own; the penalties in this area come from the state's credit reporting laws and attach to the disclosure and denial-notice duties. For the state denial-notice duties tied to a consumer credit report, a negligent violation exposes the landlord to the applicant's actual damages including court costs, lost wages, attorney's fees, and where applicable pain and suffering, while a willful violation adds punitive damages of not less than one hundred dollars and not more than five thousand dollars. Obtaining a report under false pretenses or without a permissible purpose carries an award of not less than two thousand five hundred dollars. For the notice duties tied to an investigative consumer report, a landlord who fails to comply is liable for the applicant's actual damages or ten thousand dollars, whichever is greater, outside class actions, plus the costs of the action and reasonable attorney's fees, with punitive damages available where the violation was grossly negligent or willful. A landlord who shows they maintained reasonable procedures to comply has a defense to the denial-notice duty.

Cite this page: "Landlord Atlas, California Application & Screening Fee Laws (verified August 25, 2026), landlordatlas.com/laws/application-fees/california/" — free to cite and quote with a link (how these records are verified). Every figure above is cited to the California statute in the citations section below.

Notes and caveats

There is no official current-year dollar figure — The statute sets a $30 base and lets the landlord or their agent raise it each year in line with increases in the Consumer Price Index since January 1, 1998. It does not direct any state office to calculate or publish an annual maximum, and none does. The most recent amount published by a California state agency is $62.02, given as of December 2023 in the Department of Real Estate's landlord-tenant guidebook. Higher current-year figures in circulation come from industry groups rather than the state, and they disagree with one another.
The actual-cost limit binds even when the indexed ceiling is higher — The indexed figure is a ceiling, not an entitlement. A landlord whose screening costs less than that ceiling may charge only what the screening actually cost, and that amount may include the reasonable value of the time spent gathering the information.
The written screening criteria duty applies to only one of the two processes — Screening criteria must be given to the applicant in writing with the application form where the landlord uses the process that considers applications in the order received and approves the first qualified applicant. A landlord using the process that returns the whole fee to everyone not selected is not required by the fee statute to provide written criteria.
Denial after real consideration does not trigger a refund — Under the first-qualified-applicant process, no refund is owed to an applicant whose application was actually considered and then denied for not meeting the landlord's established screening criteria. The seven-day refund rule covers a fee collected inadvertently from someone whose application was never considered.
Guarantors and cosigners are applicants — The definition of applicant covers anyone who asks to rent a unit and anyone who agrees to act as a guarantor or cosigner, so each may be charged a separate fee subject to the same limits and duties.
Reusable reports are optional for the landlord on both sides — Nothing requires a landlord to accept a reusable tenant screening report, and nothing requires a landlord to accept a credit report an applicant simply brings along. The no-fee rule applies only once a landlord has chosen to accept reusable reports and is given a qualifying one, meaning a report prepared within the previous thirty days at the applicant's expense and available to the landlord at no cost.
The fee is neither a deposit nor an advance fee — The application screening fee is not counted as security under the security deposit statute and is not an advance fee under Section 10026 of the Business and Professions Code, so the security deposit limits and return deadlines do not reach it.
Local rules can go further — The application screening fee statute contains no clause displacing local regulation, and the reusable report statute states that where a local policy conflicts with it the policy giving applicants greater protection applies. Some California cities regulate screening fees directly, so a local rule may be stricter than the state rule.
How the cost limit works — The fee may not be greater than the actual out-of-pocket costs of gathering information about the applicant. The statute names the cost of a tenant screening service or a consumer credit reporting service as examples, and it also counts the reasonable value of the time the landlord or their agent spent obtaining the information as part of that amount.
What the receipt duty covers — The landlord or their agent must give the applicant a receipt for the fee, delivered personally or by mail, itemizing the out-of-pocket expenses and the time spent obtaining and processing the applicant's information. The landlord and the applicant may agree instead to have the receipt sent to an email account the applicant provides.
When money must come back — At least three separate circumstances force a return of money. Any unused part of the fee must go back if the landlord does not perform a personal reference check or obtain a consumer credit report. A fee collected inadvertently from someone whose application is never considered must be refunded within seven days. Under the second permitted application process, the entire fee goes back to every applicant not selected.
Money to hold a unit — The chapter of the Civil Code covering the hiring of real property contains no holding deposit provision. The section that would carry one is the security deposit statute, whose definition of security reaches payments imposed at the beginning of the tenancy and expressly sets the application screening fee to one side; the fee statute likewise states that a screening fee is not security. What governs a holding deposit instead is the agreement between the landlord and the applicant, read under general contract law. The Department of Real Estate's landlord-tenant guidebook describes the customary practice, saying a holding deposit only guarantees that the landlord will not rent the unit to someone else for a stated period and does not give the applicant a right to move in, but that description is agency guidance rather than a statutory rule.
Advertising and fee transparency — California's all-in pricing rule sits inside the Consumers Legal Remedies Act, which reaches transactions resulting in the sale or lease of goods or services to a consumer. That Act limits goods to tangible chattels bought or leased mainly for personal, family, or household purposes and limits services to work and labor for other than commercial use, and the Attorney General's page on the law describes its reach through examples such as event tickets, short-term rentals, hotels, and food delivery without naming residential tenancies. Nothing in the state's own materials applies it to renting a home. A 2024 law does bar a landlord from charging a tenant for serving, posting, or delivering tenancy notices and from charging a fee to pay rent by check, but those are charges during a tenancy rather than rules about advertising a unit or charging an applicant.

Common questions: California application 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 California?: Two limits apply at once: the fee may not exceed the landlord's actual out-of-pocket cost of gathering the applicant's information, and in no case may it exceed a base of $30 per applicant, which the landlord may raise annually in line with increases in the Consumer Price Index running from January 1, 1998.
Does an application fee have to be refunded in California?: Yes — in California at least one circumstance requires application-stage money to be returned. Any unused portion must be returned where the promised reference check or credit report was not done; a fee taken inadvertently from an applicant whose application is not considered must be refunded within seven days; and under the second permitted process the entire fee returns to every applicant not selected within seven days of choosing a tenant or thirty days of the application, whichever comes first.
Does a landlord have to give a receipt for an application fee in California?: Yes — California requires a receipt for application-stage money.
Does California have a reusable tenant screening report law?: A landlord may choose to accept reusable tenant screening reports but is never required to; a landlord who does accept one may charge the applicant neither a fee to access the report nor an application screening fee.
Can a landlord charge a holding deposit in California?: No statute on holding deposits.

Statute citations

Cal. Civ. Code § 1950.6 (b) (verified 2026) Official source
California Department of Real Estate, Landlord-Tenant Guidebook, The Rental Application (verified 2026) Official source
Cal. Civ. Code § 1950.6 (c)(1), (c)(2)(A)(i)-(iii), (c)(2)(B), (a), (j), (k) (verified 2026) Official source
Cal. Civ. Code § 1950.6 (d) (verified 2026) Official source
Cal. Civ. Code § 1950.6 (e), (c)(2)(A)(iv), (c)(2)(B) (verified 2026) Official source
Cal. Civ. Code § 1950.1 (d) (verified 2026) Official source
Cal. Civ. Code § 1950.6 (c)(2)(A)(i) (verified 2026) Official source
Cal. Civ. Code § 1786.16 (a)(3), (b)(1) (verified 2026) Official source
Cal. Civ. Code § 1785.20 (a), (c) (verified 2026) Official source
Cal. Civ. Code § 1785.3 (a) (verified 2026) Official source
Cal. Civ. Code § 1950.6 (f) (verified 2026) Official source
Cal. Civ. Code § 1786.40 (a) (verified 2026) Official source
Cal. Civ. Code § 1950.1 (a), (b), (c), (d), (e)(6), (h) (verified 2026) Official source
Cal. Civ. Code § 1950.6 (g) (verified 2026) Official source
Cal. Civ. Code § 1950.5 (b) (verified 2026) Official source
Cal. Civ. Code § 1950.6 (k) (verified 2026) Official source
Cal. Civ. Code § 1770 (a), (a)(29) (verified 2026) Official source
Cal. Civ. Code § 1761 (a), (b) (verified 2026) Official source
California Attorney General, Hidden Fees and the Honest Pricing Law (verified 2026) Official source
Cal. Civ. Code § 1785.31 (a)(1)-(3), (d) (verified 2026) Official source
Cal. Civ. Code § 1786.50 (a)(1), (a)(2), (b) (verified 2026) Official source
Cal. Civ. Code § 1785.20 (c) (verified 2026) Official source
Cal. Civ. Code § 1950.6 (verified 2026) Official source
Cal. Civ. Code § 1950.1 (verified 2026) Official source
Cal. Civ. Code § 1785.20 (verified 2026) Official source
Cal. Civ. Code § 1786.16 (verified 2026) Official source

How this record was verified: Direct read of California Civil Code sections 1950.6, 1950.1, 1950.5, 1770, 1761, 1785.3, 1785.11, 1785.20, 1785.31, 1786.16, 1786.40 and 1786.50 on leginfo.legislature.ca.gov, together with the section list for Civil Code Division 3, Part 4, Title 5, Chapter 2; the Department of Real Estate landlord-tenant guidebook page on the rental application and the Attorney General's Honest Pricing Law page for state-published figures and agency-stated scope; and a 2025-2026 session sweep taking each enacted-law claim from the legislature's own bill status and history pages for AB 1170 (Chapter 67, Statutes of 2025), AB 1248, SB 381 and SB 681, plus AB 2493 (Chapter 966, Statutes of 2024) and SB 611 (Chapter 287, Statutes of 2024), and confirmation on the code itself that sections 1950.2 and 1950.3 do not exist.