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Rental Application FAQ United States
A Residential Rental Application is used by landlords and property managers to collect information on potential renters.
Landlords can rent property to tenants without obtaining rental applications. However, rental applications can provide valuable information about a renter, such as the renter's employment history and income. Also, landlords can not run credit checks on potential tenants without written permission, and rental applications can be used to obtain written permission. Thus, many landlords choose to use rental applications when screening prospective renters.
Yes. Landlords can reject potential renters for not filling out rental applications.
No. A potential renter does not have to sign a rental or lease agreement after being approved.
A landlord is an owner of land or a building who has leased some or all of the land or building to another person or persons for a certain period of time.
A property manager is hired by a landlord and entrusted with the responsibility of attending to a real estate property when the owner is unavailable, unable, or uninterested in doing so.
A blank space will be provided in the form that can be filled in later if you are missing information about one of the parties. We recommend, however, that you attempt to make the contract as complete as possible, for greater certainty.
There is no obligation for an applicant to provide their social security number. While it may be more difficult, it is possible to do a credit check without a person's social security number. Notwithstanding the fact that there is no obligation, you are allowed to reject a person's application if they do not provide their social security number.
A security deposit is a sum of money that a tenant pays to a landlord to guarantee that the tenant will fulfill all obligations under the lease. The landlord holds the security deposit in trust for the term of the lease to ensure that the tenant does not default on the terms of the lease agreement or otherwise damage the property. Should the tenant damage the property (normal "wear and tear" excluded) or if the Tenant has not paid rent, the landlord is entitled to recover the amount owing from the security deposit. Usually the tenant must provide the landlord with the security deposit at the start of the lease term. At the end of the lease term, the tenant will receive the deposit back minus any allowable deductions for repairs/restoration/owing rent. Some jurisdictions do not allow deposits to be used for damages and the deposits would be called rent deposits in that case.
Some states have limitations on what can be collected for a Security Deposit. The following list details the statutory limits that different states place on security deposits. Please be sure to check your local law to see if there are any rent control or rent regulation rules for security deposit collection. Keep in mind that the following are maximum amounts, and you can certainly collect a smaller security deposit.