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Comment by tyingq | Hacker News Reader

The cheap ubiquitous access to background checks, both criminal and "tenant history" also makes it hard to get into housing for some of these people, even if they have money.

Edit: off-topic, but amusing that Google is showing me ads for tents on the page. Hurray for world class ML.

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I'm genuinely surprised at how expensive the fees are for applying to an apartment. I sense the background checks are not that expensive to perform, nor are the credit score lookups. I can't help but think the complexes are just being greedy and using the application fees as 1) a filter to keep out lower income residents in a totally legal way, and 2) a means of collecting even more money.

Edit: I have only ever applied at apartment complexes owned by regional/national real estate management companies. I do not know what the experience is like for independent properties or small landlords. The fees I encountered were typically $100 to $250, non refundable.

Credit checks are actually somewhat costly for a small landlord. We had a rental house, and you can't just order a one off credit check. We needed to join a rental housing organization (or contract with a rental agency) to get access to credit checks. That being said, there is room in the market for a tenant friendly app that caches your credit check if you are applying to multiple apartments -- no need to run your credit multiple times within a few weeks.

This is exactly what Zillow provides, but with the obvious caveat that the tenant doesn't decide which apartments use Zillow's application/tenant screening features. $29 gives you a 30-day window to apply to however many apartments you would like.

https://www.zillow.com/z/rental-manager/rental-applications-...

Washington State tried to do this with reusable tenant screening reports but when the state landlord association heard about requiring them to actually be "reusable" (as in, landlords have to accept the report), they screamed so loudly that the requirement got yanked.

All the law wound up accomplishing was to cause landlords to put "we do not accept reusable tenant screening reports" on the footers of all of their web sites.

Gotta get that fee income.

Saw several places with $250 per person application fees in Austin.

California caps it at $35: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/california-law-tenan...

That has sure helped California be affordable and friendly to renters.

Had to put down over $300 to apply to an apartment this year. Comprised of an "application fee," "admin fee," and "holding deposit" (only the last one goes as a credit to my rent) for a 1 bedroom apartment.

The holding deposit was the largest fee of them all (at $300) and would have been refunded if I was rejected but it's a ridiculous amount of capital required to _apply to_ an apartment.

Yep. Moved into a house. Gas line wasn't installed correctly. Nearly killed me and family. Left a couple of us with permanent injuries.

We broke lease and moved out. Made it impossible to get into anyplace decent since we had abandoned the lease and refused to pay them to get it off our record.

Surprisingly lawyers were completely useless. Unless a doctor certifies that gas caused medical issues they won't touch the issue.

Screw mega rental companies.

It surprises me how harsh is the US towards people. We all make mistakes, and we deserve to build a new life after we have paid the price of our errors. If you have gone to prison, then you deserve to start again. But there is no mercy in the US.

p.s. I'm from Spain. As a Catholic this US approach seems crazy and deply unfair to me, as my religion teaches mercy. We all deserve to have a second (and third, and fourth, and n-th) opportunity.

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