California AB 2493: New Rules for Tenant Application Fees Explained!

Here are the changes to the tenant application screening process in California. Welcome back inside Uplift Property Management I'm CEO Tommy Perfect here to talk about changes to the tenant application screening process and the new laws that are going into effect this year.

So the new law is AB2493 and it talks about all of these different changes and when you're allowed to charge a screening fee how you're supposed to come up with that fee and then what kind of responsibilities you have as the landlord to give back to the tenant some of these things we talk about are when you have an application and when you have a property available you need to have a property that's available for them soon after within what they call reasonable amount of time.

Next you need to make sure that you have a system set up for screening those applications that come in really on a first come first qualified now when I say first come that's first completed application that comes in with all the necessary documentation that needs to be there to complete the application the first one that's there that meets your criteria is the one that needs to be approved applicants are allowed to change their application and add to it but you still need to make sure that you're going off that first come first qualified.

One of the main changes that this affects really mainly multifamily housing is where you have weight lists so AB2493 really limits the viability of a wait list in saying that you can only charge a screening fee on an application when you have a rental unit that is going to be available to the applicant within a reasonable amount of time now I don't know what a reasonable amount of time is to the California legislature but I know for us at Uplift we generally will keep an application for about 60 days viable so we can only charge that screening fee when we actually have a unit that we will expect to be ready.

One other point that AB2493 points out is that we are required as landlords to send the screening report that we use that that consumer credit report to the tenant in writing within 7 days of running that screening report so making sure that you are adding that layer of transparency to your application process.

The main operational changes and implicate implications that AB2493 have for us property managers and other landlords is that one make sure that you have that clear first come first qualified application process second ensure that you have that transparency sending that screening report if you need it to the to the tenant and then three adjust when you're going to be charging those application screening fees a lot of times that's the first gateway into actually having your application uh considered just make sure that your practices are matching up with this law. Documentation requirements you know maintain those records of your process clearly defined for everybody out have a score on how you're going to run that criteria for your tenants you know find some of those opportunities to add documentation to what can sometimes be a rather subjective process in screening an applicant and lastly, these deadlines and these changes it already passed this all went into effect January 1st 2025 so you need to make sure that you aren't already behind the eightball and you're following along with these changes that you're required to make to help applicants have that level of transparency and trust with your property management company or with your housing experience.

If there are any questions or concerns regarding your application process or how Uplift is running our applications and how we have that process line item out feel free to give us a call anytime and we're happy to go over those things.