Pennsylvania Act 67 of 2026: Rental Application Fee Rule Takes Effect in 60 Days

Pennsylvania Act 67 of 2026: Rental Application Fee Rule Takes Effect in 60 Days

Pennsylvania's governor approved House Bill 558 on October 22, 2026, creating Act 67 of 2026. It adds Section 207 to the Landlord and Tenant Act of 1951 and ties rental application fees to a landlord's actual administrative expenses. The act takes effect in 60 days.

Information last verified on October 23, 2026. This is a developing story; we update it as the record changes.

Status: Signed, not yet in force. Approved by the Governor on October 22, 2026 as Act No. 67 of 2026. Section 2 of the act says it takes effect in 60 days, which calculates to on or about December 21, 2026. The act prints no calendar date.

Jurisdiction scope: This article addresses one new section of Pennsylvania's Landlord and Tenant Act of 1951 governing rental application fees. It does not address rent levels, eviction procedure, screening-report accuracy under federal credit reporting law, or local ordinances in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh or any other municipality. For the broader state picture, see Pennsylvania's landlord-tenant rules on deposits and notice.

What Happened

Representative MaryLouise Isaacson of the 175th District introduced House Bill 558 on February 12, 2025 under a co-sponsorship memo titled "Capping Rental Application Fees." The House Housing and Community Development Committee amended it on April 13, 2026, adopting amendment A02832 by 26 to 0 and reporting the bill as amended by 23 to 3. That amendment produced Printer's No. 3170 and removed the cap the memo was named after.

The House passed Printer's No. 3170 by 148 to 53 on May 4, 2026. The Senate Urban Affairs and Housing Committee reported it as committed by 11 to 0 on October 7, 2026, Senate Appropriations re-reported it by 22 to 0 on October 19, and the Senate passed it by 36 to 14 on October 21, 2026 without further amendment. It was signed in the House on October 21 and in the Senate on October 22, presented to the Governor on October 22, and approved the same day as Act No. 67 of 2026.

Because the Senate passed the same printer's number the House did, Printer's No. 3170 is the enacted text. That matters here more than usual, because the introduced version and the enacted version say different things about money.

What the Law Actually Says

Act 67 adds a single new section to Article II of the Landlord and Tenant Act of 1951, the article covering creation of leases, the statute of frauds and mortgaging of leaseholds. That article previously ended at Section 206. The operative subsection reads:

Section 207. Rental Applications.--(a) A landlord or the landlord's agent may only charge a fee that is reasonably related to the actual administrative expenses incurred and may not use fees as a general revenue source.

A note on how that text is printed. In the bill as printed, the words from "only charge" through "general revenue source" appear in capital letters. Pennsylvania prints language inserted by amendment in capitals and prints deleted language struck through, so the capitalization marks the words the April committee amendment added. It is a printing convention, not part of the statute.

What the same bill shows struck through, on page one, is the rule most people have heard about. The introduced version said a landlord "may not charge a rental application fee of more than twenty dollars ($20) to apply to enter into a rental agreement for a residential dwelling unit." Every word of that, including the phrase limiting the subsection to a residential dwelling unit, is lined out in Printer's No. 3170. So is the introduced subsection restricting the fee to conducting a background check that "shall include a check of the applicant's criminal history record and credit score." Both official Appropriations fiscal notes on Printer's No. 3170 describe the surviving standard and neither mentions a dollar figure, with the Senate note summarizing the bill as limiting fees "to the landlord's administrative costs that are actually incurred."

The second and final subsection is a savings clause:

(b) Nothing in this section shall be construed to prohibit a person from charging or require a person to charge a rental application fee to apply to enter into a rental agreement for commercial, residential or nonresidential property.

That is the whole section. Read it for what it does not contain. There is no refund duty if an applicant is rejected or withdraws, no requirement to itemize what the fee covers, no receipt requirement, no duty to disclose the fee before an applicant pays it, and no cap expressed in dollars or as a multiple of anything. The section binds "a landlord or the landlord's agent," and neither phrase is defined. Section 102 of the 1951 act supplies definitions of "person" and "tenant" but none for landlord, landlord's agent, rental application fee or administrative expenses, and Act 67 adds none.

There is also no enforcement machinery. Section 207 creates no fine, no penalty, no role for any Commonwealth agency, no express private right of action, no fee-shifting and no anti-waiver clause. That absence stands out inside this particular statute, because the act's security deposit provisions are drafted the opposite way. Section 511.1 caps a residential security deposit at two months' rent in the first year of a lease and one month's rent in the second and later years, and subsection (f) makes any attempted waiver by a tenant void and unenforceable. Section 512 requires a landlord to deliver a written list of claimed damages within 30 days of lease termination, forfeits the right to withhold anything if that list is late, and makes a landlord who underpays liable in assumpsit for double the excess. Section 207 carries none of those features. Readers comparing this to how other states handle application and move-in charges will notice that a bare standard with no remedy attached is a common drafting outcome rather than an unusual one.

What Happens Next

Section 2 of the act says only "This act shall take effect in 60 days." Counting 60 days from approval on October 22, 2026 lands on or about December 21, 2026. The act prints no calendar date, so that date is a calculation and should be treated as approximate until confirmed.

The Legislative Reference Bureau had not yet published the enrolled Act 67 in the Commonwealth's unconsolidated statutes database as of October 23, 2026, which is ordinary for an act signed the previous day. The act number here comes from the official bill action log. When the enrolled text is posted it will become the authoritative version, and the codified section will slot in after Section 206.

Three questions are left entirely to later practice or litigation: what counts as an "actual administrative expense incurred," whether subsection (a) reaches nonresidential tenancies now that the residential limitation has been struck from it, and what a tenant or applicant can do about a fee that exceeds a landlord's costs. No Pennsylvania court has construed a section that did not exist before October 22, 2026.

Analysis: Why This Matters

The following is analysis from the Recording Law Editorial Team.

The gap between this bill's public description and its enacted text is the most useful thing about the story. A $20 number is memorable, checkable by anyone, and enforceable by a person with a receipt. A requirement that a fee be "reasonably related to the actual administrative expenses incurred" is none of those things from an applicant's side, because the applicant cannot see the landlord's costs. The amendment traded a bright line for a standard, and standards are only as strong as the mechanism that tests them.

Here the record shows no mechanism in the section itself. That is a drafting choice with a visible contrast sitting a few pages away in the same act: when the General Assembly wanted the security deposit limits to bite, it voided waiver and attached double damages. Section 207 does neither. What remains is a rule that constrains a landlord's conduct and tells no one what follows from breaking it, which pushes the question onto general Pennsylvania contract and consumer law rather than resolving it.

The second effect is quieter. The introduced bill would have restricted what the fee could pay for, naming a criminal history check and a credit score. Striking that subsection removed a substantive limit on screening costs and left only a proportionality test. Application fees are also a common hook in fake listings and the application-fee scams that target renters, and a rule with no number gives a fraudulent "landlord" nothing to contradict. The parallel is a municipal one: when Seattle went after rental junk fees, it did so by naming specific charges rather than by stating a principle, and Seattle's ban on pet rent and package fees is easier to apply for exactly that reason.

None of that makes the section empty. A prohibition on treating application fees as a general revenue source is a real constraint on a large operator charging many applicants for one vacancy, and it is now statutory rather than arguable. It simply means the section's practical force will be decided somewhere other than its own text.

How This Affects You

For people applying to rent in Pennsylvania, nothing changes before the effective date. After it, the law states a limit on what an application fee may be, expressed as a relationship to the landlord's actual administrative costs rather than as a dollar amount, and bars using those fees as a revenue source. The statute gives an applicant no stated right to an itemization, a receipt, a refund or a specific remedy, so those remain matters of the lease, the landlord's own practice, or general law.

For landlords and agents in Pennsylvania, the section applies to "a landlord or the landlord's agent" and takes effect in 60 days. Because the standard is tied to expenses actually incurred, the factual question it raises is what those expenses are and how they relate to the fee charged. The savings clause confirms the act neither requires nor forbids charging a fee in the first place.

Screening costs sit alongside a separate body of rules on what can be checked and how results may be used, which Pennsylvania addresses through its own Pennsylvania background check law as well as federal credit reporting law. Act 67 does not touch any of that; the struck subsection would have, and it is not in the enacted text.

This is general legal information, not legal advice. It describes Pennsylvania law as recorded on 2026-10-23, and the law can change. Nothing here creates an attorney-client relationship or tells you what to do about your own tenancy, lease or rental business. For advice on a specific situation, consult a Pennsylvania attorney.

Related articles

• Pennsylvania Landlord-Tenant Laws: deposits, notice and tenant rights
• Landlord-Tenant Laws by State
• Seattle Bans Pet Rent and Package Fees
• Rental Scams: Fake Listings and How to Verify a Landlord
• Pennsylvania Background Check Laws

Last updated: 2026-10-23. This is a developing story; details verified as of 2026-10-23.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the Pennsylvania rental application fee law in effect yet?

No. The Governor approved House Bill 558 on October 22, 2026 and it became Act No. 67 of 2026, but Section 2 of the act says it takes effect in 60 days. Sixty days from October 22, 2026 calculates to on or about December 21, 2026. The act itself states no calendar date, so the date above is a calculation rather than a figure printed in the law.

Does Pennsylvania now cap rental application fees at $20?

No. A $20 ceiling appeared in House Bill 558 as introduced in February 2025, and the sponsor's co-sponsorship memo was titled "Capping Rental Application Fees." That language did not survive. In Printer's No. 3170, the version both chambers passed and the Governor signed, the sentence capping the fee at twenty dollars is printed struck through. Published descriptions that still mention a $20 cap are describing the introduced bill, not the enacted act.

What does the enacted rule actually say?

New Section 207(a) of the Landlord and Tenant Act of 1951 provides that a landlord or the landlord's agent may only charge a fee that is reasonably related to the actual administrative expenses incurred and may not use fees as a general revenue source. There is no dollar figure in the text and the act does not define "actual administrative expenses."

Who does Section 207 apply to?

The subsection binds "a landlord or the landlord's agent." Neither term is defined. Section 102 of the Landlord and Tenant Act of 1951 defines "person" and "tenant" but contains no definition of "landlord" or "landlord's agent," and Act 67 adds none. The act also does not define "rental application fee."

Does Section 207 require a landlord to refund an application fee or give a receipt?

No. The section contains no refund duty, no itemization duty, no receipt requirement and no advance disclosure requirement. As enacted it consists of the fee standard in subsection (a) and the savings clause in subsection (b), and nothing else.

What happens if a landlord charges more than their actual costs?

Section 207 does not say. It creates no fine, no penalty, no agency enforcement role, no private right of action and no fee-shifting provision. That silence is notable inside this particular act, because the security deposit sections nearby do the opposite: Section 511.1(f) makes any attempted waiver by a tenant void and unenforceable, and Section 512(c) makes a landlord liable in assumpsit for double the amount wrongly withheld. Section 207 carries no comparable language.

Does the new section apply to commercial leases as well as apartments?

The text leaves this open. The words "for a residential dwelling unit" appeared in the introduced version of subsection (a) and were struck along with the $20 cap, so the enacted subsection (a) states no property-type limit on its face. Subsection (b) then refers to commercial, residential and nonresidential property. No Pennsylvania court has construed the section, which did not exist before October 22, 2026.

Did the final bill keep the rule that application fees could only pay for a background check?

No. The introduced version had a subsection limiting the fee to conducting a background check that included the applicant's criminal history record and credit score. The same April 2026 committee amendment struck that subsection in full. Nothing in the enacted section restricts what the fee may be spent on beyond requiring that it be reasonably related to actual administrative expenses incurred.

How did the vote go?

The House Housing and Community Development Committee adopted the amendment 26 to 0 and reported the bill as amended 23 to 3 on April 13, 2026. The House passed it 148 to 53 on May 4, 2026. The Senate Urban Affairs and Housing Committee reported it as committed 11 to 0 on October 7, 2026, Senate Appropriations re-reported it 22 to 0 on October 19, and the Senate passed it 36 to 14 on October 21, 2026.