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

No statutory cap on application fees.

Does an application fee have to be refunded in Nevada?

Yes — in Nevada at least one circumstance requires application-stage money to be returned. A landlord must refund any fee charged to apply, including an application fee, a credit-report fee or a background-check fee, if the landlord both rents the home to a different applicant and does not carry out the activity the fee was collected for, such as processing the application or obtaining the credit report or background check. No deadline or refund method is set.

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

No statutory receipt duty for application money.

Does Nevada have a reusable tenant screening report law?

No statute on reusable screening reports.

Can a landlord charge a holding deposit in Nevada?

No statute on holding deposits.

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

Verified August 26, 2026 All Nevada topics →

What did not become law. None of the following is law; failed bills are sometimes still described as if enacted:

A.B. 280 (2025) — Would have required a landlord to return fees charged to apply in the same circumstances later enacted in A.B. 121, barred application fees for a minor in the applicant's household, required every written rental agreement to carry a separate appendix explaining each fee that may be charged and its purpose, made it unlawful to charge any fee not set out in that appendix, required a separate appendix explaining tenant rights, and, from July 1, 2025 through December 31, 2026, would have barred rent increases of more than 5 percent for an existing tenant, aged 62 or older or reliant on federal Social Security Act payments, under a rental agreement in effect on June 30, 2025. Status: Vetoed by the Governor on June 2, 2025; the Legislature's own list of vetoed bills marks it as not returning to the next session. (checked August 26, 2026).
A.B. 298 (2023) — The 2023 predecessor of A.B. 280, carrying the same application-fee return duty, the same prohibition on fees for a minor in the applicant's household, the fee appendix and tenant-rights appendix requirements, and a temporary cap on rent increases for existing tenants. Status: Vetoed by the Governor on June 1, 2023 and not returned to the next session. (checked August 26, 2026).

Nevada regulates two things about application money and leaves the rest to the market: since October 1, 2025 a landlord must refund any fee charged to apply, including a credit-report or background-check fee, when the home goes to a different applicant and the landlord never did the work the fee paid for, and no such fee may be charged for a minor in the applicant's household.

Cited to NRS 118A.306 (1) and 19 more cited sources · Verified August 26, 2026

There is no dollar cap on the fee, no rule tying it to the actual cost of screening, no receipt duty at the application stage, and nothing a landlord must tell an applicant about screening criteria or what the fee covers before taking it. Nevada also has no reusable-screening-report law, no holding-deposit rules, and no state denial-notice duty beyond the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act. Separately, the same 2025 law requires rent to be stated as a single figure that includes every mandatory fee, with a narrow utility exception, and gives a tenant a civil action with $250 in statutory damages for each rent-disclosure violation involving deception.

Nevada application & screening fees at a glance

Application fee cap	No statutory cap on application fees
Fee limited to actual screening cost	No statute ties the fee to screening cost
Screening charge rules	A landlord may not collect an application fee, a fee to obtain a credit report or a fee to obtain a background check for a minor who is a member of the applicant's household. No other condition attaches to screening charges. Since October 1, 2025, NRS 118A.306(2) bars a landlord from charging application, credit-report or background-check fees for a minor in the applicant's household. The section defines a household as people who live in the same home and are related by blood, adoption, marriage or domestic partnership, and a minor as a person under 18 years of age. Nevada sets no one-charge-per-applicant rule, no requirement that the landlord actually screen before charging beyond the refund duty, and no written-notice or vacancy prerequisite.
Receipt required	No statutory receipt duty for application money
Refund required in some circumstances	Yes
Refund rules	A landlord must refund any fee charged to apply, including an application fee, a credit-report fee or a background-check fee, if the landlord both rents the home to a different applicant and does not carry out the activity the fee was collected for, such as processing the application or obtaining the credit report or background check. No deadline or refund method is set. Both conditions in NRS 118A.306(1) must be met. A landlord who rents the home to someone else but did run the applicant's report owes nothing under this section, and neither does a landlord who ran nothing but rented the home to that applicant. The statute sets no time limit for returning the money, no method of payment, no partial-refund calculation and no itemization duty. It also gives an applicant no stated remedy if the refund is not made.
Disclosure before collecting	No statutory disclosure duty
Denial-notice duties (state law)	No state statute — federal fair-credit duties still apply
Reusable screening reports	No statute on reusable screening reports
Holding deposits	No statute on holding deposits
Rental fee-transparency rules	Rent must be stated as a single figure that includes every mandatory fee charged on top of base rent, in each place a landlord lists the rent due under a rental agreement and in any reference to that rent in a written agreement, and the landlord may not charge more than that figure. A narrow exception allows a separate monthly charge equal to the cost of electric, natural gas or water service for the home. Any online rent-payment portal fee may not exceed what the portal operator charges and must be identified separately in the written agreement. These rules took effect October 1, 2025. The all-in figure requirement and the ban on charging more than it appear at NRS 118A.200(6) and (7). The utility exception at NRS 118A.200(8) applies only where the utility cannot contract with the tenant directly or the home is on a master-metered water system, and only if the single figure carries a reference symbol at least half its size pointing to a same-page statement naming the utility and explaining the separate charge. NRS 118A.303 requires at least one way to pay rent or any other fee that costs the tenant nothing and needs no bank-account information, caps an online-portal fee at the operator's own charge, and requires that fee to be stated separately in the written agreement. These provisions govern the price of the tenancy; they do not reach application or screening charges.
Penalty for violation	A tenant may sue over the single-figure rent rules and, on winning, is awarded damages, any equitable relief the court thinks appropriate, costs and reasonable attorney's fees, plus statutory damages of $250 for each violation that involved deception. Using a rental agreement that does not conform to the rental-agreement section is unlawful, and any clause that contravenes it is void. No penalty is attached to the application-fee refund duty or the minor-fee prohibition. The civil action at NRS 118A.405 reaches only violations of NRS 118A.200(6) and (7), the single-figure rent rules, and it runs to a tenant. NRS 118A.200(9) makes use of a nonconforming written agreement unlawful and voids any contravening provision. Nothing in the act attaches damages, forfeiture or a consumer-protection remedy to NRS 118A.306, and the general tenant remedies for a landlord's failure to comply with a rental agreement are not open to someone who never received one. The act does attach a deceptive-trade-practice consequence elsewhere, to a willful failure to disclose foreclosure proceedings to a prospective tenant, which shows the choice was available.

Cite this page: "Landlord Atlas, Nevada Application & Screening Fee Laws (verified August 26, 2026), landlordatlas.com/laws/application-fees/nevada/" — free to cite and quote with a link (how these records are verified). Everything above is cited in the citations section below.

Notes and caveats

Both conditions must be met — The refund duty is triggered only when the landlord both rents the home to a different applicant and did not do the work the fee paid for. If either is untrue, the statute requires no refund.
No deadline and no remedy for the refund — The refund duty sets no time limit, no method and no partial-refund formula, and Nevada attaches no damages, penalty or forfeiture to a failure to refund or to charging a fee for a minor household member.
Receipts run to tenants, not applicants — The receipt right applies to a tenant on request. Someone who has only applied is not yet a tenant under the act, so there is no statutory receipt for application money at the time it is paid.
Money to hold a home may be a deposit — Nevada has no holding-deposit statute, but any money destined for unpaid rent, damage beyond normal wear or cleaning is a security deposit whenever it is paid, and deposits and surety bonds together may not exceed three months' periodic rent.
What the all-in rent rule covers — The single-figure requirement is about periodic rent and mandatory recurring fees under a rental agreement. It does not reach application or screening charges, and the civil action it carries is available to a tenant rather than to an applicant.
Tenancies the act does not cover — Chapter 118A does not apply to manufactured-home-park tenancies, low-rent public housing authority programs, hotel or motel stays of less than 30 consecutive days without an intent to stay longer, occupancy conditioned solely on employment at the premises, condominium owners and cooperative proprietary lease holders, or premises used primarily for agriculture.
Two vetoed bills would have gone further — In 2023 and again in 2025 the Legislature passed bills adding a required appendix to every rental agreement explaining each fee and its purpose, and barring any fee not listed there. Both were vetoed, so Nevada has no fee-appendix rule.
When the law can next change — Nevada's Legislature meets in odd-numbered years. The 2025 regular session adjourned on June 3, 2025 and a special session adjourned on November 19, 2025. There is no 2026 regular session, and the next one begins February 1, 2027.
About the application fee rule — Nevada places no dollar cap, formula or actual-cost ceiling on what a landlord may charge someone to apply for a home. The one section that reaches money collected at the application stage, NRS 118A.306, governs when the money must come back and who may not be charged, and says nothing about the amount. The amount is left to the parties and the market. The three-months'-rent limit on deposits does not apply, because a security deposit is defined by purpose (unpaid rent, damage beyond normal wear, cleaning) and an application charge serves none of those purposes.
How the cost limit works — No Nevada statute ties an application or screening charge to the actual cost of the credit report, the background check or the screening work. The refund duty in NRS 118A.306 turns on whether the landlord did the work, not on what the work cost, and the statute requires no reconciliation of the charge against the cost.
What the receipt duty covers — Nevada requires no receipt for money paid to apply. NRS 118A.250 gives a receipt right on request for payments, deposits and fees, but it runs to a tenant, and the act defines a tenant as a person entitled under a rental agreement to occupy a dwelling unit. Someone who has only applied is not yet within that definition, and NRS 118A.306 imposes no receipt duty. An applicant who goes on to sign a rental agreement may then ask for a signed written receipt for what was paid.
When money must come back — Since October 1, 2025, NRS 118A.306(1) requires a landlord to refund any fee collected from an applicant to apply for a home when two things are both true: the home goes to a different applicant, and the landlord did not carry out the activity the fee paid for.
What must be disclosed up front — Nevada requires nothing to be told an applicant before application money changes hands: no screening criteria, no explanation of what the fee covers, no statement of the applicant's rights. Two related duties sit at the agreement stage instead. Since October 1, 2025 a landlord must, on request, give a prospective tenant a copy of the written rental agreement that person would be subject to. Separately, any written rental agreement must contain provisions on the fees that are required and the purposes for which they are required.
Denial notices — Nevada's landlord-tenant act imposes no denial-notice duty on a landlord who turns down an applicant: nothing on content, timing, or handing over the report. Denials based on a screening report are governed by the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act. Nevada's consumer-reporting chapter does require a person who takes adverse action based on a consumer report to tell the consumer, name the reporting agency and explain the right to a copy, but that chapter defines adverse action by reference to insurance, employment and credit decisions and does not name a rental denial, and no state material applies it to landlords.
Reusable screening reports — Nevada has no portable or reusable tenant-screening-report law. No landlord is required to accept a screening report an applicant already paid for, no rule bars a fee where such a report is used, and no validity window is set. The only screening products named anywhere in the act are the credit report and background check listed in the application-fee refund section.
Money to hold a unit — No Nevada statute addresses money paid to hold a home off the market between approval and lease signing: no cap on it, no written-statement duty, no rule on what happens to it if the tenancy does or does not go ahead. What does apply is the act's purpose-based definition of a security deposit: any payment, deposit, fee or charge that is to be used for unpaid rent, for repairing damage beyond normal wear, or for cleaning is a security deposit and carries the deposit rules, including the limit of three months' periodic rent on deposits and surety bonds combined.

Common questions: Nevada application & screening 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 Nevada?: No statutory cap on application fees.
Does an application fee have to be refunded in Nevada?: Yes — in Nevada at least one circumstance requires application-stage money to be returned. A landlord must refund any fee charged to apply, including an application fee, a credit-report fee or a background-check fee, if the landlord both rents the home to a different applicant and does not carry out the activity the fee was collected for, such as processing the application or obtaining the credit report or background check. No deadline or refund method is set.
Does a landlord have to give a receipt for an application fee in Nevada?: No statutory receipt duty for application money.
Does Nevada have a reusable tenant screening report law?: No statute on reusable screening reports.
Can a landlord charge a holding deposit in Nevada?: No statute on holding deposits.

Citations

NRS 118A.306 · (1) (verified 2026) Official source
NRS 118A.240 · (1) (verified 2026) Official source
NRS 118A.306 · (2), (3) (verified 2026) Official source
Statutes of Nevada 2025, ch. 227 (A.B. 121) · sec. 4.5 (verified 2026) Official source
NRS 118A.250 (verified 2026) Official source
NRS 118A.170 (verified 2026) Official source
NRS 118A.306 (verified 2026) Official source
NRS 118A.235 (verified 2026) Official source
NRS 118A.200 · (3)(e) (verified 2026) Official source
NRS 598C.020 · (1) (verified 2026) Official source
NRS 598C.170 (verified 2026) Official source
NRS 118A.242 · (1) (verified 2026) Official source
NRS 118A.200 · (6), (7), (8) (verified 2026) Official source
NRS 118A.303 · (1), (2) (verified 2026) Official source
NRS 118A.405 · (2)(d) (verified 2026) Official source
NRS 118A.200 · (9) (verified 2026) Official source
NRS 118A.275 · (2) (verified 2026) Official source
NRS 118A.200 · (6), (7) (verified 2026) Official source
NRS 118A.405 (verified 2026) Official source
Statutes of Nevada 2025, ch. 227 (A.B. 121) (verified 2026) Official source

How this record was verified: Direct read of the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act (NRS chapter 118A) as published by the Nevada Legislature, covering its application-fee, rental-agreement, deposit, disclosure and remedy sections, together with the enacted 2025 session law that created the application-fee provisions, the subject indexes to the 2023 and 2025 session laws, and the state's housing-discrimination, deceptive-trade-practice, consumer-reporting and real-estate chapters and their administrative regulations.