Connecticut Application Fee Law: Leasing Agents Included

Before this amendment, Connecticut General Statutes section 47a-4d already barred a landlord from charging any payment, fee, or charge for processing, reviewing, or accepting a rental application, aside from specific exceptions. What it didn't clearly reach was a third party, a property management company or leasing agent, acting on the landlord's behalf but not itself the landlord under the statute's terms. Public Act 26-68 rewrites that language to explicitly cover a third party acting on behalf of a landlord, not just the landlord directly.

[Cite: Public Act 26-68, section 59, amending Connecticut General Statutes section 47a-4d]

That's a meaningful shift for how liability attaches. A leasing agent who previously might have argued they weren't a "landlord" for purposes of this restriction no longer has that argument available.

The core exceptions carried forward unchanged: a security deposit, an advance of the first month's rent, and a key or equipment deposit remain permitted charges before tenancy begins. This amendment doesn't touch those; it specifically targets the application processing fee gap and, separately, tightens who can charge the screening report fee and under what disclosure conditions.

[Cite: Public Act 26-68, section 59, amending Connecticut General Statutes section 47a-4d]

A landlord, a third party acting on behalf of a landlord, or a third party acting on behalf of the state can charge a fee not exceeding $50 for a tenant screening report, with that cap adjusted annually to reflect any increase in the consumer price index. That three-way list is worth reading carefully: it's not just landlords and their agents anymore, it specifically includes an entity acting on behalf of the state, which points to this provision also governing state-administered or state-affiliated housing programs.

[Cite: Public Act 26-68, section 59, amending Connecticut General Statutes section 47a-4d]

Whoever charges the screening fee, landlord or authorized third party, has to give the prospective tenant either a copy of the screening report itself or the information needed to request it directly from the service provider. They also have to provide a copy of the receipt or invoice from the entity that actually conducted the screening.

[Cite: Public Act 26-68, section 59, amending Connecticut General Statutes section 47a-4d]

Before this amendment, a leasing agent charging the fee without being clearly bound by these disclosure rules created a gap similar to the fee-charging gap itself. Now, the same transparency obligations that applied to a landlord apply equally to whichever party, landlord or third party, is the one actually collecting the fee.

Separate from the application-fee provisions, the statute continues to bar a landlord from charging a tenant a move-in or move-out fee. This part of the law wasn't the focus of this amendment, but it's reaffirmed in the same section, and it's worth keeping in view alongside the application-fee changes since both provisions govern the same pre-tenancy financial relationship between landlord and applicant.

[Cite: Public Act 26-68, section 59, amending Connecticut General Statutes section 47a-4d]

The statute doesn't set a flat $50 ceiling. It caps the screening fee at an amount "not exceeding fifty dollars plus an adjustment reflecting any increase in the consumer price index," a mechanism that's been in place since the underlying $50 cap was first enacted in 2023. That means the actual maximum allowable fee today can be somewhat higher than $50, depending on how much the consumer price index has moved since the cap took effect.

[Cite: Connecticut General Statutes section 47a-4d, as amended]

A landlord or third-party agent defaulting to a flat $50 charge without checking the current CPI-adjusted figure risks either undercharging relative to what's allowed, which isn't a compliance problem, or, more importantly, assuming $50 is always safe when the actual permitted ceiling could have shifted. Anyone setting a screening fee policy should confirm the current adjusted cap rather than relying on the original 2023 figure as a fixed number going forward.

This is the phrase doing the real work in this amendment, and it's written broadly rather than naming specific business types. In practice, it reaches the common arrangements Connecticut landlords actually use to handle applications: a property management company running the leasing process for an owner, an independent leasing or listing agent working on commission, and an online application or screening platform a landlord contracts with to process applicants. Each of these fits the plain language of a third party acting on the landlord's behalf, even though they operate under different business models and different levels of direct landlord oversight.

[Cite: Public Act 26-68, section 59, amending Connecticut General Statutes section 47a-4d]

What the amendment doesn't do is carve out an exception for any particular arrangement based on how independent the third party is from the landlord's day-to-day decisions. A property manager with full leasing authority and a listing platform that simply processes applications on a landlord's instructions are both covered, since the statute's test is whether the party is acting on the landlord's behalf, not how much discretion that party has.

Public Act 26-68 began as Senate Bill 1 in the 2026 session and passed the Senate 30-6 and the House 127-21 on May 2, 2026, before being signed by the Governor on May 26, 2026. The act as a whole is primarily a state budget and tax measure, covering sales tax exemptions and income tax credits well beyond landlord-tenant law. Section 59 is a narrower, specific provision within that larger bill rather than a standalone housing act.

[Cite: Public Act 26-68, 2026 Connecticut Public Acts]

That structure matters for anyone trying to track this change through news coverage. Most reporting on Public Act 26-68 has focused on its budget and tax provisions, which means section 59's rental application fee changes are easy to miss unless someone is specifically looking at the housing-related sections of the act.

Section 59 took effect from passage, meaning it became operative immediately upon the Governor's signature, May 26, 2026, rather than on a later date like January 1 of the following year, which is common for many Connecticut statutory changes. A property manager or leasing agent working in Connecticut has been operating under this expanded rule since that signing date.

[Cite: Public Act 26-68, section 59]

The practical audit here starts with any third-party leasing or application-processing arrangement a landlord uses. If a leasing agent, property management company, or application platform charges tenants directly for processing, reviewing, or accepting an application, beyond the permitted exceptions, that arrangement needs to be reevaluated against this amended statute, since the agent can no longer rely on not technically being the "landlord."

For anyone charging the $50 screening fee, whether landlord or third party, the disclosure checklist is straightforward but easy to skip in practice: providing the applicant the report itself or a way to request it, and providing the receipt or invoice from whoever actually ran the screening. A process that charges the fee without both of those disclosure steps built in is now out of compliance regardless of whether a landlord or an authorized agent is the one collecting it.