Minnesota Rental Application Form
Do you want to rent property in Minnesota? When you find the perfect apartment, you must first submit a Minnesota Rental Application Form to the landlord. It is the landlord’s way of identifying the best person to become a tenant in a rental unit.
A rental application form allows the landlord to assess the applicant's reliability as a potential tenant. One of the most crucial pieces of information asked for in the form is their employment background. This is a good indication of their ability to pay rent on time throughout the lease.
A template rental application form will also ask for the applicant’s previous rent history. Any mark on their records, such as evictions or negative experiences shared by their previous landlords, will factor in the decision to allow them to rent a Minnesota property.
The applicant must fill out the bulk of the document, except for the parts that describe the property and the expected monthly rent. The applicant must be completely honest in the standard form. If the landlord does their due diligence, they will quickly determine if the applicant was dishonest, which will reflect badly on them.
The applicant’s signature on the document declares consent for the landlord to do a background check and contact their references.
The landlord should be fair in approving and rejecting applications for moral and legal reasons. It is against the Federal Fair Housing Act for landlords to deny applications based on the applicant’s race, gender, religion, familial status, or disability.
Rental Application Fee
No Minnesota law mandates a specific amount as a limit to how much a landlord can charge for a rental application. However, a landlord cannot charge more than the third-party screening fee. Before the landlord receives the application fee, they must give the applicant the screening company’s contact information.
The purpose of this fee is to cover the cost of screening or background check. The landlord should return the balance if the applicant paid more than the actual screening fee.
Security Deposits
There is no limit to how much a Minnesota landlord can charge as a security deposit at the start of the lease. The purpose of the security deposit is to cover the costs of damage to the apartment at the end of the tenancy or the tenant’s failure to pay rent.
They must provide the tenant with a receipt. The landlord has the right to withhold part or the entirety of the amount. The tenant also has the right to be informed of the deductions through an itemized list. When the residential lease ends, the landlord has three weeks to return the security deposit or part of it (MN Stat § 504B.178 (2021)).