New York / Housing guide
Application Fees Are Capped at Twenty Dollars in New York, and Late Fees at Fifty
Homzora editorial team · Updated September 14, 2026
A New York landlord cannot charge you more than twenty dollars to apply for an apartment. Not fifty, not seventy five, not one figure for the credit check and another for the background check. Twenty dollars total.
And a late fee cannot exceed fifty dollars or five percent of the monthly rent, whichever is less. On a three thousand dollar apartment that is fifty dollars, because five percent would be one hundred and fifty.
Both caps came in with the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019, and both are unusual enough nationally that people arriving from other states do not expect them.
Why the application fee cap matters more than it sounds
Twenty dollars sounds like a small amount to argue about. The reason it matters is the volume.
Apartment hunting in New York frequently means applying to several places, sometimes on the same day, because units move quickly and nobody holds one while you decide. In a market without a cap, applying to six apartments at seventy five dollars each is four hundred and fifty dollars spent before you have anywhere to live.
Under the cap the same six applications cost one hundred and twenty. That is the difference between application fees being an obstacle to searching widely and being an administrative cost.
What the cap covers
The twenty dollar limit is the total for the application. It is not twenty dollars per component, and splitting a single application into separately charged parts does not create additional room under it.
If you are asked for more, that is worth raising before paying rather than after. A request above the cap usually reflects a process that has not been updated rather than a deliberate decision, and pointing at the provision resolves a good number of them.
The late fee cap
Late fees are capped at fifty dollars or five percent of the monthly rent, whichever is less.
The whichever is less part does the work. At a rent of one thousand dollars, five percent is fifty and the two are the same. Above a thousand, the fifty dollar figure binds. Below it, the percentage does.
So on a fifteen hundred dollar apartment the cap is fifty dollars, not seventy five. On an eight hundred dollar apartment it is forty.
That is a materially different position from most of the country. Georgia, Illinois and Florida set no statutory cap on late fees at all, leaving the figure entirely to the lease.
What else the 2019 act capped
The fee caps sit alongside several other provisions introduced at the same time, and they work together.
Security deposits capped at one month rent, counting every refundable advance together, with non-refundable fees in place of a deposit prohibited for covered units.
Fourteen days to return the deposit with an itemized statement of any deductions, and total forfeiture of the right to retain anything if that deadline is missed.
Tiered notice of thirty, sixty or ninety days before a non renewal or a rent increase of five percent or more, scaled to how long you have lived there.
A fourteen day rent demand before any nonpayment proceeding, extended from three days.
Read together, the effect is to make the cost of entering and leaving a tenancy predictable. The deposit is capped, the application fee is capped, the late fee is capped, and the deposit comes back on a short deadline.
What is not capped
Worth being clear, because the caps can read as more comprehensive than they are.
The rent itself. New York sets no statewide percentage cap on market rate rent. Only rent stabilized and rent controlled units are limited, through the Rent Guidelines Board and the Maximum Base Rent system respectively.
Broker fees. Not addressed by these provisions.
Move in fees charged by a building, elevator deposits and similar charges levied by a condo or co-op board rather than a landlord.
So the caps govern what a landlord charges you in connection with the tenancy. They do not govern everything you will pay to move.
If you are asked for more
A practical sequence rather than a confrontation.
Ask in writing what the charge is for and on what basis. That alone resolves a fair number of these, because a process that has not been updated since before 2019 is more common than deliberate overcharging.
Cite the provision. The caps came in with the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019. An agent working from an older template may not know it changed.
Keep the record. What you were asked for, what you paid, and what you were told. If it becomes a dispute later, that is the evidence.
Do not simply pay and query afterward where you can avoid it. Recovering money is harder than not paying it.
For landlords and agents
The same provisions read from the other side.
An application fee above twenty dollars, or a late fee clause above the statutory cap, is unenforceable regardless of what the lease says or what the applicant agreed to. A lease term cannot create an entitlement the statute prohibits.
Anyone operating across state lines should treat New York as the exception rather than assuming a fee structure that works in Georgia or Florida works here. Those states cap neither.
The short version
Twenty dollars maximum for an application, total rather than per component. Fifty dollars or five percent of monthly rent for a late fee, whichever is less, which means fifty on anything above a thousand dollars rent.
Both came in with the 2019 act, alongside the one month deposit cap and the fourteen day return deadline. None of them cap the rent itself, or broker fees, or charges levied by a building rather than a landlord.
The full statutory reference, with every provision cited, is free to download at our New York datasets.
Not legal advice. This page summarizes published provisions of New York law as of September 2026 and does not evaluate any particular tenancy. New York housing law varies by building age, unit count and regulatory status. Consult an attorney or a legal aid organization about your own situation.