Biden has a new plan to save renters from bogus apartment fees

• The Biden administration is trying to crack down on hidden apartment rental fees.
• As part of the initiative, major rental platforms will show the total cost of units, not just the rent.
• While the initiative doesn't directly lower prices, it's meant to help promote competition.

President Joe Biden doesn't want you to have to pay a fee for the luxury of applying to a new apartment — or getting your trash picked up once you fork over rent.

As part of the Biden administration's ongoing initiative to crack down on junk fees, the White House has a new target: Rental fees. On Wednesday, the Biden administration announced a slew of new measures to help ensure that renters aren't burdened with surprise fees while trying to find a new place, or after they move in.

Now, prospective renters will be able to see the total cost of an apartment when they peruse three major platforms — Zillow, Apartments.com, and AffordableHousing.com. That all-in pricing is a far cry from what many renters experience when navigating a pricey rental market, where everything from parking to pets rack up hidden fees. As rental prices remain inflated, and housing markets competitive, hidden fees might be a sunken cost for renters frantically vying to sign the lease for anywhere that'll take them.

"At the front end of the apartment search, people often pay application fees of $50, $60, $100 or more per apartment, and have to do it many times over," a senior administration official told reporters. "If they're applying to multiple units, this can add up to hundreds of dollars."

That might have a disproportionate impact on marginalized renters; a 2022 Zillow report found that the typical American renter is less likely to be white when compared to the overall adult population, and more likely to be LGBTQ+. They're paying, typically, between $40 and $59 on rental applications, and generally applying to two apartments. However, renters of color were likely to be paying application fees, and Black and Latino renters were nearly twice as likely to apply to five or more apartments as their white counterparts.

According to an administration press release, as part of the initiative, Zillow will start providing a "Cost of Renting" summary on active listings, which will showcase the total cost with fees included, and Apartments.com will launch its own calculator to reflect the total cost of units. AffordableHousing.com will mandate that owners put fees and charges in their listings, and start including "Trusted Owner" badges on profiles of owners who are consistently upfront about various costs.

It's reminiscent of the Biden administration's actions in conjunction with concert and live-event ticketing platforms, where Live Nation and Ticketmaster pledged to show the costs of tickets upfront, rather than saddling fans with surprise fees at checkout. However, similarly to that ticketing initiative, the rental fee proposal isn't able to substantively bring down costs — instead, consumers just know them upfront rather than at the final stage of purchasing a ticket or leasing a unit. But the White House hopes that increased transparency will urge landlords to compete with one another for lower upfront pricing, bringing down costs for all. 

The announcement is "really about transparency of these fees," a senior administration official said, "which we of course think will have the effective of cutting them down."