Seattle Bans Rental Junk Fees(multifamilydive.com) |
Seattle Bans Rental Junk Fees(multifamilydive.com) |
It's not that onerous of legislation, but it also feels a bit gimmicky. I have never once had a problem getting the information when asked. And places that provide free utilities or pets already advertise themselves heavily as such - this would really only benefit extreme novices in the market
There are any number of stupid trends nowadays.
apartment account/login required to do almost anything, including autopay. electronic phone/garage keys with almost trivial consent of access to your apartment. apartment internet required. third party apps with account/phone/video+photos requirement to access package room, etc.
Price transparency makes more efficient markets.
One point I remember is that with trust, trade is infinite.
This completely follows in my life.
I trust costco, and I buy stuff there without doing any calculus.
I don't trust apps on the apple store, I basically don't buy any of them (even/especially the free ones). Even the phone itself has about 10,000 pages of privacy policy.
GOG sells games without DRM that you can download and played offline, forever. I don't worry about buying any game.
Go check the price for a movie ticket. At the end they slap on an additional fee. Why can't they show the fee included in the main price?
I went to the Verde Canyon Railroad, when gas prices were really low. Still a fee for higher gas prices on the receipt...
The city has basically consolidated the rental market so it works best for large corporations. Was that the intent?
Editing to just add: I absolutely support transparent pricing for rental properties.
This makes an unsubstantiated assumption that everyone would rather buy and can afford to, ignoring that people have reasons to rent.
My experience when renting in Seattle a decade ago was that it wasn't particularly hard to find a place, and that the only places that dealt in these bullshit fees were the big corporate landlords.
Australia just tried this by banning businesses from charging a card use surcharge.
You really reckon business aren’t going to then just wrap the cost of card service / merchant fees in to every product, thereby hurting those who pay with cash?
Hint: that’s exactly what businesses are doing. I know because I asked them.
Maybe stop voting for politicians who believe they can tax and regulate an economy to growth and productivity.
Being ripped off by large corporations at every transaction is what "owning the libs" looks like for your life in practice, but hey at least you can say slurs on twitter now!
As an example related to Renting. I once saw a place advertised for rent at a price in my budget. Booked a showing the next day. The dynamic pricing increased it several hundred dollars above my budget. The land lord (company) would not honor the price I booked my showing at. I immediately left saying I do not do business with such dishonest practices.
We also need to ban using the renters as a captured audience for products.
Edit to add:
When I last rented from a big corp I got:
$5 a month semi-mandatory fee on automated payments through their app (as if them handling a check would actually cost them less than an automated payment)
Mandatory internet package through a single provider.
"Resort fee" of $30 a month which was more than the cost of a proximal gym providing 10x the equipment.
Move in charge - $50 just to move in as if I was going to rent but not move in?
Move out charge - $50 just to move out as if I was going to not move out when my lease ended?
I also think rent raises after a year's lease should be limited . Why is the 13th month 100% more as if I'm not a long term renter? It makes some sense for short term rentals but this isnt a 1 month rental, it's a 1 month extension to a long term rent.
A friend of mine has recently lamented the idea gas stations can advertise "with car wash" pricing on top with what is "fine print" on the sign, which looks good but isn't when you factor in the cost of the car wash.
Another favorite is the personal loan ad, saying you're preapproved for a loan as low as 6% APR but actually you can be denied and the loan could be up to 36% APR even if you get approved. Nonsense.
I don't have a huge problem with a discount for car washes but the advertisement should be an out the door price or rate. Similarly I don't mind capped or content-restricted data plans, but the advertised price should be the unlimited one.
I don't think we should decide what businesses can sell, but we should make it very hard to mislead on the ad. Force advertisements to be the highest price instead of the lowest price, and you'll find companies finding ways to remove fees from the table themselves.
It bans "pet rent". Which, of course, means that non pet owners are now subsidizing pet owners and the damage and wear and tear that pets cause.
All for what, exactly?
With current market, we have to keep relocating here and there and leasing for 12 month doesn't make sense.
Now, unfortunately in places like the UK, tips are becoming more frequent as well as a discretionary 12.5% service charge at restaurants. And everything online has a convenience fee.
I wish governments would get serious about price transparency. The solution is quite simple, but I fear that with algorithmic pricing things are going to be getting much worse in the short term.
That said, this generally allows optional fees - they just need to be disclosed, have clear opt-in and out, and cannot be profit centers for the landlord.
[1] https://seattle.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=15702946&GUID=...
But again, if the advertised price must be the total price, it doesn't matter if there's a mailbox access fee or not. It's no different than if they eliminate the fee but raise the price the same amount. Make the advertised price be the highest price, and say "hey, you can advertise discounts off of that".
Nobody's going to advertise you can save $5 a month by eliminating your mailbox.
A similar effect, would be no longer advertising a plan's price if you enable paperless billing and autopay. You'd have to advertise the price without, and then can offer discounts for those things.
Or movie ticket prices being required to be listed with the convenience fee included, and if a theater wants, it can advertise a discount for buying a ticket some other way. More than likely that would just kill convenience fees.
Many smaller landlords will choose to exclude pets entirely in order to keep rental rates competitive.
(I have worked in housing in Seattle and have seen this first hand. And I love pets, have them myself!)
That would be amazing! Imagine no poop and no smell! And no barking!
And no subsidizing others peoples farm animals!
Funny how "pets" does not usually include rabbits, mouse, aquarium fish or snakes.
It isn't that every pet causes more damage as a rule, its that very frequently pets do damage that is quite expensive. Urine can require floor and subfloor replacement. I've seen dogs chew through walls, etc. Pets in common areas leaving tracks and fur, etc. I'm a dog lover, but it would be folly to pretend that owning a dog does not cause additional wear and tear on my house.
That said, damage from pets should be handled through the damage deposit. Pet rent is just another way to pad the bill.
That's not to say that pets can cause tons of damage: if someone let's a cat spray inside and doesn't immediately clean it, that can cost tens of thousands if it seeps down to the underlayment. But (1) that ain't getting covered by the $50 - $100 they want to gouge people for; and (2) tenants are liable for that either way.
From the very legislation this article is about:
7.24.040 Fees permitted and prohibited <...> B. A landlord may charge the following fees in addition to rent: <...> 4. Pet damage deposits pursuant to Section 7.24.038;
https://library.municode.com/wa/seattle/codes/municipal_code...
tl;dr: Pet damage deposits may not exceed 25% of the first full month's rent, no other fees are allowed. If I'm reading this correctly the current version of that ordinance was passed in 2016.
why should pets require a monthly, non refundable fee regardless of damages or not?
My main gripe is my building charges $50 more for EV spots and then wants to charge as much as the charging stations, that's a nope for me, I'll just charge while buying groceries
Urine soaking into a subfloor can easily cost more to repair than the security deposit, and recovering damages in court is hard and expensive in its own right (if the person even has money to take).
Not to mention, even when there's no apparent damage, a pet apartment can require extra cleaning to get rid of odors and dander.
It just makes sense for the landlord to price in a potential headache.
Usually it means replacing carpets, wooden floors and bottom part of walls!
Urine contamination gets everywhere , there is no way to remove that smell!!
The last place I rented had pet rent AND a deposit. The rent definitely a junk fee. It did not accumulate or get tracked.
What exactly is the problem, here? Other than a small group of people wanting special treatment?
It should just be common sense. You have a kid or you have a pet. They damaged the property, you pay it.
Pet rent isn't about directly covering damage; it's more like buying an insurance policy that occasionally covers large pet-necessitated repairs.
Dogs are not people. Many in Seattle think their dogs are people, or even prefer dogs over people, but they are not, and they do not enjoy the same protections against discrimination.
If you have never been a landlord, I can see why you would think that "if they damage the property, they pay for it" is a reasonable rule that would work, because if your dog destroyed a door, the carpet, and the blinds, you are likely to be willing (if unhappy) to pay to fix it. If you have been a landlord, you know why this doesn't work, and you would also know why pursuing the damages in court also doesn't work.
(If you are wondering why: people do not pay. Deposits, which they also now capped in Seattle, often don't cover the damage. And suing people who have no money in order to get a judgment that you can't collect on is expensive and pointless.)
This just socializes the cost of pet damage onto everyone, which is why this is populist slop.
(Some of the other junk fees make much more sense: mandatory fees that you have to pay, that are fixed in nature, should just be in the advertised lease price. Think "common area fees" you can't opt out of.)
Charge for damage if and when there is damage. Anything else is ridiculous.
Also I'm not sure what the new law changes. Since 2016, Seattle has banned charging extra rent for having a pet. Subsection E states: "Other than the pet damage deposit authorized by subsection 7.24.038.A, the landlord may not charge the tenant any fee for keeping a pet."
1. https://library.municode.com/wa/seattle/codes/municipal_code...
This is an unsubstantiated assertion. I'd want to see evidence that things like this actually move the needle on rent vs things like available housing stock, zoning, etc which seem much more likely to actually impact affordability.
We had legal changes in the UK limiting what fees could be charged to tenants and it had no noticeable effect. The main impact was to stop letting agents charging both landlords and tenants, which reduced what they charge overall.
This is not a comment on more recent changes, or other changes, just those around fees.
If not, then high prices generally comes back to supply and demand, which is driven a lot more by zoning and building restrictions than by small differences in rental law.
Generally cities are expensive because people want to live there, and there is limited space for housing. The US especially has been very restrictive on density in urban and suburban areas compared to counterparts found elsewhere around the world. People wanting to live somewhere and a lack of dense housing for them increases prices.
A lot of arguments against "big, progressive cities" seem to boil down to some form of "See, nobody wants to live in these cities because it's so crowded and expensive!" which doesn't make basic economic sense.
Not discounting the importance of supply/demand, or the damage that restrictive zoning regimes have done, but I'm not sure if this should be so strongly stated, depending on how you want to define "small differences in rental law". For example, per Wikipedia:
> In 1971, the Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck, a housing expert, said that "rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city – except for bombing". In 1989, Nguyễn Cơ Thạch, then Foreign Minister of Vietnam, observed, "The Americans couldn't destroy Hanoi, but we have destroyed our city by very low rents. We realized it was stupid and that we must change policy."
Obviously banning junk rental fees is not the same as rent control, but in either case we're talking about rental law that as an unintended second-order effect is going to (to some degree or another) discourage supplying rentals by making it harder to make money renting.
So, in the interest of being charitable to the OP, I think they're including zoning laws, building regulations, and so on in what they're saying: these cities claim to view housing as a human right, yet simultaneously seemingly do everything in their power to make it incredibly hard, expensive, and risky to supply it.
I don't agree that this attitude is exclusive to big progressive cities: the right theoretically claims to love free enterprise and deregulation, but in practice they're often just as happy with overbearing government control as long as it's their guy doing it. And if anything these days the right more than the left fetishizes certain images of American life that motivate stricter regulations on development; NIMBYism cuts across the political spectrum. But it's an attitude that maybe makes better bedfellows with the left and its intrinsic distrust of markets, and maybe afflicts those left-leaning coastal cities more because they're otherwise much better places to live and thus have higher demand.
And how exactly does the causality for this work, in your head? Rent is already high in the big, highly desirable cities, before this law.
Is this some new form of retro-causality? A law passed today drove rent up 5 years ago?
> Which, of course, means that non pet owners are now subsidizing pet owners and the damage and wear and tear that pets cause
But most people don't think that all. And I notice that you ignored all the other fees also...
Anyway there are moral arguments against junk fees other than "cost". Nobody actually wants to live in a world where service providers are constantly sneaking fees into things. It's just unjust and shitty. You and I both know that the only reason landlords include pet fees is because they get away with it, not because it's the only way to recoup losses or something like that.
> There is no market incentive to advertise the all-in price of a rental unit. Research by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research documents individual businesses losing significant market share when switching to all-in pricing. A landlord that advertises an all-in price appears more expensive than competitors with a lower base rent and unbundled fees.
> Rental junk fees represent a market failure and collective action problem that will not self-correct. Regulation of these fees is necessary to level the playing field for landlords who are transparent about their costs and protect renters from unpredictable and predatory pricing models.
This legislature requires transparency in pricing. If landlords could handle that bare minimum of responsibility on their own, without being compelled by law, it wouldn't have been required.
Oh, and pet damage deposits are still legal.
Eh, I'd be willing to wager it's because those cites are where many high-paying jobs are.
Anyway:
> Which, of course, means that non pet owners are now subsidizing pet owners and the damage and wear and tear that pets cause.
Or owners can just quantify and charge for the actual wear and tear? If someone's dog digs up the yard or their claws scrape the up wood floors, just charge them to fix it (or, more likely, take it out of the deposit).
That's why these are often viewed as "junk fees", they charge you for some potential damage vs. any actual damage.
That said pets is likely not the driver of increased housing costa by any means.
/s
Somehow squirrel hunting is still tolerated in 21dt century!
Mamdani taps Lina Khan and Tony Shorris for key New York economic posts - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/22/lina-khan-ny... - July 22nd, 2026
> think what the DSA are proposing, a complete overhaul of the Constitution.
Strongly agree, onward, elections keep happening, electorate turnover is continuous (and a likely component of why NYC and Seattle have DSA mayors, and Providence, Rhode Island is about to have one).
Citations:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48950696
There are numerous pet-friendly landlords, but typically the rent is not cheap. Pets have a real cost — they aren’t cheap for the owner, I don’t know why the owner assumes they don’t add cost to their living situation.
The main complaint seems to be that there is not a glut of cheap pet-friendly rentals, which is an unrealistic expectation in Seattle where the housing market is already extremely competitive.
It doesn't change anything about pets, the grandparent poster's complaint is a dogwhistle.
What it does ban is shit like 'consigliere' trash disposal, where you are made to pay $50 a month for the privilege of not being allowed to use the building's dumpster. Instead, you have to pile your trash at your door, and then the landlord takes it to the dumpster. You can't opt out of this 'service'.
Oh, and the city's bill for trash disposal is still passed on to you.
Oh, and your building now smells like garbage.
(Landlords are, of course, still free to offer this as an optional paid service, which ~everyone will opt out of.)
I don’t believe the problem is purely innumeracy on the consumer’s part.
If companies clearly stated “A(B + C)” as a price, even people with poor math skills would understand that the price is not “B”.
But it’s more like the price is advertised as “B” and “A(B+C)” only appears in fine print or seconds before payment.
Your comment says you can “hide a business opportunity”. I would instead call that “being dishonest”.
Try this. My cell phone service is AT&T's "Value Plus VL" service with three lines. Tell me my exact monthly bill down to the cent. Do all the Internet searching you need and all the math you need to.
In a world where companies weren't actively hiding what you pay, you would easily be able to do this.
You know what behavior HASN'T been exceptional in my experience? Landlords playing stupid games with my deposit, trying to hold me accountable for nonexistent or preexisting damage, or just generically being irritating.
Let landlords ban pets other than registered service animals if they want to (none of this ESA nonsense), make sure the eviction process is timely and fair, and otherwise crack the hell down on the games they play with their tenants.
Landlording is so morally fraught that Adam Smith called it out in the Wealth of Nations as an example of unproductive rent-seeking. "Populist slop" is absolutely called for - there is almost no other industry of that size where so many unearned benefits accrue to the already-wealthy.
When a person doesn't pay for damages, how much damage they did very much matters. Why is that hard for you to wrap your head around?
So your Human Resources version of reality is actually the opposite of what's true currently and what always has been true.
As a matter of fact there's a great deal of science showing that people feel more comfortable around their own race and age.
Dogs on the other hand do not discriminate and will love you with no bias.
It is not hard for an irresponsible renter to do way more damage than a deposit can cover.
we already have courts and torts to cover those rare occasions
Edit: right, dogs never ever urinate inside house. It is extraordinary event, that should involve courts!
Some people cause less than regular wear and tear. Some people cause more. If it gets too high, it becomes irregular, it gets pulled out of your damage deposit. If that's not enough, the landlord is free to sue.
None of this is relevant to this thread, though, because pet fees have been banned for 10 years in Seattle. This legislature isn't about pet fees.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/adhd/symptoms...
"Hyperactive means being too active and having too much energy. It may include disruptive behavior."
"Run around or climb in situations when it's not proper."
A) Households who are currently renting who would prefer to own their home
B) Households who currently own who would prefer to be renting
I'm going to guess A >>> B, but I've never seen the data.