Originally Posted by kane

I used to date a woman who worked for a large apartment management company. They too charged an application fee, but I think it was closer to $40. Their policy was that they accepted applications up until the moment someone signed a lease on the place. She said they would often get 30 or more applicants and only have a couple of open units. Those units would be filled pretty quickly so they never even bothered to run a credit check or anything on many of the applicants. What was shitty is that someone would apply and be accepted. They might then come in the next day to sign the lease. If another applicant came in after that person accepted the place, but before they signed the lease, they would take the application even knowing there was a 99.9% chance that the person would not get the place.

She told me the company (which managed several large complexes) made a lot of money just from application fees and her boss would bitch at them if they were bringing in too few applications.