$20 Background and Credit Check Fee Question

[Joshua Edwards]

My understanding of the recent change to the law in NY is that a landlord can only charge a max of $20 for a background and/or credit check. We would like to start using Cozy or Zillow Rental Manager for our rentals to collect payment and screen tenants etc. Those 2 sites charge more than that for those services. My question is this: If one of those sites is collecting the monies for the background and credit checks, and we are not, am I staying within the new laws?

[Erik B.]

Thats a good question. My original thought was to just charge them the $20 and pay the difference or to just pay the whole charge myself to keep it simple after a lot of prescreening. 

Cuomo really has gone and screwed up the whole system (among other things). Where did he come up with $20 as the number? You cant so much for $20 bucks these days.