4 ms·

Seattle Bans Rental Junk Fees

63 points by toomuchtodo 5d ago

toomuchtodo 5d ago
https://wilson.seattle.gov/2026/08/12/in-major-affordability-win-city-leaders-pass-rental-junk-fee-legislation/ https://wilson.seattle.gov/2026/08/12/in-major-affordability... https://seattle.legistar.com/ViewReport.ashx?M=R&N=Text&GID=393&ID=6892251&GUID=3793B06B-C793-4E68-B407-3B0D4EF7334C&Title=Legislation+Text https://seattle.legistar.com/ViewReport.ashx?M=R&N=Text&GID=...
matchbok3 5d ago
If you want to know why big, progressive cities have the most unaffordable housing, look no further than this law. 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?
- kazinator 5d ago
  Also, renters of well-behaved, toilet-trained, quiet pets are subsidizing renters with ADHD children.
  - djmips 5d ago
    You don't seem to know what ADHD is.
    - hedgehog 5d ago
      ADHD creates the founders that create the returns that pay for the operations of the site we are reading.
    - gosub100 5d ago
      Neither do you apparently: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/adhd/symptoms-causes/syc-20350889 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."
      - djmips 5d ago
        "may include" - do you really want to argue the side that ADHD children exist in a proportion that damage apartments that noticably increase the cost on tenants without children? Is that what your imagined ADHD child is doing, just ripping apart the walls?
- gonzalohm 5d ago
  Shouldn't there be a kid fee then? Kids are likely to cause damage and everyone is subsidizing it. It should just be common sense. You have a kid or you have a pet. They damaged the property, you pay it.
  - benoau 5d ago
    Probably should be a fee for heavy-handed people banging doors and drawers and faucets around too.
    - anticorporate 5d ago
      This is the only junk rental fee I might actually support, for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with property damage.
  - loeg 5d ago
    Kids do less damage and there's a stronger argument for subsidizing them than dogs. Pet rent isn't about directly covering damage; it's more like buying an insurance policy that occasionally covers large pet-necessitated repairs.
    - woah 5d ago
      Depends on the kid
    - edgyquant 5d ago
      Nobody is subsidizing anything. If damage occurs the tenant pays for it
      - benoau 5d ago
        If you buy like carpet you could reasonably expect to replace it in 10-15 years, and if you allow pets you are more likely to need to. However getting 15-20 years out of it instead without pets is probably more like double-dipping than a subsidy as replacing it on the correct schedule should already be factored into the rent.
- deleted 5d ago
  [deleted]
- badlucklottery 5d ago
  > If you want to know why big, progressive cities have the most unaffordable housing, look no further than this law. 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.
  - NewJazz 5d ago
    The deposit is also limited. In California, deposit is max one month rent... Not sure how difficult/possible it would be to recover more than that from a renter. That said pets is likely not the driver of increased housing costa by any means.
  - loeg 5d ago
    How successful do you think landlords are at recovering damage costs from former tenants that aren't covered by the deposit?
- operatingthetan 5d ago
  Pet rent seldom has anything to do with damage. If you pay pet rent, and then move out and the property manager finds damage, they make you pay for the damage out of your deposit anyway. The last place I rented had pet rent AND a deposit. The rent definitely a junk fee. It did not accumulate or get tracked.
  - matchbok3 5d ago
    You choose to own a pet. Building owners choose to set the rent. What exactly is the problem, here? Other than a small group of people wanting special treatment?
    - operatingthetan 5d ago
      I don't think I can have a conversation about this if you don't understand the concept of "junk fees."
- fishtoaster 5d ago
  Does Seattle allow pet deposits? That seems like a straightforward way to handle that, and it's what I've seen when renting elsewhere.
  - loeg 5d ago
    It does not. Total deposit is capped at a single month's rent.
    - deleted 5d ago
      [deleted]
    - amluto 5d ago
      Click the link to the ordinance. It explicitly permits pet damage deposits.
  - ggreer 5d ago
    Pet deposits are allowed, but they are restricted to 25% of the first month's rent and landlords cannot require a deposit if the pet is an "assistance animal" for the tenant.[1] It's unclear what qualifies as an assistance animal. If an assistance animal does cause damage, the property owner must sue for damages. I doubt such lawsuits are common, as the cost to hire a lawyer and sue in civil court is easily thousands of dollars, and compensation is far from guaranteed. Even if you win the case, collecting can be difficult. 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?nodeId=TIT7COPR_CH7.24REAGRE_7.24.038PEDADE https://library.municode.com/wa/seattle/codes/municipal_code...
    - vkou 5d ago
      > Also I'm not sure what the new law changes 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.)
- ajkjk 5d ago
  Well that's if you believe > 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.
  - ryandrake 5d ago
    Some people are obsessed with free-riders and never happy until they know they're only narrowly paying for the smallest granular subset of things they use, and nothing that they are not personally using. This is why we have all these little fees for everything everywhere--to satisfy those people. This is why airlines are terrible now: they granularly charge for every little thing. "Why should I pay for meal service if I personally don't want to eat?" people are getting their way.
- vkou 5d ago
  From the legislature: > 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.
  - verdverm 5d ago
    one-time, refundable deposit is very different from a monthly non-refundable fee
    - vkou 5d ago
      There's a monthly non-refundable fee that I pay for use and regular wear and tear of the property. It's called R E N T, and the difference between that and a landlord's costs is called profit. If you don't want any wear and tear on your property, or any income from it, there's a simple remedy - don't let it out. 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.
- kentm 5d ago
  > If you want to know why big, progressive cities have the most unaffordable housing, look no further than this law. 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.
- bryanrasmussen 5d ago
  OK so this law, enacted now and not in effect yet, which bans rental fees, is the cause of why big progressive cities that in general do not have this law, have the most unaffordable housing. That's a theory, I guess.
- graemep 5d ago
  It makes costs more transparent, which means the market works better. 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.
- stetrain 5d ago
  Are these unaffordable housing units sitting empty? 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.
  - wk_end 5d ago
    > 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. 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.
- uses 5d ago
  Well, the main reason is that locals have a lot of tools to stop construction of housing, and they've been using those tools to prevent new housing from getting built for decades. But yes, this won't do anything to lower costs. It'll just get baked into the rent everyone pays.
- amluto 5d ago
  To be fair, it seems like landlords may still ban pets and they are explicitly permitted to have a pet damage deposit.
- delecti 5d ago
  I had a pet who caused damage to a rental. I had been paying pet rent, and was also charged for the damage. What exactly was the pet rent covering? Charge for damage if and when there is damage. Anything else is ridiculous.
  - pishpash 5d ago
    It's a price discriminator, to dissuade the pet owning group from renting. Why? Because they also cause negative externality to other units. That's what I can think of. If they could do a child charge I'm sure they would.
- hugeBirb 5d ago
  What an insanely narrow and purposely ignorant opinion. Subsidizing pet owners? Good tenants are subsidizing bad tenants, people w/o kids subsidizing people w/kids. What is the conclusion of your argument? After i sign I do an insurance style risk assessment and they get to tack on a bunch of fees? I don't think a landlord is jacking up prices cause I have a pet and it is insane to think that I would need to pay more than someone else for that reason. I don't think it was about having or not having a pet, it was designed to squeeze as much as you can out of someone. What is the difference between human caused damage or animal caused damage? The person signing the agreement is still liable for whatever damages at the end of the day. Why can't we just leave it at that?
- tgv 5d ago
  Ridiculous take. It doesn't increase the average rent.
- xboxnolifes 5d ago
  It bans pet fees, but it does not ban pet damage deposits. Try reading before complaining.
- verdverm 5d ago
  Greystar's near monopoly on rentals is why
- solid_fuel 5d ago
  > If you want to know why big, progressive cities have the most unaffordable housing, look no further than this law. 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?
  - matchbok3 5d ago
    It is an example of how cities regulate housing, which I believe pushes prices up, not down.
- verdverm 5d ago
  to support the fledgling private pet security industrial complex, who's going to stop the undesirables from dining on our furry friends? /s
  - throw8383939 5d ago
    The only "undesirables" feeding on furry friends are dogs and cats. Their owners should be prosecuted for animal torture! Somehow squirrel hunting is still tolerated in 21dt century!
maerF0x0 5d ago
We need a national law and FTC teeth to say "The price advertised is the final, final, all-in price you pay" and the right to demand the product be delivered at that price if you were advertised a price. This should include limits on dynamic pricing which "whoops the price changed for the worse between when we showed it to you and when you drove to the store..." 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.
- etatester 5d ago
  I don't have any hope for broad legislation that affects all businesses. Americans are so used to + tax + tips + convenience fees that doing anything else would hurt at both ends: consumers will claim inflation (oh that 8.99+30% burger is now 11.50? Tragedy) and businesses will mourn the loss of scam tactics that lets them earn more.
  - anticorporate 5d ago
    Retailer here. I would absolutely love all inclusive pricing legislation. Since we're not trying to screw our customers (we're a co-op, so our customers are also our owners), I'd love to be on a fairer playing field with frontline pricing from the businesses trying to lie, cheat, and steal their way to a higher margin.
ocdtrekkie 5d ago
I think in general my preference is the other part of this story: Rather than choosing what fees can and can't be offered, require both brutal price transparency and prohibit advertising the unrealistic/lesser cost. 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.
- aeturnum 5d ago
  I think you should check out the kinds of fees they call out as no longer allowed[1]. They include things like: a fee to "perform landlord duties" and a fee to "access your mailbox." I absolutely think it should be illegal for your landlord to hold your mail hostage. 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=32538D0E-0FE7-40B7-AA4D-76C2202828AC https://seattle.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=15702946&GUID=...
  - ocdtrekkie 5d ago
    I mean obviously fees should either be included in the original price, or there should be a reason it might apply in some cases but not others. But I can also see someone just wanting to break out the costs as separate line items to highlight where their costs come from. (Here's what I pay for the property taxes, here's what I pay for the included utilities, here's what I pay for these maintenance services, so tada, there's your rent.) 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.
flowerlad 5d ago
We need a global ban on junk fees. I am tired of shit like AT&T's "Administrative & Regulatory Cost Recovery Fee".
- tossandthrow 5d ago
  I honestly think a us ban would get us quite far, also in a global setting.
  - rightnutwingjob 5d ago
    You can’t ban business from passing on their costs to their customers. 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.
    - tikhonj 5d ago
      A fee for a specific service (ie using a card vs using cash) is pretty different from unavoidable junk fees. As long as a fee like that is advertised up-front it's totally fine; but fees that everybody has to pay are a qualitatively different thing because they are just a way to get a misleadingly low sticker price for the product.
- inglor_cz 5d ago
  On one side, I fully understand that. On the other side, if this really reflects the cost of compliance, maybe this is the only way to signal the voter that the "there ought to be a law" approach has some downsides to it.
  - dmitrygr 5d ago
    Solution: you may put it on the receipt, but the price you advertise must be final all-in. Gas stations manage it just fine. Advertised price is what you pay, but receipt shows the taxes
sitkack 5d ago
You can't compare if you don't know the cost, if you can't compare it is hard for the invisible hand to price the market. Price transparency makes more efficient markets.
- andrepd 5d ago
  It's amazing how people neglect this basic fact. Free markets already often don't work in practice. But they don't even work in theory if both parties do not have at the very least the same information in order to base their decisions. These sort of scam tactics (like dynamic pricing) are simply fraud, much like hiding problems in a car or a house you sell.
- cjf101 5d ago
  Seattle should do restaurants next, the number of places with %fees tacked on that aren't tips and aren't optional, just so they don't end up having $20+ entrees on the menu is growing steadily.
- OptionOfT 5d ago
  This issue exists everywhere in the USA. 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...
loeg 5d ago
Banning junk fees / truth in advertising is good. But I absolutely hate that pet rent was bundled in to this. Pets occasionally cause very high amounts of real damage that should be covered by pet owners, not tenants without pets. And Seattle has banned every other possible avenue of passing this expense only to the parties responsible (higher deposits).
- bigfishrunning 5d ago
  This will likely result in more "No pets allowed" leases
- deleted 5d ago
  [deleted]
- RHSeeger 5d ago
  Pet deposit is for that, not pet rent. Or just deposit in general. Humans _can_ cause just as much damage as pets.
- sheikhnbake 5d ago
  Can property owners not just go to small claims court?
  - doublerebel 5d ago
    Typically these claims are completely unrecoverable. The tenants don’t have the money, and the cost of pursuing further is too high. The only way to ensure payment is to get it upfront.
    - nightpool 5d ago
      That's what damage deposits are for, no?
      - dghlsakjg 5d ago
        Damage deposits are capped. It is not hard for an irresponsible renter to do way more damage than a deposit can cover.
pnw 5d ago
Seattle's push to add additional regulation, compliance, fees and inspections has resulted in an exodus of small landlords, which are down anywhere from 19% to 22% in four years depending on how you slice it, and an explosion in large landlords which are up 77% in the same period. The city has basically consolidated the rental market so it works best for large corporations. Was that the intent?
- tonyhb 5d ago
  Small landlords don't own apartment buildings. They buy houses/units to rent, lowering availability for buyers. So, you'd at least want to look at the number of new apartment rentals available plus the number of first time house buyers to get a better picture.
  - dmitrygr 5d ago
    > lowering availability for buyers This makes an unsubstantiated assumption that everyone would rather buy and can afford to, ignoring that people have reasons to rent.
    - tonyhb 5d ago
      No, it doesn't. It states that if a landlord has 3 houses and exits the landlord market, those houses are either kept unused or sold and are available for new buyers.
      - dmitrygr 5d ago
        Sold...to a large landlord company... yes That is what happened in Seattle
    - InitialLastName 5d ago
      Assuming the same homes, which group do you think is larger: 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.
cute_boi 5d ago
Also, in many apartments, if you try to break your lease, they will charge you a fee. We should have a regulation requiring landlords to refund the full amount charged for the previous lease if they find a new tenant to occupy the apartment after you leave. With current market, we have to keep relocating here and there and leasing for 12 month doesn't make sense.
- pishpash 5d ago
  That already exists in many states. The problem is you need to take the landlord to court to recover, if they don't pony up.
tikhonj 5d ago
I wonder if there's any (transparently self-serving) pushback against this on Seattle Nextdoor or the like. It sounds like a straightforward set of rules that's great for everyone... but I've learned that this is never enough, and I'm sure there are some people insisting that this is some massive crime against landlords and, by extension, tenants.
- gs17 5d ago
  Yes, there are people insisting that this will make things impossible for tenants because "no one will want to be a landlord anymore" if they can't charge junk fees.
legitster 5d ago
It's not a "ban"; from what's described it's a disclosure requirement. It has always been required to have these in the rental agreements - but you have to publicize them so people see them before they pay an application fee. 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
- seanmcdirmid 5d ago
  Having been an extreme novice once, I can appreciate these laws. But as always you’ll probably get your experience the hard way.

63 points by toomuchtodo 5d ago

https://wilson.seattle.gov/2026/08/12/in-major-affordability-win-city-leaders-pass-rental-junk-fee-legislation/ https://wilson.seattle.gov/2026/08/12/in-major-affordability... https://seattle.legistar.com/ViewReport.ashx?M=R&N=Text&GID=393&ID=6892251&GUID=3793B06B-C793-4E68-B407-3B0D4EF7334C&Title=Legislation+Text https://seattle.legistar.com/ViewReport.ashx?M=R&N=Text&GID=...

matchbok3 5d ago

If you want to know why big, progressive cities have the most unaffordable housing, look no further than this law. 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?

kazinator 5d ago
Also, renters of well-behaved, toilet-trained, quiet pets are subsidizing renters with ADHD children.
- djmips 5d ago
  You don't seem to know what ADHD is.
  - hedgehog 5d ago
    ADHD creates the founders that create the returns that pay for the operations of the site we are reading.
  - gosub100 5d ago
    Neither do you apparently: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/adhd/symptoms-causes/syc-20350889 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."
    - djmips 5d ago
      "may include" - do you really want to argue the side that ADHD children exist in a proportion that damage apartments that noticably increase the cost on tenants without children? Is that what your imagined ADHD child is doing, just ripping apart the walls?
gonzalohm 5d ago
Shouldn't there be a kid fee then? Kids are likely to cause damage and everyone is subsidizing it. It should just be common sense. You have a kid or you have a pet. They damaged the property, you pay it.
- benoau 5d ago
  Probably should be a fee for heavy-handed people banging doors and drawers and faucets around too.
  - anticorporate 5d ago
    This is the only junk rental fee I might actually support, for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with property damage.
- loeg 5d ago
  Kids do less damage and there's a stronger argument for subsidizing them than dogs. Pet rent isn't about directly covering damage; it's more like buying an insurance policy that occasionally covers large pet-necessitated repairs.
  - woah 5d ago
    Depends on the kid
  - edgyquant 5d ago
    Nobody is subsidizing anything. If damage occurs the tenant pays for it
    - benoau 5d ago
      If you buy like carpet you could reasonably expect to replace it in 10-15 years, and if you allow pets you are more likely to need to. However getting 15-20 years out of it instead without pets is probably more like double-dipping than a subsidy as replacing it on the correct schedule should already be factored into the rent.
deleted 5d ago
[deleted]
badlucklottery 5d ago
> If you want to know why big, progressive cities have the most unaffordable housing, look no further than this law. 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.
- NewJazz 5d ago
  The deposit is also limited. In California, deposit is max one month rent... Not sure how difficult/possible it would be to recover more than that from a renter. That said pets is likely not the driver of increased housing costa by any means.
- loeg 5d ago
  How successful do you think landlords are at recovering damage costs from former tenants that aren't covered by the deposit?
operatingthetan 5d ago
Pet rent seldom has anything to do with damage. If you pay pet rent, and then move out and the property manager finds damage, they make you pay for the damage out of your deposit anyway. The last place I rented had pet rent AND a deposit. The rent definitely a junk fee. It did not accumulate or get tracked.
- matchbok3 5d ago
  You choose to own a pet. Building owners choose to set the rent. What exactly is the problem, here? Other than a small group of people wanting special treatment?
  - operatingthetan 5d ago
    I don't think I can have a conversation about this if you don't understand the concept of "junk fees."
fishtoaster 5d ago
Does Seattle allow pet deposits? That seems like a straightforward way to handle that, and it's what I've seen when renting elsewhere.
- loeg 5d ago
  It does not. Total deposit is capped at a single month's rent.
  - deleted 5d ago
    [deleted]
  - amluto 5d ago
    Click the link to the ordinance. It explicitly permits pet damage deposits.
- ggreer 5d ago
  Pet deposits are allowed, but they are restricted to 25% of the first month's rent and landlords cannot require a deposit if the pet is an "assistance animal" for the tenant.[1] It's unclear what qualifies as an assistance animal. If an assistance animal does cause damage, the property owner must sue for damages. I doubt such lawsuits are common, as the cost to hire a lawyer and sue in civil court is easily thousands of dollars, and compensation is far from guaranteed. Even if you win the case, collecting can be difficult. 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?nodeId=TIT7COPR_CH7.24REAGRE_7.24.038PEDADE https://library.municode.com/wa/seattle/codes/municipal_code...
  - vkou 5d ago
    > Also I'm not sure what the new law changes 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.)
ajkjk 5d ago
Well that's if you believe > 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.
- ryandrake 5d ago
  Some people are obsessed with free-riders and never happy until they know they're only narrowly paying for the smallest granular subset of things they use, and nothing that they are not personally using. This is why we have all these little fees for everything everywhere--to satisfy those people. This is why airlines are terrible now: they granularly charge for every little thing. "Why should I pay for meal service if I personally don't want to eat?" people are getting their way.
vkou 5d ago
From the legislature: > 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.
- verdverm 5d ago
  one-time, refundable deposit is very different from a monthly non-refundable fee
  - vkou 5d ago
    There's a monthly non-refundable fee that I pay for use and regular wear and tear of the property. It's called R E N T, and the difference between that and a landlord's costs is called profit. If you don't want any wear and tear on your property, or any income from it, there's a simple remedy - don't let it out. 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.
kentm 5d ago
> If you want to know why big, progressive cities have the most unaffordable housing, look no further than this law. 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.
bryanrasmussen 5d ago
OK so this law, enacted now and not in effect yet, which bans rental fees, is the cause of why big progressive cities that in general do not have this law, have the most unaffordable housing. That's a theory, I guess.
graemep 5d ago
It makes costs more transparent, which means the market works better. 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.
stetrain 5d ago
Are these unaffordable housing units sitting empty? 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.
- wk_end 5d ago
  > 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. 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.
uses 5d ago
Well, the main reason is that locals have a lot of tools to stop construction of housing, and they've been using those tools to prevent new housing from getting built for decades. But yes, this won't do anything to lower costs. It'll just get baked into the rent everyone pays.
amluto 5d ago
To be fair, it seems like landlords may still ban pets and they are explicitly permitted to have a pet damage deposit.
delecti 5d ago
I had a pet who caused damage to a rental. I had been paying pet rent, and was also charged for the damage. What exactly was the pet rent covering? Charge for damage if and when there is damage. Anything else is ridiculous.
- pishpash 5d ago
  It's a price discriminator, to dissuade the pet owning group from renting. Why? Because they also cause negative externality to other units. That's what I can think of. If they could do a child charge I'm sure they would.
hugeBirb 5d ago
What an insanely narrow and purposely ignorant opinion. Subsidizing pet owners? Good tenants are subsidizing bad tenants, people w/o kids subsidizing people w/kids. What is the conclusion of your argument? After i sign I do an insurance style risk assessment and they get to tack on a bunch of fees? I don't think a landlord is jacking up prices cause I have a pet and it is insane to think that I would need to pay more than someone else for that reason. I don't think it was about having or not having a pet, it was designed to squeeze as much as you can out of someone. What is the difference between human caused damage or animal caused damage? The person signing the agreement is still liable for whatever damages at the end of the day. Why can't we just leave it at that?
tgv 5d ago
Ridiculous take. It doesn't increase the average rent.
xboxnolifes 5d ago
It bans pet fees, but it does not ban pet damage deposits. Try reading before complaining.
verdverm 5d ago
Greystar's near monopoly on rentals is why
solid_fuel 5d ago
> If you want to know why big, progressive cities have the most unaffordable housing, look no further than this law. 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?
- matchbok3 5d ago
  It is an example of how cities regulate housing, which I believe pushes prices up, not down.
verdverm 5d ago
to support the fledgling private pet security industrial complex, who's going to stop the undesirables from dining on our furry friends? /s
- throw8383939 5d ago
  The only "undesirables" feeding on furry friends are dogs and cats. Their owners should be prosecuted for animal torture! Somehow squirrel hunting is still tolerated in 21dt century!

maerF0x0 5d ago

We need a national law and FTC teeth to say "The price advertised is the final, final, all-in price you pay" and the right to demand the product be delivered at that price if you were advertised a price. This should include limits on dynamic pricing which "whoops the price changed for the worse between when we showed it to you and when you drove to the store..." 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.

etatester 5d ago
I don't have any hope for broad legislation that affects all businesses. Americans are so used to + tax + tips + convenience fees that doing anything else would hurt at both ends: consumers will claim inflation (oh that 8.99+30% burger is now 11.50? Tragedy) and businesses will mourn the loss of scam tactics that lets them earn more.
- anticorporate 5d ago
  Retailer here. I would absolutely love all inclusive pricing legislation. Since we're not trying to screw our customers (we're a co-op, so our customers are also our owners), I'd love to be on a fairer playing field with frontline pricing from the businesses trying to lie, cheat, and steal their way to a higher margin.

ocdtrekkie 5d ago

I think in general my preference is the other part of this story: Rather than choosing what fees can and can't be offered, require both brutal price transparency and prohibit advertising the unrealistic/lesser cost. 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.

aeturnum 5d ago
I think you should check out the kinds of fees they call out as no longer allowed[1]. They include things like: a fee to "perform landlord duties" and a fee to "access your mailbox." I absolutely think it should be illegal for your landlord to hold your mail hostage. 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=32538D0E-0FE7-40B7-AA4D-76C2202828AC https://seattle.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=15702946&GUID=...
- ocdtrekkie 5d ago
  I mean obviously fees should either be included in the original price, or there should be a reason it might apply in some cases but not others. But I can also see someone just wanting to break out the costs as separate line items to highlight where their costs come from. (Here's what I pay for the property taxes, here's what I pay for the included utilities, here's what I pay for these maintenance services, so tada, there's your rent.) 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.

flowerlad 5d ago

We need a global ban on junk fees. I am tired of shit like AT&T's "Administrative & Regulatory Cost Recovery Fee".

tossandthrow 5d ago
I honestly think a us ban would get us quite far, also in a global setting.
- rightnutwingjob 5d ago
  You can’t ban business from passing on their costs to their customers. 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.
  - tikhonj 5d ago
    A fee for a specific service (ie using a card vs using cash) is pretty different from unavoidable junk fees. As long as a fee like that is advertised up-front it's totally fine; but fees that everybody has to pay are a qualitatively different thing because they are just a way to get a misleadingly low sticker price for the product.
inglor_cz 5d ago
On one side, I fully understand that. On the other side, if this really reflects the cost of compliance, maybe this is the only way to signal the voter that the "there ought to be a law" approach has some downsides to it.
- dmitrygr 5d ago
  Solution: you may put it on the receipt, but the price you advertise must be final all-in. Gas stations manage it just fine. Advertised price is what you pay, but receipt shows the taxes

sitkack 5d ago

You can't compare if you don't know the cost, if you can't compare it is hard for the invisible hand to price the market. Price transparency makes more efficient markets.

andrepd 5d ago
It's amazing how people neglect this basic fact. Free markets already often don't work in practice. But they don't even work in theory if both parties do not have at the very least the same information in order to base their decisions. These sort of scam tactics (like dynamic pricing) are simply fraud, much like hiding problems in a car or a house you sell.
cjf101 5d ago
Seattle should do restaurants next, the number of places with %fees tacked on that aren't tips and aren't optional, just so they don't end up having $20+ entrees on the menu is growing steadily.
OptionOfT 5d ago
This issue exists everywhere in the USA. 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...

loeg 5d ago

Banning junk fees / truth in advertising is good. But I absolutely hate that pet rent was bundled in to this. Pets occasionally cause very high amounts of real damage that should be covered by pet owners, not tenants without pets. And Seattle has banned every other possible avenue of passing this expense only to the parties responsible (higher deposits).

bigfishrunning 5d ago
This will likely result in more "No pets allowed" leases
deleted 5d ago
[deleted]
RHSeeger 5d ago
Pet deposit is for that, not pet rent. Or just deposit in general. Humans _can_ cause just as much damage as pets.
sheikhnbake 5d ago
Can property owners not just go to small claims court?
- doublerebel 5d ago
  Typically these claims are completely unrecoverable. The tenants don’t have the money, and the cost of pursuing further is too high. The only way to ensure payment is to get it upfront.
  - nightpool 5d ago
    That's what damage deposits are for, no?
    - dghlsakjg 5d ago
      Damage deposits are capped. It is not hard for an irresponsible renter to do way more damage than a deposit can cover.

pnw 5d ago

Seattle's push to add additional regulation, compliance, fees and inspections has resulted in an exodus of small landlords, which are down anywhere from 19% to 22% in four years depending on how you slice it, and an explosion in large landlords which are up 77% in the same period. The city has basically consolidated the rental market so it works best for large corporations. Was that the intent?

tonyhb 5d ago
Small landlords don't own apartment buildings. They buy houses/units to rent, lowering availability for buyers. So, you'd at least want to look at the number of new apartment rentals available plus the number of first time house buyers to get a better picture.
- dmitrygr 5d ago
  > lowering availability for buyers This makes an unsubstantiated assumption that everyone would rather buy and can afford to, ignoring that people have reasons to rent.
  - tonyhb 5d ago
    No, it doesn't. It states that if a landlord has 3 houses and exits the landlord market, those houses are either kept unused or sold and are available for new buyers.
    - dmitrygr 5d ago
      Sold...to a large landlord company... yes That is what happened in Seattle
  - InitialLastName 5d ago
    Assuming the same homes, which group do you think is larger: 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.

cute_boi 5d ago

Also, in many apartments, if you try to break your lease, they will charge you a fee. We should have a regulation requiring landlords to refund the full amount charged for the previous lease if they find a new tenant to occupy the apartment after you leave. With current market, we have to keep relocating here and there and leasing for 12 month doesn't make sense.

pishpash 5d ago
That already exists in many states. The problem is you need to take the landlord to court to recover, if they don't pony up.

tikhonj 5d ago

I wonder if there's any (transparently self-serving) pushback against this on Seattle Nextdoor or the like. It sounds like a straightforward set of rules that's great for everyone... but I've learned that this is never enough, and I'm sure there are some people insisting that this is some massive crime against landlords and, by extension, tenants.

gs17 5d ago
Yes, there are people insisting that this will make things impossible for tenants because "no one will want to be a landlord anymore" if they can't charge junk fees.

legitster 5d ago

It's not a "ban"; from what's described it's a disclosure requirement. It has always been required to have these in the rental agreements - but you have to publicize them so people see them before they pay an application fee. 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

seanmcdirmid 5d ago
Having been an extreme novice once, I can appreciate these laws. But as always you’ll probably get your experience the hard way.