On 12 August Seattle City Council voted 8-0 to get rid of what the city calls rental junk fees: administrative service fees, pet rent and package fees disappear from the tenancy. The other half of the law matters just as much. Landlords now have to state every mandatory and optional fee up front in the listing or the advertisement, so the price a renter sees is the price they will pay. A limited set of charges survives — screening fees, move-in fees, utility fees, security and pet damage deposits, and charges for a lost key or a lockout.
Mayor Katie Wilson sent the proposal to the council in early July after months of renter surveys, listening sessions and meetings with landlords and developers, and Councilmember Dionne Foster carried it through. The ban does not take effect until 1 July 2027, which gives the market almost a year to rewrite its listings.
So…:
What do your customers only find out the price of at the very end?
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Picture:
commons.wikimedia.org // Joe Mabel (CC BY-SA 3.0)