Are leasing agencies obligated to say why you were denied?

[Henrietta Middleton]

Hopefully this is the right forum but I was recently denied when applying for an apartment. Just curious, is the leasing agency is required to tell the applicant why they were denied? Especially if one has paid application fees and went through the entire process.

[Douglas Mcqueen]

This will vary by state, as each state has its own laws regarding landlords and tenant's, in Virginia for instance there is no requirement to inform the applicant as to why the application was rejected.  We normally do inform as to why it was rejected, we make our criteria explicitly clear before any fee is collected, more often than not if we reject an application its due to one of those criteria not being met, at times its because we had more than one applicant competing for the same unit, this is a scenario we also disclose up front if it is indeed the case.  However that being said we are not mandated to do so, we just see it as a good business practice.