Will this work?

This has had me up thinking for a few hours now, you know how when your looking to rent a house or apartment the owner of the property sometimes ask you for money to do background checks or as they call it here an application fee.

If the owner of the house chooses NOT to let me rent the house or apartment do I get my money back? can the owner keep the money legally?

The reason im asking is it seems that would be a great easy way to make money daily by advertising the house or apartment for a good price and get lots of people to pay the fee and then they can pick the person they want but keep all that money right or wrong?

Pretty sure it doesn't work that way.

i would strongly recommend you not doing that unless you have eyes in the back of your head.
Thanks,
Philgood

This sounds like a great scheme for a mortician. Then you could get money from both the living and the dead.

Even in the blackhat world there needs to be honor among thieves.

Somebody was arrested for doing just that - advertising on craigslist then meeting the person and keeping the application fee. He of course had no property to rent out

Well here is what im thinking maybe i didnt make myself clear, first i checked to see if it was legal to get an application fee and have that fee be non refundable and yes its legal. My second thought was if I have a house to rent or find other people who have a house for rent and they put it up for rent and advertised it at a good low fair price that alot of people would come and pay the application fee.

Now if 100 people came to look at the house and paid for the application fee of say $50 that would be alot of money, next the landlord could do the background check , credit check through a affiliate program which would make them even more money.

Then all they have to do is pick the right person to rent the house to and it is all perfectly legal that way, heck a person could make a living teaching landlords how to be able to get there homes rented or something like that. This is not scamming or anything illegal its the way apartment building owners do business every day.