Paid application fee but now property is not available

[Koale]

Originally Posted by sparkyg

My wife and I are selling our home in Colorado and moving to Maui. We plan to rent for a year while we find a place to purchase. My wife flew to Maui Wednesday, looked at a condo with the property manager on Thursday and loved it. I filled out the rental application online Thursday night and paid a $30 fee. About 8 hours later the property is no longer available. Is it weird if I ask for my $30 back? It seems to me like they knew they already had a tenant lined up and just took my money.

This is very common practice in Hawaii. I speak from experience. What you paid was the application 'fee', check the application to see if it was 'refundable' or not. My guess it is not. We applied for a rental, on Maui, through a PM company...took them 5 days to process the $50.00 'application fee'. They denied us for a traffic ticket they found 17 years prior... I went into their office to investigate what all that nonsense was about and saw a shoebox on the desk of the agent that was labeled 'Rejected Applications'...you know that box was filled to the top w/$50.00 application fees...it is a good scam for them to make pocket change or lunch money for the office. You should look at private owners with properties to rent. Hawaii is a scam from start to finish...and there is no recourse. I hope you and your family find peace and happiness there.
Koale

[lepoisson]

Aaah, the old bait and switch. I've been there before.

Looked at an apartment and really liked it. We put in an application that day. The manager said the application will come back in a few days. I called back two days later and she said that my application was approved, but that another application had been put in a few hours before mine, and they had just put down a deposit. Needless to say I was mad and told her that we should have been told that someone else put in an app. Her only response was that there was another unit opening up in a month.

[generalswife]

Originally Posted by lepoisson

Aaah, the old bait and switch. I've been there before.

Looked at an apartment and really liked it. We put in an application that day. The manager said the application will come back in a few days. I called back two days later and she said that my application was approved, but that another application had been put in a few hours before mine, and they had just put down a deposit. Needless to say I was mad and told her that we should have been told that someone else put in an app. Her only response was that there was another unit opening up in a month.

An application with a deposit trumps someone who only submitted an application.

[lepoisson]

Originally Posted by generalswife

An application with a deposit trumps someone who only submitted an application.

Yes, you're right. But why wasn't I told that someone else already put in an application on the apartment I was looking at?

There are some apartments that are even worse. They have you put in an application for a "1br" or "2br", but not on an actual unit. This was in Iowa City. I noped the heck out of there.