Here's Every Fee Landlords Can Still Charge Under Mayor Wilson's Junk Fee Ban

Mayor Katie Wilson, Seattle’s first renter mayor in recent memory, just announced legislation to combat the pesky “junk” fees landlords tack onto Seattle tenants’ already exorbitant rents. After seven months of testing the patience of her progressive base, this is exactly the kind of legislation supporters turned skeptics have been waiting for since she first inspired them during her insurgent campaign last year.

But before lefties lift Wilson onto their shoulders and chant her name, they should understand that the legislation would still allow landlords to stick tenants with a number of fees, so long as they disclose them transparently. 

According to draft legislation, Wilson’s junk fee ban would still allow landlords to charge non-rent fees for the following:

• Late fees

• Security deposits

• Nonrefundable move-in fees 

• Screening fees

• Pet damage deposits

• Utility fees

• Key replacement fees at the lesser of the actual cost to the landlord or $50

• Lock out fees up to $150 

• Bounced check fees up to $31

• Reimbursement for a repair as it qualifies under current law

• Tenant’s liability for default in rent or abandonment of their unit

• Optional goods and services provided at cost that the landlord clearly disclosed and the tenant affirmatively opted in to receiving. 

  
  

The good news for tenants: Anything not expressly permitted in this list will be banned if Wilson’s law passes. Think fees on pet rent, mail, in-unit appliances, common areas, partial changes in tenancy or using checks or money orders to pay rent. 

The allowance of many of the above fees won’t necessarily offend tenants — most people basically expect to have to pay up when they break something. And including some of these fees in the list of permissible charges would actually rein in landlords' ability to nickel and dime tenants on incidental charges. But others smell like “junk,” such as screening fees when they exceed the actual cost of screen tenants. Wilson herself argued against these fees in a 2024 op-ed.  

The most significant change may actually be the disclosure requirements. Landlords won’t be allowed to charge any of these fees without being totally upfront. 

To comply with the potential new law, landlords would have to disclose in any ad, listing, rental application or agreement the monthly rent, any discounts or concessions, all utilities the tenant is responsible for, any that are included within the rent, the cost of all mandatory and optional fees and the total monthly cost the tenant will owe or an average or estimate when that bill includes variable fees. 

This transparency, Wilson argues, gives renters a better sense of what they will owe each month.

It is unclear and probably impossible to know how much this legislation could save the average renter. Seattle tenants don’t need The Burner or anyone else to tell them the rent is too damn high, but according to the City of Seattle’s 2025 Comprehensive Plan, almost 40,000 renter households in Seattle are cost burdened, meaning they spend between 30% and 50% of their income on housing. Another almost 35,000 are severely rent burdened, or spending more than 50% of their income on housing. And shit seems to be getting worse. According to Market analysis by CoStar and BERK, average rents rose 32% in Seattle between 2012 and 2022 and that’s considering inflation. 

Nonrent fees are part of the issue. The Urban Institute found that these kinds of charges added 10% to 30% to renters’ total monthly payment in a 2025 study. And now, since the Washington State Legislature passed rent stabilization, capping rent increases at some buildings at 10%, landlords have admitted to using junk fees as a sneaky way to raise costs without exceeding that cap.

A slide deck presented at Wednesday’s council meeting, claimed this measure could possibly save renters money. The advertised price may go up, but making those prices “visible and salient,” the presentation argued “intensifies competition, which pushes total costs down.”

In all, this isn’t Chairman Mao Zedong’s land reform movement — it’s a meaningful reform for renters just scrapping by that still lets landlords collect fees they’d argue are the cost of doing business. But that doesn’t mean the ongoing legislative process won’t drag out the whiniest of Seattle’s landed gentry. This is the exact kind of bill that conservative lawmakers love to mark up with amendments at the pressure of the real estate lobby that paid for their seat. Lobbyists may try to add additional fees to the permitted list, or win exemptions for so-called “mom and pop” landlords, or raise the specified caps for certain charges. 

But with elections coming next year for district-level City Council members and a populist wave still propelling candidates to victories across the country, progressives may have leverage not only to stave off bad amendments, but push to ban even more fees. 

Whether this becomes a modest transparency bill or a genuine crackdown on junk fees will depend less on the mayor than on what happens in committee rooms and council chambers over the coming weeks. If progressives want the strongest version of this bill, they'll have to fight for it.