Adverse Action Notice: Free Landlord Template (2026)

Most landlords’ rejection email runs two sentences and sounds harmless. “Thanks for applying. We’ve decided to go with another applicant.” If the decision leaned on a tenant screening report, that friendly little email is a federal compliance failure, and the landlord who sent it usually has no idea a rule was involved at all.

That rule is the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the same statute governing the credit pull itself, and once stated, its logic is hard to argue with. Somebody’s file was judged on a report they have never seen. Maybe the report was right. Maybe it confused them with a different tenant or attached someone else’s eviction; maybe a paid debt shows open. Which of those happened is what the adverse action notice lets the applicant discover: a report was used, this company compiled it, here is the path to a free copy and a challenge.

On this page: when the duty triggers, the four required contents, a free adverse action notice template to copy, and the two conditional-approval situations, the bigger deposit and the required co-signer, that landlords almost never recognize as adverse action.

What an adverse action notice is

Strictly speaking, an adverse action notice is the message a landlord owes after taking action against an applicant based on a consumer report, and in rental practice that report is the tenant screening report: credit, eviction history, criminal records, whatever the screening service compiled. Its home is 15 U.S.C. 1681m, and the duty attaches to whoever used the report, meaning the landlord, not the screening company that sold it.

The statute is more flexible about form than people expect. Under 1681m(a), the user of the report must provide oral, written, or electronic notice of the adverse action to the consumer. An email qualifies; a phone call technically qualifies. Written or electronic is the only sensible choice all the same, because a landlord who gave oral notice owns the burden of proving it years later, and a dated letter proves itself.

What trips people up is not the form but the trigger. The notice is owed whenever the report influenced the outcome, even partially. A landlord who rejected an applicant for three reasons, one of them the screening report, owes the notice as surely as one who rejected on the report alone.

“Adverse action” is bigger than a rejection

The definition is the part of this law most worth reading twice. The FCRA defines adverse action expansively in 15 U.S.C. 1681a(k): beyond denials and cancellations, it reaches an increase in any charge for, or any other adverse or unfavorable change in the terms of, a benefit, and its residual clause sweeps in any determination adverse to the interests of the consumer. Rental housing sits comfortably inside that language.

The FTC’s landlord guidance turns the abstraction into a checklist, and two of its examples surprise nearly everyone. Requiring a co-signer on the lease, when the screening report drove the requirement, is adverse action. So is requiring a deposit that would not be required for another applicant. The approval letter that says “we’d love to have you, with a guarantor and a double deposit” feels like good news to the landlord writing it; under the FCRA it is an adverse action, and the notice is owed alongside it.

That connects this page to two of its neighbors. When a thin screening report leads you to require a co-signer agreement, send the adverse action notice with the guaranty paperwork. When it leads you to ask for a larger deposit, check the state deposit cap first, then send the notice with the revised offer. The notice does not make the conditional approval hostile; it makes it legal.

The four things the notice must contain

The FCRA adverse action requirements live in section 1681m(a), and they are mercifully concrete. The screening company’s identity comes with full contact details: the name, address, and telephone number of the consumer reporting agency that furnished the report, including the toll-free number where the agency is a nationwide one. An applicant who wants to see the file needs to know where the file lives.

Then a sentence that feels counterintuitive and is mandatory anyway: a statement that the consumer reporting agency did not make the decision to take the adverse action and is unable to provide the consumer the specific reasons why the adverse action was taken. The screening service compiled data. You decided. The notice says so in as many words, which keeps applicants from calling the bureau to argue about a judgment the bureau never made.

The last two items are the applicant’s rights. One is the free copy: notice of the right to obtain a free copy of the report from that agency, with an indication of the 60-day window for requesting it. The other is the dispute right: notice of the right to dispute, with the agency, the accuracy or completeness of anything in the report. Four items, one page. The template handles all of them.

The adverse action notice template (copy and paste)

Here is an adverse action notice you can copy and adapt. Bracketed choices cover the three trigger situations, denial, tougher terms, withdrawn offer, and the four required elements are baked in so none of them gets dropped in editing.

Paragraph 3 is the one landlords are tempted to delete because it reads oddly, and it is a verbatim statutory requirement. Leave it in.

How to fill it out, and the reason question

The screening company’s block deserves a minute of care, since the whole notice fails its purpose if the applicant cannot reach the agency. Copy the name, address, and phone number from the report itself or the service’s compliance page rather than from memory; the large screening brands operate under corporate names that do not match their logos. If your service provides a pre-filled adverse action insert, its contact block is usually reliable, and this template’s structure still applies around it.

Then the question every landlord asks: do I have to give my reasons? Under 1681m(a) the required statement actually runs the other way, you must say the agency cannot give specific reasons, and the statute stops short of forcing you to volunteer your own. Plenty of landlords add a short factual one anyway, “income-to-rent ratio below our published criterion,” since it cuts confusion and follow-up calls. Anyone doing that should keep the reason tied to written screening criteria and identical in kind between applicants, because a reason invented per-applicant is worse than none.

Timing has the same shape: the statute sets the duty, not a deadline, and the practical rule is promptly, with the decision itself. The notice sent alongside the rejection or the revised offer costs one email. The notice reconstructed six months later, during a dispute, costs considerably more.

The three trigger moments in a rental workflow

Mapped onto an ordinary application pipeline, tenant screening adverse action fires in three places. The obvious trigger leads: the application comes in, the screening report comes back, and the answer is no, the classic rental application denial. If the report played any part, the notice goes out with the no.

Conditional approval is the sneaky one, the yes-but. Yes, but with a co-signer. Yes, but with the maximum deposit, or a shorter initial term. Where the but traces to the report, each of those is an adverse or unfavorable change in terms, squarely inside 1681a(k), and it takes the same notice. This is the trigger small landlords miss almost universally, because nothing about a conditional yes feels adverse from the sending side.

And there is the withdrawn offer, where approval went out, a late or updated report changed the picture, and the offer got pulled. Same duty, same notice. Here the paper trail matters doubly, because a rescinded approval invites harder feelings and closer scrutiny than a plain rejection ever will.

Delivery, records, and the applicant’s next move

Delivery is undemanding by statute, oral, written, or electronic, and demanding in practice, because the notice is only worth what you can later prove. Email satisfies the electronic option and produces its own receipt; a mailed letter does the same more slowly. Under the E-SIGN Act, an electronic record cannot be denied legal effect solely because it is electronic, per 15 U.S.C. 7001, so the emailed notice with a completed delivery record is a perfectly durable artifact. Keep the copy with the application file, next to the report authorization and the screening criteria you applied.

For the applicant reading one of these adverse action letters, the CFPB’s guidance lays out the path, and it is worth knowing from the landlord’s chair too. The free copy request goes to the screening agency within the 60-day window. The report gets read for errors, the wrong person’s eviction, the paid balance shown open, and errors get disputed with the agency, which must investigate. A corrected report sometimes reverses the outcome; landlords who leave the door open for that (“we will revisit the application if the report changes”) lose nothing and occasionally recover a good tenant the data had misrepresented.

Where fair housing meets the FCRA

Two compliance regimes touch every rejection, and they answer different questions. The FCRA governs the how: a report was used, so the notice is owed, regardless of how sound the decision was. Fair housing law governs the why: the decision itself cannot rest on protected characteristics, whatever the paperwork looks like. A perfect adverse action notice does not launder a discriminatory decision, and a lawful decision is still an FCRA violation if the notice never went out.

The practical bridge between the two is written screening criteria: income ratio, credit threshold, history standard, documentation list, applied identically to every file. Consistent criteria give your adverse action notices something objective to sit on, keep the optional reason line factual, and make the difference between “we decided” and “we applied the standard” visible on paper. Our screening guide covers building that rubric; this notice is that rubric’s output on a bad day.

Mistakes that turn a form letter into liability

The dominant mistake is silence: the decision goes out, the notice never does, and the file shows a report was pulled and used. Nothing about that failure is cured by time. Next comes the hollow notice, sent without the agency’s contact block or without the rights paragraph, which delivers the bad news while withholding the exact information the statute exists to provide.

Blaming the bureau is a quieter error. “The screening company rejected you” is both false and the precise opposite of the mandatory statement; the agency compiled, you decided, and the notice must say so. And the conditional-approval blind spot rounds out the list: the higher deposit, the required guarantor, the shortened term, the moved-up start date, each sent cheerfully with no notice attached, each an adverse action in the statute’s plain terms.

The fix costs almost nothing. One template, the agency block copied carefully, a delivery record, a copy in the file. An adverse action notice is a single page that treats the applicant like someone entitled to see the evidence, which they are, and it converts a federal compliance duty into thirty seconds of routine. Send it every time the report touches the outcome, and this is one law you never think about again.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an adverse action notice for a rental application?

It is the message federal law requires a landlord to send when a consumer report, in rental practice the tenant screening report, influences a decision against an applicant. Contents come straight from the Fair Credit Reporting Act: the screening company’s name, address, and phone number, the statement that the company did not make the decision and cannot give the specific reasons, the 60-day free-copy right, and the dispute right. Whoever used the report carries the duty, the landlord, and one factor among several is enough to trigger it.

Do landlords really have to send an adverse action notice?

Yes, whenever a screening report played any part in the decision. The duty in 15 U.S.C. 1681m falls on whoever used the report, with no small-landlord exemption anywhere in it. Oral, written, or electronic notice all satisfy the statute, which makes a compliant email enough, though written forms remain the only version you can later prove you sent. Skipping it does not undo anything, since the file still shows a report was pulled and a decision followed. The one-page letter sent with the decision is the entire cost of compliance.

Is requiring a co-signer or a bigger deposit an adverse action?

Under the FCRA’s definition, yes, when the screening report drove the requirement. The statute reaches an increase in any charge and any adverse or unfavorable change in terms, not only outright denials, and the FTC’s landlord guidance names these exact examples: requiring a co-signer on the lease, and requiring a deposit that would not be required for another applicant. The conditional yes feels like good news from the sending side, which is why this trigger gets missed. Send the notice along with the revised offer, and check your state’s deposit cap before raising the deposit at all.

Does the landlord have to say why the application was denied?

Oddly enough, the one statement 1681m(a) makes mandatory points the other way: the notice must say the screening agency did not make the decision and cannot provide the specific reasons. Nothing in the statute forces the landlord to volunteer reasons of their own. Many landlords add a short factual one anyway, tied to written screening criteria, because it cuts down confusion and phone calls. If you do, keep it consistent across applicants and grounded in the criteria you actually applied; an improvised reason is worse than none, and a discriminatory one is a different law’s problem entirely.

What can an applicant do after receiving an adverse action notice?

Use the rights printed on it. Request the free copy of the report from the screening agency named in the notice, within the 60-day window. Read it for errors, the wrong person’s record, a paid debt shown open, an address that was never yours, an eviction that is not yours, and dispute inaccuracies with the agency, which must investigate. The CFPB’s guidance walks through the same steps from the consumer side. A corrected report sometimes changes the outcome, and it always cleans the file for the next application, which is worth the effort even when this rental is gone.

Elena Rodriguez

Elena Rodriguez writes about real estate and landlord-tenant law for ClearLegalTips. She focuses on making leases, security deposits, and rental rules understandable for tenants and small landlords handling them without a lawyer.