Missouri is one of the states where reading the statute leaves you with the wrong impression, because what you find is mostly silence. There is no statewide cap on an application fee, no statewide refund rule, and no prescribed disclosure at the application stage. Silence is not permission to be careless: the federal rules still apply, the deposit chapter still constrains anything you hold, and several Missouri cities have written their own rules. What changes is that the document and the written criteria are doing the work, rather than a statute you can point at.
The statute is quiet where other states are loud
Missouri's landlord and tenant provisions sit across chapters 441 and 535 of the revised statutes, and they deal with the tenancy, the deposit and the remedies rather than with the selection of a tenant. There is no application fee ceiling, no statutory refund window and no required application-stage disclosure. A landlord who assumes that means the stage is unregulated is half right and half exposed, because the federal layer and the deposit rules both reach it.
The deposit rule is what constrains a holding payment
Chapter 535 limits the security deposit a landlord may demand, requires it to be held for the tenant and sets the window and the itemisation for returning it. Money taken at the application stage to hold a unit does not escape that by being called something else: once the tenancy begins and the money is applied, it counts. The clean answer is to keep the fee, any holding payment and the deposit as three separate lines on the form, the receipt and the ledger, so the character of each is decided in writing before there is a reason to argue about it.
Local ordinances are where Missouri's real variation lives
Kansas City and St Louis have each legislated in areas the state has not, and the detail changes. A landlord with units in more than one Missouri jurisdiction cannot run one process and assume it travels, and the check to make is at city level rather than state level. Note on the property record which jurisdiction a unit sits in, because that is the field the rest of the process should be keyed to.
Write the criteria down, because nothing else will
Where a statute prescribes little, the defensible process is the one that is consistent and recorded: the criteria fixed before the unit is advertised, the same questions asked of everyone, the same order of consideration, and the outcome recorded against the criteria rather than against an impression. Federal fair housing law reaches the terms on which a rental is offered, and a written standard applied the same way every time is what an enquiry is answered with.
Questions people ask about Missouri rental application
Is there a cap on a Missouri rental application fee?
There is no statewide cap and no statewide refund requirement. Check the ordinance for the city the unit is in, and set your own written policy, because in the absence of a statutory figure your policy is the standard you will be held to.
Can I keep a holding payment if the applicant walks away?
That depends on what the payment was agreed to be, which is why the form should say so in terms. Keep it separate from the security deposit, because once it is applied to a deposit the deposit chapter's limits and return duties reach it.
What does Missouri require me to disclose to an applicant?
Nothing at the application stage by statute, beyond the federal lead paint disclosure for pre-1978 housing. Local ordinances and the lease itself carry the rest.