Rental Application Terms

The simple version

1. What the Application Service is, and is not

The Application Service is a document assembly and communication tool. It works in two ways. In an agent's application, a licensed real estate agent invites you to apply for a specific apartment, sets the document requirements for that apartment, and receives your assembled application; Leaseswap's role is limited to helping you collect, organize, check, and deliver the documents the agent asked for. In your renter profile (Section 12), you prepare your own application with no agent involved, and you decide where it goes.

Leaseswap is not a real estate broker, real estate agent, salesperson, or any other licensee under New York Real Property Law § 440 et seq., and is not a landlord or property manager. We do not decide, recommend, or influence whether any application is approved or rejected, we do not negotiate lease terms, and we do not set the document requirements for any apartment. Those requirements come from the agent and the landlord, and every decision about your application is made by them.

2. Applicants, co-applicants, and guarantors

An application may include several people: a primary applicant, one or more co-applicants who will also sign the lease, and one or more guarantors. Each person participates through their own private invitation link, signs in with their own account, and uploads their own documents.

• Your documents are never visible to other people on the application. A guarantor's files do not pass through the applicant, and the applicant's files are not shown to the guarantor.
• An invitation may only be claimed by the email address it was sent to. Do not forward your invitation link to anyone else.
• If you invite someone else to the application (for example, a guarantor), you represent that they have agreed to be contacted by us for that purpose.

3. Your documents

When you upload a document or provide information through the Application Service, you represent and warrant that:

• The document is yours, or you are legally authorized to provide it.
• The document and the information you provide are genuine, accurate, and complete to the best of your knowledge, and have not been altered or fabricated.
• You will promptly correct or replace anything that becomes inaccurate while your application is open.

Submitting falsified, altered, or fraudulent documents is grounds for immediate termination of your access to the Application Service, will be disclosed to the agent handling your application, and may be reported to the appropriate authorities.

4. No credit checks, no consumer reports, no tenant screening

Leaseswap is not a consumer reporting agency as defined by the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and the Application Service is not a tenant screening service. We do not independently obtain or create consumer reports, we do not run credit or background checks on anyone, and we do not evaluate, score, rank, or make any judgment about any applicant, co-applicant, or guarantor. The Application Service stores and transmits documents supplied by applicants and agents at their direction.

• If an apartment's requirements include a credit report, you obtain your own report and upload it. Our zero-retention document check processes only clerical document facts such as the bureau, your name, report date, and legibility. We do not extract, store as metadata, summarize, score, or evaluate credit scores, tradelines, balances, or account details.
• If you sign a credit or background check authorization form, that authorization runs between you and the agent or landlord who requested it. Any check performed under it is performed by them or their screening provider, under their own legal obligations, not by Leaseswap.

5. AI-assisted document review

The Application Service uses AI to guide you through the checklist, check uploaded documents for completeness, legibility, and consistency, and assemble the final packet with a factual cover summary. This processing runs on Amazon Bedrock (Anthropic Claude models) under a zero data retention configuration: the model provider does not store your documents and does not train on them. In your renter profile (Section 12), the same setup reads only two facts from each document you add: what kind of document it is and the date that shows how recent it is. It reads nothing else from it, never evaluates you, and you see what it read and can change it. The rest of this section describes agents' applications.

• The AI performs clerical checks only. It does not evaluate you as a tenant, and it is designed to refuse questions about approval odds or tenant quality. Questions it cannot answer are escalated to the agent.
• AI review can make mistakes. A document the AI marks as complete may still be questioned by the agent or landlord, and a document it flags may in fact be fine. The agent reviews your application before anything is sent to a landlord.
• By using the Application Service, you consent to this AI-assisted processing of the documents and information you provide, as described here and in Section 2 of the Privacy Policy.

6. Fair housing

Apart from the questions your own renter profile asks to fill in your application (described below), we do not ask about, collect, or consider race, color, religion, national origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, marital status, familial status, source of income, military status, immigration status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, New York State, or New York City law, and the Application Service is designed not to surface such characteristics to agents beyond what the documents the agent requested inherently contain. Agents and landlords are independently bound by fair housing laws, including the federal Fair Housing Act and the New York City Human Rights Law. If you believe you have experienced discrimination in connection with an application, contact us at [email protected] and consider contacting the NYC Commission on Human Rights.

Your renter profile asks for your date of birth, your household, and where your income comes from (for example, a job, benefits, or savings), because a rental application asks for them and because your income source decides which documents prove it. We never use these answers to evaluate you, and they reach a landlord only on an application you choose to send.

7. Delivery of your application

Your assembled packet is delivered to the agent who invited you, and the agent forwards it to the landlord. By submitting your application, you direct us to make that delivery. Once your packet has been delivered, the agent's and landlord's handling of it is governed by their own legal and professional obligations, not by these Rental Application Terms. You may withdraw an application that has not yet been decided; withdrawal stops future deliveries but cannot recall copies already delivered. We never deliver anything from your renter profile: you download your application and documents and send them yourself.

8. Retention and deletion

We delete your uploaded documents and the compiled packet 30 days after your application reaches a final state (forwarded, accepted, rejected, withdrawn, or expired), and we purge the personal data our systems extracted from them at the same time. Deleting your Leaseswap account also deletes your packet documents. Copies already delivered to the agent or landlord are outside our systems and are not affected by this deletion.

Your renter profile, its documents, and your signed applications are kept for 6 months after you last update them. We email you 30 days before anything is deleted, and you can choose to keep them. You can delete any document, any application, your answers, or your whole renter profile at any time. Deleting an application also deletes its unsigned document from our e-signature service; for an application you already signed, that service keeps its record of the signature (who signed, when, and the signed document) as evidence of the signing. Copies you have downloaded or sent are outside our systems and are not affected.

9. Fees

The Application Service is free for applicants, co-applicants, and guarantors. We do not charge you an application fee, and we do not collect or hold any rent, deposit, or other payment in connection with your application. Any lawful fee associated with your application (for example, a statutorily capped application fee) is charged by and paid to the landlord or their agent directly, subject to New York law.

10. Acceptable use

In addition to the acceptable use rules in the Terms of Service, you agree not to:

• Upload documents belonging to another person without their authorization
• Misrepresent your identity, income, employment, or housing history
• Share your invitation link or attempt to claim an invitation sent to someone else
• Attempt to extract, manipulate, or interfere with the AI assistant, or use it for any purpose other than completing your application

11. Disclaimers

The Application Service is provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis. We do not guarantee that any application will be reviewed, accepted, or acted on by any agent or landlord, that an apartment will remain available while you apply, or that AI review will catch every issue with your documents. The disclaimers, limitations of liability, and indemnification provisions of the Terms of Service apply to your use of the Application Service.

12. Your renter profile

Your renter profile lets you prepare your own rental application without an agent. You answer a few questions, we show a checklist of documents that commonly back up your answers, you keep those documents in your profile, and for each apartment we fill in the Leaseswap rental application from your answers for you to review and sign.

• Only you can see your renter profile. We do not send it to anyone or show it to agents or landlords. Nothing leaves it until you download it and send it yourself.
• The checklist is not a requirement set by any landlord and not a judgment about you. Section 4 applies in full: we do not run checks on you or score you.
• AI reads each document's type and date, as described in Section 5, so your checklist knows what is current. If it cannot read a date, or reads one wrong, you set it yourself; the date you set always wins.
• Your renter profile does not ask for your Social Security number, and the application we fill in has no field for it. Documents you upload, such as W-2s and tax returns, may show it; you may cover all but the last four digits before you upload them.
• You sign applications through Documenso, an e-signature service we run on our own servers. The signed copy is stored in your renter profile.
• Section 3 applies to everything you add: it must be yours, genuine, and accurate.

13. Other terms

Except as expressly modified by these Rental Application Terms, your use of the Application Service is subject to the Leaseswap Terms of Service, including without limitation provisions regarding governing law, venue, dispute resolution, modification of terms, and definitions. We may update these Rental Application Terms as the feature evolves; material changes will be presented to you for acceptance the next time you use the Application Service.

14. Contact

Questions about these Rental Application Terms can be sent to [email protected]. Questions about your data can be sent to [email protected].