There should be a landlord prescreen tool for tenants. Then tenants can know whether or not the landlord in question has the proper building permits.

Not just permits, but also whether they are a giant asshole.

Edit: I guess the person downvoting has never experienced an asshole landlord.

You should be able to get this from the city. For example, it looks like Portland has a website:

https://www.portlandmaps.com/detail/permits/NWC-1ST-SW-WASHI...

Title insurance companies also collect that information, so there should be a way for a motivated buyer to get a feed for the data.

Ignoring those, you could also ask the landlord for a copy of any recent building inspections. Smaller ones might not keep very good records, though. This is probably the easiest option.

This is neat. I would flip the payment to the applicant as that is the common practice with landlord applications in the US.

Is this at all checked out against any fair housing laws?

As far as I know the questions are in accordance with fair housing laws.

It'd be nice to be able to see the exact wording of the questions prior to signing up, some kind of demo at least. That is a huge sticking point.

Thanks for the feedback. I played around with having some screenshots on the homepage but ended up not including it. I like the idea of a quick demo though.