It’s necessary in many markets IMO. Otherwise people would just spam applications at every apartment that satisfies their broad filters.

So charge per application, with the money going towards first month's rent, if successful.

That’s how it usually works

I've never seen it go towards first month's rent, but that's not the point. The money isn't going to the landlord or the tenant, but to the data aggregators.

A lot of it is highly manual on the back end, calling and faxing random state agencies. It’s not like it’s a 90% operating margin business or a lot of companies would be getting in and driving pricing down.

Pretty sure it's infinite% margin when the same report is sent again for another application fee.

If you believe this you should get into the business

That's what a lot of places do

Nonsense. Spamming applications is strictly better than spamming low-information contact requests, and nobody seems to mind that. Instead you'll get structured applicant information that can be filtered against.