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