MMcD

+1 for Nolo, in general...

It's a legal web site for the layman which lays out your rights on a whole host of issues. Very helpful..

username.exe

In California we offered to pay the deposit immediately, and showed them a copy of our bank balance which holds the proceeds from the sale of our house in the UK.
They were completely satisfied at that point, even though we hadn't secured jobs yet.

username.exe

This is great! I'll be catching up on a few areas over the weekend, for sure.

Pulaski

To summarize, the rules, regulations, and practices of renting vary enormously from city to city, with NYC being apparently the most formalized and regulated, as well as one of the most expensive places to rent, with application fees and broker/agent fees.

The area where I live is the polar extreme, with little enforcement of whatever rules there are, low, or sometimes no application fee, and not only is there no need to go through an agent, in practice most estate agents here don't even touch rental properties.