Most places ask for one's month's rent to cover an unfurnished property.

There is no law in place for such aspects of the lettings industry. Its a free market and lettings agencies will charge whatever they can get away with. It also depends where you are. I've seen admin fees of £25 per person aswell as £175 per person, ON TOP of the costs charged by referees, like banks and credits reference agencies, which are then passed onto you in full, whether your reference are acceptable or not, whether you secure the property or not. The "admin" fee is pure profit as it rarely involves anything more than a few phones calls, faxes, emails, etc. This is how agencies make money from both landlords and tenants, for frankly not doing very much. By the way, a private landlord can also access banks & credit reference agencies directly if they want - they don't have to use a lettings agency for just this process. For inventories, the cost can also vary as per the factors above, but I wouldn't use allow the property to be inspected by the lettings agency nor for them to draw up the inventory. This is a specialised job and you should go where the agency uses an independent inventory clerk for inventory compiling and both check-in and check-out. Expect to pay for either check-in or out but not both. Independence (genuine) ensures impartiality. Ask around for all charges/costs before deciding where to go. It shouldn't take you more than 30 minutes to see who is charging what for what.

in melbourne (i keep saying this because every state in australia have differnt laws on realestate) the landlord has to pay the majourity of fee's, but i believe they charge between $5 and $25 dollars to access it, it costs them to access it, and it cost you for there time. As for inventory costs? if you mean when the property manager comes in and fill's out a condition report on the property? if so, that would cost afair bit, as it should take them an hour to fill out, because they should pick up everything. so its whatever there hourly rate is i believe (what people have done is they move in to a house with nice fridges and dishwashers and when they move out they take them and put crappy old ones in, which is why now they write down brand names and models of everything in the report)