For renting apartments, it's just like this in NYC. But nothing like this in most of the country. I rented in Pittsburgh for a few years in college, and a suburb north of LA for a couple years after that, and the application documentation was much much less, pretty much just security deposit.

The issue in places like NYC (and some German cities like Berlin I gather) is that the extreme tenant protection laws mean that landlords have to go to extreme lengths to protect themselves from tenants. In NYC you could have a tenant not paying, damaging the property, and pushing out neighboring tenants, for well over a year before you can force them out, if they're ornery enough. It could kill your business, and it probably did kill the business of most landlords who didn't switch to extreme draconian documentation requirements in applications: multiple tax returns, multiple statements from all bank accounts, proof of employment, records of previous residences, contact info for previous landlords ...

A US background check for most jobs is generally just a literal check on whether you've been charged with any crimes, and doesn't go much more detailed than that.

There is a fundamental difference between being required to furnish the information yourself and the 2nd party asking a 3rd party for information.

If the 2nd party requires you to pay for their request to the 3rd party then I'd say there isn't a difference.

Although I mean unless you've established at least a correlation between some piece of information and say ability to pay then you really shouldn't be asking for it ...