Security Deposit Laws by State: Deadlines, Interest and Penalties

Updated August 6, 2026. Quick answer: every state on this table gives you a deadline and a penalty if the landlord misses it — but the deadlines run from 14 days to 31, and the penalties are built so differently that the same wrongful withholding is worth wildly different amounts depending on the state. The most useful thing to know is not the deadline. It is what the statute does to a landlord who blows it.

The finding: the penalty designs are not variations on a theme

Of the 6 states read at primary source, all 6 attach a consequence to wrongful withholding. They are not the same kind of consequence:

• A multiplier — California and New York cap statutory or punitive damages at twice the deposit; Oregon allows twice the amount withheld; Massachusetts goes to three times, plus interest, costs and attorney’s fees.
• A flat cap — Minnesota’s punitive damages are capped at $500 per deposit. On a $2,000 deposit that is a far weaker deterrent than a multiplier, and it is the one genuinely counterintuitive cell on this table: a bigger deposit does not buy a bigger penalty in Minnesota.
• Forfeiture of the argument itself — Washington is the outlier and the most severe. Miss the 30-day statement and the landlord is liable for the full deposit and may not assert any defence about retaining it in court. The deadline is not a penalty trigger there; it is the whole case.

That is the distinction worth citing: most states price the breach, Washington ends the dispute.

The column most people do not know exists

2 of the 6 states require the landlord to pay YOU interest on money you handed over. Massachusetts pays five per cent per year on deposits held a year or longer, payable at the end of each year of the tenancy — not at the end. Minnesota pays one per cent simple, noncompounded.

Tenants routinely leave this behind because nobody sends a bill for it.

The table

What a landlord may take up front

3 of the 6 cap the deposit in the statute, and each caps it at one month’s rent — with carve-outs worth knowing. California lets a small landlord (a natural person, or an LLC whose members are all natural persons, owning no more than two residential properties totalling four units) take two months’ rent — but never from a service member. New York excepts seasonal units and owner-occupied cooperatives.

The remaining states here set no statutory ceiling in the sections read. Those cells are blank because the statute is silent, not because we did not look — a distinction most tables do not bother to draw.

Every row, quoted from the statute

Each state is quoted from its own code with the date it was read, so the table can be checked rather than trusted.

California

Cal. Civ. Code §1950.5, read 2026-08-06.

• cap: “a landlord shall not demand or receive security, however denominated, in an amount or value in excess of an amount equal to one month’s rent”
• deadline: “No later than 21 calendar days after the tenant has vacated the premises”
• itemization: “an itemized statement indicating the basis for, and the amount of, any security received and the disposition of the security, and shall return any remaining portion of the security to the tenant”
• penalty: “may subject the landlord or the landlord’s successors in interest to statutory damages of up to twice the amount of the security, in addition to actual damages”

Massachusetts

Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 186, §15B, read 2026-08-06.

• cap: “a security deposit equal to the first month’s rent”
• deadline: “within thirty days after the termination of occupancy”
• interest: “pay interest at the rate of five per cent per year”
• penalty: “awarded damages in an amount equal to three times the amount of such security deposit or balance thereof”

Minnesota

Minn. Stat. §504B.178, read 2026-08-06.

• interest: “simple noncompounded interest at the rate of one percent per annum”
• deadline: “within three weeks after termination of the tenancy”
• penalty: “punitive damages not to exceed $500 for each deposit in addition to the damages”

Minnesota sets no statutory cap on the deposit amount in this section; the cell is blank because the statute is silent, not because it was not read.

New York

N.Y. Gen. Oblig. Law §7-108, read 2026-08-06.

• cap: “No deposit or advance shall exceed the amount of one month’s rent”
• deadline: “Within fourteen days after the tenant has vacated the premises, the landlord shall provide the tenant with an itemized statement”
• penalty: “shall be liable for punitive damages of up to twice the amount of the deposit or advance”

Oregon

Or. Rev. Stat. §90.300(12), (13), (16), read 2026-08-06.

• deadline: “within 31 days after the tenancy terminates and the tenant delivers possession”
• accounting: “within 31 days after the tenancy terminates and the tenant delivers possession the landlord shall give to the tenant a written accounting”
• penalty: “the tenant may recover the money due in an amount equal to twice the amount”

Washington

Wash. Rev. Code §59.18.280, read 2026-08-06.

• deadline: “Within 30 days after the termination of the rental agreement and vacation of the premises”
• statement: “the landlord shall give a full and specific statement of the basis for retaining any of the deposit, and any documentation required by (b) of this subsection, together with the payment of any refund due the tenant”

Washington’s remedy is unusually structured: missing the deadline forfeits the deposit AND the landlord’s ability to argue about it, which is a stronger consequence than a damages multiplier alone.

Cite this

Clear Money Guide, Security Deposit Laws by State, 2026. https://clearmoneyguide.com/security-deposit-laws-by-state/. Compiled from state landlord-tenant statutes read at primary source on the dates shown. Reusable under CC BY 4.0.

What this does not cover yet

Wave one: 6 states, not fifty — and published at that size on purpose. Every row here was read at the state’s own statute; a fifty-row table assembled from other people’s summaries would look more complete and be worth less. The remaining states are the next wave.

Other limits, plainly. Local ordinances frequently add requirements the state statute does not (separate escrow accounts, higher interest, shorter deadlines) and none is covered here. Pet deposits, last-month’s rent held separately, and the normal-wear-and-tear line that decides most real disputes are governed largely by case law we have not read. Nothing here is legal advice.

If you are on the other side of these statutes — a retiree who has become a landlord, often without planning to — the same rules read very differently: converting a home to a rental and what happens to the property at death.

See methodology and corrections. General information about published law, not legal advice. No advertising appears on this page and we earn nothing from it.

The nine states where a single deadline number is wrong

Nine rows carry ⚠ above, because the number in the deadline column is conditional and publishing it bare would misstate the law. These are not footnotes; they change the answer.

• Kentucky — the URLTA is not statewide. It binds only the localities that adopted it by ordinance; outside those there is no statutory regime at all.
• Tennessee — the chapter applies only in counties over 75,000 population. In rural counties none of that row’s rules apply as state law.
• Illinois — the state deadline binds only landlords with 5+ units; interest only at 25+ units held over six months. Chicago’s ordinance is a separate municipal layer.
• District of Columbia — two-step: 45 days to refund or give written notice of intent to withhold, then 30 more days for the balance with itemisation.
• Oklahoma — the 45 days is gated on the tenant’s written demand, and the deposit reverts to the landlord if no demand is made within six months.
• New Mexico — the cap depends on lease term: under a year, one month’s rent; a year or more, no fixed cap, but anything above one month’s rent triggers mandatory annual interest.
• Wyoming — whichever is later of 30 days after termination or 15 days after the forwarding address arrives, plus 30 more if there is damage.
• West Virginia — the shorter of 60 days after termination or 45 days after a new tenant occupies, plus a 15-day extension for contractor repairs exceeding the deposit.
• Utah — the $100 penalty is not automatic: the renter must serve statutory notice and the owner must fail a five-business-day cure window.

“No cap” means two different things here, and we are not merging them

Six jurisdictions — Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Wyoming — are marked No cap (verified absence): a researcher read the chapter and confirmed no maximum exists.

Fourteen — Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin — are marked not recorded. Most are probably also verified absences, but they were written under an earlier convention where a blank meant “no cap”, and a blank cannot distinguish “confirmed there is no cap” from “could not find out”.

So we show them differently rather than printing “none” 20 times and hoping. If you are relying on the absence of a cap in one of those fourteen, read the statute rather than this row. Normalising them needs a per-row read, not a find-and-replace, and it has not been done.

Five widely republished figures this table refuses

Each was checked against the statutory text and is not in this table, which is more useful than any row in it:

• Tennessee’s “30 days” is a deadline for the landlord to discover damage, not a deadline to return your deposit. Now verified at the enacting act itself, read 2026-08-07. Public Chapter 272 of 2011 rewrote the subsection to say that repair costs “may only be recovered if the damage was discovered by the landlord prior to the earlier of: (1) Thirty (30) days after the tenant vacated or abandoned the premises; or (2) Seven (7) days after a new tenant takes possession of the premises.” That clock runs against the landlord. A tenant who reads the republished version and waits thirty days for a refund is waiting on a rule that does not exist in that form. What we still do not say is that Tennessee has no return deadline anywhere — the act we read rewrote four subsections of that section and we could not get the consolidated current text from a state host, so the absence is not ours to assert. This row was published as unconfirmed this morning and upgraded the same day when the primary source was reached.
• South Dakota is 21 days, not 14. Pre-2026 sources are stale.
• Washington is 30 days, not 21 or 14 — changed in 2023, and both older numbers are still widely republished. Its double damages are also discretionary and only for intentional refusal.
• Washington’s “25% of first month’s rent” is a cap on HOLDING FEES, not on deposits. It is easy to mistake for a deposit cap and it is not one.
• Idaho has no 3× penalty. Aggregators cite one; it is not in the statute, verified subsection by subsection.
• Wisconsin’s double damages are not in the deposit statute — the remedy comes from a different chapter and depends on the tenancy being within that chapter’s scope.

Note what these have in common: every one of them is a number that is correct somewhere else in the law and has been attached to the wrong question. That is how this category goes wrong — not by invention, but by transplant.

How these rows are sourced, including where that is weaker than it looks

Forty rows are statute-tier, seven official and four secondary. But statute-tier does not always mean we read the legislature’s own site. Fourteen of those forty were read from a commercial code aggregator rather than a state source: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, New Jersey, New Mexico, Tennessee, Texas and Utah.

We are naming them because an aggregator is reliable for a stable rule and dangerous for a moving one. We have already seen one serve superseded statutory text under a “current through” label. Every correction this table publishes as a finding — South Dakota, Washington twice, Idaho, Wisconsin and now Tennessee — was read from a state’s own legislature or Secretary of State, never from the aggregator that supplied the row.

We had ten of these rows independently re-checked, and one of them beat us

After this table was published we sent its ten riskiest claims back out to be verified against primary sources from scratch — the corrections, the conditional deadlines, and the scope limits. Not a random sample: the rows where being wrong would cost a reader money. Nine came back confirmed. One could not be checked at all.

The one that could not: the District of Columbia’s 45-day-then-30-day structure lives in a regulation (14 DCMR §§ 308-311), not in the D.C. Code, and no government host would serve that regulation’s text to us — the official portal renders through JavaScript and the agencies that link to it route straight back to the same portal. The D.C. Code itself confirms the rule lives there, by citing it. So we have the right address for the rule and not the rule’s own words, and a private mirror was not accepted as a substitute.

Tennessee was the row that changed. It was published this morning as unconfirmed; the check reached the state’s Public Acts archive, and the finding above is now stated plainly. The scope limit was confirmed the same way — two later acts moved the threshold to counties over 75,000 by the 2010 census and then deleted “or any subsequent federal census”, which is why that number does not drift with population.

We are publishing the failure alongside the passes because a verification pass that only reports its successes is not a verification pass.

Coverage, and what is still missing

All 51 jurisdictions are now on this page, up from six. Sixteen rows carry an honest-gap null, each with a reason recorded. Deposit caps in fourteen states are shown as “not recorded” rather than “none”, per the section above.

Not covered: municipal ordinances, which are a real second layer in several states (Chicago is the largest example and is deliberately excluded) · rent-controlled and subsidised tenancies · commercial leases · anything about recovering unpaid rent, which is outside what this site covers.