Security Deposit Itemized List: 14 to 45 Days

Nothing about the itemized statement feels urgent while you are writing it. The tenant is gone, the carpet is still drying, the cleaner has not sent an invoice, and the letter looks like a job for the weekend.

The urgency is all on the other side of the deadline, and it is not proportionate. A Texas landlord who has neither refunded nor itemized on or before the 30th day after surrender is presumed to have acted in bad faith, and the chapter then prices bad faith twice over: bad-faith retention costs $100, plus three times the portion wrongfully withheld, plus the tenant's attorney's fees, while a bad-faith failure to produce the list forfeits the right to withhold at all (Property Code § 92.109, subsections (a), (b) and (d)). The same delay in Maryland forfeits the right to withhold anything. In Washington it makes you liable for the whole deposit and, unless you can show the delay was outside your control, bars you from even arguing the claim you meant to make.

None of that turns on whether the carpet was really burned. That is the thing to understand before you start counting days: in these statutes the deduction and the deadline are separate questions, and losing the second one erases your answer to the first.

I read six states directly at their legislatures' own sites on 8 September 2026 — California, Texas, Florida, Washington, Arizona, Maryland — and every figure below is linked to the section it came from. Two rented houses in the Midwest, no licence, no law degree. These numbers belong to those six states and stop at their borders, and deposit statutes get amended often enough that the link matters more than my summary of it.

The clock starts on an event, and the six states do not pick the same one

Almost everyone counts from the wrong day, and the wrong day is usually the day the keys came back. Key return appears in none of these six statutes.

What each one actually says starts the count:

• California — "after the tenant has vacated the premises" (Civ. Code § 1950.5(h)(1)).
• Texas — "after the date the tenant surrenders the premises" (§ 92.103(a)), with the obligation itself held back until the tenant gives a written forwarding address (§ 92.107).
• Florida — the duty arises "upon the vacating of the premises for termination of the rental agreement," but both counts run "after the termination of the rental agreement" (§ 83.49(3)(a)). Not the day they moved out. If the lease ran to 31 August and the tenant was gone on the 12th, the Florida clock still starts on the 31st.
• Washington — "after the termination of the rental agreement and vacation of the premises," or, if the tenant abandons, 30 days after the landlord learns of the abandonment (RCW 59.18.280(1)(a)). Both events, not either.
• Arizona — three conditions, all of which have to happen: "termination of the tenancy and delivery of possession and demand by the tenant" (A.R.S. § 33-1321(D)).
• Maryland — "after the end of the tenancy" (Real Prop. § 8-203(e)(1)), with a separate 45-day count for a tenant who was evicted or who abandoned and then demanded the deposit in writing.

Two of them start on a date that arrives by itself rather than one you can see coming. Washington's abandonment branch runs from the day you learned of the abandonment, so the count opens on a realisation. Maryland's eviction branch runs from the day the tenant's written demand lands, which can be weeks after you changed the locks.

One of them can also never start at all. Arizona's "demand by the tenant" is a real precondition, which is why an Arizona owner sometimes holds a deposit for months without technically being late. That is not a reason to wait. It only means the trigger is not where you assumed it was.

Six deadlines, counted six ways

Washington deserves a second look if you have been working from an older summary. Until 2023 the number was 21, and the bill that moved it — HB 1074, enacted as 2023 c 331 § 4, effective 23 July 2023 — did the job by striking the words "twenty-one" and writing 30 in their place three times inside subsection (1). A page written in 2022 will hand you 21 with total confidence.

Florida also has a size rule that catches owners of one or two units, and it cuts the friendly way. The requirement to tell the tenant where the deposit is being held — § 83.49(2), the account-disclosure notice — "does not apply to any landlord who rents fewer than five individual dwelling units." The claim notice in § 83.49(3) carries no such exemption. Being small excuses you from the first duty and not the second, which is the reverse of what most owners assume when they hear there is a small-landlord carve-out. Where the money has to sit in the meantime is its own subject, set out in caps, separate accounts and interest.

What has to be in the envelope, and what most letters leave out

"Itemized" is doing a great deal of work in these statutes, and the states mean noticeably different things by it.

Texas asks for the least: the balance of the deposit "together with a written description and itemized list of all deductions" (§ 92.104(c)). No receipts, no photographs. There is even an exception — no list is required if the tenant owed rent at surrender and there is no controversy about the amount owed.

Florida prescribes the words. Section 83.49(3)(a) prints the notice form and requires your letter to be in substantially that shape: a claim in a stated amount, the reason for it, a citation to the statute, and a warning that the tenant must object in writing within 15 days after receiving the notice, sent to the landlord's address. After that the timetable runs on rails. If no objection arrives inside those 15 days you may deduct, and you must remit the balance within 30 days of the date of your notice.

Arizona wants "an itemized list of all deductions together with the amount due and payable to the tenant." It also gives the tenant 60 days after mailing to dispute, after which the list is "deemed valid and final."

Washington raises the bar to a "full and specific statement of the basis for retaining any of the deposit" plus copies of estimates received or invoices paid to substantiate the charges. Where you or your own employee did the work, RCW 59.18.280(1)(b) wants the time spent and the reasonable hourly rate charged. Subsection (1)(c) then removes whole categories: nothing for ordinary wear, nothing for carpet cleaning unless you can document wear beyond ordinary use, and nothing at all for fixtures, equipment, appliances and furnishings whose condition "was not reasonably documented in the written checklist" at move-in.

California now has the longest list of the six. Section 1950.5(h) requires the itemized statement plus a copy of the bill, invoice or receipt behind every charge, and where you did the work yourself, the time spent and your hourly rate. Since 1 April 2025, subdivision (g)(2) also requires photographs taken after possession came back but before any repair or cleaning, plus photographs after that work is finished, and those photographs go out with the statement. Two escapes exist: deductions for repairs and cleaning totalling $125 or less need no documentation, and a tenant may waive it in a signed writing made at or after the termination notice. Neither escape survives a question, though — under (h)(5) a tenant who asks for the documents within 14 calendar days of receiving the statement is entitled to them, and you have 14 days from that request to send them. If a repair genuinely cannot be finished inside the 21 days, you may deduct a good-faith estimate — and then you have 14 calendar days after the work is done or the paperwork arrives to send the real numbers.

Maryland requires a written list of the damages claimed "together with an itemized statement of the cost incurred," and § 8-203(j) adds that the statement must include supporting documentation identifying the materials or services. An estimate is allowed under (j)(2), but (k) attaches a tail to it: notify the tenant in writing when the repairs are done, enclose the final invoice, and refund any excess over actual cost within 30 days of completing them.

Read those side by side and the real pattern is easy to miss, because it is not about strictness. It is about who carries a gap in the paper. Texas lets you assert a number. Washington, California and Maryland make you prove it inside the same envelope, and a deduction with nothing behind it is a deduction you have already lost.

The one dispute I have lost had nothing to do with a deadline. It came apart on the arithmetic behind a single line, and the full account of it sits on the wear-and-tear page where that arithmetic belongs. What carries over to this page is the timing alone. Half these statutes now make the showing travel inside the envelope instead of waiting for somebody to ask for it, which moves weeks of work forward into the days right after the tenant leaves.

A one-page format built for the strictest state on the list

No national form exists. But a letter built to satisfy California and Washington contains everything Texas, Arizona, Florida and Maryland ask for, so this is the shape worth keeping, adjusted for the state the house actually sits in.

Header block. Date sent. Tenant names, all of them. Unit address. The date the tenancy terminated and the date possession came back — write both, because in four of these six states the deadline turns on which one you are counting from.

Line 1, the deposit received. One figure, matching the receipt you gave at move-in.

The deduction lines. One per item, and each carries four things: what the item is, why it is beyond ordinary use, which enclosed document supports it, and the amount.

Documents enclosed. Listed by name, so the tenant — and later a judge — can tell at a glance whether the envelope was complete.

The arithmetic. Deposit, minus the deductions, equals the refund. Show the subtraction rather than announcing the result.

The refund itself, in the form the statute requires. In California, money that came in electronically goes back electronically, to an account the tenant designates in writing — unless the two of you agree in writing on some other method.

Worked out on a house renting at $1,300 a month, with a $1,450 deposit:

Three lines there are doing legal work rather than clerical work. The hourly-rate line exists because California and Washington both demand it for work you performed yourself. The depreciation on the door is a convention rather than a statutory rule — no section I read requires you to subtract used-up life — but it turns an argument into arithmetic anyone can check, and it is the same calculation that decides whether to repair or replace. And the water bill rests on a lease clause rather than on damage, which matters in Washington, where the checklist and documentation rules expressly do not apply to withholdings "for reasons unrelated to damages."

What does not belong on the list: your vacant days, your listing photography, your hours screening the replacement. Those are turnover costs rather than tenant liabilities, and the line-item turnover budget shows where each of them actually lands. To put your own deposit and your own deduction lines through the same subtraction, there is a security deposit settlement calculator on this site.

Mailing it to a person who has gone

This is the part that stops owners cold, and the statutes are far more helpful here than their reputation suggests. Most of them tell you exactly where to send a letter to somebody whose address you do not have.

Arizona: first class mail to "the tenant's last known place of residence," unless the tenant made other arrangements in writing. Washington: personally delivered, or deposited in the mail properly addressed to the tenant's last known address with first-class postage prepaid, inside the 30 days. Maryland: first-class mail to the last known address. California: to the address the tenant provided, and if the tenant provided none, "mailings pursuant to this subdivision shall be sent to the unit that has been vacated."

Read that California sentence twice. The statute contemplates you posting the letter to the house the tenant just left. It looks absurd, and it is the compliant act.

Florida is the one that names a class of mail: written notice "by certified mail to the tenant's last known mailing address," or by e-mail under § 83.505 — a section added in 2025 that asks for much more than having an address. Electronic delivery works only if both parties signed an addendum in substantially the statutory form, each designating an address, each told that the election is voluntary and revocable. A notice sent that way is deemed delivered when sent unless it bounces, and § 83.505(5) requires the sender to keep a copy and evidence of the transmission.

Texas runs on a different mechanism entirely. Under § 92.107(a) you are not obligated to refund or to give the written description until the tenant gives you a written forwarding address — but subsection (b) says the tenant forfeits neither right merely by failing to provide one. The duty is suspended, not extinguished, and it revives the moment an address arrives. Texas then supplies the single most useful evidentiary rule of the six: § 92.1041 presumes you complied if the refund or the accounting was placed in the mail and postmarked on or before the required date. The postmark is the proof, which makes the receipt from the post office window worth keeping in the file.

Two postal mechanics shrink the vanished-tenant problem, and both sit in one table of the Domestic Mail Manual — 507.1.5, Exhibit 1.5.1, read 8 September 2026. Endorse the envelope Address Service Requested and, for months 1 through 12 after a change-of-address order, the Postal Service forwards the piece and sends you a separate notice of the new address, charging the address correction fee for that notice. In months 13 through 18 the piece comes back with the new address attached and nothing to pay. After month 18 it is returned with the reason for non-delivery. Where no change-of-address order exists at all, it comes back with that reason attached — which is itself dated evidence that you sent something to the address the statute told you to use.

The prices are small enough that the choice should never be about cost. From Notice 123, effective 12 July 2026: certified mail $5.55, hard-copy return receipt $4.65, electronic return receipt $2.91, manual address correction notice $1.00. Florida requires certified. Nothing stops you from using it in a state that asks only for first class.

What the multiplier is applied to, which is not what you think

Punitive numbers get quoted loosely — double damages, treble damages — and the multiplier is the less important half of the phrase. What matters is the base it multiplies.

Two of these states multiply the whole deposit. California's § 1950.5(m) allows statutory damages of up to twice the amount of the security, in addition to actual damages. Washington's RCW 59.18.280(2) makes you liable for the full deposit and then lets the court, in its discretion, award up to two times that deposit for an intentional refusal.

Three multiply only the portion wrongfully withheld. Texas: $100 plus three times that portion, plus attorney's fees. Arizona: twice the amount wrongfully withheld. Maryland: up to threefold the withheld amount, plus fees.

On the $1,450 deposit above, with $450.40 of deductions, that distinction is the whole ballgame. An exposure built on the withheld portion tops out near $1,451 plus fees in Texas. An exposure built on the deposit itself reaches $2,900 in California before actual damages and before anybody discusses the door. And in Washington the deduction analysis may never happen, because a landlord who missed the statement is "barred in any action brought by the tenant to recover the deposit from asserting any claim or raising any defense for retaining any of the deposit" — the statute reopens that door only for a landlord who shows that circumstances beyond their control caused the delay, or that the tenant abandoned the premises.

Texas adds one asymmetry that has nothing to do with the deposit. Section 92.109(b) says a landlord who in bad faith fails to provide the description and itemized list forfeits both the right to withhold and the right "to bring suit against the tenant for damages to the premises." If the damage ran past the deposit — the case where you were planning to sue — the missing letter closes that door too. And § 92.109(c) puts the burden of proving that any retention was reasonable on the landlord, not on the tenant.

Whether a particular retention was in bad faith, or wrongful, is a question for a court, and none of these outcomes is automatic. What is close to automatic is the presumption that attaches in Texas the moment day 30 passes, and the forfeiture language in Florida and Maryland, which do not ask about your intentions at all.

The two dates that belong on the calendar the day possession comes back

Not one date. Two.

The first is the statutory deadline, written as a real date rather than a number of days, and calculated the same afternoon you take possession — from the event your own state names, which as often as not is the termination date rather than the day you got the keys. Anyone counting Arizona's business days should walk the calendar past the holidays instead of adding two weeks.

The second sits about five days earlier, and it is the day the envelope has to be sealed. That gap is not padding. It is the room to notice that the cleaner's invoice never arrived, and to decide — in California, whether to send a good-faith estimate now and diary the 14-day follow-up; in Maryland, whether to send an estimate and diary the final-invoice duty and the 30-day refund of any excess. Making that call on the last afternoon is exactly how a defensible deduction turns into a late letter.

Then go and read your own state, because six is a sample and not a map. The section is usually titled something close to "security deposits" in the residential landlord-tenant chapter, and the two things to read for are the trigger event and the consequence of missing it. If your state is not one of these six, the number will differ and the base of the multiplier may differ, and this page will have served only as a list of the questions to ask. Which is all it is meant to be. I am not a lawyer, and a deposit dispute that has already been filed is a call to one rather than a longer read.