One-time toolkit · 51 jurisdictions
Your state already set the date. The rest is paperwork.
Return it right and on time and a deposit is bookkeeping. The landlords who end up in trouble over one are almost never the ones who meant to keep the money — they are the ones whose itemized statement went out late, or to an address the tenant had already left. This is four tools for that half of the job: the letter, the dates, the interest arithmetic, and the checklist.
What you get: the itemized deposit-return letter, the return-and-itemization deadline calendar, the deposit-interest calculator, and the compliance checklist. Deliverables, not a promise about what happens after you send them.
DepositHawk is a tenant-side company and does not represent landlords. This is legal information, not legal advice, and it is not a law firm.
The clocks you are running
Every jurisdiction sets a deadline. In 2 of them it is two deadlines.
Across the 51 U.S. jurisdictions, a landlord's security-deposit return deadline runs from 14 days to 60 days after move-out. All 51 require an itemized statement of deductions, 8 require the landlord to pay interest on the deposit itself, and 2 run the itemized statement on a separate clock from the deposit return.
Note which way each one runs. Florida wants the money back first and the statement later; Illinois wants the statement first and the money later. One move-out, two dates, and the one most people write down is whichever they heard first.
What is in it
Four things, and you can see all four from here.
The itemized deposit-return letter
You enter the deposit you held and each deduction with its own description and amount. It composes the cover letter: the arithmetic down through the total deductions to the amount returned, the statutory itemization requirement it satisfies, the citation, and the date the notice was prepared. If something you typed matches a category your statute does not list as permitted, the builder flags it to you before you send. It never edits your letter, and it never calls a deduction illegal — that is a court's word, not a form's.
In California, the itemized statement of deductions is due within 21 days of move-out — the same clock as the deposit itself.
Cal. Civ. Code § 1950.5 The return and itemization deadline calendar
Give it the state and the day you got the keys back. It dates every obligation from there — the deposit return, the itemized statement on its own clock where your state runs one, and the date the tenant's claim window finally closes. Download it as an .ics and the dates sit in the calendar you actually check, each with a reminder a week out.
The deposit-interest figure
In 8 jurisdictions the deposit earns interest and you are the one who owes it. Nothing in a normal move-out prompts you for it, which is why it is the obligation landlords most often learn about afterwards. Enter what you are holding and the day the lease started and the toolkit works the amount from your state's rate — in your terms, as money you owe, not in the renter-side phrasing our other products use.
Some states set this rate annually, or tie it to a bank rate, instead of fixing it in the statute. Confirm the current year's rate with your state before you return the deposit.
The printable per-state compliance checklist
Every line is read off your state's row: the return deadline, the itemization deadline, the deposit cap, whether interest is owed, whether a walk-through has to be offered, what the statute lists as a permitted deduction and what it does not, and how long the tenant's claim window stays open. Nothing on it is hand-typed per state, which is also why it will tell you plainly when an obligation does not apply to you.
Two prices, one of them later
The toolkit today. The updates only if you want them.
Before you pay
We are the tenants' side. You should know that now, not later.
DepositHawk builds demand letters for renters. That is the business, and finding it out after you bought something from us would feel like a trick, so here it is before the checkout button rather than under it. We do not represent landlords. We are not a law firm. Buying this toolkit does not create an attorney-client relationship — it buys four documents built from published statutes.
Why a tenant-side company publishes it at all: most of the letters our customers send are not about a landlord who set out to keep the money. They are about a date that slipped and a statement that never got written. A deposit returned correctly and on time does not produce a demand letter, and that is a better week for both sides of the lease.
What this is not: legal advice, or a read on how your tenant will behave. It is published law, arithmetic, and paper. Statutes, deadlines, interest rates and caps change — verify against the current statute in your jurisdiction, and for a large deposit or a complicated tenancy talk to a licensed attorney in your state. The free obligation table for all 51 jurisdictions stays free whether or not you buy anything here.
Questions landlords ask
Before you decide.
Why does my state show two deadlines instead of one?
In most places it shows one, because the deposit and the itemized statement are due on the same date. In 2 of the 51 jurisdictions they are not: Florida gives you 15 days to return the deposit and 30 days to send the statement, while Illinois gives you 45 days to return the deposit and 30 days to send the statement. The calendar dates both from the day the tenancy ended and puts both in the .ics, because the failure mode landlords describe is hitting one date and missing the other.
I sent a notice of deductions but never itemized it. Is that notice enough?
Every one of the 51 jurisdictions in this table requires an itemized statement — each deduction described, with its own amount — not an announcement that deductions were taken. A landlord posting about this in 2017 described the sequence exactly: a notice sent, the tenant's attorney answering that it was not itemized, and weeks of losing sleep over it. The letter this toolkit composes is the itemized form: the deposit held, each deduction with its description and amount, the arithmetic down to the amount returned, and the statute it is written under. Whether a notice you already sent counts is a question for a licensed attorney in your state.
Do I owe my tenant interest on the deposit?
In 8 of the 51 jurisdictions, yes: Connecticut, District of Columbia, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey. Everywhere else, no. Where it is owed it generally accrues from the day you took the money and is paid out with the deposit, so leaving it off reads as returning less than the full deposit rather than as a rounding error. The toolkit works the figure from the rate, the amount you are holding and the date the lease started. Some states set this rate annually, or tie it to a bank rate, instead of fixing it in the statute. Confirm the current year's rate with your state before you return the deposit.
The itemized statement came back undeliverable and the tenant sent a new address. What does the letter do about that?
It prints to whichever address you give it, and the checklist carries the line about sending to the forwarding address — or the last known address where none was given — and keeping proof of mailing. That is the whole of what a document can do here. The toolkit does not mail anything for you, and a second certified mailing with a return receipt costs very little next to the dated record it produces.
What is the difference between the toolkit and the $19 annual updates?
The toolkit is a one-time $39 purchase: the four deliverables, yours, no renewal. Annual updates are a separate yearly subscription that refreshes the statute data behind the calendar, the interest figure and the checklist, and adds any new notice templates. You cannot buy the updates on this page — they are offered once, on your own toolkit page, after you own the toolkit and have seen what is in it.
What happens right after I pay?
You get an email with a link to your toolkit. Open it, pick your state, and the calendar, the interest figure and the checklist fill in from there; the letter builder is already expanded, because a landlord doing this is doing bookkeeping under a date, not exploring a product. There is no account to create and no password — the link in the email is the key, so keep the email.
Is this legal advice?
No. DepositHawk publishes legal information — your state's statute, the deadlines it sets, the interest it requires — and the toolkit turns that into documents and dates. We are not a law firm, buying the toolkit does not create an attorney-client relationship, and we do not represent landlords: DepositHawk is a tenant-side company. For a large deposit or a complicated tenancy, talk to a licensed attorney in your state.
The date is already set. Write it down and work backwards.
Return it right and on time. The letter, the two deadlines, the interest figure and the checklist — for your state, from its own statute.
What you get: the itemized deposit-return letter, the return-and-itemization deadline calendar, the deposit-interest calculator, and the compliance checklist. Deliverables, not a promise about what happens after you send them.
DepositHawk provides legal information, not legal advice. It is not a law firm, it does not represent landlords, and buying the toolkit does not create an attorney-client relationship. Deadline, itemization, interest and penalty data compiled by the DepositHawk Research Team from each jurisdiction's own statute, last updated September 2026. Full terms, including refunds, on our terms page.