Answer
Jul 21, 2025 - 12:46 AM
So again, this is going to be state specific in some places, but in general, you can hold back the full amount. If you also give them an itemized statement of why you're holding it back, if you don't know how much it's going to cost, you can go based off estimates. So you can get estimates from contractors, estimates for your time and whatnot. Really what you're doing is creating a case for why you are withholding the deposit so that if the tenant decides to sue you to get the deposit back, then the judge would look at what you charged and they would say, oh, that makes a lot of sense. And, you know, we're not going to make you, you know, give that money back to the tenant. So that's really what I would keep in mind at the end of the day. If a judge was looking at it, what would they say? And then in your local jurisdiction, They will probably have some limit as to how long you can or how many days after they move out you have to give them the itemized statement and give them the notice that they're not going to get their security deposit back. So just, you know, take a look at some of those limitations there.
