What is the penalty if a Florida landlord wrongfully keeps a deposit?

A landlord who misses the 30-day notice deadline forfeits the right to impose any claim on the deposit and may not seek a setoff against it. They can still sue separately for damages, but only after returning the deposit.

Fla. Stat. § 83.49

Florida security deposit law

Your landlord is on a clock, and most tenants never find out it exists. Here is what the statute actually says - quoted, with a link so you can read it yourself.

This calculator uses the 30-day clockFlorida actually runs two deadlines. If your landlord is not making any claim on your deposit at all, they owe it back in 15 days - not 30. The day count above always uses the 30-day claim-notice deadline, since that's the one that applies once a landlord has said or implied they're keeping something. Heard nothing at all by day 15? That's already past the no-claim deadline, even though this page's countdown above hasn't hit zero yet. One more wrinkle: if you moved out early without giving 7 days' written notice and a contact address, your landlord may be excused from the claim-notice requirement entirely (§ 83.49(5)) - though you don't lose your claim to the deposit itself either way.

30days

Florida runs two clocks. If your landlord is not claiming anything, the deposit must come back within 15 days. If they intend to claim against it, they have 30 days to send you written notice - by certified mail, or by email only if you and your landlord signed a written addendum agreeing to electronic delivery (Fla. Stat. § 83.505).

Itemization: Required, in a specific statutory form, sent by certified mail, or by email only if you and your landlord signed an electronic-delivery addendum under § 83.505. You then have 15 days to object in writing.
If they get it wrong: A landlord who misses the 30-day notice deadline forfeits the right to impose any claim on the deposit and may not seek a setoff against it. They can still sue separately for damages, but only after returning the deposit.
Statute: Fla. Stat. § 83.49

The part most people miss

Check the delivery method carefully. As of a mid-2025 amendment, email can count as valid delivery of the 30-day claim notice - but only if you and your landlord both signed a specific written addendum to the lease agreeing to electronic delivery, with an email address on file, before the notice was sent (Fla. Stat. § 83.505). An ordinary email with no signed addendum in place is not valid delivery under the statute - in that case only certified mail counts. A text message or something said in person never counts either way, and the deadline keeps running while a landlord thinks it does.

If the landlord fails to give the required notice within the 30-day period, he or she forfeits the right to impose a claim upon the security deposit and may not seek a setoff against the deposit but may file an action for damages after returning the security deposit to the tenant.
Fla. Stat. § 83.49(3)(a)

Where that leaves you

The date you handed back possession, plus the 30-day window above, is the number that matters. If that date has passed and nothing arrived, that fact carries weight under Florida law - the statute is quoted above, and the conditions attached to it (if any) are noted on this page too.

If you are still living there, or about to move out, the most useful thing you can do takes fifteen minutes. Nearly every dispute reduces to a single question - was that damage there before you were - and dated photographs are the strongest evidence you can bring to that question.

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Last reviewed: 24 Aug 2026 · How this was sourced: Statute text read at flsenate.gov (§ 83.49, 2023 edition), 19 Aug 2026. Independently re-verified 23 Aug 2026 against the current 2025 Florida Statutes edition at flsenate.gov (amended by ch. 2025-16) - the 15/30-day two-clock structure and the quoted forfeiture text are unchanged; link updated from the 2023 to the 2025 edition. CORRECTED 24 Aug 2026: an external review caught that this page's prior text - 'a landlord who emailed you... has not met the statute' - was flat wrong. Ch. 2025-16 amended § 83.49(3)(a), effective 1 Jul 2025, to make email (under § 83.505) a valid delivery method alongside certified mail. My own original research had actually already surfaced this and I failed to update the copy - re-verified against flsenate.gov and Justia (word-for-word match) before fixing it. Also added § 83.49(5)'s premature-vacate exception, confirmed the same way. CORRECTED AGAIN 24 Aug 2026, second review round: that first fix only touched the keyLever field - deadlineText and itemization still said 'certified mail' only, and the quote's last clause read 'after return of the deposit' instead of the verbatim 'after returning the security deposit to the tenant.' All three fixed. The /check/ calculator was also still applying only the 30-day clock as its sole result - it now shows both the 15-day and 30-day deadlines side by side instead of picking one, since the page has no way to know which one actually governs a given visitor. CORRECTED AGAIN 24 Aug 2026, third review round: a fourth-round review flagged that § 83.505 email delivery is conditioned on the landlord and tenant having signed a specific written addendum to the lease agreeing to electronic delivery beforehand - this page previously said email 'counts as valid delivery' without that precondition, overstating when an ordinary email actually satisfies the statute. Confirmed against the statute text at flsenate.gov directly (fetched live) plus independent legal-blog summaries of the same 2025 law; deadlineText, itemization, and keyLever all corrected to state the addendum requirement.