Free Florida Security Deposit Itemization

A Florida security deposit itemization is the line-by-line accounting a landlord uses to keep any part of a tenant’s deposit. Under Fla. Stat. 83.49, keeping money is not automatic: a landlord who intends to impose a claim must send the tenant a written notice of intention to impose a claim by certified mail within thirty days after the rental agreement terminates, and the itemization is the substance of that notice. This builder itemizes each deduction, subtracts the total from the deposit, and states the refund balance due or the amount still owed. Our Florida security deposit laws guide covers the wider framework, and the tenant screening laws by state hub helps you place tenants who leave the unit in good condition in the first place.

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Video: a plain-language walkthrough of the Florida deposit itemization – the 30-day certified-mail notice of intention, the statutory language, and the tenant’s 15-day objection window.

Generate Your Florida Itemization

Complete the form below to build an itemized notice of intention ready to print, sign, and send by certified mail. Enter the deposit and any interest, itemize each deduction with a specific description, and the generator calculates the refund balance and assembles a dated, signed PDF automatically. Because any deduction triggers the claim, the document embeds the exact Fla. Stat. 83.49(3) notice-of-intention language so the tenant’s fifteen-day objection right is preserved. If you make no claim at all, you do not need this itemization; you simply return the full deposit, and our Florida security deposit return letter handles that no-claim path. Every figure you enter flows straight into the document.

How the Florida Itemization Fits the Deposit Rules

Florida’s deposit rules turn on one decision the landlord makes at the end of the tenancy: is any part of the deposit going to be kept? If the answer is no, there is no itemization to prepare; the landlord returns the full deposit, together with any interest that is required, within fifteen days after the rental agreement terminates. If the answer is yes, the itemization becomes mandatory, because the only lawful way to keep money in Florida is through a written notice of intention to impose a claim that lists the deductions. The governing statute is Fla. Stat. 83.49, the deposit-money-and-advance-rent section of the Florida Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, and it treats the itemized notice as the gatekeeper for every dollar the landlord retains.

The itemization is therefore not a courtesy document. It is the legal instrument that converts a landlord’s belief that money is owed into an enforceable claim against the deposit. Prepared correctly and delivered on time, it starts a fifteen-day clock for the tenant to object and, absent an objection, authorizes the landlord to deduct the claim and remit the balance. Prepared late or omitted entirely, it forfeits the claim outright. The sections below walk through the thirty-day deadline, the exact notice language, the tenant’s objection window, and the categories that may and may not appear on the itemization.

About the Florida Itemization

The itemization does three things at once. It satisfies the statutory duty to communicate the deposit decision in the manner the statute prescribes. It gives the tenant a concrete, line-by-line accounting to review and, if warranted, to object to in writing within fifteen days. And it creates a contemporaneous, provably delivered record that answers a later challenge to the deductions. Without a properly worded and properly delivered notice, even legitimate deductions are exposed, because Fla. Stat. 83.49(3) forfeits the right to impose a claim when the notice is not sent on time and in the required form.

Because the itemization is the notice of intention itself, its content is where disputes are won or lost. Each deduction must be described with enough particularity that the tenant and, if it comes to it, a judge can tell whether the charge is for damage beyond ordinary wear or for something the tenant was never obligated to pay. A single vague line such as “repairs” can undermine an otherwise solid claim, while a specific line such as “patch and repaint two large holes in the living-room wall, contractor invoice attached” carries its own justification. The builder above forces the specific-description discipline by pairing every amount with a description field.

The 30-Day Notice Deadline

The deadline that governs the itemization is thirty days, not fifteen. The fifteen-day figure is the no-claim full-return deadline; it does not apply once the landlord decides to keep money. If the landlord intends to impose a claim, Fla. Stat. 83.49(3)(a) requires the landlord to give the tenant written notice of the intention to impose that claim by certified mail to the tenant’s last known mailing address within thirty days after the rental agreement terminates. The clock runs from termination of the rental agreement, not from the date the tenant provides a forwarding address, so a landlord who waits for an address before acting can blow the deadline before the address ever arrives. Calendar the thirtieth day the moment the tenancy ends and aim to mail several days early.

The Required Statutory Notice Language

When a claim is imposed, Fla. Stat. 83.49(3)(a) prescribes the substance of the notice. The statute directs that the notice be in substantially this form:

The Tenant’s 15-Day Objection Window

The certified-mail notice starts a fifteen-day clock for the tenant. Under Fla. Stat. 83.49(3)(b), the tenant must object in writing within fifteen days after receiving the notice. If the tenant does not object within that window, the landlord may deduct the amount of the claim and must remit the balance of the deposit to the tenant within thirty days after the date of the notice. If the tenant does object, the dispute is resolved between the parties or, if either party files an action, by a court, and the landlord should not deduct against a timely objection without a resolution. The objection window is why the itemization must reach the tenant in a provable way; if the tenant later claims never to have received it, the certified-mail receipt is the landlord’s proof.

Forfeiture If the Notice Is Late

The forfeiture rule is what gives the thirty-day deadline its teeth. Under Fla. Stat. 83.49(3)(a), if the landlord fails to give the required notice within the thirty-day period, the landlord forfeits the right to impose a claim upon the security deposit and may not seek a setoff against it. The landlord must return the deposit and may only file a separate action for damages afterward. Florida courts enforce this strictly, and a defective certified-mail notice is treated much like no notice at all, so a technically late or wrongly delivered itemization can cost the landlord the entire claim even where the underlying damage is real.

Certified Mail, and the Email Option

Certified mail to the tenant’s last known mailing address is the method the statute has always required for the notice of intention, and it remains the defensible default because it produces a dated receipt and a return receipt. As amended, Fla. Stat. 83.49(3)(a) also permits the notice to be sent by email, but only to an email address the tenant designated in writing for receiving notices; a casual email to whatever address the landlord happens to have does not qualify. Even where email is used for the notice, the refund check itself is a negotiable instrument and should be delivered by mail or in person, not by email. Because a defective delivery can forfeit the whole claim, most landlords still use certified mail and retain the receipt.

Interest and Where the Deposit Is Held

Separate from the itemization, Fla. Stat. 83.49(2) requires the landlord, within thirty days of receiving a deposit, to disclose in writing the name and address of the depository where the deposit is held, or that a surety bond has been posted, and whether the tenant will receive interest. If the deposit was held in an interest-bearing account, the tenant is generally entitled to the interest the landlord agreed to pay, which then belongs on the itemization as an addition to the deposit before the deductions are subtracted. The builder includes an interest field for exactly this reason. Confirm how the deposit was actually held before you finalize the figure, so the interest line is correct.

Florida gives the landlord three lawful ways to hold a residential deposit, and Fla. Stat. 83.49(1) sets the terms for each. The first is a separate non-interest-bearing account in a Florida banking institution for the tenant’s benefit, with the landlord prohibited from commingling the deposit with any other funds or pledging it as security. The second is a separate interest-bearing account in a Florida banking institution, in which case the tenant is entitled to receive at least 70%-5% of the annualized average interest rate the account pays, or 5% simple interest per year, at the landlord’s election. The third is to post a surety bond with the clerk of the circuit court in the county where the unit sits, or with the Department of Business and Professional Regulation, in the amount of the deposits the landlord holds or fifty thousand dollars, whichever is less, and to pay the tenant 5% simple interest annually. A landlord who commingles the deposit or holds it in a way the statute does not authorize can lose the protection the disclosure and holding rules are meant to provide, so confirm the account type before the tenancy ever ends.

The upfront depository disclosure and the end-of-tenancy itemization are two different documents that must nonetheless agree with each other. If the disclosure promised interest and the deposit sat in an interest-bearing account, the itemization has to add that interest to the deposit before any deduction is subtracted; leaving it off shortchanges the tenant and hands the tenant a clean argument in a fee-shifting dispute. If the disclosure said the deposit earns no interest and it was held in a non-interest-bearing account, the interest line on the itemization is simply zero and the builder’s interest field stays at its default. The safest practice is to pull the original written disclosure before you open the builder, so the deposit figure, the interest figure, and the holding method on the itemization line up exactly with what the tenant was told at move-in.

The Notice of Intention to Impose a Claim, Step by Step

Because the itemization only exists when the landlord keeps money, the document the builder produces is legally the notice of intention to impose a claim described in Fla. Stat. 83.49(3)(a). Getting each element of that notice right is what separates an enforceable claim from a forfeited one, so it is worth walking through the notice element by element in the order a Florida court would read it.

Who Must Send It, and to Whom

The landlord who received the deposit, or the landlord’s authorized agent or property manager, is the party that must send the notice. It goes to the tenant or tenants who signed the lease, at the tenant’s last known mailing address. When multiple tenants shared the unit and only one gave a forwarding address, the defensible step is to send the notice to the forwarding address and, if the others left no address, to the vacated unit’s address as their last known address, because the statute keys on the tenant’s last known mailing address rather than on a forwarding address the tenant may never have supplied. The 2023 amendment adds one alternative: the notice may be sent by email to an address the tenant designated in writing, in the lease or in a separate signed writing, for receiving statutory notices. A landlord relying on email should keep the writing that designates the address, because an email to an address the tenant never designated is not valid service of the notice.

What the Notice Must Say

Fla. Stat. 83.49(3)(a) supplies the operative language and directs that the notice be in substantially the statutory form. Three elements are non-negotiable: the dollar amount of the claim, the reason for the claim, and a statement of the tenant’s right to object in writing within fifteen days, together with the address to which the objection must be sent. The builder assembles all three automatically from the fields you enter, dropping the total of your itemized deductions into the amount, the deductions themselves into the reason, and your mailing address into the objection line. A notice that recites the amount but omits the fifteen-day objection statement, or that states the objection right but gives the tenant no address to object to, is the kind of defective notice Florida courts have treated as no notice at all.

When It Must Be Sent, and How the Clock Runs

The notice must be sent within thirty days after the rental agreement terminates. The single most costly misunderstanding in Florida deposit practice is believing that the clock starts when the tenant provides a forwarding address; it does not. The thirty-day period runs from termination of the rental agreement itself, which for a fixed-term lease is the end date on the lease and for a month-to-month tenancy is the effective date of the terminating notice. A landlord who sits on the claim waiting for a forwarding address can watch the entire thirty days expire and forfeit an otherwise valid claim before an address ever arrives. The disciplined practice is to calendar the thirtieth day the moment the tenancy ends, prepare the itemization as soon as the unit is inspected, and mail it several days before the deadline so a posta