Free Georgia Holding Deposit Agreement

A holding deposit is money a prospective tenant pays to take a unit off the market before a lease is signed. Nothing in the four enacted Georgia acts read for this page addresses it. What Georgia has is Article 2 of Chapter 7 of Title 44 of the Official Code, the security-deposit article, and a definition in § 44-7-30(3) that decides how far that article reaches. It reaches money given “by a tenant to a landlord which shall be held by the landlord on behalf of a tenant by virtue of a residential rental agreement”, and it says in terms that the category includes “advance rent deposits”. It does not reach, and does not mention, money paid by someone who has not yet agreed to rent. Between those two positions sits every holding deposit paid in the state, and the article does not say on which side a given one lands. This page sets out the enacted text, states the conditional honestly, says where the statute is silent, and produces a record designed to fix the fact the statute turns on: whether, when the money was paid, there was a residential rental agreement under which the landlord was holding it for a tenant. It also says plainly where its text comes from — the enacted Acts, not the codification — because that limit belongs on the page and not in a footnote.

Fill in the fields below and the generator produces a clean, dated PDF you can print, sign and give to the applicant, keeping a copy for your file. Nothing is stored and there is no charge. Fields you leave blank print as a dash so you can complete them by hand.

Watch: Free Georgia Holding Deposit Agreement — Fillable PDF explained

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The generator above produces a holding deposit record, not a statutory form. Georgia prescribes no holding-deposit document because Georgia has no holding-deposit statute, so a document captioned as though it satisfied one would claim something Article 2 of Chapter 7 of Title 44 does not say. What the record does is fix the facts the article makes decisive: who paid what, for which unit, on what date, whether a residential rental agreement had by then been made, whether the money is being held on the tenant’s behalf under it, where it is being held, and what each side undertook to do with it in each outcome. It is built around the conditional in § 44-7-30(3) rather than around a rule the article does not contain. Four limits belong on the page rather than in the form. First, the record does not decide whether a residential rental agreement was formed; it records what the parties said, and a court would decide what that amounted to. Case law was searched in no state for these pages. Second, municipal ordinances were not researched. Third, three sections of the article — § 44-7-32 on surety bonds, § 44-7-36 and § 44-7-37 — were not fetched, and no claim about their contents, including any claim of absence, is made here. Fourth, the text relied on is the enacted Act text from the General Assembly’s document server, not the LexisNexis codification, which sat behind a sign-in wall; currency rests on the reported amendment histories and on a read of 2024 HB 404, which adds § 44-7-30.1 and does not touch the other sections.

• The amount received, the date, and the method of payment. If the money is or becomes a security deposit, § 44-7-30.1 caps it at the equivalent of two months’ rent and § 44-7-35(c) triples “the sum improperly withheld”; the record fixes the figures those rules are measured against.
• The unit, the parties, and the name of the person who paid. § 44-7-30(3) speaks of money given “by a tenant to a landlord”; the record should leave no doubt who each would be.
• Whether a residential rental agreement has been made, in terms. The definition reaches money held “by virtue of a residential rental agreement”, and § 44-7-30(2) lets that be “a contract, lease, or license agreement”. This line is the one the whole article turns on.
• A statement of what the payment is — a deposit to hold the unit off the market until a stated date — and whether it is refundable. Georgia’s only nonrefundable category, § 44-7-30(1), is money paid “under the terms of a residential rental agreement which the parties agreed would not be refunded”.
• Where the money is being held. § 44-7-31 requires a security deposit to sit in an escrow account established only for that purpose, and requires tenants to be told in writing where. Recording the account satisfies the writing requirement if the duty attaches.
• The date the hold ends and what happens if no lease is signed by then. Georgia prescribes no holding period; the parties supply it.
• What happens to the money on signing — whether it is credited to the security deposit or to rent. Credited to the security deposit, it is inside § 44-7-30(3) without any doubt; credited to rent, it sits between the included “advance rent deposits” and the excluded money “applied toward the payment of rent”, which the page leaves open.
• What happens if the applicant withdraws. The article does not say; the record must. Nothing on this page shows that a forfeiture clause in a pre-lease record is one of the retention grounds § 44-7-34(a) lists, and the page does not say such a clause is enforceable.
• What happens if the landlord withdraws. The article does not say. At minimum the record should commit to return in full, and by when.
• The return method and the address for return, so that the 30-day period in § 44-7-34(a) can be met if it applies; the section deems mailing to the last known address by first-class mail to be compliance.
• A note that no Georgia holding-deposit form or deadline exists, so nobody later reads the record as a statutory form or reads the parties’ chosen dates as statutory ones.

• Saying holding deposits are unregulated in Georgia. § 44-7-30(3) reaches “advance rent deposits” and anything else held for a tenant by virtue of a residential rental agreement, and that agreement may be a “contract, lease, or license agreement”. Once an agreement exists and the money is held under it, every rule attaches.
• Saying the security-deposit rules apply to every holding deposit. The definition is tied to a tenant and a residential rental agreement, and the article says nothing about money paid before either exists. Neither absolute statement is true; the conditional is.
• Quoting the earnest-money exclusion. The sentence excluding earnest money and pet fees was struck by 2007 SB 94. It is repealed text, and a page that prints it as Georgia law is wrong.
• Taking more than two months’ rent. § 44-7-30.1 bars a landlord from demanding or receiving a security deposit exceeding “the equivalent of two months’ rent” for leases entered into or renewed on or after July 1, 2024. A holding deposit credited to the security deposit counts toward that figure.
• Keeping the money in the operating account. § 44-7-31 requires an escrow account “established only for that purpose” and written notice to the tenant of its location, and § 44-7-35(a) makes the failure to escrow one of the three conditions that together bar any retention.
• Writing “non-refundable” on the receipt and relying on it. Georgia’s nonrefundable-fee category in § 44-7-30(1) is money paid “under the terms of a residential rental agreement”. A pre-lease receipt is not that agreement, and this page does not say a forfeiture clause in one is enforceable.
• Keeping the money after you yourself back out. Nothing in the article gives a landlord who declines to rent any right to retain a deposit. If the money was a security deposit, § 44-7-35(c) prices the withholding at three times the sum improperly withheld plus attorney’s fees.
• Missing the 30-day return period once a tenancy existed. Under § 44-7-35(b), missing the time periods in §§ 44-7-33 and 44-7-34 forfeits “all the landlord’s rights to withhold any portion of the security deposit”.
• Importing another state’s rule. No other state’s cap, deadline or definition of “tenant” is a Georgia rule. Georgia defines neither “tenant” nor “rental agreement” in the sections read, and this page does not borrow a definition to fill the gap.
• Assuming this page states all of Georgia law on the point. The codified text was not read; §§ 44-7-32, 44-7-36 and 44-7-37 were not fetched; case law was not searched; municipal ordinances were not researched.

No. Georgia has a security-deposit article, and the question is whether its definition reaches money paid before a residential rental agreement exists. Six sections of it were read for this page — O.C.G.A. §§ 44-7-30, 44-7-30.1, 44-7-31, 44-7-33, 44-7-34 and 44-7-35 — from the enacted text of four Acts of the General Assembly: 2007 SB 94, which revised the definitions in § 44-7-30; 2006 HB 1273, which rewrote the escrow section, § 44-7-31; 2018 HB 834, which revised §§ 44-7-33 through 44-7-35 on damage lists, return and remedies; and 2024 HB 404, which added the cap in § 44-7-30.1. Across those four texts, 30,654 characters in all, the word “holding” never appears as a deposit term (its one appearance is “withholding” in § 44-7-35(c)), “prospective” never appears, “reserv” never appears, and “earnest” appears only in a sentence SB 94 struck. Three sections of the article — § 44-7-32 on surety bonds, § 44-7-36 and § 44-7-37 — were not fetched, and no claim about them, including a claim of absence, is made here.

So the honest answer has two halves. Nothing in the four enacted acts read names a holding deposit, a reservation fee or earnest money as a category, and nothing in them says how much one may be, how long a unit may be held, or when the money must come back if no lease follows. And there is a definition of “security deposit” which, once a residential rental agreement exists and the money is held for the tenant under it, captures the money and attaches every duty in the article to it. The rest of this page is about that definition, about the duties that ride on it, and about the space the article leaves open.

Money given by a tenant and held by the landlord on the tenant’s behalf by virtue of a residential rental agreement, expressly including advance rent deposits. § 44-7-30(3), as enacted by 2007 SB 94 with effect from July 1, 2007, verbatim:

“‘Security deposit’ means money or any other form of security given after July 1, 1976, by a tenant to a landlord which shall be held by the landlord on behalf of a tenant by virtue of a residential rental agreement and shall include, but not be limited to, damage deposits, advance rent deposits, and pet deposits. Such term shall not include nonrefundable fees, or money or other consideration which are not to be returned to the tenant under the terms of the residential rental agreement or which were to be applied toward the payment of rent or reimbursement of services or utilities provided to the tenant.”

Read the first sentence as a landlord holding an applicant’s money. Two conditions must be met at once. The money must be given “by a tenant”, and it must be held “by virtue of a residential rental agreement”. Georgia does not define “tenant” in the sections read, and an applicant still waiting on a screening report is not obviously within it. Money the landlord holds while deciding whether to rent is not obviously held by virtue of any agreement. On the words, then, a payment made before any agreement is outside the definition, and the article contains no other provision that reaches it.

Now read the same sentence after a lease is signed and the holding deposit is credited to the security deposit. The payer is a tenant. The money is held by virtue of a residential rental agreement. From that moment the money is a security deposit without any argument, and the cap, the escrow duty, the damage-list duty, the 30-day return rule and the three-times penalty all attach to it. A holding deposit credited to rent instead is less clear: the definition “shall include, but not be limited to … advance rent deposits”, and its second sentence excludes money “which were to be applied toward the payment of rent”. The text does not say which of those a credited holding deposit is, and this page leaves it open.

The second sentence, the exclusions, is worth noticing for what it does not exclude. It takes out “nonrefundable fees” — a defined term, dealt with below — and money “not to be returned to the tenant under the terms of the residential rental agreement” or to be applied to rent, services or utilities. Every exclusion is keyed to the rental agreement itself. Nothing in the sentence carves out money paid before the agreement, and the one sentence that once carved out earnest money is gone.

A contract, lease, or license agreement for the rental or use of real property as a dwelling place — and yes, the definition of a security deposit presupposes one. § 44-7-30(2), verbatim: “‘Residential rental agreement’ means a contract, lease, or license agreement for the rental or use of real property as a dwelling place.”

Three features of that definition bear on a holding deposit. The first is its breadth. A “license agreement” is not a lease; it is a permission to use. By naming it, the General Assembly reached arrangements short of a formal tenancy, and a court asked whether a landlord’s agreement to let an approved applicant move in on a stated date is a “contract … for the rental or use of real property as a dwelling place” has a wide phrase to work with. The second is what the definition does not say. It does not say the agreement must be written, and it does not say it may be oral; it is silent on form. Five other of the seven states compared here — Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi and Vermont — say in terms that a rental agreement may be oral, and this page does not import that into Georgia. The third is that the definition is of the compound term. Georgia defines a residential rental agreement; in the sections read it defines neither “rental agreement” alone nor “tenant”.

Put (2) beside (3) and the question for a Georgia holding deposit reduces to this: when the money was paid, was there a contract, lease or license agreement for the use of the unit as a dwelling, under which the landlord was holding the money for the person who paid it? If there was, the money is a security deposit. If there was not, the article does not reach it. Which description fits a given payment is a question about whether and when an agreement was formed, and the article does not answer it. No Georgia case law was read for this page.

At the latest, when the applicant signs and the money is credited to the security deposit. Possibly earlier, and the statute does not say when. It helps to separate three moments.

The first is the ordinary case. The applicant pays to hold the unit, the lease is signed, the applicant takes possession, and the holding deposit is credited against the security deposit. From that point there is no conditional. The money was given by a tenant and it is held by virtue of a residential rental agreement. § 44-7-30.1’s cap, § 44-7-31’s escrow duty, § 44-7-33’s damage lists, § 44-7-34(a)’s 30-day return and § 44-7-35’s forfeiture and treble-damages provisions apply to it exactly as they apply to any other security deposit in Georgia. A landlord who credits a holding deposit should record that it has been credited, because the amount originally paid and the date are facts the end-of-tenancy accounting under § 44-7-34(a) will need.

The second moment is the one the article leaves open. The applicant pays to hold the unit and no lease is ever signed. Whether the money was ever a security deposit depends on whether, when it was paid, there was already a residential rental agreement — a contract, lease or license agreement for the use of the unit as a dwelling — under which the landlord held it for a tenant. The parties’ words at the moment of payment decide that, and nothing in the article tells anyone how to characterise those words.

The third moment is the one the landlord controls. Because the decisive fact is what the parties had agreed when the money moved, a landlord who writes down at that moment whether an agreement has been reached — “the landlord is holding the unit until [date] while screening is completed; no agreement to rent has yet been made”, or the opposite — has produced the evidence on which the question turns. The article does not require that record. It is recommended here because the article supplies no other way to answer the question it raises.

In Georgia the difference is not the label but the timing and the agreement: a security deposit is money held for a tenant by virtue of a residential rental agreement, and a holding payment is money paid before that agreement exists, which the article does not address. The distinction that matters is drawn by § 44-7-30(3) itself, and it is drawn by reference to an agreement, not to a name.

A security deposit, once it exists, comes with a defined set of consequences. It is capped at the equivalent of two months’ rent. It must sit in a dedicated escrow account the tenant has been told about in writing. It is preceded by a comprehensive list of existing damage. It comes back within 30 days after the landlord obtains possession, less itemised retentions on the grounds § 44-7-34(a) lists. And keeping it wrongfully costs three times the sum improperly withheld plus attorney’s fees. A payment made before any agreement carries none of those consequences by the article’s terms, and carries no others either, because the article says nothing about it.

Two things follow. A landlord cannot take a payment that is in truth a security deposit — money held for a tenant under a signed lease — and escape the article by writing “holding fee” on the receipt; the definition includes advance rent deposits and is “not limited to” its examples. And a landlord cannot take a payment from an applicant before any agreement and claim the article’s retention grounds for keeping it, because the article does not reach that money and confers no such right. The article decides neither what the money is called nor whether it may be kept; it decides only what follows once the money is a security deposit.

The article defines a “nonrefundable fee” only as money paid under the terms of a residential rental agreement, and it says nothing about money paid outside one. § 44-7-30(1), added by 2007 SB 94, verbatim: “‘Nonrefundable fee’ means any money or other consideration paid or given by a tenant to a landlord under the terms of a residential rental agreement which the parties agreed would not be refunded.” And § 44-7-30(3) excludes from the term “security deposit” any “nonrefundable fees, or money or other consideration which are not to be returned to the tenant under the terms of the residential rental agreement”.

Read those two provisions with a holding deposit in mind and the shape is clear. Georgia recognises that a tenant may agree, in the rental agreement, that some money will not come back, and it takes that money out of the security-deposit rules. Both provisions locate the agreement not to refund in the residential rental agreement. A pre-lease receipt marked “non-refundable” is not a residential rental agreement, and the article does not say what effect such a receipt has. It does not say the payment is forfeit; it does not say it is recoverable; it does not mention it.

What this page can say is what it cannot find. It cannot find, anywhere in the sections read, a provision that makes a forfeiture clause in a pre-lease holding record enforceable, and it does not say such a clause is enforceable. It cannot find a provision that bars one either. Whether a reservation payment made with no agreement is recoverable when the applicant withdraws is a question of Georgia contract law, which this page did not research and does not state. The record this page generates treats the deposit as refundable, and where the parties want any other handling it asks them to state the condition on which money would be kept, so that a court is at least reading a term rather than a label. It does not tell them the term will hold.

Georgia sets no figure for a holding deposit as such. If the money is or becomes a security deposit, § 44-7-30.1 caps it at the equivalent of two months’ rent for residential lease agreements entered into or renewed on or after July 1, 2024. Both halves of that sentence are needed.

The cap, verbatim from 2024 HB 404: “No landlord shall demand or receive a security deposit in an amount that exceeds the equivalent of two months’ rent.” Section 6 of the same Act provides that it applies to residential lease agreements “entered into or renewed on or after July 1, 2024”. Two features deserve notice. The cap is on demanding or receiving, so it is breached at the moment the money is taken, not only when it is kept. And it is dated: a lease entered into before July 1, 2024 and not since renewed is outside it, and this page does not say what, if anything, capped deposits under such a lease.

For a holding deposit the practical rule that survives both readings of § 44-7-30(3) is simple. Take no more to hold a unit than you could lawfully hold as a security deposit, and make sure that the holding deposit plus anything further collected as security at signing does not exceed the equivalent of two months’ rent. A holding deposit above that figure is not reached by § 44-7-30.1 on the reading that puts it outside the article; it becomes a security deposit in excess of the cap on the day it is credited, on the reading that crediting is receipt. A page that prints any other Georgia figure — one month, one and a half, a percentage of rent — has borrowed it from another state.

If it is a security deposit, in an escrow account established only for that purpose, with the tenant told in writing where it is. § 44-7-31, as rewritten by 2006 HB 1273, requires that a security deposit held by a landlord or the landlord’s agent on behalf of a tenant “shall be deposited in an escrow account established only for that purpose in any bank or lending institution subject to regulation by this state or any agency of the United States government”, and that “Tenants shall be informed in writing of the location of the escrow account”. The section opens “Except as provided in Code Section 44-7-32”, the surety-bond alternative, which was not fetched for this page and about which nothing is said.

Read against a holding deposit, the duty is keyed to the same conditional as everything else: it attaches to a security deposit held on behalf of a tenant. But it is the cheapest duty in the article to satisfy in advance. A landlord who puts every holding deposit into the escrow account on receipt and records the account in the holding record has complied on the reading that the money is a security deposit and has lost nothing on the reading that it is not. The cost of not doing so is set by § 44-7-35(a), under which the failure to escrow is one of three conditions which, when all three are present, mean the landlord “shall not be entitled to retain any portion of a security deposit”.

The tenant must be presented with a comprehensive list of existing damage. § 44-7-33(a), as revised by 2018 HB 834: “Prior to tendering a security deposit, the tenant shall be presented with a comprehensive list of any existing damage to the premises”, for the tenant’s permanent retention; the tenant may inspect the premises to check the list “prior to taking occupancy”; both sign it, or the tenant “shall state specifically in writing the items on such list to which he or she dissents and shall sign such statement of dissent”.

This is the one place in the article where the phrase “prior to” attaches to the deposit, and it is written for a tenant, not an applicant. It presupposes that the person tendering the deposit has a premises to inspect and an occupancy to take. The article does not say how that duty maps onto money paid to hold a unit before any lease, and this page does not say either. What it does say is that under § 44-7-35(a) the absence of the move-in list is one of the three conditions that together bar retention, and under § 44-7-35(b) the failure to provide the lists within the time periods in §§ 44-7-33 and 44-7-34 forfeits the landlord’s right to withhold any portion. A landlord who intends a holding deposit to become the security deposit at signing has every reason to present the list before the holding deposit is paid, or at the latest before it is credited.

The move-out side is set by § 44-7-33(b). Within three business days after termination of the lease and vacation of the premises, or surrender and acceptance, whichever occurs first, the landlord inspects and compiles a comprehensive list of damage that is the basis for any charge, with an estimated dollar value; the tenant may inspect the premises and the list within five business days. Neither period is written for someone who never moved in.

The article is silent, and the honest answer has two branches. Nothing in the sections read addresses an applicant who pays to hold a unit and then declines to sign, and nothing addresses an applicant whose application the landlord declines after screening. The word “prospective” does not appear. What happens to the money depends on the same fact as everything else on this page: whether a residential rental agreement existed when it was paid.

If no agreement had been made — the landlord was holding the unit while screening continued, and neither side had committed — then on the words of § 44-7-30(3) the payer was not a tenant and the money was not held by virtue of any agreement. Article 2 does not by its terms govern its return or its retention, and no other Georgia section read for this page does. Whatever the parties agreed about the money in that event is what governs it, and that is a matter of the agreement between them and of Georgia contract law, which this page did not research. The page does not say the landlord may keep it and does not say the landlord must return it; the article says neither. Where the applicant failed the landlord’s own screening, the landlord is the party who declined to proceed, and nothing on this page supports keeping money paid to hold a unit the landlord then refused to rent.

If an agreement had been made — a contract, lease or license agreement for the use of the unit as a dwelling, under which the landlord was holding the money for the person who paid — then the money was a security deposit. What may be retained from a security deposit is governed by § 44-7-34(a), which lists the grounds: nonpayment of rent or late fees, abandonment of the premises, nonpayment of utility charges, repair or cleaning contracted by the tenant with third parties, unpaid pet fees, and actual damages caused by the tenant’s breach “provided that the landlord attempts to mitigate the actual damages”. Whether an applicant who agreed to rent and then withdrew has committed a breach causing actual damages, and what those damages are after mitigation, is a question the section does not answer for this fact pattern; nothing on this page shows that a forfeiture clause in a holding record is one of the listed grounds, and the page does not say it is. What the section does make clear is the shape of any retention: a written statement identifying the exact reasons, accompanied by payment of the difference, within the 30 days § 44-7-34(a) allows — and under § 44-7-35(b) a landlord who misses that period forfeits the right to withhold anything.

The article is silent on this too, and the silence runs entirely against keeping the money. Nothing in the four enacted acts read addresses a landlord who accepts a holding deposit and then rents the unit to someone else, withdraws