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Free Louisiana Security Deposit Itemization (Auto-Calc PDF)

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One month, itemized, and a penalty of three hundred dollars or double if you get it wrong — the itemized statement a Louisiana landlord must forward under La. R.S. §9:3251 when any part of the deposit is kept. It adds up the amounts retained, subtracts them from the deposit, and writes the refund or balance straight into the PDF.

La. R.S. §9:3251 One-Month Deadline Auto-Calc Refund Free PDF

A Louisiana security deposit itemization is the itemized statement that La. R.S. §9:3251 requires a landlord to forward whenever any part of the deposit is retained. Within one month after the lease terminates and the tenant vacates, a Louisiana landlord must either return the full deposit or send the tenant this line-by-line accounting of the proceeds retained and the reasons for keeping them, together with any balance. Louisiana lets a landlord keep only what is reasonably necessary to remedy a default of the tenant or to remedy unreasonable wear, requires the tenant to leave a forwarding address, and — where a landlord willfully fails after written demand — lets a tenant recover three hundred dollars or twice the amount wrongfully retained, whichever is greater. The generator below does the arithmetic: enter the deposit and each amount retained, and it totals them, subtracts, and prints a ready-to-sign statement. Confirm the current statute text at the Louisiana State Legislature before you send it, and pair it with the Louisiana return letter that transmits it.

The itemization is one equation wrapped in a legal deadline. You begin with the original security deposit the tenant paid — Louisiana sets no statutory ceiling on that amount, so it is whatever the lease required. From that figure you subtract every lawful amount retained, each listed on its own line with a description and a dollar amount. What remains is the refund you forward with the statement. If the amounts retained add up to more than the deposit, the equation goes negative and the statement instead shows the balance the tenant owes you. This document is the heart of Louisiana deposit compliance: §9:3251 does not merely say “explain yourself,” it requires the landlord to forward an itemized statement accounting for the proceeds retained and giving the reasons for the retention.

What makes Louisiana distinctive is the one-month deadline in §9:3251 paired with the willful-failure penalty in §9:3252. The landlord must forward the itemized statement or the full refund within one month after the lease terminates and the tenant vacates. Miss the deadline, keep an amount the statute does not allow, or ignore a tenant’s written demand for a refund for more than thirty days, and a retained amount can become a wrongful retention, exposing the landlord to the greater of three hundred dollars or twice that amount. The generator on this page handles the money side flawlessly: it sums the retained lines as you type, subtracts, and prints matching numbers into the PDF, so the arithmetic on the page and on the statement never disagree.

Fill in the parties, the deposit, and one line for each amount retained. As you type, the calculator at the bottom updates in real time; when you click generate, the same totals are written into a formatted Louisiana itemized statement you can print, sign, and mail. Every field below reaches the document, and the refund or balance is computed for you under La. R.S. §9:3251. If you also want a cover letter to transmit it, use the companion Louisiana deposit return letter form.

Louisiana’s residential security deposit rules live in a short cluster of statutes known as the Lessee’s Deposit Act, La. R.S. §9:3251 through §9:3254, and every landlord who holds a residential deposit is bound by them. The core duty sits in §9:3251: within one month after the lease terminates and the tenant vacates the premises, the landlord must return the deposit to the tenant, or, if any portion is retained, forward to the tenant an itemized statement accounting for the proceeds retained and giving the reasons for the retention, together with any remaining balance. That itemized statement is precisely the document this page generates.

The same section limits what may be kept. A Louisiana landlord may retain from the deposit only the amount reasonably necessary to remedy a default of the tenant or to remedy unreasonable wear to the premises. A “default” covers the tenant’s breaches — most commonly unpaid rent, but also other obligations the lease imposes — while “unreasonable wear” is the harm beyond the ordinary deterioration that any occupancy produces. Section 9:3251 also puts a duty on the tenant: the tenant shall furnish the lessor a forwarding address at the termination of the lease, to which the statement may be sent. And subsection (C) carves out an exception: the one-month itemization requirement does not apply when the tenant abandons the premises, either without giving the notice the lease requires or before the lease terminates.

Section 9:3252 supplies the teeth. A willful failure to comply with §9:3251 gives the tenant the right to recover the portion of the deposit wrongfully retained plus three hundred dollars or twice the amount of the portion wrongfully retained, whichever is greater. The statute defines when a failure becomes willful: failure to remit within thirty days after written demand for a refund constitutes willful failure. The action may be brought in the parish of the lessor’s domicile or in the parish where the property is situated. Section 9:3253 then addresses fees: in an action brought under §9:3252, the court may, in its discretion, award costs and attorney fees to the prevailing party — a discretionary award that can run to either side, not an automatic tenant recovery.

Louisiana landlords often blur two documents that the statute treats differently. The itemization is the statutory instrument named in §9:3251: the itemized statement accounting for the proceeds retained and giving the reasons. It is the accounting — each amount retained on its own line with a description and a dollar figure, the deposit at the top, and the refund or balance at the bottom. A return letter, by contrast, is the cover correspondence that transmits the accounting: the salutation, the paragraph explaining what is enclosed, the signature. The statute mandates the first; the second is a courtesy that carries it.

In practice a landlord usually sends both, stapled together, which is why the two are easy to conflate. But they are not interchangeable. A “Dear Tenant” letter with a lump-sum figure and no line items does not satisfy §9:3251, because the statute demands an itemized statement giving the reasons, not a bare summary. Conversely, a plain schedule of amounts retained with no cover note still satisfies the itemization requirement, though most landlords prefer to add a short transmittal for clarity. This page builds the itemization itself — the document the statute actually requires — and you can pair it with the companion deposit refund cover letter when you want a formal cover page. Keeping them as two separate forms mirrors how a Louisiana court will read your file: the itemized statement is the compliance record; the letter is the envelope.

The line between a lawful Louisiana retention and an unlawful one is the difference between unreasonable wear or a default and ordinary wear and tear. Section 9:3251 authorizes only what is reasonably necessary to remedy a default of the tenant or to remedy unreasonable wear — not upgrades, not routine turnover cleaning that any vacancy would require, and not the aging that happens even when a tenant is careful. The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development describes ordinary wear and tear as the deterioration that results from the intended, ordinary use of a dwelling; unreasonable wear, by contrast, is harm from negligence, carelessness, accident, or abuse. Only the second category may appear on a Louisiana itemization.

A useful test is to ask whether the condition came from living in the unit or from misusing it. Carpet flattened along the path from the door to the sofa is ordinary wear; the same carpet with a bleach stain is unreasonable wear. Louisiana courts, like courts elsewhere, also respect the depreciation idea behind HUD’s life-expectancy tables: if a carpet’s useful life is seven years and the tenant lived there five, the landlord cannot itemize a brand-new carpet, because most of that value was already used up by ordinary aging. When a line item is close to the boundary, retain conservatively and document thoroughly — an over-aggressive itemization is the fastest route to the §9:3252 penalty once the tenant makes written demand.

It helps to watch the equation run once with real numbers under Louisiana law. Suppose a tenant paid a security deposit of fifteen hundred dollars — Louisiana caps nothing, so it is whatever the lease required for a unit renting at, say, a thousand dollars a month — and no lease term credited interest, so the interest field stays at zero. The starting pool the landlord is accounting for is therefore fifteen hundred dollars, all of it the tenant’s money held under the Lessee’s Deposit Act until lawful amounts are retained.

After the tenant vacated, the landlord finds three chargeable items. The tenant left one month of rent unpaid, which the lease pegs at nine hundred fifty dollars — a classic default. A dog left urine stains that required professional carpet treatment, invoiced at two hundred eighty dollars — unreasonable wear. And a bedroom wall had several fist-sized holes that cost one hundred twenty dollars to patch and repaint. Faded paint elsewhere and a worn path in the hallway carpet were left off the statement entirely, because those are ordinary wear and tear and charging for them would convert a lawful itemization into a wrongful retention.

The three lawful amounts retained total thirteen hundred fifty dollars. Subtracting that from the fifteen-hundred-dollar deposit leaves a refund of one hundred fifty dollars owed back to the tenant, which the landlord forwards with the statement to the forwarding address within one month. Had the damage been worse — say a ruined subfloor pushing the retained amounts past the deposit — the equation would have gone negative, and the statement would instead show a balance the tenant owes, with the same line-item detail and receipts behind it. The generator above produces exactly this arithmetic, whichever way it lands, and prints the matching figures into the PDF so the page and the statement never disagree.

The single most common reason a Louisiana deposit retention fails in court is not that the charge was unfair — it is that the line item was too vague to defend. A judge reading an itemization is looking for three things on every line: a specific condition, a specific location, and a specific amount tied to a receipt. A line that reads “cleaning — three hundred dollars” invites the tenant to argue the unit was left broom-clean and the number was invented. A line that reads “Professional cleaning of kitchen and two bathrooms left with grease, soap scum, and mildew, per attached ABC Cleaning invoice dated March 3 — one hundred eighty-five dollars” tells the court exactly what happened and what it cost.

Write each retention as if the tenant will contest it, because the ones worth contesting usually get contested. Name the room, describe the condition in plain words, and anchor the amount to a document: an invoice, a receipt, a written estimate, or a labor log at a stated hourly rate. Where a retention covers your own labor rather than a contractor’s bill, say so and state the hours and the rate, because a Louisiana court will scrutinize round numbers that look like guesses. Attach photographs keyed to each line, dated at move-out and, ideally, matched to a move-in photo of the same spot. The itemization the generator produces gives you the numbered structure; your job is to make the description on each line carry its own weight.

The whole itemization deadline hangs on two linked events — the termination of the lease and the tenant vacating the premises — yet those dates are not always obvious, and getting them wrong is how careful landlords still blow the month. Section 9:3251 measures a calendar month, not a fixed thirty-day count, so a statement due after a February termination has fewer days to run than one due after a July termination. The clock runs from when the lease terminates and the tenant leaves, not from the date the tenant happens to hand back the keys if those differ. For a fixed-term lease that simply expires, the termination date is the last day of the term. For a month-to-month tenancy ended by proper notice, it is the date the notice makes effective.

Three fact patterns cause the most trouble in Louisiana. The first is the holdover tenant who stays past the term: the month does not start until that continued occupancy itself ends and the unit is vacated, so a landlord who itemizes prematurely may be counting from the wrong day. The second is abandonment, which the statute treats specially: under §9:3251(C) the one-month itemization duty does not apply when the tenant abandons the premises without the required notice or before the lease terminates, though a prudent landlord still documents the condition and any amounts kept. The third is a partial move-out by one of several tenants, where the lease as a whole has not terminated even though one occupant is gone. When the termination-and-vacating date is genuinely uncertain, choose the earliest defensible date and work from it, because counting from too early a date only helps you, while counting from too late a date is what a written demand can turn into willfulness.

The remedy that makes Louisiana deposit law worth taking seriously lives in §9:3252, and its structure rewards precision. The tenant recovers the portion of the deposit that was wrongfully retained, plus a statutory penalty equal to the greater of three hundred dollars or twice that wrongfully retained portion. The multiplier attaches to the portion wrongfully retained, not to the entire deposit, so a landlord who correctly keeps nine hundred fifty dollars of unpaid rent but wrongly adds a two-hundred-dollar charge for faded paint faces the penalty measured against the two hundred, not the whole deposit. Twice two hundred is four hundred, which exceeds the three-hundred-dollar floor, so on those facts the tenant recovers the two hundred back plus four hundred.

The three-hundred-dollar floor matters most when the wrongful retention is small. If a landlord wrongly keeps one hundred dollars, twice that is two hundred, which is less than the three-hundred-dollar minimum, so the tenant recovers the hundred plus three hundred. This floor is why even a modest wrongful retention is worth a tenant’s time in Louisiana, and why a landlord should never treat a small disputed line as harmless. The penalty is not automatic, though: it is triggered only by a willful failure, and the statute pins willfulness to the thirty-day-after-written-demand standard. A landlord who responds promptly and in good faith to a written demand — by refunding, correcting, or explaining a retention — can defeat the willfulness element even if a court later trims a line item.

Many tenants assume that winning a deposit case in Louisiana means the landlord automatically pays their lawyer. That is not what the statute says. Section 9:3253 provides that, in an action brought under §9:3252, the court may, in its discretion, award costs and attorney fees to the prevailing party. Three features of that language matter. First, the award is discretionary — “may,” not “shall” — so a court can decline to award fees even to a winner. Second, it runs to the prevailing party, which can be the landlord: a tenant who sues on a weak claim and loses may find a fee award pointed the other way. Third, fees are available only in an action brought under §9:3252, meaning the willful-failure remedy, not merely any deposit disagreement.

For a landlord, the practical takeaway is that a clean, timely, well-documented itemization does double duty: it avoids the §9:3252 penalty in the first place, and if a tenant sues anyway, it positions the landlord as the potential prevailing party who could be awarded fees. For a tenant weighing a claim, the discretionary nature of §9:3253 counsels bringing only well-founded demands, because the fee shift is not a one-way ratchet. Because the exact application turns on the facts and the judge, both sides should read the current text at the Louisiana Legislature and consult the broader Louisiana tenant-law guide before filing or defending.

An itemization is only as strong as the evidence behind it, and Louisiana’s willful-failure penalty makes weak evidence expensive. The backbone of a defensible file is a matched pair of records: a move-in condition report signed at the start of the lease and a move-out condition report made when the tenant vacates. When the two are read side by side, each amount retained on the statement corresponds to a documented change — a wall that was intact and is now holed, a carpet that was clean and is now stained. Without the move-in baseline, a tenant can plausibly claim the condition predated the tenancy, and a Louisiana court has little to weigh against that claim.

Photographs are the second pillar, and their value depends on discipline rather than quantity. Date-stamp every photo, shoot the same locations at move-in and move-out, and capture wide shots that establish the room as well as close-ups that show the specific damage. Keep the contractor invoices, material receipts, and any written estimates that support each dollar figure, and if part of a retention is your own labor, log the hours and the rate rather than writing a round number. Retain the whole package — signed statement, condition reports, photos, receipts, and proof of delivery — in the tenant’s file, because a deposit dispute can surface months after move-out. A completed move-in and move-out inspection checklist is the simplest way to build the matched-pair record the itemization relies on, and screening applicants carefully with a thorough rental application up front reduces how often you ever reach a contested itemization.

Most deposit disputes involve one tenant, but the ones that go sideways often involve several. When two or more tenants share a Louisiana lease and a single deposit, the deposit is ordinarily treated as a joint fund: the landlord accounts for one deposit and owes one refund, and it is generally not the landlord’s job to split the refund among roommates according to who paid what. The prudent practice is to make the refund check payable jointly, or to follow whatever the lease specifies, and to forward the single itemized statement to an address that reaches the tenants. Where roommates have scattered to different addresses, forwarding to the last known address of the tenancy still helps show a good-faith attempt at compliance even if the internal split is left for the roommates to sort out among themselves.

The forwarding address deserves its own attention because §9:3251 makes it the tenant’s duty and tenants frequently forget it. Ask for a forwarding address in writing before move-out and record it, but if none arrives, forward the itemization and any refund to the tenant’s last known address within the month rather than waiting. If a refund check is later returned undelivered, keep it and the envelope showing the attempt, because the returned check is evidence that you tried to comply on time. Remember too that under §9:3251(C) the one-month duty does not even apply when the tenant abandons the premises without the required notice or before the lease ends — but a careful landlord still documents the condition and any amounts kept in case the tenant later resurfaces with a written demand.

A Louisiana tenant who believes the itemization is wrong or the deposit was kept without cause is not without recourse, but the path runs through a specific first step. Because §9:3252 pins willfulness to a failure to remit within thirty days after written demand, the tenant’s opening move is almost always a written demand for the refund. That demand starts the thirty-day clock and, if the landlord lets it lapse, converts an ordinary retention dispute into a willful failure that carries the greater of three hundred dollars or double the wrongfully retained amount. The everyday forum is small claims or the local city court or justice of the peace court, where deposit disputes are among the most common cases and a tenant usually does not need a lawyer.

Note the precise contours of the remedy. The penalty multiplier applies to the portion wrongfully retained, not to the entire deposit, and it is measured as the greater of three hundred dollars or twice that portion. The action may be filed in the parish of the lessor’s domicile or in the parish where the property sits, which gives a tenant flexibility on venue. And unlike some states, Louisiana’s fee provision in §9:3253 is discretionary and available to either side — a court may award costs and attorney fees to whichever party prevails. Because the exact application turns on the facts, a tenant weighing a claim, or a landlord assessing exposure, should read the current text at the Louisiana Legislature and consult the broader Louisiana landlord-tenant laws.

The mechanics of a claim also reward the prepared landlord. A Louisiana deposit dispute usually lands in a city court or justice of the peace court, where the tenant files, the landlord answers, and both sides bring their exhibits to a short hearing. What decides these cases is rarely a point of law — it is whose paperwork is more credible. A landlord who arrives with a signed itemization, matched move-in and move-out condition reports, dated photographs, receipts numbered to the line items, and proof of timely delivery presents a record the court can follow line by line. A tenant arguing that the whole deposit was kept without cause has a much harder time when each amount retained is documented and each number is tied to a receipt. Conversely, a landlord who shows up with a lump-sum figure, no supporting records, and an unanswered written demand invites the court to find the retention wrongful, apply the §9:3252 penalty, and consider fees under §9:3253. The itemization this page builds is the centerpiece of that file, and the surrounding documentation is what makes it persuasive rather than merely tidy.

Most Louisiana deposit disputes trace back to a short list of avoidable errors. Reviewing them before you forward the statement is the cheapest insurance available.

Two refinements separate a rushed Louisiana itemization from a defensible one. The first is interest. The Lessee’s Deposit Act does not require a Louisiana landlord to pay interest on a residential security deposit, so for most Louisiana leases the interest field on this form stays at zero. Where a written lease term nonetheless promises the tenant interest, that promise is enforceable as a matter of contract, and you would add the credited interest to the deposit before subtracting the amounts retained. When in doubt, treat interest as owed to the tenant only if a document you signed says so.

The second refinement is prorating for an item’s age. A Louisiana landlord cannot itemize a departing tenant the full price of a brand-new replacement for something already partway through its useful life, because the statute authorizes only remedying unreasonable wear, not betterment at the tenant’s expense. HUD’s life-expectancy guidance is the common reference point: interior paint is often treated as lasting two or three years, plush carpet roughly five to seven, and larger appliances closer to ten. If a carpet with a seven-year life is damaged after five years of tenancy, only the remaining fraction of its value is fairly chargeable. Applying that proration signals good faith and keeps a retention proportionate if the tenant challenges it in court.

Security deposit itemization rules vary widely from state to state, and Louisiana stands out on two points: it measures its deadline in a calendar month rather than a fixed thirty-day count, and it defines willfulness by a thirty-day-after-written-demand trigger rather than a flat deadline miss. Many states run a fixed fourteen-, twenty-one-, or thirty-day clock and double or treble damages on any late itemization; Louisiana instead gives the landlord a month and then a second chance to cure after a written demand, but backs it with a three-hundred-dollar floor that makes even small wrongful retentions worth litigating. The absence of a deposit cap and of an interest rule also sets Louisiana apart from the many states that impose both.

• Calendar the month. Count one calendar month from lease termination and vacating, and forward the statement well before it runs, with proof.
• Answer any written demand fast. Section 9:3252 makes silence past thirty days after a written demand willful; respond in writing within that window.
• Retain only within §9:3251. Amounts reasonably necessary to remedy a default or unreasonable wear — nothing for ordinary wear.
• Photograph at move-in and move-out. Dated photos next to the inspection checklist turn “your word against mine” into documented fact.
• Itemize line by line. One description and one amount per retention with the reason, never a single lump sum, and attach the receipt.
• Respect the item’s life expectancy. Prorate for age rather than charging full replacement cost on a used item.
• Forward to the forwarding address. Certified mail with a return receipt gives you provable timing and delivery.
• Keep a copy. Retain the signed statement, the receipts, and the delivery proof in the tenant’s file.

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