Free Minnesota Security Deposit Itemization Form

A Minnesota security deposit itemization form is the line-by-line written statement a landlord uses to account for every dollar withheld from a departing tenant’s deposit. Under Minnesota Statutes Section 504B.178, a landlord may keep part of a deposit only by furnishing a written statement that shows the specific reason for the withholding of each amount, then adding the one percent statutory interest and returning the balance, all within three weeks after the tenancy ends and the tenant provides a mailing address. This form builds that itemized statement, does the math, and pairs with the cover letter in our Minnesota security deposit return letter. Our Minnesota security deposit laws guide covers the wider framework, and the tenant screening laws by state hub helps you place tenants who leave the unit clean in the first place.

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Video: a plain-language walkthrough of the Minnesota deposit itemized statement – the specific-reason lines, the one percent interest, the three-week deadline, and the up-to-five-hundred-dollar punitive penalty.

Build Your Minnesota Itemized Statement

Complete the form below to build an itemized statement of deductions ready to print, sign, and attach to your return letter. Enter the deposit and the number of full months you held it, and the interest helper estimates the one percent statutory interest for you, applying the under-one-dollar exclusion. Then itemize each withholding with a specific reason and a category, and the generator adds the deposit to the interest, subtracts the itemized withholdings, and calculates the refund balance owed to the tenant automatically. If the withholdings exceed the deposit, it flips to show the additional balance the tenant owes. Every figure you enter flows straight into the PDF statement, and the running total updates on screen before you generate.

How the Minnesota Itemized Statement Works

The itemized statement is the heart of a lawful Minnesota deposit withholding. Under Minnesota Statutes Section 504B.178, a landlord who keeps any part of a deposit does not simply mail back less money; the landlord must furnish a written statement showing the specific reason for the withholding of the deposit or any portion of it, and deliver it, along with any balance and the statutory interest, within three weeks after the tenancy terminates and the landlord receives the tenant’s mailing address or delivery instructions. The itemized statement is that written statement. It is not a courtesy or a formality; it is the legal precondition to withholding anything at all, and a withholding that is not backed by a specific-reason statement is a wrongful withholding no matter how genuine the underlying damage.

Because the statement is the gate to every deduction, the discipline that makes it defensible is the same discipline that fills it out well. Each line pairs a specific reason with a category and a dollar figure, and each figure should be traceable to a receipt, an invoice, or a reasonable estimate, measured against the condition the unit was in when the tenancy began. The move-in and move-out condition records and dated photographs are the evidence that turns a line on the statement into a proven deduction, which is why the strongest itemized statements are written from a condition file rather than from memory. Build the statement immediately once the mailing address arrives, so the three-week window is a comfortable margin rather than a scramble.

The One Percent Interest You Add Before Deducting

Minnesota is one of the states that requires a landlord to pay interest on a held deposit, and the itemized statement has to account for it. Under Section 504B.178, subdivision 2, the deposit bears simple, noncompounded interest at the rate of one percent per year, computed from the first day of the month following the full payment of the deposit to the last day of the month in which the landlord, in good faith, complies with the return duty. The statute adds a de minimis rule: any interest amount that comes to less than one dollar is excluded, so a short tenancy on a small deposit may owe no interest at all. Because Minnesota has changed the deposit interest rate several times over the decades, confirm the current rate in the live text of subdivision 2 before you compute, and treat one percent as the figure to verify rather than assume.

On the itemized statement the interest sits above the deductions, added to the original deposit to form the fund the withholdings come out of. The interest helper on this page estimates it by multiplying the deposit by one percent per year across the full months held, then applying the under-one-dollar exclusion, but it rounds to whole months and does not track the exact first-of-month to last-of-month window the statute describes. Use the helper to get close, then adjust to the precise statutory computation before you rely on the figure. A landlord who returns the principal but ignores the interest has technically failed to comply, so the interest belongs on the statement as its own line even when it is only a few dollars.

The Specific-Reason Requirement

Minnesota does not let a landlord withhold silently or vaguely. Section 504B.178, subdivision 3, gives the landlord a binary choice: return the whole deposit with interest, or furnish a written statement showing the specific reason for the withholding of the deposit or any portion of it and pay the balance. The word that carries the weight is specific. A statement that lists a bare dollar figure next to the word “repairs” or “cleaning” does not show a specific reason, and a court can treat it as no statement at all, which turns the entire deposit into a wrongful withholding and exposes the landlord to the punitive penalty. Tie each amount to what was unpaid or what was damaged, describe the harm and its location, and keep the receipts and photographs that back the figure. The itemization form exists precisely to force that specificity, one line at a time.

The Two Deductible Categories Under Subdivision 3

Section 504B.178 draws the outer boundary of what a Minnesota landlord may itemize. A landlord may withhold only amounts reasonably necessary to remedy tenant defaults in the payment of rent or of other funds due to the landlord under an agreement, and to restore the premises to their condition at the commencement of the tenancy, ordinary wear and tear excepted. Those two categories, a rent-or-funds-due category and a restoration category, are the whole universe of lawful deductions, which is why the form asks you to name the category for each line. A charge that fits neither category, or that cannot be tied to a reasonable and documented cost, is not a lawful deduction no matter how the landlord labels it on the statement. Keep every line inside one of the two boxes and the statement stays inside the statute.

Who Proves the Deduction: The Landlord’s Burden

The itemized statement is not the last word; it is the opening position the landlord must be able to defend. Section 504B.178 places the burden of proving, by a fair preponderance of the evidence, the reason for withholding all or any portion of the deposit on the landlord. If the tenant disputes the statement in conciliation court, Minnesota’s small-claims forum, the landlord, not the tenant, has to come forward with the proof that each line was reasonably necessary. That is the practical reason each row on the itemized statement should be paired with a dated move-out photograph and a receipt or invoice, measured against the move-in condition record. A deduction the landlord cannot prove is a deduction the landlord will lose, and losing it can carry the punitive penalty with it.

Bad Faith and the Five-Hundred-Dollar Penalty

The penalty is what gives the specific-reason rule its teeth. Under Section 504B.178, subdivision 7, a landlord who in bad faith retains the deposit, the interest, or any portion of it, in violation of the section, is liable to the tenant for the amount wrongfully withheld, plus punitive damages of up to five hundred dollars for each deposit. Bad faith is a fact question a court decides, and the statute presumes it when the landlord fails to comply with the three-week statement-or-return duty, unless the landlord returns the deposit within two weeks after the tenant commences an action to recover it. Common triggers are missing the deadline, itemizing with no specific reason, charging obvious wear and tear, inventing or padding a line, and refusing to return an undisputed balance. A landlord who errs in good faith may face only the withheld amount, while a landlord who fabricates a line risks the full punitive penalty on top of returning the money.

Wear and Tear Versus Damage

Every restoration line on the itemized statement lives or dies on the wear-and-tear line. Minnesota treats normal wear and tear as the gradual deterioration of the unit from ordinary use over time, and Section 504B.178 expressly excepts it from the cost to restore the premises. Faded paint, minor carpet wear in walking paths, small scuff marks near door handles, loose grout, and minor nail holes from hanging pictures all fall on the wear-and-tear side and may not be itemized. Damage is harm beyond ordinary use: large holes in walls, carpet stains or burns, broken fixtures, pet-urine saturation, smoke damage, missing appliances, or deliberate alterations, and those may be itemized as restoration costs. The move-in and move-out condition records and dated photographs are the evidence that separates one from the other, which is why a thorough Minnesota move-in and move-out checklist is the upstream document that makes a defensible itemized line possible.

When the Deductions Exceed the Deposit

An itemized statement does not always end in a refund. When documented damage and unpaid rent add up to more than the deposit plus interest, the statement shows an additional balance the tenant owes rather than a refund, and the generator on this page flips to that outcome automatically. The deposit is a fund the landlord draws against first, not a ceiling on the tenant’s liability, so a large, well-documented restoration cost can leave the tenant owing the difference. The catch is that the same specific-reason and burden-of-proof rules apply to every line whether the balance runs to the tenant or to the landlord. A landlord who pursues the extra balance must still be able to prove, by a fair preponderance of the evidence, that each charge was reasonably necessary, and an overreaching statement invites the tenant to counter with a bad-faith claim and the punitive penalty.

Citation Reference Table

The provisions a Minnesota itemized statement relies on live in a single statute, Section 504B.178, organized by subdivision:

• Minnesota Statutes Section 504B.178, subdivision 3 – the three-week deadline to return the deposit with interest or furnish a written statement showing the specific reason for the withholding after termination and receipt of the tenant’s mailing address; the five-day deadline when the unit is legally condemned; the two deductible categories; and the landlord’s burden of proof by a fair preponderance of the evidence.
• Section 504B.178, subdivision 2 – the one percent simple noncompounded interest on the deposit, computed monthly, with any interest under one dollar excluded.
• Section 504B.178, subdivision 4 – the tenant’s remedy when the landlord fails to comply, equal to the withheld amount and interest as a penalty in addition to the portion wrongfully withheld.
• Section 504B.178, subdivision 7 – the bad-faith penalty of the amount wrongfully withheld plus punitive damages of up to five hundred dollars for each deposit, with bad faith presumed on noncompliance unless the deposit is returned within two weeks of suit.

Subdivision numbers and the interest rate have shifted as the statute has been amended, so treat the citations above as a guide and confirm the current text of Section 504B.178 on the Minnesota Revisor of Statutes site before you rely on a specific subdivision or the one percent figure in a filing.

What to Send With the Minnesota Itemized Statement

A complete itemized-statement package usually includes:

• The itemized statement itself – generated above, signed and dated within three weeks of termination and receipt of the mailing address.
• The cover return letter – the short letter that transmits the statement and refund, built with our Minnesota deposit return letter form.
• The refund check – for the calculated balance, including the one percent interest, if any is owed.
• The move-in and move-out condition records – they establish baseline condition against end-of-tenancy condition for each restoration line.
• Dated move-out photographs – paired line by line to each damage deduction to prove damage rather than wear and tear.
• The receipts and invoices – the cost basis for each figure, and the copy of the lease for any deposit and restoration provisions it contains.

Send the package by certified mail with return receipt to the mailing address the tenant provided, retain the mailing receipt, and keep copies of everything for at least six years.

Common Minnesota Itemization Mistakes

The most-litigated Minnesota deposit disputes share a short list of itemization errors:

• Itemizing with a category word such as “cleaning” or “repairs” instead of a specific reason tied to a documented cost.
• Missing the three-week deadline because the itemized statement was not started once the mailing address arrived.
• Returning the principal but forgetting the one percent statutory interest line, a technical noncompliance in itself.
• Charging ordinary wear and tear, such as faded paint or minor carpet wear from foot traffic, as a restoration cost.
• Padding or inventing a line the landlord cannot prove was reasonably necessary by a fair preponderance of the evidence.
• Retaining an undisputed balance while a dispute over one line is pending, risking punitive damages of up to five hundred dollars.

A Worked Minnesota Itemized Statement

A concrete example shows how the two categories and the interest line fit together. Suppose a tenant paid a security deposit of one thousand two hundred dollars, held for the full twelve months of a one-year lease, and moved out owing eight hundred fifty dollars in unpaid final-month rent. During the move-out inspection the landlord documents a burned patch on the living-room carpet that a receipt shows cost three hundred twenty dollars to replace in that room, and a broken interior door the landlord repaired for ninety dollars. The landlord also notices faded paint in the hallway and light carpet wear in the main walking path, but leaves both off the statement because they are ordinary wear and tear.

On the itemized statement the landlord first adds the interest. One percent simple interest on one thousand two hundred dollars for twelve months is twelve dollars, which exceeds the one-dollar de minimis threshold, so the fund available becomes one thousand two hundred twelve dollars. The itemized deductions are three lines: eight hundred fifty dollars for unpaid final-month rent in the rent-or-funds-due category, three hundred twenty dollars for the burned living-room carpet in the restoration category, and ninety dollars for the broken interior door, also restoration. The three lines total one thousand two hundred sixty dollars. Because the deductions of one thousand two hundred sixty dollars exceed the fund of one thousand two hundred twelve dollars, the statement does not produce a refund; it shows the tenant owes an additional forty-eight dollars, and the generator on this page flips to that outcome automatically.

The example illustrates two disciplines the statute rewards. First, each line names a specific reason and a category rather than a vague label, so the tenant, and later a court, can see exactly what each amount represents. Second, the wear-and-tear items never appear on the statement at all, because charging them would not only lose those lines but could color the whole statement as an overreach and open a bad-faith argument. A statement that itemizes only provable damage and unpaid funds, and that carries the interest on its own line, is the statement a landlord can defend without hesitation.

Computing the One Percent Interest Correctly

The interest line trips up more Minnesota landlords than any other part of the statement, because the statute describes a specific computation window rather than a flat annual figure. Under subdivision 2, the interest runs from the first day of the month following the full payment of the deposit to the last day of the month in which the landlord complies with the return duty. A deposit paid mid-March therefore begins earning on April first, and if the landlord returns the deposit in October the interest runs through the last day of October. The rate is one percent per year, simple and noncompounded, so a partial year is prorated by the number of months in the window.

The under-one-dollar exclusion matters most on small deposits and short tenancies. One percent per year on a five-hundred-dollar deposit is five dollars annually, or roughly forty-two cents a month, so a deposit held only two months would generate under one dollar of interest and owe none at all. On a larger deposit held for a full lease term the interest is a real figure that belongs on the statement even though it is modest next to the deductions. The interest helper on this page rounds to whole months and treats a full year as twelve months, which is close enough to plan around, but the defensible practice is to count the exact months from the first of the month after payment to the last of the month of compliance and to confirm the current rate in the live text of subdivision 2 before you commit a number to the statement.

Consider a second scenario to see the window in action. A tenant pays a two-thousand-dollar deposit on the fifteenth of January and moves out at the end of a two-year lease, with the landlord completing the itemized statement and refund in early February two years later. Interest begins on February first of the first year, the month after the deposit was fully paid, and runs through the last day of February in the return year, a window of roughly twenty-five months. One percent per year on two thousand dollars is twenty dollars annually, so across about twenty-five months the interest comes to a little over forty-one dollars. That figure sits on its own line above the deductions and forms part of the fund the withholdings draw against. A landlord who simply wrote “one year of interest” or ignored the interest entirely on a deposit this size would understate the tenant’s money and hand the tenant a technical noncompliance argument, which is exactly the kind of avoidable error the interest line on this form is designed to prevent.

Room-by-Room: Wear and Tear Versus Damage

Because the restoration category is where most disputes live, it helps to walk the unit room by room with the wear-and-tear exception in mind. The test is always the same: did the condition result from the gradual, expected deterioration of ordinary use, or from abuse, neglect, or an accident beyond ordinary use? Only the second kind is a deduction, and only against the move-in condition record.

• Walls and paint. Faded paint, minor scuffs, and small nail holes from hanging pictures are wear and tear. Large holes, unapproved bright paint the landlord must prime and repaint, and crayon or marker across a wall are damage. Do not itemize a full repaint of a unit painted years before the tenancy began; the paint would have needed refreshing regardless of the tenant.
• Flooring and carpet. Traffic-path wear, minor matting, and a few small stains that clean out are wear and tear. Burns, pet-urine saturation that requires pad replacement, deep tears, and stains that will not clean are damage. Prorate a carpet deduction by the carpet’s remaining useful life rather than billing a new carpet against a tenant who wore out an already-aging one.
• Kitchen and bath. Loose grout, a worn faucet washer, and minor mineral buildup are wear and tear. A cracked countertop, a broken cabinet door, a missing appliance, and filth requiring extraordinary cleaning beyond a normal turnover clean are damage. A routine turnover cleaning is generally not chargeable; extraordinary cleaning of an abnormally dirty unit can be, if documented.
• Fixtures, doors, and windows. A worn hinge or a light bulb out is wear and tear. A broken interior door, a shattered window from misuse, missing blinds, and a removed smoke detector are damage. Tie each to a receipt or a reasonable estimate.
• Yard and exterior. Normal seasonal wear on a shared lawn is wear and tear. Debris the tenant left, a damaged fence, or destroyed landscaping the tenant was responsible for maintaining under the lease can be damage, if the lease assigned that duty.

The recurring theme is documentation measured against a baseline. A restoration deduction that a landlord cannot anchor to a move-in condition record and a move-out photograph is a deduction the landlord will struggle to prove, and an unprovable deduction is the seed of a wrongful-withholding claim.

If the Tenant Disputes: Conciliation Court

An itemized statement is the landlord’s evidence, and Minnesota gives the tenant a low-cost forum to challenge it. Deposit disputes typically land in conciliation court, Minnesota’s small-claims division, where filing fees are modest and parties usually appear without lawyers. In that forum the itemized statement is exhibit one, and the burden the statute assigns to the landlord becomes concrete: the landlord must come forward and prove, by a fair preponderance of the evidence, that each withheld amount was reasonably necessary to remedy a rent default or to restore the unit beyond ordinary wear and tear.

Practically, that means the landlord who prepared a specific-reason statement, paired each line to a dated photograph and a receipt, and mailed the package on time walks into court with a defensible position, while the landlord who wrote a vague statement or missed the deadline is already presumed to be in bad faith and must overcome that presumption. The statute’s bad-faith presumption on noncompliance can be cured only by returning the deposit within two weeks after the tenant commences the action, so a landlord served with a conciliation-court claim should weigh an early return of any genuinely disputed amount against the risk of the punitive penalty. Winning the small line is rarely worth losing the five-hundred-dollar exposure.

Joint Tenants, Multiple Deposits, and a Change of Owner

Two wrinkles catch landlords who manage at any scale. First, when several tenants share one lease and one deposit, the statement accounts for a single deposit and a single interest figure, and the refund or balance is a single number owed to or by the tenants jointly; the punitive cap in subdivision 7 is up to five hundred dollars for each deposit, not for each tenant, so consolidating roommates on one deposit keeps the exposure to a single cap. Second, when a landlord holds deposits on many units, each deposit is its own accounting with its own interest window and its own statement, and the punitive exposure attaches per deposit, which is why a portfolio owner who is careless across many move-outs can accumulate real liability.

A change of ownership adds its own duty. Under Section 504B.178, when the landlord’s interest in the property is terminated or transferred, the responsibility for the deposit and the interest follows the property to the successor in interest, and the original landlord must either transfer the deposit and interest to the new owner and notify the tenant in writing of the transfer and the successor’s name and address, or return the deposit and interest to the tenant. A buyer who takes over occupied units inherits the deposit-return duty and the three-week clock, so the itemized statement at the next move-out is the new owner’s obligation even though the money was collected by someone else. Confirm the exact transfer mechanics and any notice requirements in the current text of the statute before a sale closes.

Tenant Screening as Prevention

The cleanest move-outs, and the shortest itemized statements, come from tenants who were screened thoroughly at the application stage. A verifiable income, a steady payment history, and a clean eviction record are the strongest predictors of a unit returned in good condition, which means an itemized statement with few lines or none, a full refund with interest, and no five-hundred-dollar exposure. Screening is the upstream control that keeps the deposit accounting simple. Our overview of how to screen tenants step by step walks through the process, and the broader tenant screening laws by state guide covers the rules that apply when you pull a report.