Does the deposit have to be in an interest-bearing account in Nebraska?

No statute addresses whether the account must bear interest.

What happens if a landlord does not pay deposit interest in Nebraska?

No statutory penalty reaches an interest violation specifically.

Does a landlord have to pay interest on a security deposit in Nebraska?

Verified August 28, 2026 All Nebraska topics →

Nebraska requires no interest on a residential security deposit, and imposes no duty at all about where the deposit is held.

Cited to Neb. Rev. Stat. § 76-1416 (security deposits; prepaid rent) (1), (2), (3), (5) and 1 more cited source · Verified August 28, 2026

Section 76-1416 of Nebraska's Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act is the whole of the state's deposit law: it caps the deposit at one month's periodic rent, allows a pet deposit of up to a quarter of a month's rent on top, lets the money be applied at the end of the tenancy to rent and to damage from the tenant's noncompliance, and requires the balance plus a written itemization to be delivered or mailed within fourteen days. It never names an account, an escrow, a bank, or a rate, and neither does any of the act's other forty-eight sections. Nebraska's distinctive rule is one that is easy to misstate: where a landlord's failure to return the deposit is 'willful and not in good faith,' the tenant recovers the money due plus court costs and reasonable attorney's fees, and additional liquidated damages of 'one month's periodic rent or two times the amount of the security deposit, whichever is less' — a ceiling, not a doubling. A refund that comes back undeliverable, or that stays outstanding for a year, becomes abandoned property to be reported and paid to the State Treasurer.

Nebraska deposit interest at a glance

Interest owed to the tenant	No — no statute addresses it
How the rate is set	No rate exists — there is no interest duty
Current figure	No published figure exists
Rate rules	No rate rules — no duty exists
Accrual and payment	No payment duty exists
Who and what is covered	No statutory conditions stated — see the summary and notes
Statute controls where or how the deposit is held	No statute addresses how the deposit is held
Interest-bearing account required	No statute addresses whether the account must bear interest
Custody rules	No statute addresses custody of the deposit
Penalty for violation	No statutory penalty reaches an interest violation specifically
Local rules	None noted for this state

Cite this page: "Landlord Atlas, Nebraska Security Deposit Interest Laws (verified August 28, 2026), landlordatlas.com/laws/deposit-interest/nebraska/" — free to cite and quote with a link (how these records are verified). Everything above is cited in the citations section below.

Check the verified Nebraska answer — and every state and city that differs — in the deposit interest calculator — free, no signup, built on the same verified Nebraska law as this page.

Notes and caveats

The penalty is a cap, not a multiplier — Section 76-1416(3) sets the extra damages for a willful, bad-faith failure at 'an amount equal to one month's periodic rent or two times the amount of the security deposit, whichever is less.' Because Nebraska caps the deposit at one month's rent in the first place, twice the deposit will usually be the larger figure and one month's rent the operative one. Sources that print a flat 'two times the deposit' for Nebraska overstate the exposure.
No account duty of any kind — Nebraska is about as bare as a deposit statute gets on custody: no escrow, no trust account, no separate account, no named institution, no disclosure of where the money sits. A landlord may hold a Nebraska deposit in an ordinary operating account. That absence is what makes the interest question moot rather than merely unanswered.
Every 'interest' in the act is an ownership or security interest — The word appears five times across the forty-nine sections: a purchaser 'or a person who succeeds to his or her interest' in the tenancy-definition provision, 'two or more persons having a joint or common interest' in the definitions, 'the holder of the landlord's interest in the premises' in § 76-1416(5), 'a lien or security interest on behalf of the landlord in the tenant's household goods' in the distraint provision, and 'the rights, duties, and interests flowing from them' in the savings clause. None is money.
The section has stood since 2021 — Section 76-1416's source line runs Laws 1974, LB 293, § 16; Laws 1999, LB 105, § 99; Laws 2001, LB 7, § 12; Laws 2019, LB433, § 1; Laws 2021, LB532, § 7 — and stops there. No 2025 or 2026 enactment appears.

Common questions: Nebraska deposit interest

Each answer is the verified value from the table above, restated as a direct answer. Free to quote with a link to this page.

What is the Nebraska security deposit interest rate right now?: No published figure exists.
When must a landlord pay or credit deposit interest in Nebraska?: No payment duty exists.
Does the deposit have to be in an interest-bearing account in Nebraska?: No statute addresses whether the account must bear interest.
What happens if a landlord does not pay deposit interest in Nebraska?: No statutory penalty reaches an interest violation specifically.
Do any cities or counties in Nebraska have their own deposit-interest rules?: None noted for this state.

Citations

Neb. Rev. Stat. § 76-1416 (security deposits; prepaid rent) · (1), (2), (3), (5) (verified 2026) Official source
Neb. Rev. Stat. §§ 76-1401 to 76-1449 (the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, complete) (verified 2026) Official source

How this record was verified: Direct read of Neb. Rev. Stat. § 76-1416 in the Legislature's published statutes, all five subsections, together with the full text of all forty-nine sections of Nebraska's Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, §§ 76-1401 through 76-1449, read in one continuous official range display. Every occurrence of the word 'interest' in the article was enumerated individually and examined in context — four singular and one plural, all of them property-interest, security-interest, or savings-clause usages — and the article was searched for escrow, trust-account, separate-account, interest-bearing and banking-institution terms, none of which occurs. Currency taken from the section's own source line, which ends at Laws 2021, LB532, § 7.