What are the security deposit rules in Arkansas?

Verified July 10, 2026 All Arkansas topics →

Pending legislation — not yet law. The rules on this page reflect current law only. The following bill would change it if enacted:

SB 501 (2025 RS) — 'Tenant Possessions Recovery Act' — Would have required a landlord to give a tenant at least 14 days' written notice before the scheduled repossession date after a court issues a writ of possession, and created a process for tenants to recover personal possessions left behind. Adjacent to, not within, the four v1 topics, but it was the session's principal tenant-side bill.Status: Dead. Filed 2025-03-18, amended and re-referred to Senate Judiciary 2025-03-20, died in committee at the 2025-05-05 sine die adjournment. The 2026 fiscal session was appropriations-only; watch for a refile in the 2027 regular session (Arkansas holds regular sessions in odd years). (checked 2026-07-10).

Arkansas caps security deposits at two months' rent and requires return — or an itemized written notice of deductions plus the balance — within 60 days of the tenancy ending, but none of it applies to the state's smallest landlords: the entire deposit law exempts an individual owner whose household and rental entities collectively own five or fewer dwelling units, unless a third party manages the units (even just collecting rent) for a fee.

For those exempt landlords there is no cap, no deadline, no itemization duty, and no statutory penalty — the lease alone governs. Where the law does apply, mailing the notice and payment first-class to the tenant's last known address counts as compliance, and an undeliverable refund becomes the landlord's property 180 days after mailing. A landlord who violates the law owes the tenant the amount due plus twice the sum wrongfully withheld plus costs and attorney's fees, with an escape hatch for honest error or a good-faith dispute. No escrow account, no interest, and no move-in inspection checklist are required — Arkansas's deposit statute is six short sections, unamended since 2009.

Arkansas security deposits at a glance

Maximum deposit	2 months' rent — A.C.A. 18-16-304: no landlord may 'demand or receive a security deposit, however denominated, in an amount or value in excess of two (2) months periodic rent' — but ONLY where the deposit subchapter applies. A.C.A. 18-16-303 exempts the whole subchapter (cap, refund deadline, itemization, penalty) for dwelling units owned by an individual when the individual, spouse, minor children, and their rental-purpose entities collectively own five (5) or fewer dwelling units — UNLESS management, including rent collection, is performed by third persons for a fee. For exempt small landlords there is no cap at all.
Return deadline	60 days
Deadline conditions	Within 60 days of 'termination of the tenancy' (A.C.A. 18-16-305(a)(1)); the withholding-and-itemization clause computes the balance as due '60 days after termination of the tenancy and delivery of possession by the tenant' ((a)(2)). Mailing the written itemized notice and any payment by first-class mail to the tenant's last known address is deemed full compliance ((b)(1)); if the letter is returned and the landlord cannot locate the tenant after reasonable effort, the payment becomes the landlord's property 180 days from the date it was mailed ((b)(2)) — an unclaimed-refund forfeiture that runs against the tenant, not a return deadline. The 60-day deadline dates from Act 559 of 2009, which lengthened it from 30 days.
Itemization required	Yes
Itemization rules	Where the subchapter applies, the deposit may be applied to accrued unpaid rent and damages from the tenant's noncompliance with the rental agreement only 'as itemized by the landlord in a written notice delivered to the tenant,' with the remainder paid to the tenant (A.C.A. 18-16-305(a)(2)). No move-in checklist, inspection procedure, or tenant-dissent mechanism exists (unlike KY/TN/GA); the statute requires only the itemized written notice at return time.
Separate account required	No
Interest owed to tenant	No
Account & interest rules	No provision — the six-section subchapter (18-16-301 through 18-16-306) contains no escrow/dedicated-account requirement and no interest requirement; both are documented statutory absences, not oversights in this record.
Pet deposits	No pet-deposit statute. Where the subchapter applies, the 18-16-304 cap covers any deposit 'however denominated,' so refundable pet deposits count toward the two-month ceiling; for exempt small landlords pet deposits are unregulated lease terms.
Non-refundable fees allowed	Not addressed by statute
Penalty for violation	If the landlord 'fails to comply with this subchapter,' the tenant may recover the property and money due, PLUS damages equal to two (2) times the amount wrongfully withheld, PLUS costs, PLUS reasonable attorney's fees (A.C.A. 18-16-306(a)(1)) — the recovery stacks on top of the refund itself, which many summaries flatten to 'double damages.' Safe harbor: liability drops to costs plus the sum erroneously withheld if the landlord proves by a preponderance that the noncompliance resulted from an error despite procedures reasonably designed to avoid errors, or was based on a good-faith dispute as to the amount due ((a)(2)). Other lawful relief is preserved for both parties ((b)). None of this reaches exempt small landlords.
Tenant forwarding-address duty	None. Mailing to the 'last known address' is deemed compliance, and the incentive runs against the tenant: an undeliverable, unclaimed refund becomes the landlord's property 180 days after mailing (18-16-305(b)). Historical note: the 2007 act's original 18-17-501 DID require tenants to provide a forwarding address in writing — Act 559 of 2009 repealed it, so sources asserting that duty are quoting 2007-2009 law.

Notes and caveats

THE APPLICABILITY TRAP LEADS EVERYTHING — 18-16-303 verbatim: '(a) This subchapter shall not apply to dwelling units owned by an individual, if the individual, his or her spouse and minor children, and any and all partnerships, corporations, or other legal entities formed for the purpose of renting dwelling units and of which they are officers, owners, or majority shareholders own, or collectively own, five (5) or fewer dwelling units. (b) This exemption does not apply to units for which management, including rent collection, is performed by third persons for a fee.' Three parsing points page copy must keep: (1) it is an AGGREGATION test (spouse + minor children + rental-purpose entities), not a simple unit count — the AG's own page compresses it to 'landlords who rent six or more dwellings,' which drops both the aggregation and the manager exception; (2) hiring ANY paid third-party manager, including a mere rent collector, forfeits the exemption; (3) the exemption is entity-shaped — units 'owned by an individual' — so corporate-owned portfolios arguably never qualify. The statewide 2007 act adds no deposit duties of its own: 18-17-501 (as rewritten by Act 559 of 2009) simply defers to 18-16-301 et seq., so exempt landlords face only lease/common law. Stale-source traps: pre-2009 sources say 30 days (Act 559 of 2009 made it 60 — stricken/underlined text verified from the official act PDF); 2007-2009 sources describe a tenant forwarding-address duty that Act 559 repealed. nonrefundable_fees_allowed is null because no provision addresses fees (the cap's 'however denominated' language reaches things called deposits); separate_account_required and interest_required are false because the subchapter verifiably contains no such provisions (documented per data rules). Deposit subchapter otherwise unamended since Acts 1979, No. 531. Act 459 of 2025 also preempts LOCAL deposit regulation ('except as provided under § 18-16-304'), so no Arkansas city may impose stricter deposit rules.

Statute citations

A.C.A. § 18-16-303 (Exemptions — the applicability trap; read twice, FindLaw + Justia 2024 ed., fetches matched; unamended since Acts 1979, No. 531) (a)-(b) Unofficial mirror
A.C.A. § 18-16-304 (Maximum amount; read twice, fetches matched) Unofficial mirror
A.C.A. § 18-16-305 (Refund required — Exceptions; read twice, fetches matched) (a)-(b) Unofficial mirror
A.C.A. § 18-16-306 (Remedies; read twice, fetches matched) (a)-(b) Unofficial mirror
Act 559 of 2009 (SB 454) — official session law changing the refund deadline from 30 to 60 days and rewriting 18-17-501 to defer to 18-16-301 et seq. §§ 1-2 Official source
A.C.A. § 18-17-501 (2007 act defers all deposit questions to 18-16-301 et seq. — completes the exemption's statewide effect) Unofficial mirror

How this record was verified: Arkansas's official code is published via a LexisNexis portal without stable deep links (GA/TN-class sourcing), so verification pairs two independent current-code mirrors with official arkleg.state.ar.us session-law PDFs: every load-bearing section (A.C.A. 18-16-303, 18-16-304, 18-16-305, 18-16-306, 18-17-201, 18-17-202, 18-17-401, 18-17-602, 18-17-704, 18-17-705, 14-16-601) was read verbatim on FindLaw (current through 2024-03-28) and independently re-read on the Justia 2024 Arkansas Code edition (via browser; Justia returned 403 to direct fetches), with all reads matching; chapter 18-17 was additionally read in FULL from a mirrored chapter PDF for negative checks (no late-fee, rent-increase, or entry-notice provision exists). Every amendment was traced to the official act text read from arkleg PDFs: Act 559 of 2009 (deposit return 30->60 days; 18-17-501 rewritten to defer to 18-16-301 et seq.), Act 1052 of 2021 (18-17-502 habitability, context), and Act 459 of 2025 (preemption expanded to application fees and deposits). Corroborated against the Arkansas Attorney General's landlord-tenant page (official state source) and Legal Aid of Arkansas. 2025 regular session swept for landlord-tenant acts (only Act 459 touches an encoded field; SB 501 died in committee 2025-05-05 per the official arkleg bill page); the 2026 fiscal session was appropriations-only.