How long does a landlord have to return a security deposit in Indiana?

45 days. The clock starts when the tenancy ends and the tenant returns possession, not when the tenant gives a forwarding address. But the landlord owes nothing under the statute until the tenant supplies a mailing address in writing, so a tenant who never sends one cannot enforce the deadline.

What happens if a landlord does not return the deposit on time in Indiana?

The landlord forfeits the right to keep any of the deposit and pays the tenant's reasonable attorney's fees and court costs. There is no doubling or trebling in Indiana; the teeth are total forfeiture of the deduction claim plus fees.

Do landlords have to pay interest on security deposits in Indiana?

No — Indiana does not require interest on the security deposit to be paid to the tenant. Indiana's residential security-deposit chapter (IC 32-31-3, §§ 1.1–19) contains no escrow, trust-account, or interest provision of any kind.

What are the security deposit rules in Indiana?

Verified October 2, 2026 All Indiana topics →

Indiana sets no cap on residential security deposits, but a landlord must deliver an itemized written accounting — with any refund — within 45 days after the tenancy ends and possession is returned, and owes nothing under the statute until the tenant supplies a forwarding address in writing.

Cited to IC 32-31-3-12 (a)-(d) and 4 more cited sources · Verified October 2, 2026

The deposit may only be applied to unpaid rent, damage beyond ordinary wear and tear, rent owed for breaking the lease early, and unpaid utility or sewer charges the lease put on the tenant; the itemized list must state the estimated repair cost for each damaged item and come with a check or money order for the balance. The penalty structure is what makes the 45-day letter famous in Indiana practice: a landlord who misses it is deemed to have agreed that no damages are due, must immediately return the entire deposit, and is on the hook for the tenant's reasonable attorney's fees and court costs. There is no interest, escrow, or separate-account requirement, and no statutory limit on deposit size — the leverage is all in the return procedure.

Indiana security deposits at a glance

Maximum deposit	No statutory cap
Return deadline	45 days
Deadline conditions	The clock starts when the tenancy ends and the tenant returns possession, not when the tenant gives a forwarding address. But the landlord owes nothing under the statute until the tenant supplies a mailing address in writing, so a tenant who never sends one cannot enforce the deadline. The itemized written notice (with the amount due) must be delivered not more than 45 days after 'termination of the rental agreement and delivery of possession' (IC 32-31-3-12(a)); the parallel mailing duty in IC 32-31-3-14 runs 45 days from 'termination of occupancy'. The forwarding address is a liability precondition, not the clock trigger: 'The landlord is not liable under this chapter until the tenant supplies the landlord in writing with a mailing address to which to deliver the notice and amount' (12(a)). Popular summaries collapse this into '45 days after the tenant provides a forwarding address' — a serviceable practical reading, but the statutory trigger is termination plus delivery of possession, with the duty suspended until the written address arrives.
Itemization required	Yes
Itemization rules	Two overlapping duties: (1) under IC 32-31-3-12(a), all deductions (accrued rent, damages the landlord has suffered or will reasonably suffer from the tenant's noncompliance, and unpaid utility/sewer charges the tenant owed under the lease) must be itemized with the amount due in a written notice delivered within 45 days; (2) under IC 32-31-3-14, the landlord must MAIL an itemized list of damages claimed, setting forth 'the estimated cost of repair for each damaged item' and 'the amounts and lease on which the landlord intends to assess the tenant' (that odd phrase is the actual statutory text), together with a check or money order for the difference. Deductions are limited to the purposes in IC 32-31-3-13: actual damages beyond ordinary wear and tear, rent in arrearage and rent due for premature termination, last-period rent if a written agreement so stipulates, and unpaid tenant-obligation utility/sewer charges.
Separate account required	No
Interest owed to tenant	No
Account & interest rules	Indiana's residential security-deposit chapter (IC 32-31-3, §§ 1.1–19) contains no escrow, trust-account, or interest provision of any kind. Fifty-state charts that import other states' interest or separate-account rules into Indiana are wrong, and a tenant-advocacy proposal to require interest on deposits held over a year (circulating in 2026 blog roundups) has never been enacted.
Pet deposits	No statute addresses a pet deposit, and no general deposit cap exists for one to count against. The pet-deposit rule, pet rent and fees, and the assistance-animal rules are on the pets and assistance animals page.
Non-refundable fees allowed	Not addressed by statute
Penalty for violation	The landlord forfeits the right to keep any of the deposit and pays the tenant's reasonable attorney's fees and court costs. There is no doubling or trebling in Indiana; the teeth are total forfeiture of the deduction claim plus fees. The forfeiture is layered across three sections: failure to deliver the 12(a) notice lets the tenant recover 'all of the security deposit due the tenant and reasonable attorney's fees' (12(b)); failure to mail the section 14 damages notice 'constitutes agreement by the landlord that no damages are due, and the landlord must remit to the tenant immediately the full security deposit' (IC 32-31-3-15 — a total forfeiture of deduction claims); and a landlord who violates sections 14 and 15 is liable for the part of the deposit withheld plus reasonable attorney's fees and court costs (IC 32-31-3-16). Waiver of the chapter is void (32-31-3-17), and the owner at termination is bound (12(d)); on a sale, the seller stays liable for the deposit for one year after notice of conveyance unless the buyer acknowledges to the tenant, by notice, that the buyer has assumed the seller's liability and the seller transfers the deposit to the buyer at the conveyance (32-31-3-19).
Tenant forwarding-address duty	Yes, functionally: the landlord 'is not liable under this chapter until the tenant supplies the landlord in writing with a mailing address' (IC 32-31-3-12(a)). A tenant who never supplies a written address cannot enforce the 45-day duty; supplying it promptly at move-out is the practical trigger for the whole remedy scheme.

Cite this page: "Landlord Atlas, Indiana Security Deposit Laws (verified October 2, 2026), landlordatlas.com/laws/security-deposits/indiana/" — free to cite and quote with a link (how these records are verified). Everything above is cited in the citations section below.

Generate a Indiana security-deposit return letter — free, no signup, built on the same verified Indiana law as this page.

Editable Indiana deposit kit — the deposit disposition letter, the move-in receipt with the custody and interest statements, a deposits-held register with the return deadline computed, and the rules fact sheet built on the verified Indiana rules on this page, in Word, fillable PDF and Excel.

Notes and caveats

No deposit cap exists — the circulating '1.5x rent' figure is fabricated — Nothing in IC 32-31-3 caps deposit size: the chapter's full section list (1.1 through 19) contains no cap provision. Widely syndicated summary charts claiming a '1 month for month-to-month / 1.5x monthly rent' cap are quoting text that exists nowhere in the code.
The forwarding address is a liability switch, not the deadline trigger — The record follows the actual IC 32-31-3-12(a) text: the tenant's written mailing address is a precondition to the landlord's liability under the chapter, not the trigger of the 45-day deadline that most summaries describe.
Missing the damages notice forfeits every deduction — The IC 32-31-3-15 forfeiture is total — failing to mail the damages notice 'constitutes agreement... that no damages are due' — and it is the risk the whole Indiana deposit scheme turns on.
A garbled-looking phrase is the genuine statutory text — IC 32-31-3-14's requirement to state 'the amounts and lease on which the landlord intends to assess the tenant' reads garbled, but it is the actual statutory wording. Do not 'correct' it when quoting the statute.
Who the deposit chapter covers — The chapter applies to rental agreements for dwelling units in Indiana (IC 32-31-2.9-3). Agreements predating July 1989 are grandfathered (IC 32-31-3-1.1), and IC 32-31-2.9-4 excludes transient occupancy in a hotel, motel or other lodging, institutional and employer-tied occupancy, fraternal housing, condominium owners and holders of a proprietary lease in a cooperative, agricultural occupancies, and purchase-contract occupants — except rent-to-own agreements under IC 32-31-3-7(b) — unless the arrangement was created to avoid the residential landlord-tenant statutes.

Common questions: Indiana security deposits

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

How much can a landlord charge for a security deposit in Indiana?: No statutory cap.
How long does a landlord have to return a security deposit in Indiana?: 45 days. The clock starts when the tenancy ends and the tenant returns possession, not when the tenant gives a forwarding address. But the landlord owes nothing under the statute until the tenant supplies a mailing address in writing, so a tenant who never sends one cannot enforce the deadline.
What happens if a landlord does not return the deposit on time in Indiana?: The landlord forfeits the right to keep any of the deposit and pays the tenant's reasonable attorney's fees and court costs. There is no doubling or trebling in Indiana; the teeth are total forfeiture of the deduction claim plus fees.
Do landlords have to pay interest on security deposits in Indiana?: No — Indiana does not require interest on the security deposit to be paid to the tenant. Indiana's residential security-deposit chapter (IC 32-31-3, §§ 1.1–19) contains no escrow, trust-account, or interest provision of any kind.
Can a landlord charge a non-refundable fee in Indiana?: Not addressed by statute.

Citations

IC 32-31-3-12 · (a)-(d) (verified 2026) Official source
IC 32-31-3-13 (verified 2026) Official source
IC 32-31-3-14 (verified 2026) Official source
IC 32-31-3-15 (verified 2026) Official source
IC 32-31-3-16 (verified 2026) Official source

How this record was verified: Every section these answers rest on was read on October 2, 2026 in the Indiana General Assembly's own publication of the Indiana Code at iga.in.gov (the 2026 edition, published June 30, 2026, which carries the acts of the 2026 session in each section's history line): IC 32-31-1 (termination notices, the ten-day notice for unpaid rent and its optional form, and the bar on local regulation in IC 32-31-1-20), IC 32-31-2.9 (the tenancies the residential statutes do not reach), IC 32-31-3 (security deposits, read whole), IC 32-31-4 to 32-31-7 (a tenant's property, the entry and lockout rules of IC 32-31-5-6, the 30-day notice of IC 32-31-5-4, emergency possessory orders, tenant duties), IC 32-31-10 to 32-31-12, IC 32-30-2 and 32-30-3 (actions for possession and the order of possession), IC 33-29-2-4, 33-34-3-3 and 33-34-3-15.1 (the courts), IC 36-1-2-23 (what a unit of local government is), IC 24-7-5-5 and IC 16-41-27 (mobile home communities). No 2026 public law amended IC 32-31, IC 32-30-2 or IC 32-30-3, and the 2025 and 2026 editions of those chapters are identical. Senate Enrolled Act 148 of 2020 was read as enrolled, with the General Assembly's roll calls on the veto override (Senate, February 8, 2021; House, February 17, 2021) and its record of the Governor's veto on March 25, 2020. Small Claims Rules 2 and 4 and Appellate Rule 9 were read on the Indiana courts' rules site, each with its effective date, and Gershin v. Demming, 685 N.E.2d 1125 (Ind. Ct. App. 1997), in the reporter. September 5, 2026 addendum: the decisive figures touched by the 2025-2026 enactments reviewed that day were re-read on the official host — IC 32-31-11-3 on iga.in.gov; the earlier reads stand as recorded.