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

No statutory deadline. Kentucky sets no deadline for returning a deposit, and in most of the state there is no general deposit statute. Where the local government has adopted the URLTA, the only clocks in the statute run against the tenant, not the landlord.

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

Forfeiture only, and only where the URLTA has been locally adopted: the landlord loses the right to keep any part of the deposit. Kentucky has no damages multiplier, no bad-faith penalty, and no attorney-fee award for deposit violations.

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

No — Kentucky does not require interest on the security deposit to be paid to the tenant. KRS 383.580 is silent on interest. It does require the deposit to sit in a dedicated account, and the tenant must be told both where that account is and its account number.

What are the security deposit rules in Kentucky?

Verified October 1, 2026 Correction October 2, 2026 All Kentucky topics →

What did not become law. None of the following is law; failed bills are sometimes still described as if enacted:

HB 340 (2026 RS) — 'AN ACT relating to termination of residential leases' — Would have created early-termination rights (new sections of KRS ch. 383) for 'medically fragile' tenants (30 days' notice plus medical documentation), tenants 60+ or disabled on the death of a spouse or cotenant (60 days' notice), and tenants facing unabated lead hazards. Does not touch deposits, entry, late fees, or rent-increase rules, but it was the session's principal landlord-tenant bill and a likely refile. Status: Dead. Referred to House Judiciary 2026-01-21 with no further action; the 2026 Regular Session adjourned sine die 2026-04-15. 2026 RS HB 202, which would have repealed KRS 383.500 and applied a rewritten act to every lease of a dwelling unit in Kentucky, was referred to House Judiciary on January 14, 2026 and also died; no 2026 act amended KRS 383.500-383.715, 383.195, or 65.875 — a future statewide-URLTA enactment would rescope Kentucky landlord-tenant law across the board and is the top KY watch item. (checked July 9, 2026).

Kentucky has no statewide security-deposit law: the deposit statute, KRS 383.580, applies only in the cities and counties that have adopted Kentucky's optional Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act by local ordinance — including Louisville-Jefferson County and Lexington-Fayette — and everywhere else the lease governs deposits, apart from the statewide bar on any pet fee or deposit for an approved assistance animal.

Cited to KRS 383.580 (1)-(7) and 3 more cited sources · Verified October 1, 2026

Where it does apply, there is no cap on the deposit and no deadline to return it. Instead the landlord must hold the deposit in a dedicated bank account disclosed by location and account number, give the tenant signed itemized damage listings at both move-in and move-out, and send the departing tenant notice of any refund due — and a tenant who fails to respond within 60 days forfeits the entire refund. A tenant who signs the move-out damage listing without an item-by-item written dissent cannot later sue over those charges. The only penalty for landlord noncompliance is losing the right to withhold; Kentucky awards no double damages and no attorney fees.

Kentucky security deposits at a glance

Maximum deposit	No statutory cap
Return deadline	No statutory deadline
Deadline conditions	Kentucky sets no deadline for returning a deposit, and in most of the state there is no general deposit statute. Where the local government has adopted the URLTA, the only clocks in the statute run against the tenant, not the landlord. What KRS 383.580 provides instead: if the tenant leaves owing nothing with a refund due, the landlord must send notice of the refund amount to the tenant's last known or reasonably determinable address, and if the TENANT does not respond within 60 days of the sending of that notice, the landlord may remove the deposit from the account and keep it free of any claim (subsection (7)). If the tenant leaves owing the last month's rent without demanding the deposit, the landlord may apply it to the debt after 30 days (subsection (6)). Both clocks run against the tenant. Outside URLTA jurisdictions there is no general deposit statute — the lease and common law govern, apart from the statewide bar on any pet fee or deposit for an approved assistance animal (KRS 383.085(4)).
Itemization required	Yes
Itemization rules	URLTA jurisdictions only. Two mandatory damage listings bracket the tenancy (KRS 383.580(2)-(3)): BEFORE any deposit is tendered, the prospective tenant must receive a comprehensive listing of existing damage with estimated repair costs and may inspect to check it; at termination the landlord must inspect and compile a comprehensive listing of damage charged against the deposit with estimated repair costs, which the tenant may verify by inspection. Both parties sign each listing, and signatures are conclusive evidence of its accuracy (move-in signatures not conclusive as to latent defects); a tenant who refuses to sign must submit a signed, item-by-item written dissent. The dissent has teeth: a tenant's District Court claim is limited to the items dissented from, and a tenant who neither signs nor dissents recovers nothing under the section (subsection (5)).
Separate account required	Yes
Interest owed to tenant	No
Account & interest rules	KRS 383.580 is silent on interest. It does require the deposit to sit in a dedicated account, and the tenant must be told both where that account is and its account number. Deposits must be held in an account 'used only for that purpose' at a bank or lending institution regulated by Kentucky or a federal agency, and prospective tenants must be told the location of the account AND the account number (KRS 383.580(1)).
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	Forfeiture only, and only where the URLTA has been locally adopted: the landlord loses the right to keep any part of the deposit. Kentucky has no damages multiplier, no bad-faith penalty, and no attorney-fee award for deposit violations. A landlord is not entitled to retain any portion of the deposit if it was not kept in the dedicated account required by (1) AND the initial and final damage listings required by (2)-(3) were not provided (KRS 383.580(4) — the statute's literal 'and' leaves ambiguous whether both failures are needed; the statute is followed as written here). Outside URLTA jurisdictions no statute sets a penalty for a deposit violation.
Tenant forwarding-address duty	No affirmative duty — the landlord's refund notice runs to the 'last known or reasonably determinable address' — but the incentive is severe: a tenant who fails to respond within 60 days of the refund notice forfeits the entire refund to the landlord (KRS 383.580(7)).

Cite this page: "Landlord Atlas, Kentucky Security Deposit Laws (verified October 1, 2026), landlordatlas.com/laws/security-deposits/kentucky/" — free to cite and quote with a link (how these records are verified). Everything above is cited in the citations section below.

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

Editable Kentucky 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 Kentucky rules on this page, in Word, fillable PDF and Excel.

Notes and caveats

Most of Kentucky has no general deposit statute — KRS 383.500 (1984) makes the whole URLTA (KRS 383.505-383.705, which contains the deposit statute, KRS 383.580) adoptable only by ordinance of a city, county, or urban-county government — in its entirety and without amendment — and bars any city, county or urban-county government from enacting any other ordinance on the same subjects; since March 6, 2024 no local government may adopt or enforce a landlord-tenant ordinance that conflicts with state law (KRS 383.198). Most of Kentucky's 120 counties have NOT adopted, so most of the state has no general deposit statute; the rule described here applies only where the URLTA has been adopted, and readers should confirm adoption with their local government.
'Applies statewide' claims are wrong — debunked from the primary text — Several consumer and AI-generated summaries in 2026 flatly claim KRS 383.580 'applies statewide.' It does not: the section sits inside the adoptable span, was repealed and reenacted by the same 1984 act (ch. 176, sec. 16) that created the opt-in (sec. 1), and KRS 383.715 titles exactly that span as the URLTA — its 'All landlords of residential property' opening is intra-act phrasing. The likely seed of the myth: KRS 383.300, the domestic-violence lease-termination law, IS statewide because it is codified outside the URLTA span.
The '30/60-day return deadline' myth — those clocks run against the tenant — claims that deposits 'must be returned within 30/60 days' misread KRS 383.580(6)-(7): those are the unclaimed-deposit forfeiture windows and they run against the tenant. No return deadline exists.
No official statewide list of adopting localities — No state publication lists the cities and counties that have adopted the act: the Legislative Research Commission's guide to city law says only that any city may adopt it, in its entirety and without amendment. Adoption is shown in each locality's own code — Lexington-Fayette Urban County Code § 12-54 enacts the act (Ord. No. 98-84, June 28, 1984), and the Court of Appeals has recorded that Jefferson County adopted the act in 1984 as sections 151.01 to 151.51 of its code (Caudill v. Acton, 175 S.W.3d 617 (Ky. App. 2004)). Readers should confirm adoption with their own city or county clerk.
The 2018 legislative count — A 2018 Legislative Research Commission local mandate statement on House Bill 550 reported 32 cities and five counties as adopters, including Louisville/Jefferson County and Lexington/Fayette County, twenty-nine of them in the metropolitan areas near Cincinnati, Lexington and Louisville. The count came from a private housing group, not from a state register.
Why the deposit-cap and fee fields are blank — The deposit-cap and non-refundable-fee answers are empty because no provision exists for either — an empty answer here records an absence of law, not a zero.
Unchanged since 1984 — KRS 383.580 has not been amended since 1984, when 1984 Ky. Acts ch. 176 repealed and reenacted it; it was first enacted in 1974.

Common questions: Kentucky 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 Kentucky?: No statutory cap.
How long does a landlord have to return a security deposit in Kentucky?: No statutory deadline. Kentucky sets no deadline for returning a deposit, and in most of the state there is no general deposit statute. Where the local government has adopted the URLTA, the only clocks in the statute run against the tenant, not the landlord.
What happens if a landlord does not return the deposit on time in Kentucky?: Forfeiture only, and only where the URLTA has been locally adopted: the landlord loses the right to keep any part of the deposit. Kentucky has no damages multiplier, no bad-faith penalty, and no attorney-fee award for deposit violations.
Do landlords have to pay interest on security deposits in Kentucky?: No — Kentucky does not require interest on the security deposit to be paid to the tenant. KRS 383.580 is silent on interest. It does require the deposit to sit in a dedicated account, and the tenant must be told both where that account is and its account number.
Can a landlord charge a non-refundable fee in Kentucky?: Not addressed by statute.

Changes since last full verification

The Verified date above (October 1, 2026) marks the last time every figure on this page was verified end-to-end against official sources. The changes below were published since then, each verified against the official source it names (what these dates mean).

Correction, October 2, 2026 — Kentucky (correction): several pages had said that outside the cities and counties that have adopted the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act no statute applies. Two statewide sections do: a landlord may not charge a pet fee or deposit for an assistance animal (KRS 383.085(4)), and a tenant who holds over after a fixed term may be removed without notice only if the case is begun within 30 days after the term ends, or 90 days for a term of a year or more (KRS 383.160). The eviction timeline is restated from the statutes: about 19 to 21 days from the notice to the earliest warrant where the act applies, and about 11 to 13 days from filing where it does not. Also corrected: a local ordinance cannot lengthen the act's notice periods, because a locality must adopt the act whole and without amendment (KRS 383.500, 383.198); a landlord may enter during a tenant's absence of more than seven days, and the statute requires no documentation of it (KRS 383.670(2)); since June 27, 2025 the bar on billing a landlord for an emergency response fee reaches a response caused by a tenant or guest where the landlord kept the building to code (KRS 65.111); the Louisville owner-occupancy rule for new leases does not reach a lot with one single-family home and no accessory dwelling unit (KRS 383.199); the deposit and entry sections date from 1974 and were reenacted in 1984. No state publication lists the localities that have adopted the act; the pages now name Lexington-Fayette from its own code (section 12-54) and Louisville from a Court of Appeals decision, and no longer cite privately compiled lists.

Citations

KRS 383.580 · (1)-(7) (verified 2026) Official source
KRS 383.500 (local-option adoption of the URLTA, KRS 383.505-383.705) (verified 2026) Official source
KRS 383.085 · (4) (verified 2026) Official source
KRS 383.545 · (10), (13) (verified 2026) Official source

How this record was verified: Every section these answers rest on was read on the Legislative Research Commission's statute pages at apps.legislature.ky.gov. On October 1, 2026 each was read there again (the Commission's database includes enactments through the 2026 Regular Session): KRS 383.500 to 383.715, the forcible entry and detainer sections 383.195 to 383.290, and KRS 383.085, 383.160, 383.302, 65.111, 65.875 and 446.030, together with the sections-affected tables for 2019 through 2026, the Administrative Office of the Courts forms AOC-215, AOC-216, AOC-217 and AOC-220, and Lexington-Fayette Urban County Code § 12-54, which enacts the act. No state publication lists the localities that have adopted the act; the Commission's 2018 local mandate statement on House Bill 550 gives a count. 2026 Regular Session (adjourned sine die 2026-04-15) swept via official bill pages and the LRC chapter listing, which is current through the 2026 RS and shows no amendments to any section used here. Louisville Metro Code ch. 151 was read directly 2026-07-10 on the American Legal Publishing code library (codelibrary.amlegal.com, supplement 2026 S-47, current through ordinances of 2026-05-20) — § 151.01 titles the chapter the 'Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act' with an express statutory reference to KRS 383.500-383.705, ordinance lineage Jefferson County Ord. 22-1984 (adopted and effective 7-24-1984), recodified as 1994 Jeff. Code ch. 151, continued post-merger by Lou. Metro Am. Ord. No. 134-2006 (approved 8-23-2006); § 151.26 (security deposits) read in full and tracks KRS 383.580 verbatim in substance, including the separate-account/account-number disclosure, signed move-in/move-out damage listings with written dissent, the forfeiture-only penalty, and the 30-day (F) / 60-day (G) TENANT-side windows — confirming the reading given here that those windows are forfeiture rules, not landlord return deadlines. Metro-only additions beyond the URLTA text (eviction-court legal-representation §§ 151.60-151.61) noted and out of v1 scope.