New York Security Deposit Return Letter: Free Template and Generator for Landlords

This page is for landlords returning a deposit. If you are a tenant looking for a demand letter, this is not that page.

The letter and the money share one deadline

Within fourteen days after the tenant has vacated the premises, the landlord shall provide the tenant with an itemized statement indicating the basis for the amount of the deposit retained, if any, and shall return any remaining portion of the deposit to the tenant. If a landlord fails to provide the tenant with the statement and deposit within fourteen days, the landlord shall forfeit any right to retain any portion of the deposit. N.Y. Gen. Oblig. Law § 7-108(1-a)(e)

Read that sentence twice, because most landlords read it once and get it wrong. The forfeiture is triggered by failing to provide "the statement and deposit" within the fourteen days. That is one deadline with two deliverables. A perfect itemized statement on day 12, followed by a refund cheque posted on day 18, is a forfeiture on the face of the text. Send them together.

The clock starts on the day the tenant actually vacated, not on the day the lease ended. If your tenant left on the 10th of a month whose lease ran to the 30th, your clock started on the 10th, and a landlord who diaries off the lease-end date has already forfeited. The day they moved out is not itself counted, so a tenant who vacates on July 24 must have the statement and the money by August 7, which is exactly how the Second Department counted it in Cohen v Abruzzo. Weekends and holidays inside the fourteen days are counted, not skipped, and there is no reliable extension if day 14 lands on a weekend. Treat the strict date as the real one.

What being late actually costs you

If a landlord fails to provide the tenant with the statement and deposit within fourteen days, the landlord shall forfeit any right to retain any portion of the deposit. N.Y. Gen. Oblig. Law § 7-108(1-a)(e)

"Any portion" means all of it. The forfeiture is total, not proportional, and there is no good-faith exception anywhere in the text. In one case a landlord returned most of the deposit, with a written breakdown, and was merely late, she still forfeited the part she had kept. Her explanation, that she did not have the tenant’s forwarding address, spared her punitive damages but did not spare her the forfeiture. Returning the money late does not undo it.

The letter, as our generator writes it

New York prescribes no form for this letter. The statute says only that the landlord shall "provide" an itemized statement, so the samples below are our own plain template, not a form the law requires. What the law does require is that the statement show the basis for whatever you kept. Fill in the bracketed fields and send it with the money.

Full deposit return, nothing kept

Itemized statement, keeping part of the deposit

You may deduct four things, and nothing else

The entire amount of the deposit or advance shall be refundable to the tenant upon the tenant’s vacating of the premises except for an amount lawfully retained for the reasonable and itemized costs due to non-payment of rent, damage caused by the tenant beyond normal wear and tear, non-payment of utility charges payable directly to the landlord under the terms of the lease or tenancy, and moving and storage of the tenant’s belongings. The landlord may not retain any amount of the deposit for costs relating to ordinary wear and tear of occupancy or damage caused by a prior tenant. N.Y. Gen. Oblig. Law § 7-108(1-a)(b)

The list is closed: unpaid rent, damage beyond normal wear and tear, unpaid utility charges the lease makes payable directly to you, and moving and storing the tenant’s belongings. That is the whole list. Flat cleaning fees, repainting for wear, turnover and administrative fees, late fees, legal fees and a prior tenant’s damage are all off it. Note the utility limit in particular: if the tenant’s unpaid electricity bill was owed to the utility company rather than to you under the lease, it is not a lawful deduction.

Cleaning is the one genuinely unresolved case. The closed list omits it, yet the inspection paragraph tells landlords to itemize "repairs or cleaning" proposed as the basis of deductions. The two passages are in tension and no court has resolved it, so nobody can give you a confident answer. The safe reading, and ours: charge cleaning only where it is putting right damage the tenant caused beyond normal wear and tear, never as a flat turnover fee. Describe the damage, not the chore.

And note what New York does not have: any definition of "normal wear and tear", statutory or from an appellate court. Anyone handing you a confident New York rule about faded paint or nail holes is inventing it, including one case that circulates widely online and does not exist. What the law does say is procedural, and it is the part that matters to you:

In any action or proceeding disputing the amount of any amount of the deposit retained, the landlord shall bear the burden of proof as to the reasonableness of the amount retained. N.Y. Gen. Oblig. Law § 7-108(1-a)(f)

If the tenant disputes what you kept, you must prove the amount was reasonable. They do not have to prove you were wrong. So describe each item specifically, keep the invoices and the photographs, and do not rely on a label. (The odd phrasing in that quote, "the amount of any amount", is a drafting error in the enacted statute, not a typo of ours. We print the law as the Legislature wrote it.)

You do not need a forwarding address. At all.

This is one of the most common and most expensive misconceptions about New York, and it usually arrives from somebody who has read the Texas rule. In Texas a landlord’s duty really is suspended until the tenant gives a written forwarding address. New York has no such rule anywhere: not in § 7-103, not in § 7-107, not in § 7-108, and not in the Attorney General’s own statement of the law. The fourteen days run whether or not you know where the tenant went.

A tenant who vanishes does not buy you a single extra day. A lease clause conditioning the refund on a forwarding address is void. If you have no address, send the statement and the money to the last address you have, and keep proof that you sent them. There is a claim circulating online that a missing forwarding address pauses the clock; it traces back to a landlord’s own policy document filed as an exhibit in a settlement, not to any law.

How to send it

The statute prescribes no method at all. It says only "provide": no certified-mail requirement, no first-class rule, no personal-delivery provision, no email rule and no postmark rule. It must be in writing, though that rests on trial-court decisions rather than a settled appellate rule.

That freedom cuts both ways. There is no certified-mail requirement, but there is equally no safe harbour for a letter you post on day 13 that lands on day 16. Whether "provide" means sent or received has never been decided, and the risk sits entirely with you. So: send early, send in writing, and keep proof of sending. Do not aim at day 14. Our own practice, and it is our reading rather than the statute, is to mail with proof of mailing and to email a copy as well where you have an address.

If the apartment is rent stabilized, cite a different statute

Since November 15, 2025, rent-stabilized apartments have had their own deposit statute, § 7-107, rewritten by Chapter 436 of the Laws of 2025. The fourteen days and the forfeiture are word for word identical to the rule above. But it is a different statute, and § 7-108 does not govern a stabilized unit at all, so a letter for one should not cite it.

Within fourteen days after the tenant has vacated the premises, the landlord shall provide the tenant with an itemized statement indicating the basis for the amount of the deposit retained, if any, and shall return any remaining portion of the deposit to the tenant. If a landlord fails to provide the tenant with the statement and deposit within fourteen days, the landlord shall forfeit any right to retain any portion of the deposit. N.Y. Gen. Oblig. Law § 7-107(6)

Here is the same itemized letter, for a rent-stabilized apartment. The words the tenant reads do not change. Look at the legal-basis line at the foot of it: that is what moves.

The same letter, for a rent-stabilized apartment

Two cautions. § 7-107 reaches only leases, rental agreements and renewals entered into on or after November 15, 2025, and nearly every other guide omits that. And no court has interpreted a word of it yet. The full treatment is in our rent-stabilized deposit guide.

The letter is not the only way to lose the deposit

Whenever money shall be deposited or advanced on a contract or license agreement for the use or rental of real property as security for performance of the contract or agreement or to be applied to payments upon such contract or agreement when due, such money, with interest accruing thereon, if any, until repaid or so applied, shall continue to be the money of the person making such deposit or advance and shall be held in trust by the person with whom such deposit or advance shall be made and shall not be mingled with the personal moneys or become an asset of the person receiving the same, but may be disposed of as provided in section 7-105 of this chapter. N.Y. Gen. Oblig. Law § 7-103(1)

This is the part almost every New York deposit guide leaves out, and it is half the exposure. The deposit is the tenant’s money, held in trust. It never becomes yours. Keeping it in your personal account or your general operating account is commingling, and New York courts have held that commingling forfeits the entire deposit, even where the tenant breached the lease first, and no matter how perfectly you met the fourteen days.

There is no small-landlord exemption and no building-size floor: one rented condo counts. It reaches prepaid rent as well as the deposit, so a landlord who segregated the deposit but banked last month’s rent in the operating account has still commingled. A flawless letter cannot cure it. If that describes you, do not send anything until you have taken advice.

Generate this letter free

The free New York deposit tool works out your fourteen-day deadline from the move-out date, tells you whether the dates you have already acted on put you inside it or past it, checks your deductions against the closed list of four, and prepares the letter, citing § 7-107 or § 7-108 depending on the apartment. No sign-up, and nothing you type ever leaves your browser.

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About this page

Every rule above is cited to the New York statute it comes from, and each quote is verbatim, including the Legislature's own drafting errors: we print the law as enacted rather than as we would have written it. Every quoted passage on this page is checked, automatically and character-by-character, against the official New York Senate legislative database. Statutes verified July 11, 2026. Primary source: N.Y. Gen. Oblig. Law § 7-108 (official, nysenate.gov). Read how we verify the law. This page is general information for landlords, not legal advice; Deposit Record is not a law firm, and using this page or the generator creates no attorney-client relationship. For advice about your situation, talk to a licensed New York attorney.