California's security deposit limit, and the small-landlord exception

Two tests, and both of them. Who the landlord is: a natural person, or a limited liability company whose members are all natural persons. And how much they rent out: no more than 2 residential rental properties, with no more than 4 dwelling units between them offered for rent.

Both or neither. A corporate landlord fails the first however small they are, and an individual who owns three buildings fails the second however few units each has. It is not a judgement about whether somebody is a big landlord; it is two counts. That is why the checker asks both questions and reports both possible caps where only one of them has been answered: one month or two is the difference between a claim and no claim, and guessing it decides a month's rent.

If you are a servicemember the small landlord exception does not apply to you, and the one month cap governs whoever your landlord is. It is easy to miss and it is worth a month's rent, so it is one of the questions the checker asks.

The one month cap took effect on July 1, 2024, under AB 12. A deposit collected before then was governed by the earlier and higher limits, so a two month deposit taken in 2019 was lawful when it was taken and does not become unlawful later. This site does not state the old figures, because a limit quoted from memory behind a verdict about somebody's tenancy is exactly the kind of number that should not be invented: the checker says which law was in force when you paid and stops.

If your deposit was charged after the cap took effect and is over the limit that applied to you, that is a sum to ask for back, and it belongs in the same demand letter as anything wrongly deducted.

Whatever the lease calls it, money held as security counts toward the cap: advance rent held as security, a refundable cleaning deposit, a key deposit, a pet deposit. So the figure to measure against the cap is all of them added, not the line headed "deposit". Rent for the first month, paid at the start for a month you actually lived there, is not security and is not counted. Nor is an application screening fee, which is its own statute. One payment is outside the cap altogether: an advance payment of 6 months' rent or more, under a lease of 6 months or longer.

So a separate pet deposit on top of a full month's rent is worth questioning, and so is a refundable cleaning or key deposit. What the lease headed each line does not decide it.

A lease may not call any part of a residential security deposit nonrefundable. A "non-refundable cleaning fee" is a security deposit whatever the lease headed it, and it is refundable to the extent the landlord cannot show a deduction the statute allows.

What is not security is rent for a period you actually occupied, including the first month's rent paid at the start. An application screening fee is its own statute and is not part of security either.