LA deposit interest: the money most tenants never get back
If your unit is covered by the Rent Stabilization Ordinance and in the City of Los Angeles, your landlord owes you interest on your security deposit for every year they held it. It is in the municipal code, at section 151.06.02, the rate is set each year by the Rent Adjustment Commission, and for 2026 it is 3.03%. On a $2,000 deposit that is roughly $61 a year, every year, and most tenants have never been told it exists.
It is owed annually rather than at the end, so a tenancy of several years means several years of it. The calculator above takes the address, because both halves of the question are things this site can read from records rather than ask you to work out: the city boundary, and whether the building is on LAHD's rent stabilization list. It then prices the years we hold a published rate for. The California security deposit guide checks the rest of a statement.
LA deposit interest calculator
Your landlord owes this for every year they held your deposit, and almost nobody claims it. It reaches rent stabilized units in the City of LA, so we check the address first.
Who is covered, and who is not
Two conditions, and both have to hold. The unit has to be inside the City of Los Angeles, which is not the same as having a Los Angeles postal address, and it has to be covered by the Rent Stabilization Ordinance. Being in the city is not enough on its own, and that is the half most people get wrong. The calculator reads both from the records for your address; the rent control checker answers the coverage question on its own from six questions about your building, which is the route for somebody who is not at the address.
Mobilehome park spaces are outside the requirement, whatever else is true of them.
A unit in Santa Monica, West Hollywood, Long Beach or the unincorporated county is not reached by this section, because this is a City of Los Angeles ordinance. That is not the same as nobody owing you interest: some cities have requirements of their own, so the thing to check there is your own city's rules rather than this page. Neither is a newer building inside the city that the RSO does not cover.
Is there deposit interest anywhere else in California?
Not as a statewide right. California's deposit statute does not require interest at all, which is why most general California guides do not mention it and why a search for California deposit interest usually ends in nothing useful.
What exists instead is a patchwork of city ordinances, and Los Angeles has one of them attached to its Rent Stabilization Ordinance. So the answer to "does my landlord owe me interest" is a question about which city you are in and whether your unit is covered, rather than a question about California. If you are not in Los Angeles, this calculator will tell you so and stop rather than tell you nothing is owed, because it does not hold your city's rules.
How much it comes to
The Commission publishes a rate for each year and the interest is calculated on the deposit the landlord is holding. The 2026 rate is 3.03%. Over a long tenancy the total is usually larger than people expect, because it is owed for every year rather than once.
There is a second route the ordinance allows: instead of the Commission's rate, the owner may pay the interest the deposit actually earned in a financial institution, with a statement showing it. So a figure built on the published rate is an estimate of one of two lawful amounts, and a landlord who took the bank route should be able to show you the statement.
What this site can price honestly is limited by what it holds. We have the published rate for one year; the Commission has set one every year and the rest are on LAHD's own pages. The calculator prices the years it has, counts the years it does not, and says so in the result rather than applying this year's rate to a tenancy that started a decade ago.
California Security Deposit Laws, and What You May Be Owed
California's security deposit rules in plain English, with a checker that reviews what was deducted from a specific deposit and estimates the LA deposit interest an RSO unit earns.
How to ask for it
Ask in writing, name the section, and ask for the figure per year rather than a lump sum: a landlord who has never paid it is unlikely to have a calculation ready, and a year by year request is harder to wave away. If they say the deposit earned less in the bank, that is a legitimate answer and it comes with a statement showing what it earned.
Unpaid interest is money owed on the deposit, so it belongs in the same letter as anything wrongly deducted, and the demand letter page has the sequence. The California Courts' small claims self-help pages cover the filing.
Common questions
How do I calculate security deposit interest in Los Angeles?
Does California require interest on a security deposit?
My landlord never paid any interest for six years. Can I claim all of it?
Can the landlord credit it against my rent instead of paying me?
Related guides
- The return of a security deposit in CaliforniaA California landlord has 21 days to return the deposit or send an itemized statement. When the clock starts, what the statement has to contain, and late returns.
- Normal wear and tear under California lawOrdinary wear and tear is not deductible from a California security deposit. Where the line sits on paint, carpet and cleaning, and what the age of a thing has to do with it.
- AB 2801: the photo rule that can sink a deductionAB 2801 requires California landlords to photograph the unit at move-out and after repairs, and to send those photos with the itemized statement. The dates it phased in on.
- How to get your deposit back: the demand letterWhat to put in a California security deposit demand letter, in what order, and what to do when the deadline you set passes. Free, with no paid template.
- California's security deposit limit, and the small-landlord exceptionSince July 2024 a California deposit is capped at one month's rent, with an exception for small landlords that does not apply to servicemembers.
- The penalty for not returning a security depositCalifornia lets a court award up to twice the deposit on top of the money where it finds bad faith. What that means, and what a late statement alone does not mean.
The rules on this page were last checked by a person on October 23, 2026