Does the deposit have to be in an interest-bearing account in Arkansas?

No statute addresses whether the account must bear interest.

What happens if a landlord does not pay deposit interest in Arkansas?

No statutory penalty reaches an interest violation specifically.

Do any cities or counties in Arkansas have their own deposit-interest rules?

An Arkansas city or county cannot fill the gap. Act 459 of 2025 rewrote Ark. Code § 14-16-601 so that, as to leasing private residential or commercial property and except as provided under § 18-16-304, "a local governmental unit shall not enact, maintain, or enforce an ordinance or resolution that would have the effect of controlling the amount charged for" rent, rental application fees, or rental deposits.

Does a landlord have to pay interest on a security deposit in Arkansas?

Verified August 28, 2026 All Arkansas topics →

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

SB 501 (2025 RS) — 'Tenant Possessions Recovery Act' — Would have required a landlord to give a tenant at least 14 days' written notice before the scheduled repossession date after a court issues a writ of possession, and created a process for tenants to recover personal possessions left behind. Adjacent to, rather than within, the deposit, rent-increase, late-fee, entry and eviction topics covered here, but it was the session's principal tenant-side bill. Status: Dead. Filed 2025-03-18, amended and re-referred to Senate Judiciary 2025-03-20, died in committee at the 2025-05-05 sine die adjournment. The 2026 fiscal session was appropriations-only; watch for a refile in the 2027 regular session (Arkansas holds regular sessions in odd years). (checked July 10, 2026).

Arkansas requires no interest on a residential security deposit, and it imposes no rule about where the money is kept while the tenancy runs.

Cited to Ark. Code §§ 18-16-301 to 18-16-306 (Security deposits), Arkansas Code of 1987 Annotated Official Edition §§ 18-16-302, 18-16-303, 18-16-305 and 2 more cited sources · Verified August 28, 2026

The state's deposit law is a closed six-section subchapter, Ark. Code §§ 18-16-301 through 18-16-306, and not one of its sections mentions interest, an escrow, a trust, a separate account, or a bank. The word "interest" appears in the whole subchapter exactly once, in § 18-16-302, and it means the landlord's ownership interest in the property. What the subchapter does regulate is the amount, the return and the remedy: a deposit may not exceed two months' rent, the money must come back within sixty days of termination with a written itemization of anything applied to unpaid rent or damage, and a landlord who fails to comply owes the tenant twice the amount wrongfully withheld plus costs and attorney's fees. Nothing in that scheme gives the tenant a claim to earnings on the money, and an Arkansas city or county may not create one — the Legislature preempted local control of rental deposits in 2025.

Arkansas deposit interest at a glance

Interest owed to the tenant	No — no statute addresses it
How the rate is set	No rate exists — there is no interest duty
Current figure	No published figure exists
Rate rules	No rate rules — no duty exists
Accrual and payment	No payment duty exists
Who and what is covered	No statutory conditions stated — see the summary and notes
Statute controls where or how the deposit is held	No statute addresses how the deposit is held
Interest-bearing account required	No statute addresses whether the account must bear interest
Custody rules	No statute addresses custody of the deposit
Penalty for violation	No statutory penalty reaches an interest violation specifically
Local rules	An Arkansas city or county cannot fill the gap. Act 459 of 2025 rewrote Ark. Code § 14-16-601 so that, as to leasing private residential or commercial property and except as provided under § 18-16-304, "a local governmental unit shall not enact, maintain, or enforce an ordinance or resolution that would have the effect of controlling the amount charged for" rent, rental application fees, or rental deposits.

Cite this page: "Landlord Atlas, Arkansas Security Deposit Interest Laws (verified August 28, 2026), landlordatlas.com/laws/deposit-interest/arkansas/" — free to cite and quote with a link (how these records are verified). Everything above is cited in the citations section below.

Check the verified Arkansas answer — and every state and city that differs — in the deposit interest calculator — free, no signup, built on the same verified Arkansas law as this page.

Notes and caveats

The subchapter's only 'interest' belongs to the landlord — § 18-16-302 reads in full: "The transferee, assignee, or other holder of the landlord's interest in the premises at the time of the termination of the tenancy is bound by this subchapter." That is an ownership interest in real property, and it is the sole appearance of the word anywhere in Arkansas's deposit law. A source reporting Arkansas as an interest state has nothing in the statute to point at.
Where the money sits is left entirely to the landlord — § 18-16-305(a)(1) speaks of "property or money held by the landlord as security" and says only that it "shall be returned to the tenant" within sixty days of termination. That is a held-by-the-landlord framing with no account attached to it. The section's other end points the same way: if the refund letter comes back undelivered and the landlord cannot locate the tenant after reasonable effort, the payment "shall become the property of the landlord" one hundred eighty days from the date it was mailed.
Five units in Arkansas, ten in Georgia's lookalike rule — § 18-16-303 takes the whole subchapter off an individual who, together with a spouse and minor children and any partnerships, corporations or other entities formed to rent dwelling units of which they are officers, owners or majority shareholders, owns "five (5) or fewer dwelling units" — but "[t]his exemption does not apply to units for which management, including rent collection, is performed by third persons for a fee." The drafting is nearly identical to Georgia's § 44-7-36 carve-out, which uses the same individual-plus-family-plus-entities collective count and the same paid-manager exception at ten units rather than five. The two are easy to swap, and swapping them changes who is covered.

Common questions: Arkansas deposit interest

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

What is the Arkansas security deposit interest rate right now?: No published figure exists.
When must a landlord pay or credit deposit interest in Arkansas?: No payment duty exists.
Does the deposit have to be in an interest-bearing account in Arkansas?: No statute addresses whether the account must bear interest.
What happens if a landlord does not pay deposit interest in Arkansas?: No statutory penalty reaches an interest violation specifically.
Do any cities or counties in Arkansas have their own deposit-interest rules?: An Arkansas city or county cannot fill the gap. Act 459 of 2025 rewrote Ark. Code § 14-16-601 so that, as to leasing private residential or commercial property and except as provided under § 18-16-304, "a local governmental unit shall not enact, maintain, or enforce an ordinance or resolution that would have the effect of controlling the amount charged for" rent, rental application fees, or rental deposits.

Citations

Ark. Code §§ 18-16-301 to 18-16-306 (Security deposits), Arkansas Code of 1987 Annotated Official Edition · §§ 18-16-302, 18-16-303, 18-16-305 (verified 2026) Official source
Act 559 of the Regular Session, 2009 (SB 454), reproducing Ark. Code § 18-16-305 in full · §§ 1-2 (verified 2026) Official source
Act 459 of the Regular Session, 2025 (SB 91) (rent, rental application fee, and rental deposit control preemption) · § 1 (Ark. Code § 14-16-601(b)(1)) (verified 2026) Official source

How this record was verified: Complete read of Arkansas's security-deposit subchapter — Ark. Code §§ 18-16-301 through 18-16-306, all six sections plus the subchapter's own note — in the Arkansas Code of 1987 Annotated Official Edition published under the direction of the Arkansas Code Revision Commission, currency line "Current through the First Extraordinary Session, 2026"; every occurrence of the words 'interest', 'account', 'escrow' and 'trust' in the subchapter examined in context; the compiled text of § 18-16-305 matched against its full reproduction in the official session law that last amended it, Act 559 of 2009 § 1, with § 18-17-501 read in § 2 of the same act; Act 459 of 2025 read for the local-preemption position; and the Legislature's bill full-text search run for each of the six section numbers across all sixty-three sessions from 1987 through 2026, every hit inspected.