What are the security deposit rules in Vermont?

Verified July 12, 2026 All Vermont topics →

Check your municipality. Vermont does not preempt local rent regulation — city or county ordinances may impose rent caps, notice rules, and fee limits that are stricter than the state-level rules on this page and are not covered here. Verify your municipality's ordinances before relying on any figure below.

What the state record says

No rent control exists anywhere in Vermont — no statewide program and no municipal ordinance. Two notice-only overlays exist: (1) age-restricted housing (privately owned, not licensed as a long-term care or similar facility) requires written notice of any rent increase on a state form to the Department of Housing and Community Development AND all affected residents at least 60 days before the effective date, and an unnoticed increase is 'ineffective and unenforceable' (9 V.S.A. 4468a, effective 2024-06-17); (2) mobile home park LOT rents are a separate regime with their own 60-day state-form notice to the Commissioner and leaseholders, capital-improvement surcharge rules, and the same ineffective-if-unnoticed sanction (10 V.S.A. 6251 — lot rentals are excluded from chapter 137 by 4452(6)).

Vermont sets no limit on how large a residential security deposit can be, but the landlord must return it — with a written statement itemizing any deductions — within 14 days after discovering the tenant has moved out or abandoned the unit.

The clock detail matters: it runs from the landlord's discovery, or from the actual move-out date only if the tenant gave the landlord notice of that date, and seasonal rentals of units that are not a primary residence get 60 days instead. Miss the deadline and the penalty is severe: the landlord forfeits the entire right to withhold anything, and a willful failure means liability for double the amount wrongfully withheld plus the tenant's attorney's fees and costs. Deductions are limited to unpaid rent, damage beyond normal wear and tear (and beyond events outside the tenant's control), unpaid utility or similar charges owed directly to the landlord or a utility, and the cost of removing abandoned belongings. Vermont requires no deposit interest and no separate bank account at the state level — but it expressly invites towns to add supplemental deposit ordinances, and Burlington does exactly that, with a local one-month cap and an interest requirement (Brattleboro has a similar cap). A deposit is a deposit 'however named,' application fees are banned outright, and the deposit transfers automatically to a new owner when the building is sold.

Vermont security deposits at a glance

Maximum deposit	No statutory cap
Return deadline	14 days
Deadline conditions	The 14-day clock runs from the date the landlord DISCOVERS that the tenant vacated or abandoned the dwelling unit — or from the date the tenant vacated, but only if the landlord received notice from the tenant of that date (9 V.S.A. 4461(c)). For seasonal occupancy of a dwelling unit not intended as a primary residence, the deposit and written statement are due within 60 days. The landlord complies by hand-delivering or mailing the statement and any payment to the tenant's last known address (4461(d)).
Itemization required	Yes
Itemization rules	The deposit must be returned 'along with a written statement itemizing any deductions' within the same 14-day (or 60-day seasonal) window (9 V.S.A. 4461(c)). Retention is allowed only for: nonpayment of rent; damage to the landlord's property unless it is normal wear and tear or the result of actions or events beyond the tenant's control; nonpayment of utility or other charges the tenant was required to pay directly to the landlord or to a utility; and expenses required to remove articles abandoned by the tenant (4461(b)). 'Normal wear and tear' is a defined term (4451(5)).
Separate account required	No
Interest owed to tenant	No
Account & interest rules	No section of 9 V.S.A. chapter 137 requires interest on residential security deposits or any particular account (verified negative — complete chapter read twice). The legislature instead delegated the question downward: 4461(g) lets a town or municipality adopt a supplemental deposit ordinance that 'may authorize the payment of interest on a security deposit' but 'may not limit how a security deposit is held.' Burlington uses that authority (deposit interest at roughly bank-passbook rates, plus a local one-month cap), and Brattleboro has a similar local cap, per the statewide Renting in Vermont guidance — local rules, not state law.
Pet deposits	No separate pet-deposit statute. Because 4461(a) defines a security deposit as 'any advance, deposit, or prepaid rent, however named,' a pet deposit is simply part of the security deposit, subject to the same retention grounds, 14-day return, and penalties. There is no state cap for it to count against. Burlington locally allows a limited additional pet payment and bars charging it for assistance animals (local ordinance, out of v1 scope).
Non-refundable fees allowed	No
Penalty for violation	A landlord who fails to return the deposit with the itemized statement within 14 days forfeits the right to withhold any portion of it; if the failure is willful, the landlord is liable for double the amount wrongfully withheld, plus reasonable attorney's fees and costs (9 V.S.A. 4461(e)).
Tenant forwarding-address duty	None — no statutory duty to supply a forwarding address and no forfeiture for failing to. Delivery is to the tenant's 'last known address' (4461(d)). One practical hook: the alternate return-clock trigger (the date the tenant vacated, rather than the later date the landlord discovers it) applies only if the landlord 'received notice from the tenant of that date' (4461(c)) — so telling the landlord the move-out date starts the clock sooner.

Notes and caveats

No-cap encoding: max_deposit null — verified negative across the full chapter, read twice; 4461 regulates everything about deposits except their size. TRAP: at least one secondary chart claims Burlington's one-month cap 'overrides the state's 2 month limit' — Vermont has NO state cap of any size; every cap figure for Vermont is local (Burlington, Brattleboro) or invented. STATE-VS-LOCAL: deposit interest is purely municipal (4461(g) authorization, added by 2007 Act 176 sec. 45; enabling framework 24 V.S.A. ch. 123 with housing boards of review under 24 V.S.A. 5001-5006) — do not render Vermont as an interest state. nonrefundable_fees_allowed false rests on 4461(a)'s function-over-label definition ('any advance, deposit, or prepaid rent, however named') plus 4454, which voids any lease provision that attempts to circumvent chapter obligations; note the definitional wrinkle that (a) literally describes a deposit as an amount 'which is refundable' — a landlord reading that clause as an escape hatch for 'nonrefundable' fees runs straight into 4454, but no Vermont appellate case squarely so holds; separately, 4456a(a) flatly bans residential application fees. Seasonal-gap flag: 4461(e)'s forfeiture/double-damages language is keyed to 'within 14 days' and does not restate the 60-day seasonal clock — the sanction for blowing the seasonal deadline is textually unresolved. Farm-employee housing is fully carved out of the deposit statute (4469a(h)). Sale of building: deposit transfers to the buyer, who must give the tenant actual notice of name, address, and the transfer (4461(f)). Mobile home parks have a parallel deposit section, 10 V.S.A. 6244 (same 14-day/forfeiture architecture) — different regime, do not mix. All load-bearing figures double-read (per-section page + full-chapter view, verbatim match); zero 2025-2026 acts touched 4461 (official acts-affecting table).

Statute citations

9 V.S.A. § 4461 (a)-(g) Official source
9 V.S.A. § 4451 (5) Official source
9 V.S.A. § 4454 Official source
9 V.S.A. § 4456a (a) Official source

How this record was verified: Direct read of statute text on the official Vermont General Assembly site (legislature.vermont.gov): the complete text of every section of 9 V.S.A. chapter 137 (4451 through 4475, all four subchapters) read twice via two independent official endpoints — the per-section pages and the full-chapter view — with every load-bearing figure (60 days' actual notice for rent increases in 4455(b); the 14-day deposit return clock, its discovery/noticed-vacate-date triggers, the 60-day seasonal clock, and the forfeiture-plus-willful-double penalty in 4461(c)-(e); the 48-hour / 9 AM-9 PM entry rule in 4460(b); the three-day mail-receipt presumption in 4451(1)) matching verbatim across both reads. 10 V.S.A. 6251 and a full sweep of 10 V.S.A. chapter 153 (mobile home parks) read for the note-only lot-rent regime. Session sweep run against the official 2025-2026 biennium data: all 178 regular acts, all 12 municipal (charter) acts, and all 13 vetoed bills enumerated, plus the official Acts-Affecting-VSA-Sections table (2,693 rows) filtered to Title 9 chapter 137 — exactly three hits, each verified in the enacted act text (Act 69 of 2025 sec. 10 amending 4456a; Act 103 of 2026 amending 4452(b) and cancelling its scheduled repeal, effective 2026-07-01; Act 176 of 2026 sec. 30 adding new 9 V.S.A. 4468b, effective 2026-07-01). Act 103 and Act 176 read from their official As Enacted PDFs; both postdate the statutes site's current text (the site still shows 4452(b) as repealed effective 2026-07-01 and lacks 4468b — flagged in notes). Verified negatives (no deposit cap, no state deposit-interest or separate-account rule, no late-fee or grace-period statute, no rent-control or preemption provision, no increase-frequency limit) established by the full-chapter double read plus a targeted Title 24 municipal-powers check (24 V.S.A. 2291; chapter 123). Late-fee case law (Highgate Associates, Ltd. v. Merryfield, 157 Vt. 313 (1991)) corroborated via the statewide CVOEO tenant-landlord guidance and multiple independent secondary descriptions; advance.lexis.com not used. Dead 2025-2026 bills (S.91, H.399, H.440) verified dead on their official bill-status pages; the biennium has adjourned sine die.