The House Truth

Renters Lose Deposits Every Second

The House Truth ·

Estimate
Security deposit money withheld from US renters so far in
…
About $1.7B a year (estimate) withheld from renters. Running at a second this month (estimate).
About $72 a second in March, about $45 a second in October, about $32 a second in December (estimate).

Every year millions of renters hand back their keys and wait to see how much of their deposit comes home. A lot of it doesn't. By our estimate, about $1.7B a year (estimate) in security deposits is withheld from renters. The counter above runs from January 1 at that pace, faster in the late-winter and spring moving months and slower in December.

The typical deposit is about $800 (estimate, Zillow 2025), among renters who paid one. Losing it hurts. It's often the money for the next place.

The one habit that lines up with losing less

Renters who documented their move-in in any way lost their whole deposit 20% of the time. Renters who documented nothing lost it all 39% of the time (estimate, Zillow Research, 2022).

That's a correlation, not proof that documenting caused the difference. But it's a big gap, and it points at the cheapest thing a renter can do: on day one, write down and photograph what the place looks like before you live in it.

The house tells the truth. The question is whether anyone wrote it down when you moved in.

How we estimated this

All figures on this page are estimates by The House Truth, not official statistics.

  • Rental-to-rental moves (about 5.68M a year, estimate; we use the low end of a 5.7M to 6.8M range): US renter households (Census ACS 2023, 1-year) × share that moved in the past year (18.3%, CPS ASEC 2024 as cited by NMHC, to 22%, ACS 2023 as cited by Zillow) × 68% whose previous home was a rental (Zillow Consumer Housing Trends Report 2025).
  • Deposits: a flat typical deposit of about $800 for every home type (median among renters who paid one, Zillow 2025), times the 83% of renters who paid a deposit (Zillow 2025). Some renters lose only part of a deposit, which is why we say “about.”
  • Share withheld: renters got back about 53% of their deposit on average (Fannie Mae, 2023), so 47% withheld.
  • The math: about 5.68M moves (the low end of the range) × 83% who paid × $800 × 47% ≈ $1.77B a year (estimate). We round to “about $1.7B a year (estimate).”
  • Seasonality: the counter's per-second pace follows renter move-in months (Zillow 2025). Other sources show a summer peak instead.
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