4 Things South Carolina Landlords Can Legally Remove From a Security Deposit

A security deposit can feel like your money, sitting safely with your landlord until you move out.

But in South Carolina, your landlord can keep part of it for specific reasons.

Here’s what those reasons are.

Note: This is general information, not legal advice. Rental rules and deadlines are subject to change.

1. Unpaid Rent

A South Carolina landlord can apply your security deposit to accrued rent, and Section 27-40-410 names that deduction first.

If you still owe last month’s rent when you move out, that amount can come off your deposit.

Rent comes first.

South Carolina Appleseed Legal Justice Center’s tenant guide gives accrued rent and damage to the unit as examples of what a landlord can deduct.

The act frames the deposit as money that “must be returned less amounts withheld” for accrued rent and damages.

2. Unpaid Late Charges

A landlord holding your security deposit can look to the act’s definition of rent.

That definition covers the consideration payable for use of the premises, including late charges.

Read with the accrued-rent rule, it means a late charge still unpaid when you move out can count as accrued rent.

The same definition excludes “security deposits or other charges” from rent, so a fee your lease calls something else may not count.

The label matters.

3. Damage and Misuse

Deliberate or careless damage gives a landlord grounds to keep part of your security deposit.

Section 27-40-510 bars you from deliberately or negligently destroying, defacing, damaging, impairing or removing any part of the premises.

You also have to use electrical, plumbing, sanitary, heating, ventilating, air-conditioning and other facilities and appliances in a reasonable manner.

Section 27-40-410(a) lets the landlord withhold “damages which the landlord has suffered by reason of the tenant’s noncompliance” with those duties.

4. Leaving the Unit Dirty

Dirt may cost you part of your deposit because the act requires you to keep your unit “reasonably safe and reasonably clean.”

Trash is covered, too.

You have to dispose of ashes, garbage, rubbish and other waste in a reasonably clean and safe manner.

Plumbing fixtures are named separately, and you have to keep them reasonably clean.

The South Carolina Bar’s public guide lists damage caused by a tenant’s failure to maintain the unit among the reasons a landlord may keep deposit money.

Clean up before you go.

Which Lease Rules Count

The tenant duties behind a landlord’s deposit deductions, listed in Section 27-40-510, also include complying with your lease.

The act limits lease compliance to rules it calls enforceable under Section 27-40-520.

What makes one stick?

What Makes a Lease Rule Enforceable

A lease rule that could cost you part of your security deposit is enforceable against you only if it meets every condition in Section 27-40-520.

The rule has to serve one of three purposes.

Those are promoting tenants’ convenience, safety or welfare, preserving the landlord’s property from abusive use, or making a fair distribution of services and facilities.

It has to be reasonably related to that purpose. The landlord has to apply it to all tenants in the premises in a fair manner.

It has to be explicit enough to fairly inform you of what you must or must not do. It can’t exist to evade the landlord’s obligations.

You have to have notice of the rule when you enter the rental agreement or when the landlord adopts it.

Itemized Notice

Your landlord has to send a written, itemized notice of every deduction from your security deposit, along with any amount you still owe.

The act calls for written notice within thirty days.

Those days count from the later of your move-out and your demand for the money back.

Mind the clock.

You have to give your landlord a forwarding address in writing, so the notice and any refund can reach you.

If you don’t, the act says you aren’t entitled to damages.

The landlord also must have had no notice of where you went and mailed the notice and any refund to your last known address.

Different Deposit Standards

A landlord who rents more than four adjoining units and uses different standards to calculate security deposits has a disclosure duty.

That landlord has to post the standards in a conspicuous place, or hand you a statement of them, before the rental agreement is consummated.

If the landlord skips the disclosure, part of your security deposit is “not subject to deductions for damages.”

Section 27-40-410(c) sets that part at the difference between your deposit and the lowest deposit required of any other tenant of a comparable dwelling unit on the premises.

Here’s the math.

Say you paid $1,200 and the lowest deposit for a comparable unit is $900.

Under that wording, the $300 difference is off-limits for damage deductions.

Psst! How much do you know about security deposits? Tap each card and see if you can ace it.

Triple Damages

Section 27-40-410(b) covers a landlord who fails to return any prepaid rent or security deposit with the notice the act requires.

The multiplier applies to the amount wrongfully withheld, not to the whole deposit.

The South Carolina Bar’s guide says you may recover money damages if your landlord fails to return your deposit and you give proper notice.

What does that look like?

Say a landlord wrongly keeps $400 of a $1,000 deposit.

The statute describes the recovery as “an amount equal to three times the amount wrongfully withheld and reasonable attorney’s fees.” Multiplied out, that $400 becomes $1,200, plus fees.