Lease renewal for existing tenant

[Chris Duffy]

Newer landlord question - State: Florida - So I have a current tenant in place paying me $1425/mo. Her lease is up mid-march and I am increasing her rent to $1600/mo. which she is fine with. I'd like to draft up a new lease in the next week or so to sign but not sure how to go about collecting more security, if that's even possible. To hedge my risk, I'd like to sign the lease and collect more security but I'm already holding her security deposits from the current lease in place and don't want to ask for excessive deposits.. if I ask for another $1600 deposit I'll be holding almost $4500 of her money until March. If I have her sign a new lease with no new security deposit, I worry she could find something new before the lease restarts and terminate the lease and still be entitled to her security deposit from the previous lease. Should I just stipulate in the new lease that her previous security deposit will roll over and should she terminate the new lease after signing I'd be entitled to those deposits? Any advice on best course of action? Thank you! 

[Dan Nutter]

With the rent increase, personally I wouldn't sweat also increasing the deposit (at least not for the next year, or whatever duration the new lease will be).You're not risking much by keeping the deposit amount as-is.

Regarding how to show it in the new lease, it's not a huge deal. You will want to state  in the lease there's a security deposit of $2,850, but it would be abnormal to state "the $2,850 security deposit from tenant's previous lease will rollover to this lease, and no additional deposit will be collected during the duration of the lease."

What I would do is write the tenant an email informing her that the security deposit she initially paid will continue to rollover into her new lease, and now you've got a paper trail of your intent. I've been managing my properties for a decade, and I've never even considered this :P