Deposit?

[Ryan Billingsley]

I have read many different perspectives on the deposit that landlords ask renters to pay before moving in.  What is a fair amount to ask the renter to pay?  I would like to get the equivalent of the monthly rent as a deposit.  I figure any damage that will be accounted for will cost at least a couple hundred dollars.  Opinions and recommendations welcome!

[Marcia Maynard]

@Ryan Billingsley Our duplex units rent for $690 and our small houses rent for about $1000. We charge a flat amount for our base security deposit ($600 on our duplex units and $800 on our houses) and raise it by $200 if the tenant is a little riskier for us to accept based on thier past history or current income stream. 

We purposely don't make the security deposit equal to a rent payment, because there is greater chance of the tenant thinking they will just not pay last month's rent and the security deposit will cover. Of course it doesn't work that way, but there is no accounting for tenant mentality and it just makes it clearer for them if I make the security deposit a little less or a little more than the rent. 

The reality is that a good tenant move out will usually cost us $100 or less from the deposit and a bad tenant move out will cost us $1000 or more. The security deposit is never enough for bad tenant move outs and we do our best to avoid renting to rogue tenants. But sometimes a tenancy will go south, so we have other reserves to cover that kind of situation.  If our market could bear a higher security deposit, I would do what I could to get it!