Question for Pennsylvania Landlords

[Jeff Lehman]

Hello fellow Pennsylvania landlords. I have a security deposit question for you. It is my understanding that the security deposit, by law, must be kept in a separate interest-bearing account. When I initially asked several banks about this, they all seemed clueless except for Citizens Bank which assured me that they knew what I was talking about. They proceeded to put my security deposit into an interest-bearing business checking account and then charged me $10 a month, in maintenance fees. After fighting with the branch (for a month or more) that originally set up the account, I called customer service and they immediately told me that the wrong account was selected and changed it to the "correct" account. Now today I discovered that they charged me a $10 fee for a dormant account.

My questions are, Do the security deposits, by law, need to be in an interest-bearing account? Does it matter if the account is a savings or a checking account? What banks are you using and what is the type of account? In other words, is there a special type of account that is specifically to be used for security deposits?

Any help or insight would be much appreciated.