What Happens If a Massachusetts Landlord Keeps Your Security Deposit Past 30 Days?

A Massachusetts landlord has thirty days after the tenancy ends to return the security deposit or whatever balance of it the tenant is owed. When that thirty-day return fails, M.G.L. c. 186, sec. 15B(7) awards the tenant three times the deposit or balance, plus interest at five percent from the date payment became due, plus court costs and reasonable attorney’s fees.

Why the thirty-day failure is the one that matters

Section 15B is a long statute, and subsection (6) is a list of five things a landlord can do wrong. Any of the five forfeits the landlord’s right to keep any portion of the deposit. That much is widely reported.

What gets reported inaccurately is the multiplier. Subsection (7) does not attach to all five failures. It reaches three of them: failing to hold the deposit in a separate interest-bearing account in a Massachusetts bank, failing to transfer the deposit to a new owner, and failing to return the deposit or its balance within thirty days after the tenancy ends. A landlord who forgets the itemized list of damages has forfeited the deposit under subsection (6), but that omission by itself is not what subsection (7) triples.

That distinction is the reason the video says “the thirty-day return failure” rather than “any violation.” A tenant reading a general article about section 15B can easily walk into a claim built on the wrong subsection.

What the tenant is actually asking for

The award described in subsection (7) is the deposit or balance multiplied by three, and the statute states it as what the tenant “shall be awarded” rather than as something the court may consider. Interest runs at five percent from the date the payment became due. Court costs and reasonable attorney’s fees sit alongside the award in the same sentence of the statute.

None of that answers whether a particular deduction from a particular deposit was proper, how much of the deposit is genuinely a “balance thereof,” or whether the tenancy ended on the date one side says it did. Those are fact questions, and they are where security deposit disputes are usually won or lost.