If you hand over the keys today without a document signed by the landlord recording the state of the flat and the meter readings, the return of your deposit will depend on the version he gives later, because Article 1562 of the Spanish Civil Code presumes that you received the property in good condition when the contract said nothing else. The deposit is claimed in writing from the landlord, who is obliged to return it when the lease ends and who, once a month has passed since the keys were handed over without doing so, also owes the legal rate of interest (Article 36.4 of Law 29/1994 on Urban Leases, the LAU). If he still does not pay, the route is a claim under the verbal trial procedure, and the time limit for filing it is five years (Article 1964.2 of the Civil Code). Royal Decree-Law 28/2026 of 6 October, the new rental law, comes into force on 15 November, and it reaches your contract only to the extent its transitional provision says so.
Before handing over the keys, what depends on you alone
Most deposit disputes are won or lost on the day you move out, with the landlord present, and not months later in a courtroom. What you can do today, without anyone’s help, is this.
- Photograph and film every room on the day you leave, with the date visible, including cupboards, appliances, walls and floors. If you still have the photographs from the day you moved in, you already hold the comparison the landlord will have to rebut.
- Note the electricity, water and gas readings and ask the landlord to sign a handover record with the condition of the flat and those readings. If he refuses to sign, do not hand over the keys alone; do it with a witness present or record the day and time in writing.
- Do not accept verbal arrangements. If the landlord announces he will deduct something, ask for the item and the invoice in writing. What is not documented does not exist for a judge.
- Keep the contract, the proof of payment of the deposit and of every month’s rent, the emails and the WhatsApp messages. Delete nothing even if the relationship ends badly.
- Do not stop paying the last month’s rent to recover the deposit on your own. I explain below why that puts you on the side of the party in breach.
- Check with the regional body, in Galicia the Instituto Galego da Vivenda e Solo, whether the deposit for your contract is on record. It is a fact that changes the negotiation.
What changes on 15 November with Royal Decree-Law 28/2026 and what happens to the contract you already signed
Royal Decree-Law 28/2026 of 6 October was published in the Official State Gazette under reference BOE-A-2026-20822 and comes into force on 15 November 2026. It is a decree-law, so Article 86 of the Spanish Constitution requires Parliament to vote on its ratification or repeal within thirty days of its promulgation, and allows it to be processed afterwards as a bill, which means the text may change in the following months. If it is not ratified, it will never apply to anyone.
What decides whether it affects you is its transitional provision. The last two reforms of the Urban Leases Act, Royal Decree-Law 7/2019 and Law 12/2023 on the right to housing, followed the same rule, each contract is governed by the law in force on the day it was signed, and the new measures apply to later contracts or, at most, to their extensions. Before assuming that a new measure helps or harms you, that provision has to be read with the contract in hand, which is what we do at the firm when a tenant or an owner brings us theirs.
Under the LAU text in force today, the minimum term of a residential lease is set by Articles 9 and 10 (five years, seven if the landlord is a legal entity, plus a tacit extension of three more years), the annual rent update by Article 18 and the deposit by Article 36. If the new law alters any of those rules, its effect on earlier contracts will come from the transitional provision, not from the newspaper headline. The claim for the deposit under a contract that has already ended, or that ends in the coming weeks, is decided under Article 36 as it stands.
Article 36 of the LAU, one month’s rent, one month to return it and legal interest
The deposit is compulsory and paid in cash, one month’s rent for a residential lease and two for leases for other uses, which covers seasonal lets and business premises (Article 36.1). During the first five years of the contract, seven if the landlord is a legal entity, it is not updated (36.2). When the lease ends, the balance of the deposit to be refunded is returned to the tenant, and if a month passes from the handover of the keys without that happening, the amount accrues interest at the legal rate (36.4). That rate is set each year in the Budget Act and is low; on a deposit of 700 euros it comes to a few euros a year. What is useful is not the figure, it is that a landlord who withholds without grounds is in default from day thirty-one, and that weighs in the negotiation and in costs.
The deposit secures the tenant’s obligations, rent, utilities the contract places on him and repairs that fall to him. The landlord may deduct what he can prove under those headings and must return the rest. Keeping it as automatic compensation, or using it to repaint a flat he handed over freshly painted six years ago, is wrongful retention.
Alongside the deposit, the contract may provide an additional guarantee, a bank guarantee or an extra sum held. In residential leases subject to the minimum term of Articles 9 and 10, that additional guarantee cannot exceed two months’ rent (36.5). If the landlord calls on the guarantee or keeps the extra sum without a debt to justify it, he is liable for the excess, and the claim follows the same route as the deposit.
Damage or wear and tear, and who has to prove it
The tenant must return the property as received, except for what has perished or deteriorated through time or unavoidable cause (Article 1561 of the Civil Code), and is liable for deterioration unless he proves it occurred without fault on his part (Article 1563). Minor repairs required by ordinary wear fall on him during the lease (Article 21.4 of the LAU). And the general rule of evidence is Article 217 of the Civil Procedure Act (LEC), whoever asserts a fact proves it.
Taken together, those rules allocate the burden as follows. The landlord who deducts has to prove three things, that the damage exists, that it is not the wear expected after the years of use, and that it costs what he says, with an invoice or estimate. Only once he has proved that does Article 1563 come into play and the tenant has to show the deterioration was not his fault. If there was no inventory or photographs at the start, Article 1562 presumes the flat was in good condition, which works against the tenant as to the starting point, but it does not relieve the landlord of proving the damage and its cost. A judge also discounts for age, eight-year-old paintwork or a ten-year-old mattress is not paid for at new price.
| What the landlord wants to deduct | Can he withhold it from the deposit? | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|
| Unpaid rent | Yes, proving the months owed | Article 36.4 LAU |
| Damage that is not wear (burns, broken doors, cracked tiles) | Yes, if he proves the damage, its cost and that it was not there at the start | Articles 1561 and 1563 Civil Code |
| Normal wear and tear (marks on walls, aged taps, paintwork) | No | Article 1561 Civil Code |
| Minor repairs from ordinary use the tenant left undone | Yes, with an invoice | Article 21.4 LAU |
| Outstanding utilities payable by the tenant | Yes, with the bill and the final reading | Article 20 LAU and the contract |
When a landlord keeps the whole deposit «for the state of the flat» with no further detail, he usually cannot support even half that amount with documents. At the firm we review the contract, the photographs and the invoices the landlord produces and quantify which part of the retention holds and which does not before claiming, as part of our lease work.
The landlord who never lodged the deposit with the IGVS or your regional body
The third additional provision of the LAU allows the autonomous regions to oblige the landlord to lodge the deposit with a public body, with no interest for him, until the contract ends. In Galicia that body is the Instituto Galego da Vivenda e Solo; in Andalusia, the Agencia de Vivienda y Rehabilitación de Andalucía; every region has its own. Lodging the deposit is the landlord’s obligation towards the administration, within a period counted from the signing of the contract, and failing to do so is an administrative offence punished with a fine and with the demand to lodge it late.
For the tenant the practical consequence is twofold. First, the deposit remains yours and is owed to you by the landlord, not by the administration; the regional body returns the money to the landlord who lodged it when he asks for it at the end of the contract, and never to the tenant, so if there is no deposit there is nothing to ask for there either. Second, the landlord who did not lodge it has a problem with the administration that you can trigger with a simple written notice. That fact carries real weight when the refund is negotiated, and the timing of using it, before claiming, in the same demand letter or only if the landlord refuses, changes the outcome. We decide it with each client depending on who the landlord is and how much is in dispute.
Withholding the last month’s rent against the deposit, and the risk under Article 250.1.1 LEC
The deposit is not money the tenant can set off on his own account. It is a guarantee the landlord settles at the end of the contract, and until then the rent is owed in full. Whoever stops paying the final month «because he already has the deposit» is in arrears. In practice the landlord keeps the deposit for the rent owed, the tenant loses his position as creditor and ends up arguing about alleged damage from the side of the party in breach, with interest on the rent against him and the door open to a tenant default register.
Non-payment of a single month allows the landlord to file an eviction claim for non-payment (Article 250.1.1 of the LEC), with the demand under Article 440. The fact that the contract is ending does not prevent it, and even if the eviction becomes pointless because you have already left, the claim for the rent and the costs remains alive. If your fear is that the landlord will not return the deposit, the answer is to document the handover and claim, not to withhold the rent.
Flat sold or inherited during the lease, who you claim from
The buyer of a let property steps into the landlord’s rights and obligations during the first five years of the contract, seven if the previous landlord was a legal entity (Article 14 of the LAU). Returning the deposit is one of those obligations, so when the lease ends it is claimed from the owner at that moment, even if the deposit was collected by the seller. How seller and buyer settle it between themselves is not the tenant’s problem. If the owner has died, the obligation passes to the heirs, and the demand must be addressed to whoever is on record as owner; how property passes to the next generation in Galicia, often during the owner’s lifetime, is covered here.
Anyone buying a let property should insist that the deed record the deposit and its lodgement, because they will inherit the obligation to return it; what to check before signing a reservation agreement is set out in this article.
Court claim for the deposit, what it costs, how long it takes and who pays the costs
A residential deposit rarely exceeds 15,000 euros, so the claim goes through the verbal trial procedure (Article 250.2 of the LEC, threshold set by Royal Decree-Law 6/2023), before the first instance court of the place where the property is located (Article 52.1.7). Since 3 April 2025, Organic Law 1/2025 requires proof of an attempt at out-of-court settlement before suing, through documented negotiation, conciliation or mediation; a well-drafted demand to the landlord performs three functions at once, it documents that attempt, it interrupts the limitation period (Article 1973 of the Civil Code) and it fixes the day from which interest runs.
As to cost, up to 2,000 euros in value the involvement of a lawyer and court agent is not compulsory (Articles 23.2 and 31.2 of the LEC). The other side of that is that, in those cases, costs do not include lawyers’ fees except for recklessness or where the losing party lives in another judicial district (Article 32.5), so a tenant who hires a lawyer for an 800 euro deposit and wins does not recover what he paid, and one who loses does not pay the landlord’s lawyer either. Above 2,000 euros representation is compulsory and the loser-pays rule applies (Article 394), capped at one third of the amount claimed for the other side’s fees unless there is recklessness. How long it takes depends on the court; a verbal trial without a hearing, which is the usual case when neither party asks for one and the evidence is documentary, is resolved in months, not weeks.
With those numbers, when is it worth it. If the landlord has returned the deposit minus 150 euros for cleaning and there is an invoice, probably not, the demand letter and a conciliation before the local court will close the matter. If he keeps the whole deposit without invoices, or called on a bank guarantee on top, the case is won with the move-out documentation and the judge will award interest and, above 2,000 euros, costs. If the landlord is insolvent, winning is not collecting. The time limit for suing is five years from when the deposit became due (Article 1964.2 of the Civil Code), but witnesses and photographs age worse than the time limit.
If you are the landlord, when you may withhold and what happens if the tenant does not leave
The owner may withhold only what he can prove with the same documentation he would demand from his tenant, entry record, exit record, invoices and readings, and he should notify the settlement in writing within the month under Article 36.4 so as not to add interest. Keeping the whole deposit «just in case» is the surest way to end up paying interest and costs on money that was never his.
If the contract has ended and the tenant will not leave, do not change the lock or cut off the utilities, because that turns you into the defendant. The route is an eviction claim for expiry of the term or for non-payment (Article 250.1.1 of the LEC), with the requirements added by Law 12/2023 on large-holder status and the occupant’s vulnerability. That procedure, its time frames and what can be claimed alongside the eviction are covered under evictions.
Frequently asked questions
How can I claim back a rental deposit?
In writing from the landlord, as soon as the month from the handover of the keys has passed without a refund, and by a means that records the date, because that letter interrupts the limitation period and documents the settlement attempt the law requires before suing. If he does not reply or withholds without invoices, the route is the verbal trial. How that demand is drafted and what it asks for is the lawyer’s work.
How do I claim back the deposit on a rented flat?
By asking the landlord in writing for the list of what he is deducting and the invoices. It is for him to prove that the damage exists, that it is not ordinary wear and that it costs what he withholds (Articles 1561 and 1563 of the Civil Code and 217 of the LEC). Your move-in and move-out photographs, the signed handover record and the payment receipts are the evidence used to claim the shortfall.
How do I claim a rental deposit from the Junta de Andalucía?
You do not claim it from the Junta, you claim it from the landlord. In Andalusia the deposit is lodged with the Agencia de Vivienda y Rehabilitación de Andalucía and the body returns it to the landlord who lodged it when he requests it at the end of the contract, never to the tenant. What you can do there is check whether it is on record and, if not, report it, because failure to lodge is penalised.
Where do I claim a rental deposit?
First from the landlord, by a means that leaves a record. If he does not pay, before the first instance court of the place where the property is located (Article 52.1.7 of the LEC), through the verbal trial, and beforehand you must prove an attempt at out-of-court settlement under Organic Law 1/2025. The regional body where the deposit was lodged does not return it to the tenant.
How do I claim the return of a rental deposit?
In the same way as the full deposit, but for the difference, if part has been returned. Accept what is paid while stating in writing that you receive it on account and claim the rest; partial payment is not a waiver if you say so. You have five years (Article 1964.2 of the Civil Code) and interest runs from the month after the keys were handed over (Article 36.4 of the LAU).
What do I do if I discover my landlord never lodged the deposit with my region’s housing body?
The deposit is still yours and is owed by the landlord, not by the administration. Failure to lodge it is an administrative offence by the landlord which the body punishes with a fine, and you can bring it to its attention. First decide the timing, because it is a strong argument in negotiating the refund; we assess that at the firm case by case.
The demand letter that fixes the date, the step to take now
Once the month from the handover of the keys has passed, every week without a demand letter is a week with no interest counting, no limitation period interrupted and photographs and witnesses that age. The next step is a demand to the landlord that leaves a record, with the settlement you stand by and the documents that support it, and we draft it from the contract, the move-out record and whatever the landlord has alleged. At Perseus & RC Abogados, in A Coruña, we handle deposit claims and lease matters for tenants and owners. You can call +34 677 841 007 or write through our contact page.