Oregon Hold Deposit Rules 2026: Written Terms Required Before Accepting a Deposit, Plus Refund Deadlines

A landlord should treat these examples as illustrative of the severity level required, a defect affecting basic livability or safety, rather than a complete and exhaustive list; a different but comparably serious habitability problem could reasonably trigger the same refund right.

5. Why documenting the unit's condition protects against unfounded claims

Since an applicant can back out and get a refund based on a habitability defect they discover, a landlord has a practical incentive to document the unit's condition with photos or a written inspection record before the applicant's walkthrough.

[Cite: ORS 90.297, as amended by Or. Laws 2025 ch. 392]

That documentation isn't a separate legal requirement under this statute, but it's the practical tool a landlord has to dispute a refund claim that misstates the unit's actual condition at the time the hold deposit was taken.

6. Why the penalty structure makes a late refund expensive

A landlord who fails to refund on time, apart from acts of God, owes the deposit back plus a penalty equal to the greater of the deposit amount itself or whatever figure the written statement specified.

[Cite: ORS 90.297, as amended by Or. Laws 2025 ch. 392]

That's effectively a doubling exposure in many cases; a landlord holding a $500 hold deposit who misses the 5-business-day deadline could owe $1,000 total, the original deposit plus a matching penalty, rather than just the deposit amount alone.

7. Why the acts-of-God exception is narrow

The penalty doesn't apply when the delay results from an act of God, but that's a narrow exception tied to genuinely unforeseeable, uncontrollable events.

[Cite: ORS 90.297, as amended by Or. Laws 2025 ch. 392]

A landlord who's simply short-staffed, or whose accounting process is slow, can't rely on this exception; it's reserved for circumstances outside the landlord's control in a much stronger sense than ordinary business delays.

8. Why the refund-delivery methods matter for proving compliance

The statute allows making the refund available for pickup at the landlord's office or sending it by first-class mail.

[Cite: ORS 90.297, as amended by Or. Laws 2025 ch. 392]

A landlord relying on the mail option should keep proof of when the refund was actually sent, since the 5-business-day clock is measured from when the refund obligation was triggered, not from whenever the applicant happens to receive it.

9. Why this doesn't change a landlord's ability to retain a deposit when terms are met

This provision addresses refund obligations when the landlord doesn't follow through or a habitability issue surfaces; it doesn't prevent a landlord from retaining a hold deposit, or applying it toward the lease, when both parties proceed as agreed under the written terms.

[Cite: ORS 90.297, as amended by Or. Laws 2025 ch. 392]

A landlord and applicant who both follow through on a lease signing exactly as the written statement described aren't triggering any refund obligation under this specific provision at all.

10. Why lease-application workflows need a specific new step

Since the written statement has to precede deposit collection, a landlord's application and hold-deposit process needs a distinct step where that statement is generated and provided, not folded informally into a verbal conversation.

[Cite: ORS 90.297, as amended by Or. Laws 2025 ch. 392]

A landlord using a standardized application packet should build the written hold-deposit statement into that packet as a required document the applicant receives before any deposit payment is processed.

11. What property managers should do now

The practical starting point is building a standard written hold-deposit statement template covering all 4 required elements, rent, fees and deposits, lease-signing terms, and the specific refund conditions and timeline, for use before any hold deposit is collected.

For any hold deposit currently held, tracking the 5-business-day refund clock from the moment a disqualifying event, a failed follow-through or a habitability discovery, actually occurs keeps the refund timely and avoids the doubled penalty exposure.