California landlord deadline calculator
Most of these deadlines are counted from a day you already know. Put the date in and the rest follows — with the section of the Civil Code each one comes from, so you can check us.
Security deposit deadlines
One date in. Every deadline that follows from it, with the statute beside each one.
Recalled stove or refrigerator — AB 628
From January 2026 a working stove and refrigerator are part of habitability in California. A recalled one starts a 30-day clock — and the statute treats the dwelling as untenantable in the meantime, which is the part most summaries leave out.
Rather not track this by hand?
SmartLeaseFlow keeps these dates against the actual tenancy, and tells you what's next instead of waiting to be asked.
Start a 14-day free trialWhy 21 days and not 30
Thirty days is the deposit deadline in a lot of states, which is exactly why it keeps being repeated in California. It’s wrong here. §1950.5(h)(1) gives you 21 calendar days — not business days — and the clock starts the day the tenant vacated the premises, not the day you got the keys back, not the day the contractor finished, and not the day you finally worked out what the repairs cost.
That last part is where most of the damage happens. A landlord waiting on a quote watches day nineteen go past thinking the clock hasn’t started. It has. If you genuinely can’t get a final figure in time, §1950.5(h)(3) lets you send a good-faith estimate inside the deadline and follow it with the real documents afterwards — which is a far better position than a late statement.
What the AB 628 calculator is for
The second calculator on this page has nothing to do with deposits, and almost nothing written about it is right yet. AB 628 took effect on January 1, 2026. If a stove or refrigerator you supplied is subject to a safety recall, you have 30 days to repair or replace it once you know.
The detail nearly every summary omits: during that window the statute treats the dwelling as untenantable. That is a materially different exposure from “you have a month to sort it out,” and it’s the reason this calculator exists alongside the deposit one.
Put the dates somewhere you’ll see them
Every timeline here exports a calendar file. That isn’t a gimmick — the 21-day deadline is short enough to be missed by someone who is busy and long enough to be forgotten by someone who isn’t. A date sitting in the calendar you already check beats one written on a page you visited once.
One more thing worth doing while the dates are in front of you: get the tenant’s forwarding address in writing before they hand back the keys. A statement you can’t deliver is the most common way this goes wrong after the deadline has been correctly calculated.
General information about two California statutes, not legal advice about your situation, and we are not lawyers. Local ordinances can add requirements this page doesn’t cover. Every figure is read from the same tested constants the calculator uses, each verified against the statutory text.