How to split a security deposit between roommates

Should roommates split a security deposit equally?

Not always. Equal shares are right when the rooms and rents are alike. When the rents differ, a split by rent share ties each person’s deposit to their own rent.

Say the deposit is $2,400, one month’s rent, and the three rents are $1,000, $800 and $600. Equal shares are $2,400 ÷ 3 = $800 each. By rent share, each person’s deposit equals their own monthly rent. For any deposit, a person’s share is the deposit times their rent, divided by the total rent.

Roommate	Monthly rent	Equal split	By rent share
Room A	$1,000	$800	$1,000
Room B	$800	$800	$800
Room C	$600	$800	$600
Total	$2,400	$2,400	$2,400

The difference is $200 in each direction. Room A pays $200 more under a rent share and Room C pays $200 less. Whichever rule you choose for paying in should be the rule you use for getting the money back, so write it down once. Roommate moving out: how to handle their deposit share covers that side.

Who pays the landlord, and when do the others pay in?

Have one person send the full $2,400, so the landlord gets one payment and gives one receipt. The others send their shares to that person by a date you set before the landlord’s deadline, so the person sending the money already holds the others’ shares. If the deposit is due on the 1st, the date for the shares could be the 27th.

Ask the landlord first whether separate payments from each roommate are accepted. If they are, each person pays their own share directly and nobody fronts anything.

What should you write down?

Keep a short record, in the group chat or in the roommate agreement, with:

• The date and the amount. $2,400, paid on a given day.
• The method. A bank transfer or a check, for example.
• Who paid. The one person whose account sent it.
• Each person’s share and the rule. Equal, or by rent share, with the dollar amounts.
• The landlord’s receipt. A photo is enough.

How do you record it in EvenOut?

1. Tap “Add expense”, type $2,400 and put “Security deposit” in “What was this for?”.
2. Set “Paid by” to the person who paid the landlord.
3. For equal shares, leave “Split equally”, which shows $800 each for 3 people. For a rent share, open the split chip and choose “Shares”, then type 10, 8 and 6. The pill shows 24 shares at $100 a share. “Exact amounts” with $1,000, $800 and $600 also works.
4. Under “Photo, repeat, pending or note”, add the receipt as the photo and put the method and date in the note.

EvenOut may ask “Track as pending?” because the description sounds like a deposit. Choose “Save normally”. Pending is meant for holds that can still change, and a pending expense is “Not counted in balances yet”, so nobody would see what they owe the person who paid.

Once saved, each roommate’s balance shows what they owe, and a payment is recorded with “Settle up”. EvenOut records payments and does not move money, so the transfer itself happens outside EvenOut.

What happens when someone joins later?

A new roommate buys in, which means the existing payers get some money back. Say three roommates paid $800 each toward the $2,400 deposit, and a fourth person moves in. An equal split is now $2,400 ÷ 4 = $600 each. Each of the three has $800 in and should have $600 in, so the newcomer pays $600 in total, $200 to each of them.

In EvenOut, once the newcomer is in the group, open the deposit, choose “Edit expense” and change the split to four people. The deposit stays at $2,400. If the others have not yet repaid the person who fronted it, each of them now owes that person $600, newcomer included. If the original three have already repaid, the newcomer owes $600 in total and each of the original three is owed $200, so the newcomer records three payments of $200 with “Settle up”.

What should you do next?

Pick equal or by rent share, set the repay date and write both down. The apartment move in cost calculator puts the deposit next to the other money due at the start. Rules on how much a landlord can ask for, where it is held and when it is returned vary by place, so check your local tenant resources for those. Apartment move in costs and how roommates split them covers the other costs due at the start.