Security Deposit Alternative in Oregon
Oregon sets no ceiling on a security deposit, but once a tenancy starts you cannot add one or raise one for a year, and after that you have to give the resident at least three months to pay any increase. When the tenancy ends you have 31 days to send a written accounting of any claim and refund the rest. Withhold wrongly and the resident is entitled to twice the amount.
What Oregon law says about security deposits
Read from the Oregon statute on 2026-09-10. Deposit rules change, and this is general information rather than legal advice. Confirm the current text with your own counsel before you change a lease.
Can you require it of every Oregon resident?
Oregon's constraint is not about whether the fee is optional. It is about whether a landlord may charge it. ORS 90.302 says a landlord may not charge a fee at the start of a tenancy for an anticipated expense and may not require payment of any fee except as the section provides, and every permitted fee must be described in the written rental agreement. The permitted list is short and specific: late rent, a dishonored check, tampering with a smoke or carbon monoxide alarm, breaching a written pet agreement, abandoning a fixed-term tenancy, and repeat violations of written rules after a warning. A recurring charge in place of a deposit is not among them. Whether a premium paid to a licensed insurer, rather than a fee paid to the landlord, sits outside that section is the question to put to Oregon counsel, and it is not one this page can answer. The deposit rules are simpler: no cap, but you may not add or raise a deposit in the first year, and after that the resident gets at least three months to pay any increase.
Fee-in-lieu provision: ORS 90.302, read on 2026-09-10.
Rules differ by state and by city, and subsidized housing is its own question. This is general information for property managers, not legal advice. Get a written opinion before you make the fee a condition of tenancy anywhere.
How the program works in Oregon
The mechanics are the same in every state Beagle operates in. The program is designed to comply with applicable state and local regulations, and the rate is set by the deposit amount rather than by geography, so a Oregon property and one two states over are quoted the same way.
The resident chooses at signing
Instead of producing the full deposit, the resident pays a smaller non-refundable monthly fee that is billed with rent. Nothing is held, so nothing has to be returned.
The property keeps its protection
Damage beyond normal wear is reimbursed up to the deposit amount the unit would otherwise have required, so what you can recover does not shrink.
Move-out stops being a negotiation
A claim is filed against the program rather than deducted from money you are holding, which takes the itemised-deduction letter and the dispute that follows it off your team's desk.
You earn on every resident who takes it
You set an administrative fee on top of the premium, up to $5 per unit per month, and keep it.
Oregon security deposit alternative FAQs
Not as a landlord fee, on the face of ORS 90.302, which limits landlord fees to a short listed set that does not include this. Whether a program structured as a premium to a licensed insurer is something different from a landlord fee is the question your Oregon attorney needs to answer before you offer it, and certainly before you require it.
Security deposit rules in other states
See it on your Oregon units
Run the program against your own unit count, or walk through it with our team. No upfront fees, no onboarding charges, no long-term contracts.