South Carolina adopted the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, and its deposit section (§27-40-410) is lean: no cap, one clock, one itemization duty — and a treble-damages penalty that makes the lean statute heavy.
How much can a landlord charge?
No statutory cap — market convention is one month's rent. One SC-specific disclosure rule: a landlord renting more than four adjoining units who imposes different deposit amounts on different tenants must post or disclose the standards used — undisclosed discriminatory deposit-setting entitles the tenant to their full deposit back.
The 30-day clock
Within 30 days of termination, delivery of possession, and the tenant's demand or forwarding address, the landlord must return the deposit with a written itemized statement of any amounts withheld. Deductions: unpaid rent and damage beyond ordinary wear and tear — the URLTA standard.
The penalty
Bad-faith retention costs the landlord three times the amount wrongfully withheld, plus reasonable attorney's fees. Magistrate court (small claims, up to $7,500) is the venue, and the fee-shifting makes modest deposits worth pursuing — a $900 wrongful withholding is a $2,700-plus-fees judgment.
Why South Carolina deposit disputes are documentation disputes
A bare-bones URLTA statute means no checklists, no inspection procedure, no receipts mandate — the wear-and-tear line is decided in magistrate court purely on the evidence each side carries in. With treble damages riding on "bad faith," a landlord's documentation quality is their good-faith defense, and a tenant's baseline record is their case.
SealMove is that record, for either chair. Every photo and video is cryptographically sealed the instant it's captured, independently timestamped, and locked with Face ID into a tamper-evident archive. At move-out, your walkthrough lines up room-by-room against the sealed baseline — and either party can send the other a report to review and acknowledge, no app required.