What to photograph before a tenant moves in.
Wherever you let a home, the argument at the end is settled by whoever kept a dated record of the beginning. The deposit scheme, bond authority or tribunal deciding it was not there, and usually cannot visit. They read what you both give them.
Photograph the things people argue about, not the things that look nice.
Arguments cluster in a few places: cleanliness, carpets and flooring, walls and paintwork, kitchen and bathroom surfaces, gardens and rubbish. An estate-agent photograph of a tidy living room settles none of them. A close, well-lit photograph of the corner of the carpet by the door settles one.
Take two of everything: the wide one and the close one.
The wide photograph shows which room and which wall. The close one shows the mark. On its own, a close-up of a scuff proves nothing about where the scuff is, and a wide shot of a room shows nothing about its condition. Together they place it. Photograph the meter readings and the keys handed over on the same day.
The date is the part that matters.
A photograph with no reliable date is an assertion. What makes a record useful later is that it was made at the time, has not been edited since, and sits alongside everything else made that day. Keep originals rather than screenshots, exports or copies pasted into a document — and keep them somewhere the date travels with the file.
Write what you saw, in ordinary words.
Note what a photograph cannot show: a smell, a sticking window, a radiator that does not come on. Say how clean each room was in plain language rather than a score. Avoid conclusions. “Mark beside the handle, about 3cm” is useful; “tenant damage” is an opinion about something that has not happened yet.
Give the tenant a real chance to answer.
Send the record and invite them to add their own notes and photographs under their own name. Somebody neutral reading it later is more persuaded by a record both sides contributed to than by one side’s account. Silence should never be treated as agreement, and where your jurisdiction sets a required form or a deadline for a condition report, use that process rather than this one.
Then do the same thing at the end.
The comparison is the point. Walk the rooms in the same order, photograph the same places from roughly the same spots, and keep the original record intact rather than replacing it. If you propose a deduction, show the working: what the item cost, how long that kind of item normally lasts, and how much of that life was left.
Written as general organisational practice, not legal advice. Condition-report requirements, deposit and bond handling, deadlines and dispute processes differ by country, state and province — check the official process where your property is. Checked 11 September 2026.
Keep the record without thinking about it.
Housetold does this job in the background: the photos stay dated, the renewal dates work themselves out, and the whole thing still makes sense a year later. It is coming to iOS and Android soon, and invited tenants use it free.
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