Inventories
DIY inventory or hire a clerk? What it really costs to get it wrong
3 min read
You can write your own inventory, and for some landlords that is a perfectly reasonable choice. The question is not whether a DIY inventory is legal — it is — but whether the one you produce will still be standing when a tenant disputes a deduction two years from now. That is a different bar, and it is worth being honest about where the line falls before you decide.
When DIY is genuinely fine
If you have the time, the patience, and a methodical eye, a careful self-made inventory can protect a deposit. The requirements are not secret: describe every item's condition rather than just listing it, photograph everything with a visible date, cover the whole property including the parts people skip, and give the tenant a proper chance to check it and comment. A landlord who does all of that, every time, on every tenancy, has a real record. The trouble is that most DIY inventories are made once in a hurry and never quite to that standard.
Where DIY quietly fails
The failures are rarely dramatic; they are gaps that only matter later. Photos with no date, so 'that mark was already there' cannot be tested. Rooms described as 'good condition' with no detail, which an adjudicator reads as no evidence at all. A document the tenant never signed or agreed. A check-out done by the same landlord who is claiming the money, which reads as one interested party's opinion rather than a neutral record. None of these feel like mistakes on the day. All of them lose deposits.
Adjudicators still consider a landlord's own report — but they place less weight on it than on an independent one. Being the person who both wrote the evidence and stands to gain from it is a discount you pay at exactly the wrong moment.
The real cost comparison
A professional check-in and check-out typically costs somewhere around a hundred pounds each. Weighed against an afternoon of your time, that can look like an easy saving. Weighed against a single lost dispute — a carpet, a repaint, an end-of-tenancy clean the tenant refuses to pay for — it is small. One deduction you cannot prove usually costs more than several years of professional inventories, and that is before the hours spent arguing over email and the void weeks while the deposit stays frozen.
What independence actually buys
The value of a clerk is not that they see more than you could — it is that their report is neutral, consistent, and built to the standard adjudicators expect: dated photographs, item-by-item condition, disclosed limits of inspection, and a check-out that maps cleanly onto the check-in. You are not paying for someone to look at your property. You are paying for a record that a stranger deciding a dispute will believe.
That is the whole design goal. InventorySafe produces the independent, evidence-cited report that holds up — so the choice stops being 'save an afternoon' versus 'spend a hundred pounds', and becomes 'a record that survives a dispute' versus one that might not.
Common questions
- Is a DIY inventory legally valid?
- Yes. There is no legal requirement to use a professional inventory clerk, and a landlord's own inventory can be used as evidence in a deposit dispute. The issue is weight, not validity: adjudicators consider self-made reports but tend to place less weight on them than on an independent clerk's report, because the author also stands to benefit from the deductions.
- Do I need a professional inventory clerk?
- Not by law, but it is strongly advisable if you want deductions to hold up. A careful DIY inventory with dated photos, item-by-item condition and tenant agreement can work; the risk is that most DIY inventories fall short of that standard, and the gaps only show up when a deposit is disputed.
- How much does an inventory clerk cost?
- As a rough guide, a professional check-in and a check-out each cost in the region of a hundred pounds, varying with property size and location. Set against the cost of a single deduction you cannot prove in a dispute, it is usually the cheaper option overall.
- What makes an independent inventory stronger than my own?
- Neutrality and consistency. An independent report is written by someone with nothing to gain from the deductions, to the standard adjudicators expect — dated photographs, detailed condition per item, disclosed limits of inspection, and a check-out that compares directly to the check-in. That is exactly the profile of evidence that wins disputes.