Deposit deductions, and the evidence that decides them

Your agent booked the check-in inventory, filed it somewhere, and you have almost certainly never read it. If your tenant disputes a deduction at the end of the tenancy, that document is your case. Not a summary of it — the whole of it.

The thing most landlords have backwards is whose money is in dispute. A deposit is the tenant's until a landlord proves a claim to it. The Deposit Protection Service puts it plainly: the onus is on the landlord "to prove they have a legitimate claim to a share of the deposit, whilst the tenant has no obligation to prove their position." An adjudicator decides on the evidence the two of you submit, and the DPS recommend you provide "at the very least, a copy of the tenancy agreement, and check-in and check-out report". No check-in report means no baseline, and no baseline means very little to argue from.

What the scheme actually expects to see

The evidence that carries weight is unglamorous and entirely predictable:

• A signed check-in inventory, describing the condition of each room at the start rather than listing the contents of it.
• A check-out report in the same shape, so the two can be read side by side.
• Photographs, tied to the room and the date they were taken.
• The tenancy agreement, so the adjudicator can see what the tenant actually agreed to.
• Invoices and receipts for anything you are claiming the cost of.

Two limits are worth knowing before you start building a claim. You can only claim for excessive wear and tear — ordinary use is what rent is for. And time works against a deduction: the DPS notes that redecoration is not usually awarded on tenancies of five years or more, because the landlord "would probably have needed to redecorate anyway".

Four things that go wrong when the agent held the file

You have never checked whether the report is any good. A check-in inventory can be four pages of ticked boxes with no photographs, or it can be a room-by-room record with dated images. Both cost you the same fee. You find out which one you paid for at the exact moment it stops being fixable.

It was never signed. An inventory the tenant never saw and never agreed to is a document written by one side of the dispute. It is not worthless, but it is a great deal weaker than one both parties put their name to.

The photographs are somewhere else. Images on a phone, or in an email thread, or on a former staff member's account, are not part of the report. An adjudicator reads what is submitted, and a photograph that cannot be tied to a room and a date is doing less work than you think.

There is no continuity. The strength of a deposit claim comes from comparing two moments in the same property, recorded the same way. A check-in done by one agency and a check-out done by you, or by a different agency, or in a hurry after the keys came back, produces two documents that do not line up. The adjudicator has to do the comparison, and anything they cannot see, they cannot find in your favour.

What it costs if this stays as it is

Not a penalty. Just a series of small, quiet losses that only become visible years later.

The deposit goes back. Where evidence is thin, the money returns to the tenant, because it was theirs to begin with and the claim was not made out. That is not an adjudicator being harsh — it is the burden of proof working exactly as described.

The gap is unfixable by the time you see it. Every other landlord problem gives you a second chance: a certificate can be renewed, a notice can be reissued. A check-in inventory cannot be improved after the tenant has moved in. The work has to have been done on day one, by someone who knew it would be read by a stranger years later.

It compounds across every tenancy you run. This is not one bad outcome. It is the same weakness sitting under every deposit you hold, coming due one tenancy at a time.

And it is worst at the point you leave. If you part company with an agent, you leave with the summaries and without the underlying record — the photographs, the signed version, the file the claim depends on. That is the moment a folder of PDFs turns out to have been a way of not keeping evidence at all. We have written separately about what to ask for before you go.

How Tenarize makes the evidence a by-product

Tenarize is software for landlords in England who manage their own properties. What it changes here is not a dispute feature — it is that the report gets built while you are standing in the room, by you, and ends up signed by both of you without anyone chasing a document.

The walkthrough is done on your phone, room by room. Add a room, write what condition it is in, add up to eight photographs — the picker opens the camera directly. It saves as you go, so you can stop halfway and pick it up later. Press Finish and Tenarize generates the report PDF, attaches it to the right checklist item, and sends it to you and your tenant for e-signature. It works for the move-in inventory, the check-out inventory and a mid-tenancy inspection.

The check-out report writes itself against the check-in. A check-out walkthrough pulls the move-in report in as its baseline and sets matched rooms side by side, before and after, in one document. That is the comparison an adjudicator is trying to make, handed over already made.

The report is built to survive being read by a stranger. It opens on a cover page carrying the full address, both parties, the date, how many rooms and photographs it contains and a reference you can quote. Rooms are numbered, and so is every photograph — "photo 2.3" is the third photograph of room two, which means a specific piece of damage has a name in a sentence. Every page is footed with the report type, the property and the date, so one page separated from a bundle still says what it belongs to. You do not have to take our word for the shape of it: three example reports are downloadable, produced by the same template your own would use.

Disagreement is handled before it becomes a dispute. A tenant reviewing a pending report can raise a structured query against the report or one named room. You either dismiss it with a written explanation they are emailed, or reopen the walkthrough, correct it and re-send it for signature. A query cannot be marked resolved without a corrected report actually going out — which is the right way round, because an objection settled in month one is not an objection sitting in an adjudication file in year three.

And the end of the tenancy is recorded too. The tenancy carries the date the deposit was returned, the amount and any deductions, with a reminder if a return looks overdue. The audit trail exports as a dated PDF you can take to an adjudication alongside the reports.

Tenarize does not protect your deposit and does not hold it. You protect it with one of the three government-approved schemes, which is a duty and a deadline of its own. What Tenarize does is keep the record that decides what happens to it at the other end.

What changes for you

You stop holding evidence you have never inspected. The check-in report is one you built, in the property, and you know exactly what is in it — because you took the photographs.

Check-out stops being a scramble. The comparison is generated rather than reconstructed, so the end of a tenancy is a walkthrough and a signature instead of an evening spent trying to remember what the kitchen looked like in 2024.

A deduction becomes a conversation with something behind it. You can point at a numbered photograph in a signed document and say what changed, which is a very different conversation from asserting that something used to be better.

And if it does go to adjudication, you are submitting a file rather than assembling one. Everything the scheme asks for is already in one place, already dated, already signed by both of you. That is not a promise about the outcome — no one can offer you that, and the adjudicator decides on the merits. It is the difference between making your case and hoping the other side does not make theirs.

Where to check this yourself

• Deposit protection schemes and landlords — GOV.UK, on your duties, and on the deposit being returned within 10 days of you both agreeing the amount
• Common dispute questions — the Deposit Protection Service, on the burden of proof, the evidence they expect and what counts as excessive wear and tear
• The Deposit Protection Service, mydeposits and Tenancy Deposit Scheme — the three approved schemes, each with its own dispute guidance
• What is the room-by-room walkthrough tool? and what the report looks like — the help centre, with the example PDFs
• Does Tenarize track returning the deposit? — what is recorded at the end of a tenancy

Tenarize is £15 a month for one to five properties, with the first month free. The walkthrough tool, the reports and the audit trail are included at every tier, and the help centre is free to read whether you sign up or not.