Check-out reports and schedules of condition: ending a tenancy cleanly

The moment a tenant hands back the keys is rarely the end of the story. For landlords and letting agents alike, the check-out is the point at which months of careful property management either pay off or unravel. Get the paperwork right and deductions are simple, fair, and accepted. Get it wrong — or skip it entirely — and even a legitimate claim becomes almost impossible to evidence.

This guide covers what a proper check-out report should contain, how fair wear and tear actually works in adjudication, and why an automated comparison against the original check-in inventory is now the standard worth adopting before the Renters’ Rights Act raises the bar further.

Why the check-out report matters more than ever

The UK’s private rented sector now holds around 4.7 million protected deposits in England and Wales. In 2024/25 (the year to March 2025), just 1% of those — 46,950 cases — reached formal adjudication with a tenancy deposit scheme. That sounds reassuring, but the disputes are concentrated around a handful of recurring issues. Cleaning features in 54% of TDS adjudication cases, damage in 49%, and redecoration in 31%. And the single thread running through the claims landlords lose is the same: inadequate documentation at check-out.

The Renters’ Rights Act 2025, which received Royal Assent on 27 October 2025 and whose main tenancy reforms came into force on 1 May 2026, abolishes fixed-term assured shorthold tenancies. New tenancies now begin as rolling periodic tenancies, and existing tenancies have converted to the same footing. That means tenancies will frequently run longer — and the longer a tenancy runs, the harder it becomes to distinguish fair wear and tear from genuine damage, unless you have watertight, date-stamped evidence going back to check-in.

What goes into a proper check-out report

A check-out report is not a freestanding document. Its entire value rests on how directly it references the check-in inventory. Without that comparison, you have a snapshot; with it, you have evidence.

A thorough report should cover:

Every room, fixture, and fitting — not just the obvious ones. Skirting boards, window mechanisms, extractor fans, and light fittings all appear in adjudications. Anything not documented is assumed to have been acceptable at the start.

Photographic evidence at item level — wide shots of a room establish context; close-up shots of individual marks, stains, or damage are what adjudicators actually use. Images should be dated and clearly labelled.

Condition ratings using the same terminology as the check-in — adjudicators look for consistency. If the check-in says “good condition” and the check-out says “fair” for the same item, that change is the basis for a claim. Mismatched language undermines it.

Meter readings, key counts, and cleanliness assessments — these are among the most disputed items and the easiest to verify objectively at the time of the inspection.

A clear treatment of fair wear and tear — it is not a vague get-out for tenants. Fair wear and tear is the reasonable use of the property by the tenant and the ordinary operation of natural forces — the gradual deterioration that occurs through normal, everyday use. A carpet becoming slightly worn in a hallway is wear and tear; a burn mark is damage. The distinction needs to be explicit in your report, not assumed. The age, quality, and expected lifespan of the item, together with the length of the tenancy, all affect what deduction is reasonable. Replacing a worn, decade-old sofa with a brand-new one is betterment, and an adjudicator will reduce the award accordingly rather than leave the tenant footing the full replacement cost.

The check-in/check-out comparison: where disputes are won and lost

The check-out report alone does not resolve a dispute. The adjudicator compares the property’s condition at departure against its condition at arrival. That means a poor check-in report — vague, under-photographed, or inconsistently described — destroys the evidential value of even the most detailed check-out. A detailed, dated check-in inventory is frequently the single most important piece of evidence in any deposit dispute.

Best practice, as set out by mydeposits, is to use the check-in inventory for reference at the check-out so that differences can be highlighted clearly using the same terminology at both stages. It is also worth inviting the tenant to attend the check-out inspection — mydeposits describes giving the tenant the opportunity to attend the final inspection as best practice. Any disagreements surfaced on the day are far easier to resolve informally than after the deposit has been formally deducted.

It is also good practice to issue the completed report promptly and keep a dated record of when it was sent. (At check-in, the industry standard is to give the tenant seven to ten days to review the inventory and report any differences — a useful benchmark for how quickly written records should change hands at either end of a tenancy.)

How InventoryGoose automates the comparison

Manual side-by-side comparison of check-in and check-out reports is time-consuming and error-prone — easy to miss an item, easy to forget to flag a condition change, easy to produce a document that’s technically complete but practically useless under adjudication.

InventoryGoose handles this automatically. At check-out, the system compares each room and item against the check-in record, flags discrepancies, and produces an itemised schedule of condition in minutes — complete with side-by-side images and condition notes. There is no hunting through PDFs or manually matching room-by-room entries. The output is structured around the kind of dated, item-level evidence the deposit schemes — TDS, mydeposits, and the DPS — rely on at adjudication.

For agents managing multiple tenancies, this matters at scale. One under-documented check-out is an inconvenience. A pattern of them is a liability — and with deposits now at record levels (the average reached £1,175 in 2024/25, the highest on record) and the periodic tenancy model placing even greater weight on long-running condition records, the administrative shortcuts of the past will be harder to sustain.

Practical steps to get the check-out right

Four to six weeks before check-out: Remind the tenant of their obligations in writing — cleaning to the standard recorded at check-in, defrosting appliances, garden maintenance (if applicable), and removing all belongings. Refer them to the original inventory.

At the inspection: Work through each item in the check-in report in order. Don’t rely on memory. Photograph everything flagged, even items that appear fine — “no change” entries matter too.

Promptly after the inspection: Issue the completed report to the tenant, with any proposed deductions itemised and justified against specific check-in entries, and keep a dated record of when you sent it.

On deposit returns: By law, the deposit (or the undisputed portion of it) must be returned within ten days of both parties agreeing how much is to be deducted. If there is a dispute, raise it through the scheme’s free Alternative Dispute Resolution service rather than withholding money you both agree the tenant is owed.

The bottom line

A check-out report is only as strong as what it can be compared against. The UK’s deposit schemes adjudicate on evidence — not on what is written in the tenancy agreement, and not on what you believed the condition to be. Dated photographs and consistent, item-by-item condition records are what carry the day. With tenancies now rolling periodic by default and deposits at record values, the shortcuts that let landlords and agents get away with rough-and-ready documentation in the past will be far harder to sustain.

If you are managing the full tenancy lifecycle — from referencing through to check-out — having the check-in and check-out in the same platform closes the loop. See how InventoryGoose works and how it fits alongside PropertyGoose’s full suite of tenancy tools.

Craig Ryder