A Completely Free App to Speed Up Inventories

To anyone outside the lettings industry, taking inventory may seem an easy job. It’s just a case of just getting a clipboard and walking from one room to the next making a note of things as you go. That’s it, isn’t it?

Well, of course, as an insider you will know that it isn’t as simple as that. We wish! There is a lot more to taking inventory and taking it accurately than meets the eye. A whole section of industy exists in the form of inventory companies who take their instructions form mainly letting agents but now increasingly from landlords directly too.

Quite a number of letting agents prefer to outsource their inventory because of the amount of time it can take doing it in-house. When you are managing 300 or 400 properties, doing inventory is a full-time job for someone, so outsourcing it may be the best option. Many inventory clerks are members of a professional body such as the Association of Independent Inventory Clerks or ARLA Propertymark Inventories both of which run training courses and offer a qualification/accreditation route. In addition, both organisations need members to carry indemnity insurance so letting agents can handover work with peace of mind.

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Why You Need A Free Schedule Of Condition App If You Are A Landlord

When you are a landlord with a couple of properties that you let, or perhaps five or six, you are probably only too well aware that you need to carry out inventory on a regular basis. Your tenants are required to pay a deposit, and you are entitled to claim the cost of any repairs from that deposit if they cause damage to your property.

So far, so good. But you can only do that if they agree that the damage is their fault and not fair wear and tear. Unfortunately, the fact is that tenant disputes have increased dramatically over the last few years since the introduction of the Tenant Deposit Scheme because both tenants and landlords have realised that it costs nothing to begin a dispute.

This is why carrying out inventory on a regular basis has become so much more important. If you have got records to show exactly what condition everything was in at the beginning of the tenancy and at the end, along with interim records and photographs to go with them, then your chances of making a valid claim increase considerably. 

The problem is that, unless you are an experienced landlord, you may not know how to go about carrying out inventory the correct way.

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There’s An App For That!

It’s true. There is an app for very many things these days. There are thousands and thousands of them to deal with all sorts of problems, and many of them are free to download to your mobile, tablet, laptop, or whatever. Technology has made our lives much easier in many respects in the 21^st century.

Many of these apps are available on the App Store and/or Google Play, and quite a lot of them are available on both. They will work with both iPhone and Android in most instances, so it doesn’t matter which you use. You simply download the app that you wish to use – in some cases there is a small fee – and away you go.

If you are a letting agent, you may or may not know that you can get a property inventory app which will save you a lot of time when taking inventory. Carrying out inventory can be very time-consuming, especially if your landlords let a property fully furnished. There are so many things to take into consideration. It is bad enough when a property is let empty, but when it is fully furnished it can easily take an hour or two to do the inventory.

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Carrying Out A Condition Report Can Be Time-Consuming

One of the biggest problems that a letting agent has to face is carrying out inventory, otherwise known as a condition report. Inventory has to be carried out right at the beginning of a tenancy, ideally on the same day that the tenant moves in, and with the tenant present. It also needs to be carried out on the day the tenant moves out, again also with the tenant present if possible.

In addition, of course, interim condition reports need to be carried out during the life of the tenancy. Just how often these should be conducted are a matter of some debate. Some letting agents say they should be carried out annually, others every six months, and some say every three months. Perhaps every three months is a little too often, and the tenant may also find it tedious. However, every six months is reasonable.

No matter, the fact is that as a letting agent you can spend a lot of time carrying out inventory, particularly if you look after, say, 300 or 400 properties. Even if you only carry out a condition report every six months, that is still a lot of time doing inventory. If your landlords let properties empty then that is time-consuming enough, but if they let their properties furnished it can become a full-time job.

Traditionally, of course, inventory has been done with nothing more than a clipboard and a biro, and also a small camera. Today, however, we have moved into the 21^st century and we have technology which can help considerably. There are apps which you can download on to a mobile phone or tablet which can help to save a considerable amount of time taking inventory. Furthermore, some of them are free to use!

They will guide an inventory clerk through each room making suggestions as to what to check. The clerk can either type in his comments, or in the case of some apps there is an audio feature when he can just speak his comments and then type them out when he gets back to the office later on.