An inventory provider is offering a 30-day free trial of its services.
Steve Rad, managing director of Inventory Base, says that tenants are continuing to win most disputes over deposits because landlords and agents are simply not producing sufficiently robust inventories.
He said: “Many agents and landlords find compiling inventories very time-consuming and hence skip on attention to detail, which can land them in hot water.
“Areas of negligence include not enough detailed recording of damage, supported by appropriate digital evidence, and incomplete check-in and check-out documents.”
At the DPS last year, there were 10,789 disputes over deposits, with nearly 52% of tenants winning the larger proportion of the disputed deposit.
For the 30-day free trial, visit inventorybase.com or call 03333 444 506.
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Comments
InventoryBase is a service/software to create your own inventories, plus manage your internal clerks & external inventory providers, providing them the tools to produce reports or at least giving them access to upload their own.
The point made with regards to agents/landlords creating their own inventories comes down to the level of detail. An external inventory provider should have experience with regards to knowing what stands up in court, and may pick up things that an inexperienced landlord or agent may miss.
Tools like InventoryBase try to reduce room for error and influence detail through checklists and a dictionary of terms that include the typical vocabulary used by IPs, but it doesn't replace the expertise of an experienced clerk.
I guess it boils down to confidence, I could try and fix my own car but it would be safer and may cost me less in the long run to take it to a mechanic, and with over 1 million new tenancies per year in the UK, I don't see the demand for external inventory providers declining any time soon.
@revel without a cause
It isn't a requirement of TDS to have an independently prepared inventory. Can you tell us where you saw this advice?
TDS adjudicators consider any evidence given to them, but in most cases a detailed inventory is an important document to have. And of course, an adjudicator can be more satisfied with the reliability of an inventory produced by an independent specialist than one produced by one of the parties actually involved in the dispute.
The TDS certainly do not say that you cannot provide an inventory yourself if you are a landlord. They do say that they will place more weight on independently prepared documents however. An inventory must be highly detailed, preferably with a few supporting photographs, to be useful as strong evidence in any end of tenancy dispute. The Association of Independent Inventory Clerks has been teaching this for the last 10 years or more, long before the TDS came into existence! www.theaiic.co.uk.
@revel without a cause
"The terms of business for the TDS says you cannot do it yourself, neither can the landlord and it must be done by a (neutral) 3rd party."
Would you care to point to where you think it says that in the Rules of Membership?
actually having looked at Inventorybase I cant help but notice this is a service helping agents create their own inventories no? The terms of business for the TDS says you cannot do it yourself, neither can the landlord and it must be done by a (neutral) 3rd party.
You cannot under estimate the need for a top inventory, I'd consider my firm negligent if we were not advising landlords of the ramifications of not having a top one. Tech is moving on and our inventories are delivered on line where we can track when a tenant opens it and signs it off plus a load of other cool features that nails a tenant to the post so to speak. 100% of disputes won.