Daniel Evans
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The important thing is to do your research and make a decision based on which reporting app allows you to most easily maintain your own reporting style and meets the needs of your business both now and on an ongoing basis if you plan on growing.
There are lots of choices out there these days and at some point we will be looking to do a more in depth ‘Which?’ review of the different software products for the members
Most companies will offer some form of free trial so you can try before you buy and remember that when you make your choice it will potentially be very difficult and costly to change at a later date.
It is worth taking the time when you have made your choice to ensure you have set the product up to your own needs as most have custom template facilities and editable dictionaries which although time consuming to populate and edit up front will definitely increase your productivity.
There are some really good products out there and the customer service can in many cases be incredibly helpful in assisting with these upfront tasks.
With any situation such as this you just need to stick to the basic principles of how to assess wear and tear and the contributing factors
The definition of wear and tear focuses heavily on the ‘reasonable use’ of a premises by the tenant
The reasonableness test is set out under S11 (1) of UCTA 1977 and asks ‘is it fair and reasonable to be included, having regard to the circumstances which were, or ought reasonably to have been, known to or in contemplation of the parties when the contract was made
It would therefore be for each party to argue the known facts at the time the tenancy agreement was created in the event of any dispute
The Landlord and Agent may never have met the occupant in a wheelchair and therefore would have had no knowledge of the additional factors and therefore a normal assessment would be required by the inventory clerk….
Would it be reasonable to assume an occupant in a wheelchair will cause more damage to door frames and to what extent would this mitigate their liability if the landlord was aware in advance, as with any life expectancy question there is rarely a fixed answer and it is for us as clerks to use our experience to determine the appropriate level to which this affects our assessment of wear and tear
In eventuality in most cases I expect the most sensible outcome if everyone was fully aware in advance would be proportional liability to both parties depending on length of tenancy and other contributory factors such as original condition / extent of damage. How you want to represent split apportionment between landlord repairs and tenant damages is entirely up to you and your own reporting practices.
Another company I would recommend for typing is Splashscripts who began out of working for RND
There are actually a few companies working in the same region in India who have former RND employees
In terms of phone versus tablet, the phone is easier to hold but has limitations in terms of visibility and data input, we have found that using an iPad mini with a case that includes a hand strap on the back for easier holding has been a great solution in terms of all-around compromise
Julie raises a very salient point in terms of the camera though, this appears to be one of the major limitations of the tablets versus phones as phones seem to have much better cameras at this point and the added benefit of torches for meter cupboards, water meters and inside ovens….phones also seem to suffer less from battery usage
Stef – I’m not sure you are correct on the properties issue with IB, we have to pay for our properties in blocks of 5000 at a time due to our volume, but it is definitely the total number held on the system even with closed appointments. I’d be saving a fortune if it was only the ones with inspections which weren’t closed. As you say call up IB though they are very helpful on the phones.
Keys have long been a subject that few want to discuss in terms of time and cost as it seems such a simple job when dealing with a 1 bedroom flat but then can take hours of reconciling on larger country properties
We’ve considered over the years buying large boxes of key fobs and labelling them to assist in this process as there is a time saving to us on all future appointments if keys are well labelled, but it has always felt overkill for the percentage of properties it causes an issue with
Most of the software packages available allow you to identify keys either in one area or break them down into individual keys on each line
If using software, the easiest way around the problem then is to add each key to separate lines and take a picture of each type of key against the correct description
As with so many areas of our job what seems like a simple request from the agent needs to be explained in terms of the time implications on a job that only ever seems to get more demanding
There is another way of looking at this under the new FFHH legislation in combination with the legionella, blind regulations etc that have all come over recent months and years…..
The agents and landlords are all risk averse and for clarity, none of them are actually insured to assess a property as FFHH compliant, neither are we without additional training.
However, as our role has clearly been developing over the past few years my personal feelings are we are gradually being pushed into a compliance and risk assessment role on top of our existing inventory reporting role, we can therefore no longer afford to be risk averse as in the end when reflected upon we have already been assessing (without the opportunity for a second review generally) and allocating liability for years.
Now this trend can be seen as a threat or an opportunity, I’d rather see it as the later and push for our position to be more compliance based, thereby increasing our importance to the industry and demonstrating considerable additional value which my personal view is can be charged for along with opening up the potential for increase inspection work on a regular basis.
The addition to this subject on the basis of recent topical news is the Fitness for Human Habitation Law…..
This requires agents and landlords to assess the potential danger of any ‘risk’ in the property and lends additional weight to advising the agent towards their duty of care obligations to protect tenants welfare and mitigate any serious risks, of which death by carbon monoxide is one.
As such my current advice to all agents and clerks is that we should be trying where possible to ensure there is a carbon monoxide detector by all gas appliances including the boiler even if it is not a mandatory requirement presently.
It is also a good opportunity to upsell the supply and fit of the devices if you are doing so already
I’m inclined to agree with Rowley on this point, however it could be argued and could always have been argued, that the agent is in fact our client in most instances as they are the ones who instruct us and pay us most of the time and in terms of the arrangement we have with the agent very little has changed with the introduction of the Tenant Fees ban.
As independent assessors it is only through regulation and improved standards that we can hope to demonstrate that our reports have been produced without bias, but there will always be those inclined to do favors to keep agents onside when they know that they are effectively removing their impartial approach to the work.
The key is to demonstrate to all we deal with that we are independent in our assessment, cannot be persuaded to change our assessment and become more vocal towards improved standards across the industry in general
In a reasonable world I’d agree with all other comments but Tenancy Agreements aren’t always reasonable…
If the tenant has made a material change to the garden ie. reducing the size of the lawn area then it would potentially be reasonable for the landlord to reinstate the lawn to the original size, they would probably need to show a degree of understanding towards ‘betterment’ and apportion the costs accordingly but they’d definitely have a case on the lawn reinstatement.
The plants as previously stated are perishable and therefore shouldn’t be charged, landlords who have taken real time and care on their garden or made a significant investment in their garden, before renting should consider employing a gardener as part of the tenancy agreement to avoid these issues.
Most of us wouldn’t necessarily even notice the difference and my main comment when dealing with gardens is always take as many photos for reference as possible as the written description unless you are lucky enough to employ Alan Titchmarsh will probably invariably be less descriptively accurate than that of the interior of the property.
Whilst this is a sign of the times my personal feelings are that in order to maintain a position of ‘independence’ it is very hard to advise landlords on the actions they should take further to receipt of a check out report.
My first piece of advice is refer to the prescribed information form they will legally have had to provide for the deposit protection and further to that ‘be reasonable’ is always my secondary advice to landlords.
There is only so far in this ‘conversation’ we can participate and there are numerous resources available to landlords to ‘self manage’ their property, accidental landlords who are unaware should really pay the agents for a full management service and professional landlords who have been through the process on a number of occasions should already have the relevant knowledge.
Invariably this is my first suggestion to a landlord….return to the agent, agree to a full management service and try and negotiate their assistance in the deposit release process, most agents will help for the promise of future gains and we shouldn’t really be picking up the pieces when somebody tried to save a couple of percent on their letting fee.
We frequently have clients ask us for Word documents or to amend previous reports for use on a subsequent tenancy, however as our reports are our own intellectual property we are under no obligation to provide it in an editable format and fully endorse your position. It sounds potentially like the kind of landlord you should consider the value in accepting instructions from, we have had many who we refuse to work for on the basis of what they then try and use the reports for or their unscrupulous behaviour in general….we had one landlord who tried to mark up the check out invoice from £90 to over £350 on one occasion and pocket the difference from the tenants deposit!
The one thing landlords who use reports in this fashion frequently forget is that the report probably has no legal standing as the information could easily be contested by the new tenants are unverified and not accurate as of the start date of the new tenancy. There are potential GDPR issues as well relating to the use of information from one tenancy to the next.