What is a property condition report? It is the dated record of the condition of a property at a point in time, written by the person who manages it, room by room and item by item, with a photograph and a written description against every line. A manager writes one at move-in so there is a baseline, again at move-out so the change is visible, and periodically in between so nothing is discovered for the first time at the end of a tenancy. The report is not an opinion about value, and it is not a specialist's report on one element of the building. It is a factual condition record: what is there, what state it is in, and who is answerable for that state. That record is what you produce when a deposit deduction is questioned, when an owner asks why a unit cost what it cost to turn, and when a new manager takes the property over. The free property condition report builder on this site prints that record room by room with the wear and tear split beside each line, and the paid product keeps every report filed against the property it belongs to.
What the report has to record
Every line names a thing, states its condition in plain words, and carries a photograph taken on the day. Walls, ceilings, floors, doors, windows, fittings, appliances and the yard each get their own line, and each line gets a condition grade and a note saying why that grade was given. A grade with no note is the line that fails you later, because nobody can tell six months on whether the mark on the wall was a scuff or a hole. Record the meter readings and the keys handed over as their own lines. The report is signed and dated by the manager, and the tenant is given the chance to add comments before it is closed.
A building condition report, a real estate condition report and the rest: four names, three frames
Property condition reports, a building condition report and a real estate condition report are names for records with different scopes, and it pays to be exact about which one is wanted. Property condition reports usually mean the room by room record of a single managed unit at a point in time. A building condition report widens the frame to the whole structure and its shared parts: the envelope, the common areas, the parking and the grounds, which is what the owner of a small block asks for once a year. A real estate condition report is the name used when the record is handed to somebody making a decision about the asset, most often at sale. The walk itself is broadly the same walk. What changes is who reads it and how much of the property sits in the frame, so settle the reader before you settle the form.
Splitting wear and tear: a worked example
Fair wear and tear is the change a reasonable tenant produces by living in the unit for the time they lived there. Damage is everything else, and the split is arithmetic once you fix the age of the item and the life you assign it. Take a unit with a 1,200 dollar deposit and a carpet that was new at move-in, on an eight year life, pulled out after six years because it was torn through in two places. The replacement is 400 dollars. Six of the eight years were used up by ordinary living, so the tenant does not pay for those. Two years of life were unexpired, a quarter of the eight, and a quarter of 400 dollars is 100 dollars. The tenant's share is 100 dollars, and the deposit returned is 1,100 dollars. The report is what makes that sum defensible: the move-in photograph showing a new carpet, the move-out photograph showing the tears, and the date on both.
The property condition assessment template
A property condition assessment template is the form that makes the walk repeatable. It fixes the order of the rooms, the items inside each room, the condition grades and the fields every line must carry, so two people walking two units produce reports that can be read side by side. Build it once from the property type rather than writing it fresh each time, and version it, because a template that changes quietly makes last year's reports incomparable with this year's. For federally assisted units the HUD inspection standards cited below set out the areas and items an inspection has to cover, so a template that already carries them saves rewriting the form when a unit enters the program. Where the record covers a whole building, the standards published by BOMA are the usual reference for how areas are defined and measured, which matters once the report goes to an owner or a lender.
Filing it so it is there when the deposit is disputed
A report that cannot be found is a report that was never written. File every report against the property, not against the tenancy and not in a folder named after the month, so the move-in report, the periodic reports and the move-out report for one unit sit in a single history in date order. When a deduction is questioned, that history is the answer: the baseline, the walks in between that show when the change appeared, and the closing report. Keep photographs at full size with their original dates attached, and keep the version of the template that was used. The paid product on this site does that filing as the report is saved, and exports one property's whole history as a single document when an owner, a court or a mediator asks for it.
Questions people ask about what is a property condition report
How often does a managed unit need a property condition report?
At minimum one at move-in and one at move-out, with a periodic walk once or twice a year in between so a problem is found while it is still small.
Does the tenant have to sign it?
A signature is not what makes the report evidence; the dated photographs are. Ask for one anyway, and record it if the tenant declines to sign or does not respond.
What if the tenant disagrees with a line?
Record the disagreement on the line itself rather than arguing it out on the day, keep both photographs, and let the move-out comparison settle it against the baseline.
Is the property condition report builder free?
Yes. The builder prints the room by room report with the wear and tear split without an account. Saving, branding and filing every report is the paid product.