The Move-In Checklist That Holds Up in Court

Search for “move-in checklist” and you will find dozens of PDFs that all look the same. A grid of rooms. A column for “good,” “fair,” “poor.” A line at the bottom for signatures. They are designed to be filled in quickly, signed, and forgotten.

That is exactly the problem. A checklist that takes three minutes to complete is a checklist that proves nothing later. The version below is longer, slower, and built around a single idea: every claim a landlord can make at move-out should already be answered, with evidence, before you bring in a single box.

Before you start

Pick up the keys. Do not move anything in. Park the truck on the curb, open the door, and spend the first 60 to 90 minutes walking through with a phone, a notepad, and the lease. If you have a partner, divide rooms — one captures, one notes.

Bring:

A phone with full battery and at least 8 GB free.
A flashlight (phone flashlight is fine for backup).
A measuring tape — useful for documenting damage size for later proof.
The signed lease to cross-reference any included items (appliances, fixtures, furniture).
A notes app or paper pad for things photos cannot capture (smells, sounds, drafts).

Set your phone clock to auto-update from the network. A wrong device clock has cost more than one tenant their case.

The walkthrough order

Always go in the same order, every room, every time. Consistency makes the record readable. Suggested path:

Front door and entryway
Living room
Kitchen
Dining area
Hallways
Bedrooms (in order from front to back of unit)
Bathrooms
Closets and storage
Laundry area
Outdoor spaces (balcony, patio, yard)
Building common areas your lease covers (parking spot, mailbox, basement storage)

In each room, capture in this order:

Wide shot from the doorway showing the whole room.
Wide shot from the opposite corner showing the doorway side.
Close-up of the floor including any seams, transitions, or visible damage.
Close-up of each wall if any defect is visible.
Ceiling shot — water stains and old leaks live here.
Each window open and closed, with the lock engaged.
Each outlet with a tester if you have one, or by photographing a charger plugged in.

A good walkthrough produces 80 to 200 photos for a one-bedroom. If you take fewer than 40, you are under-documenting. (For why volume matters in a deposit fight, see our piece on security deposit dispute evidence.)

Room-by-room: what to capture

Front door and entryway

Door condition both sides. Frame, threshold, weather stripping.
All locks engaging and disengaging. Take a video, not a photo.
Peephole. Doorbell. Security chain.
Mailbox key working in the mailbox.
Light fixture functional (turn it on in the photo).

Living room and bedrooms

Each wall corner-to-corner. Look for nail holes, anchor holes, paint touch-ups (often a slightly different sheen).
Floor seams, baseboards, transition strips.
Carpet stains, especially under windows and near doorways.
Closet interiors — shelves, rods, doors, tracks.
Light switches and dimmers (try each).
Outlets including the ones behind where you plan to put furniture.
Window treatments (blinds, shades, curtains) with each cord and lock.
Smoke detector — present, mounted, with a date sticker visible.

Kitchen

The kitchen is the highest-conflict room in deposit disputes. Document it as if you are submitting evidence on day one.

Refrigerator interior, exterior, top, sides, behind.
Oven interior cold, broiler, racks, glass.
Stovetop with each burner shown working in a video.
Microwave interior and exterior.
Dishwasher interior, racks, seal.
Sink and faucet — run hot and cold water on video, document drainage.
Garbage disposal — turn it on briefly with water running.
Cabinets — open every door and drawer. Look for water damage at the base under the sink.
Countertops — every stain, scratch, chip, burn.
Backsplash — grout color, any cracks, missing tiles.
Floor — especially in front of the sink and dishwasher.

Bathroom

Toilet — exterior, base, behind. Flush on video. Listen for run-on.
Sink and vanity — drain, faucet, exposed plumbing under cabinet.
Tub or shower — every wall, the floor, the drain, the caulk lines.
Tile and grout. Photograph any discoloration or cracks.
Exhaust fan — turn it on for video.
Shower door tracks if applicable.
Towel bars, toilet paper holder, hooks (these get charged for at move-out if missing).
Mirror, medicine cabinet interior.

Outdoor space

Balcony or patio surface, railings, gates.
Yard if private — grass condition, fences, sprinkler heads.
Parking spot — surface, lines, any oil stains (these will be blamed on you).
Storage units the lease assigns to you — interior with the door open.

What photographs cannot capture

Make notes on the things a photo cannot record:

Smells — smoke residue, mildew, pet odor. Note the room and intensity.
Sounds — buzzing outlets, humming appliances, water hammer in pipes.
Temperature behavior — drafts at windows, cold spots, AC distribution.
Functionality issues — slow drains, weak water pressure, intermittent lights.
Insect or rodent signs — droppings, gnaw marks, cobwebs in unlikely places.

Send these notes to the landlord by email within 48 hours of move-in. The email itself becomes evidence — a contemporaneous record of what was already wrong on day one.

What to do with the documentation

Two failure modes here. The first is collecting hundreds of photos, dumping them into a folder, and never being able to find a specific shot when you need it twelve months later. The second is sharing the photos with the landlord in a way that lets them dispute the file’s integrity.

Solutions:

Organize by room. Folder per room. Filename prefix per surface (kitchen-floor-01.jpg). Future-you will need this.
Back up to a service that timestamps the upload. A cloud sync that records server-side upload time is harder to dispute than local files.
Lock the record. A tamper-evident export — one PDF with photos, GPS, and a cryptographic seal — is the strongest format. Anyone can verify it. No one can argue the timestamps.

Tenant Trace builds this PDF automatically as you walk through. The capture, the timestamps, the GPS, and the seal are produced in one session. You hand the resulting PDF to the landlord by email or a short verification URL on day one and the move-in record is closed.

Send the report on day one

The most under-rated step is sharing the walkthrough with the landlord immediately after capture. Many tenants skip this because they do not want to seem confrontational. Skipping it is a mistake.

A short, polite email works:

Hi [landlord],

Thanks again for the keys. Attached is the move-in walkthrough for [unit address], completed today, [date]. Please reply to confirm receipt and let me know if anything in the report does not match your records.

Best, [tenant]

That email turns your private documentation into a shared record. If the landlord disputes any item later, the email proves they had the opportunity to object on day one and did not.

Repeat the process at move-out

Use the same checklist, in the same order, on move-out day. Compare side by side. Send the move-out walkthrough by email with a written request for the deposit and the statutory deadline. We wrote a separate guide for the move-out version: move-out walkthrough — photo evidence landlords cannot dispute.

If you did the move-in walkthrough properly, the move-out version writes itself. The whole process should take under two hours. The deposit it protects is usually worth thousands.

See how Tenant Trace handles the move-in walkthrough end to end →