The first time a tenant disputed a security deposit deduction with me, I lost the argument in about four minutes because my move-in photos were three blurry shots taken on an old flip phone back in 2011. I ended up eating roughly 45,000 yen in wall repair costs I probably could have collected. Nine properties and over 15 years later, I have a move-in photo checklist that takes about 25 minutes per unit and has held up in every deposit conversation since. It is not complicated, but it has to be consistent, because the whole point is proving what a room looked like on day one, months or years before anyone remembers arguing about it.
A lot of landlords take move-in photos, but very few take photos that actually survive a dispute. The difference is structure. Random snapshots on a phone get buried in a camera roll with 4,000 other pictures. A real checklist forces you to shoot the same things, in the same order, every single time, so nothing gets missed and nothing looks improvised later.
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Most disputes do not happen at move-in. They happen 2 to 5 years later, when a tenant moves out and you compare the condition against what you remember. Memory is useless at that point, and so are photos that were never labeled or dated. I have seen fellow landlords lose 100,000 yen or more on flooring and appliance claims simply because they could not prove the damage was not already there. A checklist matters because it turns your photos into evidence rather than a diary entry. If a photo cannot answer the question of when it was taken and what exactly it shows, it will not hold up when a tenant pushes back.
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I treat every unit the same way, whether it is a 1K studio or a 3LDK family unit. The goal is full coverage, not artistic composition. Here is the shot list I run through in every room before a new tenant moves in:
- Wide shot of each wall, standing in the same corner, so all four walls are covered
- Ceiling and light fixtures, especially in kitchens and bathrooms where staining shows up first
- Flooring close-ups, including corners and under any furniture the previous tenant left behind
- Every window frame and sill, both inside and where it meets the outer wall
- Inside every closet, cabinet, and the genkan entryway shoe storage
- Close-ups of any existing scratch, dent, or stain, with a coin or tape measure next to it for scale
- All appliances that come with the unit, showing the door seals and control panels running
- The bathroom unit and toilet, including grout lines and the exhaust fan cover
That list usually adds up to 35 to 50 photos for a standard 2DK unit. It sounds like a lot, but at 25 minutes per unit, that is roughly 3,000 yen worth of my time if I value it at typical hourly rates, against a potential 100,000-plus yen dispute later. The math is not close.
Timestamps and File Names Are Not Optional
A photo with no date attached is barely better than no photo. I set my phone camera to embed location and timestamp data automatically, but I do not rely on that alone, because metadata can get stripped when files are transferred or compressed. My habit is to also hold a printed sheet with the unit address and the move-in date in the frame for the very first photo of each room. It looks a little clunky, but it means that even a screenshot of that single image proves the date beyond argument. I then rename every file with the unit number and room before archiving, something like 305-kitchen-01 rather than IMG_4471. It takes maybe 10 extra minutes per unit, but I have never once had a tenant successfully argue that a labeled, dated photo set was fabricated after the fact.
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Photos are worthless if you cannot locate them when a move-out dispute actually happens. I keep a dedicated cloud folder per property, sub-divided by move-in date, and I back that up to a second drive twice a year. Every folder also gets a short text file listing anything unusual noted at move-in, like a 2-centimeter scuff on the entry door or a slightly loose faucet handle, cross-referenced to the matching photo number. When I moved from paper folders to this cloud system four years ago, it took an entire weekend to digitize old records for all 9 properties, but I have not lost a single move-in record since, and retrieving a file now takes under a minute.
Building the Habit Into Your Actual Move-In Routine
The checklist only works if it happens every time, not just for tenants who seem likely to cause trouble. I run through mine on the same day I hand over keys, before the tenant has moved a single box in, and I ask the tenant to walk through with me when possible. Having them present, even briefly, means they cannot later claim a mark was caused by movers on day one. If a tenant cannot attend, I send the full photo set by email within 24 hours and ask for a quick reply confirming receipt. That single email has settled more potential disputes before they started than any argument I have ever made in person.
None of this requires expensive equipment. I shoot everything on a regular smartphone, and the entire system costs me nothing beyond a bit of cloud storage and the 25 minutes per unit I already mentioned. What it buys me is leverage: when a move-out inspection turns into a disagreement, I am not relying on memory or goodwill, I am pulling up a dated, organized photo set that ends the conversation quickly. That is the approach I use across all 9 of my properties, and it is the one habit I would tell any new landlord to build before they hand over their very first set of keys.
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