A landlord who loses a deposit case almost never lost it for lack of photos. They lost it because the photos were on an old phone, undated, unnamed, and impossible to tie to a room anyone could identify.
Photography at move-in is a filing problem wearing a camera. Solve the filing and the camera part is twenty minutes of work.
California made it a duty, and gave it two dates
Until recently this was best practice everywhere and law nowhere. That changed.
Cal. Civ. Code § 1950.5(g)(1)
for tenancies that begin on or after July 1, 2025, the landlord shall take photographs of the unit immediately before, or at the inception of, the tenancy.
Cal. Civ. Code § 1950.5(g)(2)
beginning April 1, 2025, the landlord shall take photographs of the unit within a reasonable time after possession is returned but before any repairs or cleanings claimed against the deposit, and again after that work is completed.
Note the asymmetry. The move-out photos apply to every California tenancy from April 2025. The move-in photos apply only to tenancies starting July 2025 or later, which means a landlord with a tenant who moved in during 2023 has a move-out duty and no matching baseline. That is a bad position to be in, and it is a good argument for photographing everything at the next turn regardless of what the calendar says. California’s deposit rules in full are on the California security deposit page.
Outside California nothing compels this. The reason to do it anyway is that the landlord carries the burden of showing a deduction was reasonable, and a photograph is the cheapest way to carry it.
How many, and of what
Fifteen to twenty-five photos for a typical one or two bedroom unit. Under ten and you have a highlight reel. Over sixty and nobody, including you, will ever look through them.
Every room gets at least two:
- A wide shot from the doorway, taken so the frame includes two walls and the floor. This is the shot that proves which room the close-ups belong to.
- A close-up of anything already worn, marked, or broken.
Then the shots people forget, which are the ones that later turn out to matter:
- Inside the refrigerator, the freezer, and the oven
- Under every sink, with the cabinet door open
- The water heater, the furnace, and the filter with its date written on it
- Every smoke and carbon monoxide alarm, close enough to read the test-button label
- The meters, with the numbers legible
- Window screens, from outside if you can
- The exterior, including the condition of any lawn, fence, or gate you expect back
A close-up of damage should include something for scale. A coin, a tape measure, or your hand. “A scratch” and “a nine-inch gouge” are different claims, and the photo should say which one you are making.
Timestamps, and what they are actually worth
Most phones write a capture date into the file. That is genuinely useful and it is not proof of anything, because file metadata is trivially editable and everyone in the room knows it.
What holds up better is corroboration. The photo set was emailed to the tenant on a date the email header records. It was attached to a signed condition report. It sits in a system that logs when each file was uploaded and by whom. Any of those beats a bare timestamp, because it puts the date outside your own control.
So the rule is: keep the metadata, and do not rely on it alone. Send the photos to the tenant the same day and keep the delivery record.
Naming and storage
This is the part that decides whether the work was worth doing.
Name every file with the room, the area, and the date: kitchen-oven-2026-11-14.jpg. It
sorts itself, it survives being pulled out of context, and it needs no explanation from
you eleven months later.
Store them in a folder per report, not a folder per year. One folder per unit per inspection, named the same way as the report it belongs to. Put a copy somewhere that is not your phone within twenty-four hours, because phones get replaced and photo apps get cleaned out.
Keep them for the length of your state’s statute of limitations on the tenancy plus a year. Two to four years covers most situations, and storage is cheap enough that longer is fine.
The one thing not to do is leave the only copy in a text thread with the tenant. Threads get deleted, numbers change, and half the time the images are compressed to the point of uselessness anyway.
Where video helps and where it does not
Video is better than photos at two specific things: showing that a fixture works, and showing a whole room without anyone claiming you framed out the bad part. It is worse at everything else, because nobody scrubs through eight minutes of footage to find the mark on the baseboard.
Use both. Short clips for anything mechanical, stills for everything else. The technique for shooting a walkthrough clip that is actually usable later is in the move-in video walkthrough.
Give the tenant a copy
Same day, in a form they can keep. Not a link that expires in seven days.
Two reasons, and the second one is the real one. A tenant who has the photos can point out something you missed, which is information you want now rather than at move-out. And a tenant who received the set on day one cannot credibly claim at the end of the tenancy that they never saw it.
Condition reports in LeaseRooster attach photos to the specific area they document rather than to the report as a whole, so the shot of the tub surround is filed against the tub surround line and stays there. The full sequence of what happens before keys change hands is in the 30 days before move-in.
This is general information, not legal advice. Rules change and local ordinances vary. Confirm current requirements with your city, county, or an attorney before you act.