Both parties. The landlord who conducted the inspection, and every adult named on the lease. Then each side keeps a copy, and the copy the tenant keeps is not optional.
Washington makes that a condition of holding a deposit at all.
Most states leave it to you. The reasoning does not change with the state line, and neither does what happens in front of a judge when only one of the two signatures is there.
What a signature on a condition report means
Not what people assume. It is an attestation, not a contract.
A lease signature says “I agree to these terms.” A condition report signature says something narrower: on this date, I walked this unit, and this is my record of what I saw. Nobody is promising anything. Nobody is waiving anything.
That distinction is worth explaining to a tenant who hesitates, because the hesitation is almost always a fear of signing away a right. Tell them plainly: signing does not agree to any charge, it records what the unit looked like, and the parts they disagree with are exactly what the second column is for.
It also means the report does not need the ceremony a lease needs. No notary, no witnesses, no counterpart pages. A dated name and a copy to each side is the whole requirement.
Every adult on the lease signs
Not the one who happened to be home. All of them.
Co-tenants are usually jointly liable for the unit, so a report signed by one of three roommates is a record the other two can distance themselves from later. It takes about eleven seconds to collect a second and third name, and it removes an argument entirely.
If somebody genuinely cannot be there, send them the report and get the signature back separately. Two signatures on two dates is fine. One signature and a shrug is not.
Two situations that need a note rather than a signature: a minor occupant does not sign, and an occupant who is not on the lease does not sign either. Write down who was present and in what capacity, and leave it there.
Does a typed name count?
Yes, in nearly all circumstances, and federal law has said so since 2000.
15 U.S.C. § 7001(a)
a signature, contract, or other record relating to a transaction in or affecting interstate commerce may not be denied legal effect, validity, or enforceability solely because it is in electronic form.
Every state has a companion statute, and taken together they mean a typed name attached to an identified person, on a dated record, is a signature. What makes it credible is not the cursive font some tools draw for you. It is the surrounding record: who was logged in, when they submitted it, from what address, and what they were shown at the time.
So a typed name captured with a timestamp and an audit trail is stronger than an unattributed scrawl on a scanned page. Photographs of a signature page are the weakest option of the three, and they are also the most common.
A condition report does not need a full e-signature envelope of the kind a lease gets. It needs an attestation you can prove happened. LeaseRooster records the typed name, the moment, and the address it came from, and deliberately keeps that separate from the lease signing flow, because the two documents are doing different jobs.
When the tenant will not sign
Sometimes they refuse. More often they simply never get around to it, which looks the same from your side and is much more common.
Do not treat silence as a dead end and do not chase it for three weeks. Run this sequence instead.
- Set a deadline in writing when you send the report. Seven days is normal. State what happens if the deadline passes: your ratings stand for any line they did not answer.
- Send a reminder before the deadline, not after. One reminder, three days out, with the report attached again.
- When the deadline passes, close the report and say so. A short message: the report is final as of today, here is the copy, here is what was recorded.
- Keep the delivery proof. When you sent it, how, to what address, and that a reminder went out. This is the part that matters, and it is the part people skip.
- Never backdate or amend a closed report. If something new turns up, it goes on a new dated record.
An unsigned report delivered on a documented date, with a stated deadline the tenant let pass, is a substantial document. An unsigned report nobody can show was ever sent is nothing at all.
The version of this that goes wrong
A landlord walks the unit alone, fills the report out afterward from memory, signs it themselves, and files it. No tenant signature, no delivery, no deadline.
That report is a note to self. It has the shape of evidence and none of the function, because there is nothing in it the tenant ever had a chance to contest. A tenant who sees it for the first time during a dispute will say exactly that, and they will be right.
The fix is not more effort. It is sending the thing you already made.
Sign-off, in practice
Sign your own copy when you close the inspection. Send it the same day, with a deadline. Take back whatever comes in, including disagreements, and close it on schedule either way.
Condition reports in LeaseRooster send the report to the tenant with a response deadline, collect a typed sign-off with the time and address recorded, and close the report on the deadline with the landlord’s ratings standing on any line the tenant left alone. What belongs on the form in the first place is in what a condition report needs besides a list of rooms, and what to do when the tenant does respond and disagrees is in the tenant disagrees with your move-out condition report. The state paperwork that has to accompany a tenancy start and end is in the compliance kit.
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.