Nine out of ten deposit arguments are not about damage. They are about a scratch nobody wrote down in September and everybody remembers differently in June. The inventory is the only document that settles it, and nobody is obliged to give you a good one.
Spanish law does not prescribe an inventory for a residential lease. The contract usually says the home is rented "con el mobiliario e instalaciones que se detallan en el anexo I", and then the annex is either four lines of A4 or a proper document. Both are legal. Only one protects you.
The obligation to hand the property back in the state you received it comes from the lease and from article 1561 of the Civil Code. Article 21 of the LAU keeps the building and its installations on the owner. Between those two sits the grey zone where deposits die: a mark on a wall, a missing towel, a scorched worktop, a boiler that was already noisy.
In practice the inventory is written by the agency, in a hurry, on the morning of the signing, while six people wait. That is exactly the moment to slow everything down. Fifteen extra minutes in September are worth more than any argument in June, because in June the money is already in someone else's account.
Room by room, in the order you walk through the house, not alphabetically. Every item with a quantity, a short description and a condition, not just a name. "Sofa" is useless. "Sofa, three seats, grey fabric, one small mark on the left armrest, legs scratched" is evidence.
A good inventory also records the things that are already wrong, and this is where tenants get shy. Write them down. The broken shutter in the small bedroom, the tap that drips, the tile with a chip, the wardrobe door that does not close, the stain on the mattress. You are not accusing anyone. You are dating the damage.
Sixty to a hundred photos sounds excessive until the first dispute. Shoot every room from the door and from the opposite corner, then the details that always come up: worktops, hobs, shower trays, grout, window seals, the bottom of the wardrobe, the inside of the oven, the boiler plate, the electrical panel, the terrace drains.
Then walk through the house once with the phone recording video and say out loud what you see and the date. It takes four minutes, it cannot be edited, and it settles arguments about sequence. Send it to the agent and to yourself by email the same day, so the timestamp is not yours alone.
Flash matters more than megapixels. A phone flash at midday shows scratches that daylight hides, and a photo taken with the blinds closed shows the damp patch under the window that the agency photo cropped out.
A house inventory has a second half that flats do not: the outside. Pool pump, filter, salt cell or chlorinator, robot, cover and roller, the state of the liner or the tiles, the outdoor shower. Garden: irrigation controller and which zone waters what, the mower if it stays, tools, the state of the fence and the gate motor.
Two clauses are worth fighting for in a villa. The first names who services the pool and the boiler, because a pump that dies in August is a €400 to €900 conversation. The second says what happens to the garden in a drought phase, when watering rules change and the lawn turns yellow through nobody's fault.
Also list what the owner leaves locked away. A garage full of the owner's furniture, a storage room with bicycles, a wardrobe with the family's ski gear. If those spaces are not in the inventory as "excluded", in June nobody can say what was there.
Ask for a joint inspection (acta de devolución) with the owner or agent present, and do it in daylight. Bring the inventory you signed. Walk the same rooms in the same order. Photograph the meters again. Hand over the keys against a signed list, not into a mailbox.
Normal wear is not damage. Paint that has faded over five years, a mattress that has lost shape, grout that has darkened, a wooden floor with a path worn into it: none of that comes out of your deposit, whatever the agency says on the phone. A hole in the wall, a burn on the worktop, a missing set of keys and a broken window do. When the deduction is for a damaged item, ask for the invoice or a quote, not a number invented on the spot, and remember that an eight-year-old sofa is worth its age, not its price when new.
If the owner refuses to do a joint exit inspection, send a burofax with your own report, dated photos and a request for the deposit within the legal month. It costs €20 to €30 and it changes the tone of the conversation, because from that moment there is a record that a court can read.
Send us the inventory the agency gave you and we will tell you what is missing, what will be argued about in June, and which three lines to add before you sign. It takes us twenty minutes and saves a deposit.
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