The records a self-managing landlord actually needs

Most people who manage their own rental think the hard part is the property: the leaking tap, the late payment, the weekend spent painting. The harder part tends to arrive eighteen months later, in a tribunal hearing or an email from an accountant, and it is always the same question: can you show it?

Owners who sleep well are seldom better with a paintbrush. Their paperwork exists, and they can find it in under a minute.

What a dispute turns on

A tribunal decides what the evidence shows, which sounds harsh until you are the one holding the evidence. In a bond hearing the party with dated photographs and a signed report tends to win, and the party explaining what they remember tends not to.

Five documents do most of the work, and nothing else can stand in for them.

• The signed tenancy agreement, in the form your state requires, with every page both parties signed.
• The ingoing condition report, completed room by room and returned by the tenant with their comments.
• Proof the bond was lodged with the state authority, with the reference number and the date.
• Every notice you served, whether for entry, a rent increase, a breach or termination, with the date and the way you gave it.
• Dated photographs from the start of the tenancy, from each routine inspection and from the day it ended.

How long to keep each record

There are two clocks running. The tax clock is set by the Australian Taxation Office and is the same in every state. The tenancy clock is set by how long somebody could still bring the tenancy up with you, and it is the one people underestimate.

When you are unsure whether something is worth keeping, keep it. Storage is cheap, and rebuilding a tenancy from memory takes a weekend and usually loses.

Photographs need a date

Photographs are the most useful record you can make, and few landlords take enough of them. The condition report guide sets out a room-by-room method for taking them. What turns a photograph into evidence is its date: a picture that cannot be tied to a moment is one two people can hold opposite beliefs about.

Keep each photo with the tenancy and the inspection it came from, not scattered through a camera roll between birthdays.

One home for every record

Most missing records were made once and then scattered: the agreement in email, the condition report in a drawer, the photos on a phone since replaced, the invoices in a folder called “house stuff”.

1. 1 Choose one home for tenancy records and move everything into it this week, however untidy the first pass looks.
2. 2 File against the property and the tenancy. You will always be looking for “the Wilson Street ingoing report”, never for “March”.
3. 3 Name each document so its contents are obvious without opening it.
4. 4 Add each record when it is created. Ten seconds then saves an afternoon later.

The habit matters more than the tool, and a shoebox that gets used beats software that does not. If the shoebox keeps failing you, put the records where the property already lives, so that “can you show it?” has a boring answer.