Incoming Inspection Photos

The incoming inspection is the only honest picture of the room on day one. Everything after that — a stain, a cracked tile, a missing stay — will be compared to it. ManjeProp treats those photographs as part of the file, next to the lease, not as optional memories on a parent’s phone.

This is how to shoot them so they still make sense in November.

Walk together, then shoot

The Rental Housing Act expects a joint incoming inspection so existing defects are listed and can be attached to the lease. Photos are how that list stays true when memories fade. Walk the room with staff or the agent. Agree what you are looking at. Then photograph. Do not shoot only the pretty wall after everyone has left.

Tenants should keep their own set. Staff should file a set on the property record in a controlled way — not in a public gallery, not in a WhatsApp group with last year’s students still in it.

A sequence that covers the room

Use the same order every time so two inspections can be compared:

Door from the passage, then the door faces and the lock
Each wall, then the ceiling, then the floor
Window, stay, handle, burglar bars if any
Built-in cupboard, inside empty shelves
Desk, bed base, mattress corners if they are house furniture
Any attached bathroom: pan, cistern, mixer, tray, extractor, ceiling
Meter box only if you are also taking a start reading

Daylight. No “mood” lamp. No wide-angle that bends a straight wall into a joke unless you also take a normal frame.

What each frame must be able to answer

Six months later a stranger should be able to say: was this chip already here? Was the ceiling already tea-coloured in that corner? Did the cupboard door exist?

That means close shots of existing damage, not only room-set photos for advertising. A scuff the size of a card should fill the frame, with a bit of the surrounding wall so we know which wall.

Include a piece of paper with the date and the unit name in the first shot if you like. The phone’s file date is better than handwriting on the plaster.

What must not appear

Tenant identity documents. Student cards. Medicine. Other occupants’ faces unless they have agreed to be in a handover picture, which they usually should not. Keys spread on the bed. A paper with a gate code. Bank letters.

If a previous student’s poster is still on the wall, the room is not ready for an incoming inspection. Finish the vacancy check first.

File names and storage

Name files with property, unit and date: saunders-r4-2026-02-01-ceiling.jpg. Do not name them thabo-id-room4.jpg. Do not put identity numbers in the folder name.

Staff: keep incoming photos with the tenancy file, not as the public listing set. Listing photos are a marketing choice after the room is empty and presentable. Inspection photos are evidence. They may be ugly. They should be complete.

Do not feed a whole inspection pack into an AI field “to summarise.” A person can look at thirty pictures.

Defects you find on day one

If the window stay is already broken, it is not your damage. Get it onto the list and onto Report a fault the same day so it becomes a ticket with a date. Incoming photos plus a ticket beat a December argument.

Do not refuse to move in as theatre unless the room is unsafe. If it is unsafe — live wires, sewage, no lock — leave, phone +27 60 313 6961, and do not sleep there while you argue on chat.

Parents on a viewing

A viewing is not an incoming inspection. You may photograph empty corners with consent. You may not treat another student’s occupation as your incoming file. When your child actually takes the room, do this walk properly.

Questions before you sign: enquiry form.

If the room is a mess of the last occupant’s boxes, you are not in an incoming inspection yet. Finish the vacancy walk. Incoming photos of someone else’s life are a privacy problem and a useless file.

Incoming photos are boring on purpose. Take more than you think you need. The photo you skipped will be the corner that stains in August.

Broken fittings on day one still go through the fault form. The inspection records them. The ticket gets them fixed.