What to have ready before your first let

Letting a property for the first time is mostly a scheduling problem wearing a legal costume. Nearly everything that goes wrong in the first month was decided by something that was not ready in the week before.

Before you list

• Proof you are entitled to let it. Title, or the landlord's written authority if you are managing on someone's behalf. It is the first thing a serious tenant's lawyer asks for and the last thing most people have to hand.
• A working inventory with photographs. Dated, room by room, including the things that are already damaged. The inventory does not protect the property. It protects the conversation at the end.
• Meter readings on the day. Both meters, photographed. This costs two minutes and settles an argument that otherwise takes two months.
• Somewhere for the deposit that is not your current account. Whatever the local rule, keeping the deposit separate is what makes returning it a formality rather than a negotiation.

Before the tenant moves in

1. A signed agreement both sides have actually read. Term, rent, what the rent includes, notice on each side, and who fixes what.
2. Every key, labelled, counted. Including the gate, the postbox and the one for the meter cupboard.
3. A named contact for repairs. A person and a number, not "the office". The single largest predictor of a tenancy going badly is a first repair request that goes unanswered for a week.

In the first month

Ask once, at about week three, whether anything is not working. It takes a message. It converts the small problems into small problems, which is the only category they stay in if you catch them early.

None of this is exciting, and all of it is the difference between a let that renews and a let that ends in a dispute over a fridge.