Inventory Providers are professionals, who’s job is to document the full description of the property and everything in it. The service is intended for landlords, agents or even tenants, who do not have time or knowledge to put together a complete report for a property that is being rented out. The inventory providers can be ordered for a regular “inventory report”, a “check-in report” or a “check-out report”. Some of them have invented more interesting reasons, like “mid-term report” or a “snagging report”. The letting agents used to do this but now that ARLA, too, is setting up an association APIP, we’re not sure where this is going.

Here is a couple of Inventory Providers in London:

Property Inventories
Inventory preparation for furnished 2-bed – £100
Check-in report for furnished 2-bed – £75
Check-out report for furnished 2-bed – £80
See an example of what you’ll be paying for HERE (*pdf).

Inis Inventories
Example of their inventory report HERE (*pdf)

We’re skeptical because the service is not cheap, yet the document they provide is quite basic, really (the template might need some work). We understand that ARLA is concerned about the incompetent people offering this service, as it is SO EASY to do. But shouldn’t they be concentrating on training the letting agents instead?

PS! There already IS an association for inventory providers in UK – Association of Independent Inventory Clerks AIIC.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 at 1:13 pm and is filed under Inventory, Letters & Forms. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.