For students
Your first deposit is the one most likely to disappear
Joint tenancies mean shared blame, shared kitchens mean blanket cleaning charges, and nobody photographs anything in September. Scout gets your room and the shared spaces on file in one evening, and gets the whole house doing it together.
What actually goes wrong
The three ways this costs people money
Blanket charges for the kitchen
One oven nobody cleaned, one deduction split across five deposits. Without a dated photo of how that oven looked in September, there is nothing to compare July against.
Damage that was there first
Student houses arrive pre-worn. Marks, burns and stains from previous groups become yours the moment nobody records them on day one.
Everyone leaves at once
Summer move-out happens in a rush, half the house has already gone home, and the last person standing gets the email about the deductions.
How Scout helps
What you get, in order of usefulness
Scout Inventory, room by room
A shot list per room built around what actually gets disputed: oven interior, extractor filter, grout, skirting, carpet edges. Scout tells you the shot, you take it.
Scout House for the whole group
One house, one invite code. Everyone claims their bedroom, the shared spaces get divided up, and a house progress bar shows what is still undocumented. Nobody sees anyone else's photos.
Pre-existing damage, marked as theirs
Tag anything that was already broken as pre-existing. It appears in your report as damage recorded on arrival, with the date to prove it.
Reminders keyed to a student year
Snagging in week one, interim checks each term, and summer move-out planning that starts two months before everyone scatters.
A report an adjudicator recognises
One dated PDF with a reference number, every photo fingerprinted, and a verification page so anyone can confirm nothing was edited after the fact.
Scout Letters when a deduction lands
If the July email proposes £200 for cleaning, Scout drafts the response from your own photographs, cites the dates, and leaves every line editable.
Your year
What Scout reminds you about, and when
You do not have to remember any of this. Scout keys every prompt to your own tenancy dates.
Moving-in weekend
Your room and the shared spaces, before the boxes come in. About twenty minutes, and it is the whole game.
One week in
Snagging window. Scout asks about the things you walked past on day one — the window that sticks, the chip on the worktop.
Every three months
A short interim check, so normal term-time wear is dated as normal wear rather than argued about later.
Boiler season
If the heating fails, log it the day it happens along with the message you sent the agent. Reported problems are not tenant damage.
Two months before summer move-out
Scout starts planning the house move-out with you: who photographs which shared space, and when.
The last fortnight
Move-out capture, same rooms, same angles, side by side with your move-in photos. Then the report goes to the agent the same day.
Questions
Questions people in your position ask
- We signed a joint tenancy. Does that mean we share the blame?
- On a joint tenancy the landlord can take a deduction for shared-space damage out of the whole deposit pot, whoever caused it. That is exactly why the kitchen, bathroom and hallway need a dated record from the day you move in. If the house has photos of how those rooms started, a blanket cleaning charge in July has to argue with the evidence rather than with your memory.
- The house is already a bit of a state. Should I even bother?
- That is the best reason to bother. Every room has an 'already damaged?' toggle: mark the burn on the worktop and the stain on the carpet as pre-existing, dated, on your first walkthrough. Pre-existing damage you recorded is not damage you pay for.
- Is my halls deposit protected by a scheme?
- University-owned halls are usually exempt from the deposit protection schemes, and many private halls operate their own deductions process instead. That means there may be no free adjudicator to appeal to, so your own dated photographs carry more weight, not less.
- Can my housemates see my photos?
- No. In Scout House everyone sees who has documented which rooms and the house's overall progress — never each other's photos or reports. Your evidence stays yours.
- What happens when we all move out and a new group moves in?
- You keep every report forever. If you hand the house over, the property record and the damage that was there before you arrived carries forward to next year's tenants, so they start from the truth instead of from scratch.
Twenty minutes in September, or an argument in July
Your first report is free, and it covers your whole room and the shared spaces. Scout will walk you through it.
Document my room free