Badly-prepared inventories are costing the UKs buy-to-let sector as much as £12 million a year.

The Video Inventory Agency claims that the number of disputes between landlords and their tenants is growing each year- reaching a total of 23,500 cases in 2009. Of this staggering figure, 92% of these cases were found in favour of the tenants, costing landlords an estimated £12 million in lost claims.

As a result of badly-prepared inventories landlords are finding themselves increasingly in disputes with tenants over deposits and now have as little as a one in ten chance of winning a dispute, according to The Video Inventory Agency.

The introduction of the Tenancy Deposit Scheme in 2007 now means that a landlord has to prove their case when keeping a proportion of a tenant’s deposit. Badly-prepared inventories make this very hard to do.

Frazer Fearnhead, founder of The Video Inventory Agency said, “While the Tenancy Deposit Scheme is vital to protect tenants, the residential property market has been consistently undermined by incomplete or sub-standard inventories.”

He continued, “When it comes to inventories, landlords have traditionally got away with the bare minimum. In my time I have seen inventories that have been scribbled on the back of an envelope. However, since 2007, the balance of power has swung in favour of the tenant. This is positive since many would-be cowboys have been pushed out of the market. However, it also means that law abiding landlords are losing money unnecessarily.”

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