Your lease starts before your flight lands: getting a move-in record without being there
Plenty of people moving to Los Angeles sign a lease that starts before they arrive. The keys go in a lockbox, the movers get a code, and the first person to walk through the unit is someone carrying your boxes. That is fine for logistics. It is a problem for your deposit, because the condition of the unit on the day the tenancy began is exactly what gets argued about when you leave.
Here is what the law gives you, what it does not, and how to get a record made before the first box lands. General information, not legal advice.
The landlord photographs move-in, for the landlord
For tenancies that begin on or after July 1, 2025, Civil Code 1950.5 requires the landlord to "take photographs of the unit immediately before, or at the inception of, the tenancy". Those photos are the landlord's evidence. You see them if the landlord deducts for repairs or cleaning, because they must come with the itemized statement. Nothing requires the landlord to send them to you on day one, or to photograph the things you care about.
Why day one matters more than any other day
The same section bars a landlord from charging for "damages to the premises or any defective conditions that preexisted the tenancy", and for ordinary wear and tear. That protection only works if someone can show what preexisted. If the first dated record of the unit is a mover's phone video from the afternoon the sofa scraped the hallway, the new scratch and the old stain sit on the same footage and nobody can tell them apart.
Ask for the landlord's photos in writing
Before the key handover, email the landlord or manager. Ask for a copy of the move-in photos the law now requires, and for a written list of any known issues. The reply helps either way: either you get the photos, or you have a dated email showing you asked.
Get your own record made before the movers
The record that protects you is made before anything of yours enters the unit, dated and room by room:
- every wall, floor and ceiling, including the corners behind doors
- inside the oven, the fridge, the cabinets and the closets
- window screens, blinds, the bathtub and the grout
- water at every tap and a flush of each toilet, noted as observations
- anything already damaged, in close-up
Ask the movers to wait until it is done, or schedule it the morning before. The California move-in checklist lists what to cover in each room.
Send it the same week
Email the record to the landlord within a few days, with a short note listing the existing damage. You are not asking for repairs. You are fixing the starting point, in writing, while nobody disputes it.
The takeaway. When your lease starts before you land, the first person in the unit should not be the movers. Get a dated record made before the first box, send it to the landlord that week, and day one stops being a matter of opinion. A Scoutmyplace move-in condition report does this from a distance: a visit before you arrive, every element photographed, the file delivered within 24 hours.