Condition reports in holiday rentals: compulsory or not, and how to do one

In short. No law makes a condition report compulsory for a holiday rental: the obligation set out in the Act of 6 July 1989 applies only to homes let as a main residence. It is article 1731 of the French Civil Code that decides for you when there is none, and on paper it works in your favour: without a condition report, the guest is presumed to have received the property in a good state of tenant repair and to have to return it that way, unless proven otherwise. But that presumption is rebuttable, and in practice a judge will still ask you to show that the damage exists and that it is attributable to that particular guest. Without a dated photo from the day of check-in, that case falls apart, and it is the deposit that pays the price.

One case came back to our support team, and it is worth every legal reminder. One of our clients has the condition report filled in with photos before the stay. In one of them, a lamp, exactly where it should be. End of stay, new set of photos: the lamp has gone. The guest replies that it was broken before he arrived, that it was not even there. Except that we have it, in the photo. He had forgotten.

There is nothing extraordinary about that, and that is precisely the problem. The memory of a guest leaving is not the memory of a guest arriving, and without a dated image you are reduced to their word against yours. A single owner running everything herself, a property management company, a gîte with self check-in: the scene is the same, only the person holding the phone changes.

Is a condition report compulsory for a holiday rental?

Up to date as at 13 September 2026. No. The check-in and check-out condition report is an obligation under article 3-2 of Act no. 89-462 of 6 July 1989, but article 2 of that same Act limits its scope to premises "which constitute the tenant's main residence". Furnished tourist accommodation, let to holidaymakers for a few nights, falls outside it. No penalty, no fine, no imposed formalities.

What applies instead is the general law of hire, at articles 1730 to 1732 of the Civil Code. So nothing obliges you to carry out a condition report. Everything pushes you to, and it comes down to a single article.

One obligation does exist, though, and it goes by a similar name. Article L. 324-2 of the French Tourism Code requires every holiday rental offer or contract to be in writing and to state the price asked as well as a descriptive statement of the premises. That description says what the property contains and how it is laid out, before booking. It says nothing about its condition at 10 pm on a Tuesday, the moment the guest walks in. Many hosts believe they have satisfied "the condition report" because their contract includes a description: these are two different documents, at two different moments.

What article 1731 really changes in a dispute

Article 1731 of the Civil Code comes down to one sentence: "Where no condition report has been made, the tenant is presumed to have received the premises in a good state of tenant repair, and must return them as such, unless proven otherwise."

Read quickly, that article looks like good news for the owner. It is, by half.

The presumption works in your favour on paper, but it is rebuttable, and in practice a judge will still ask you to show that the damage exists and that it is attributable to that particular guest. Article 1731 relieves you of having to prove the condition at check-in. It does not relieve you of proving the condition at check-out, nor of linking the damage to the stay you are charging for. The guest, for their part, only has to produce something to the contrary, and a photo taken on arrival is often enough: that is what "unless proven otherwise" means.

Turn the situation round and the balance changes. When a condition report does exist, article 1730 applies: the tenant must return the property as they received it, in line with that report, except for anything that has perished or deteriorated through age or force majeure. Article 1732 adds that they are liable for damage occurring while they had use of the property, unless they prove it happened without any fault on their part. The discussion is no longer your word against theirs, it is a comparison of two dated reports.

Our view is clear-cut: do it, even a short one. Ten time-stamped photos and two signatures are worth more than a legal presumption you will have to defend with nothing to show.

What a holiday rental condition report must contain

A condition report that is any use in a dispute comes down to four things: the date and time, the identity of both parties, a room-by-room record with photos, and two signatures. The rest is a nice-to-have. A twenty-page condition report nobody reads is no better than a two-page one with the right photos.

Room by room, not item by item. A 90 m² gîte in the Lot is described in eight rooms, each with floors, walls, joinery, equipment and a condition in three words: good, worn, damaged. A 30 m² flat in Nice fits into three. Describing what matters, in the order you walk through the property, is what makes the document readable for a guest who has just arrived.

The photos are the evidence. One overall photo per room, and one photo of every existing flaw: the guest can see they will not be blamed for the mark that was already there. The photos must be dated, and ideally dated by the tool, not by the phone's memory. This is where a paper condition report shows its limits.

What you record	Example	What it prevents
Date, time, identity of both parties	Check-in on 14 July at 4.20 pm, Mr Durand and the owner	"That wasn't me, not on that day"
One record per room, in three words	Living room: floors good, walls worn, sofa damaged (armrest)	A document so long it never gets read
One overall photo per room	Kitchen, from the doorway	"The oven was already like that"
One photo per existing flaw	Scratch on the floor in front of the patio door	An unjustified, or disputed, deduction
Meter readings and inventory	Electricity 45,812; 4 sheets, 6 towels	The most common deposit disputes
Two signatures	On screen, at check-in	A one-sided record

Meter readings and linen. Meters if you charge for consumption, the number of sheets, towels and sets of cutlery, the state of the crockery. These are the items behind the most frequent, and the most argued-over, deposit deductions. Nobody has ever enjoyed counting teaspoons, and yet that is the very line you reread three weeks later, when the deposit is at stake.

When to do the condition report, and with whom?

At check-in and at check-out, and in both cases within a short window. A check-in condition report filled in the following evening is worth less than one filled in within the hour: in between, the guest has been living in the property.

With the guest if you are there, which is the simplest and most robust option. Without you when check-in is self-service: the guest completes the condition report alone, on their phone, straight after arriving. The phone is not a fallback, it is the screen already in their hand: of the 1.4 million StyQR welcome book openings recorded each year, 91% come from a mobile. That is an internal observation, measured on our own welcome books, and it is what determined the shape of the module.

For it to work, it has to be easy, guided room by room, and the result has to reach you signed. A cleaner photographing the property before every arrival completes the set-up: their photos date the state of the property, the guest's photos confirm it. If your council or your building management has made you change your access method, the constraints of self check-in shift too, and we set them out in our piece on key boxes now banned in certain cities.

At check-out, the same journey, in reverse. If the guest leaves early without doing it, your cleaning photos, taken just afterwards, serve as the check-out record, with less weight since they are not made jointly.

Then there is the guest who has just driven for eight hours. They put down their bags, and you ask them to inventory the cupboards room by room. Nobody would do that in a good mood. A check-in condition report has to be quick: a few strategic photos are worth more than an exhaustive survey nobody finishes.

The simplest approach is to announce a window. Check-in at 3 pm on the day, condition report to be returned before midday the next day. The guest catches their breath, unpacks, and does it with a clear head. At check-out, it is the same day, with no postponing.

At Gîtes de France®, the condition report is often done with the owner: they note any issues together and the document is signed. That is the most robust formula when you are there. When you are not, it is the digital version that does the job.

How to get a condition report signed without being there

The principle: the guest fills it in and signs from their phone, and you receive the dated document without ever having to meet them. The digital welcome book is the logical place to put it, since it is already where the guest looks for the wifi and the gate code when they arrive. One tool fewer to install, one explanation fewer to give.

In StyQR, the Condition report module guides the guest room by room: they add photos and comments, then sign on screen. You find every condition report in your client area and download the PDF report, dated and signed, useful if the deposit is ever discussed. The full journey, from the key box code in wifi and access codes through to check-out, is described on the check-in and check-out page, and you can see the guest-side result in our demo welcome books.

For a property management company looking after forty properties, the benefit lies elsewhere: the reports are all in one place, property by property, with no hunting through the photos on a team member's phone. That is the use case described on our short-term rental solution page.

Let us also say what it does not do. A condition report completed by the guest alone remains a one-sided record that they accepted and signed; it is not a jointly agreed record, still less a bailiff's report. It carries real weight in an amicable discussion or before a platform. Before a court, it carries whatever its photos are worth.

What if the guest does not do it?

You cannot force them. A condition report is not signed under the threat of losing a deposit, and a guest arriving at midnight with two sleeping children will not fill anything in before the next morning.

What works: an automatic reminder the day after check-in, wording that explains what it does for them, and a document short enough to complete in five minutes. What does not work: an eight-page form emailed the day before check-out.

If they explicitly refuse, record the refusal in writing in your booking messaging, date your own photos and keep them. You lose the jointly agreed status, you do not lose your evidence. And if the stay goes badly, the steps to take in the event of breakage or theft are set out in our article on theft and breakage in your rental.

In practice, almost nobody refuses: people forget, which produces the same result with less bad faith.

And where does the deposit fit in?

The deposit is what the condition report protects. Without one, you cannot withhold anything defensibly, and the guest cannot challenge a deduction with evidence. With one, the discussion comes down to a comparison: the check-in photo, the check-out photo, the quote or the invoice.

Platforms do not carry out the condition report for you, they ask you for evidence. On Airbnb, a reimbursement request is filed through the Resolution Centre within 14 days of the responsible guest's departure, that guest has 24 hours to respond, and only if they fail to respond, pay in part or refuse can AirCover's Host damage protection step in, up to a limit of 3 million dollars. The help centre asks you to document the damage with photos or videos, quotes or invoices. Source: Airbnb help centre, accessed 13 September 2026.

Two common-sense rules head off most conflicts. State the amount of the deposit and what it covers right from the listing and in the welcome book, next to the house rules, and in the same place as everything else a guest has to find on their own, as shown in our welcome book template for holiday rentals. And return promptly whatever is due: a deposit returned within days of check-out, with a short note, weighs on the review the guest will leave.

Frequently asked questions

Is a condition report compulsory for a holiday rental?
No. The obligation under the Act of 6 July 1989 applies only to the tenant's main residence. For a holiday rental, it is article 1731 of the Civil Code that applies: without a condition report, the guest is presumed to have received the property in good condition, unless proven otherwise.

Can you withhold the deposit without a condition report?
In theory yes, the presumption in article 1731 allows it. In practice, you will still have to establish that the damage exists and that it comes from that stay, otherwise the deduction is open to challenge. Without a check-in photo, a platform, like a judge, will ask you what you are basing it on.

Is a condition report completed by the guest alone worth anything?
Yes, if it is dated, signed and backed up with photos. It counts as a record accepted by the guest, not as a jointly agreed record. Your cleaner's photos, taken before arrival, usefully complete it.

Do you need a condition report for a single night?
The rule does not depend on the length of stay. A one-night stay in a brand-new property with a high deposit justifies a condition report; a bed and breakfast with no deposit can do without. The test is what you would have to prove.

What if the guest refuses to sign?
Record their refusal in writing, date your own photos, and notify the platform if the booking went through one. A refusal to sign does not deprive you of your photos; it deprives the record of its jointly agreed status.

How long should photos and reports be kept?
At the very least until the deposit has been returned in full and the platform's claim window has closed: on Airbnb, a request is filed within 14 days of check-out. Beyond that, keep them by property and by season, as they also serve to prove the normal wear and tear of an item.