Questions people ask before hiring us
Straight answers to what people ask us most. If yours isn't here, call or email us. If someone else is likely to ask it too, it'll end up here.
Before you book
What does Encina actually do?
We photograph everything in your home, room by room, and turn it into a report you can hand to an insurer, a tenant, or anyone else who asks what you had and what shape it was in. That's the whole job. We don't appraise, we don’t do valuation, we don't inspect buildings, and we don't sell insurance. We make sure the facts are on record before anybody needs them. You’d be surprised how many people get caught flat-footed when evidence is required.
What's the difference between a Contents Report and a Condition Report?
A Contents Report shows details about all of the items inside of a property; a Condition Report shows what’s in the property and what shape it's in. Most homeowners want contents, and most furnished rentals want condition.
A Contents Report is generally about capturing the resident’s belongings. It contains wide shots of each room, a medium-wide shot of each wall, and close-ups of each item or set, so your dining set gets about two photos, each chair, one or two. It also contains close-ups of belongings, inside drawers, on shelves, on hangers, and captures details about belongings: books, artwork, clothing.
A Condition Report is typically done for rentals, typically the high-value furnished rental. It contains everything the Contents Report does, minus the belongings detail, since there are fewer of them. Instead, it captures Furniture, Fixtures, and Finishings close-up and from different angles: every dining chair on its own, the table from multiple sides, the baseboards, the countertops, the walls, ensuring the state of the home is documented so someone can check for a new scratch or damaged countertop after somebody else has lived with it.
How much does it cost?
Both types of report start at $990 per 1,000 square feet for interior space and $490 per 1,000 square feet for exterior space. Rounding your square footage down to the nearest 500, a 3,200 square foot home with 1,200 square feet of exterior space is $3,460. For properties totaling over 8000 square feet, custom rates apply.
There are no additional editing fees or processing fees.
Ask about our FAIR Plan, repeat-client and referral discounts.
Do you charge for travel?
There are no travel fees within about an hour's drive or 60 miles of downtown Los Angeles; for properties over 60 miles from the city centre, a nominal travel fee may apply. We're happy to travel to you if your property is somewhere else entirely.
How do I pay?
At the end of the visit, by ACH bank transfer or credit card. We quote one flat price and don't tack on a card fee.
Can I see a sample report?
Yes. Ask, and we'll send you one. We never share clients' reports, so you’ll never see your home’s photos here, and you won't see the home of anybody you know in it.
Is this actually worth it for me?
Not always, and we'd rather tell you now than after you've paid us. If your insurance won't pay for your belongings in the event of a loss, documenting them won't change that. One example: a California FAIR Plan policy where the value of the house itself meets the $3 million limit, leaving nothing left over to cover what's inside it, or FAIR Plan customers whose contents are covered by the default “Actual Cash Value” and haven’t upgraded it to “Replacement Contents Value.” Our FAIR Plan article walks through it. Not sure where you land? Call us and we'll tell you straight.
Will you deal with my insurance company or adjuster?
No. We work for you, and only you. We hand your report to you, and we only send it to anyone else (your broker, your adjuster, your attorney) if you ask us to (and we’ll copy you on that transmission). We're not public adjusters, so we don't talk to your insurer for you or negotiate anything. We strenuously avoid any conflict of interest on purpose, and it is extremely important to us to maintain.
Are you insured?
Yes. We carry general liability, errors and omissions, and data breach coverage.
The visit
Who comes to my home?
Both of us, Carl and Siobhan, every time. We've tried to figure out how to do this with one person. We haven't.
Do I need to be home?
That's up to you. Your report gets a lot richer if you walk us around and tell us about things: where it came from, when you remodeled, what's special. We record that conversation, and what you tell us goes into the report. If you need to be somewhere else, that’s okay too – we'll work on our own.
How long does it take?
Most homes take a few hours. The time it takes is a function of details: a small furnished rental’s condition report might take an hour on-site, while a large home with a pool and guest house that someone's lived in for decades needs an inventory that takes nearly a day.
Do you open drawers and closets?
If you ask us to, yes, we’ll open them ourselves, so you don't have to do that. In a contents report we photograph what's in a drawer or closet as a group: the drawer, not every sock. Individual pieces of a collection (every pair of shoes, every guitar, every car) are quoted separately, because 1000 comic books, 100 pairs of shoes, and 10 classic sports cars are all very different days. In the case of everyday dishware and cookware, if it’s easily accessible, we may pull one piece out and turn it over in order to identify the brand, and we may push a camera deep into a cabinet in order to capture the number of glasses or the details on pots and pans.
Do you move furniture or other belongings?
No, we don’t move furniture, appliances, heavy objects, or any art objects. Where something is simple to get to, like flipping up the corner of a rug to get to the label on the backside, or opening the door of the dishwasher to see the serial number, we’ll do that. But if the designer label is on the underside of the sofa, or the maker’s mark of the desk is somewhere on the back against a wall, we don’t; not unless the homeowner has singled it out and made it easy for us to locate and get to. (Post-it notes in a bright color and making those things accessible to us helps immensely.)
What about stairs and ladders?
Stairs with handrails are one thing; ladders are a no, including Louisville-style pull-down ladders; that’s a safety thing and our insurer has asked us to please not do that. However, for things like rooftops and aerial views, we have a better solution: a drone camera, and we have an FAA license to use it!
Will you photograph serial numbers and labels?
Yes, whenever we can see them without moving anything. We don't move furniture, appliances or art.
Do you identify materials, brands or antiques?
Only if you tell us. Say it's Calacatta marble from your 2019 remodel, and that's what the report says, in your words, credited to you, right next to our photo. Brands go in when they're plainly visible. We don't guess, because one wrong guess in a claim gives an adjuster a reason to doubt everything else.
Can you include my receipts?
Yes. Hand us up to 50 receipts or 50 pages of renovation records, and we'll photograph each one and link it to the item it belongs to in your report. Any more than that and we’d treat them as a separate Collection. Tell us how many there are, and we can tell you what it would cost to add those in. We may elect to set up a document scanner onsite in order to do this; we’d let you know ahead of time.
Is there anything you won't do?
A few things, on purpose:
Inspect the building: structure, roof, plumbing, electrical, HVAC, or testing appliances
Move heavy furniture, lift flooring, take things apart or open walls
Open safes or locked rooms, unless you open them and ask us to include them
Climb above step-ladder height: attics, crawlspaces, roofs
Put a value on anything
File your claim, or promise how it turns out
Food, toiletries and cleaning supplies, unless you ask
What about exteriors and landscaping?
Yes, we do both. For most Content Inventories and Condition Reports that exclude exteriors, we will generally include around 5 to 10 wide-angle exterior photos and about as many landscaping photos, just to contextualize the area immediately surrounding the property. For properties with extensive custom exterior features and/or landscaping, the scope includes photos of furniture, finishes, and fixtures, including individual items such as firepits, pools, patios, mature trees, pools, ponds, vessels and fountains. If photographs of the roof are required, it must be done by aerial drone and is available as an add-on.
Your report
How long until I get my report?
Five business days. Every client, every time.
What do I get?
A PDF report that walks through your home room by room, plus every full-resolution photo, by download link. Want a USB drive instead? Just ask. It's included. The report prints each photo's file name, so you can find any image in seconds, and every photo carries your property's address in its metadata.
How do I know the photos haven't been altered?
Every photo we deliver carries Content Credentials, a tamper-evident record built right into the file. It shows the image hasn't changed since we handed it to you, and anyone can check it on a free verification site. One honest caveat: those credentials are attached when we export the photos, not inside the camera, so they vouch for the image as delivered, not as shot.
We keep that record inside the file and don't publish it online, so pictures of your home stay off public servers.
If we do any editing of photos at all, we may occasionally tilt or rotate images for perspective, and we may occasionally brighten them to compensate for low-lit areas or times when a flash may fail.
Can I fix mistakes in it?
Yes. You've got seven business days to look it over and tell us what's missing or wrong.
How long do you keep my files?
Five years from the day we deliver your report, included in the price. Want us to keep them longer? We'll quote it. Want them gone sooner? Ask, and we'll delete them from our systems.
Who can see my photos?
You, and whoever you decide. We never publish clients' photos or reports, and we only send your report to someone else when you explicitly ask us to.
How often should I update it?
Honestly? Maybe never.
Realistically, if you’re early in your home-ownership journey and your home changes a lot (a new baby, a big remodel, a serious collecting habit), a fresh look every three years or so makes sense. Most people are fine snapping a few photos of any major purchases or big renovations to make a record of them in between having us come by for the big updates. One client has a note to themselves to snap photos of everything that’s new every New Year's Day, which we love.
For those further along in their property-ownership journey, things probably don’t change as often, so you might want to wait longer in between refreshes, maybe five to six years.
After a loss
What happens if I have a loss?
For five years after we deliver your report, call us within 30 days of that loss, and at no extra charge we'll sit down with you in person, go through your report and the full-resolution photos together, and help you prepare the contents list your insurer asks for, from our record. Our goal is to help you get this done so you can get it to your insurer as soon as possible. You submit it, and you handle all communication with your insurer. If you've hired a public adjuster, they take it from there, and we'll send them your report if you ask.
Can you tell me what my claim will pay?
No. We document what you own; we don't put a value on it, and we can't predict what an insurer will do. We do this specifically to avoid any possible conflict-of-interest with specialized valuation professionals. (Anyone who’s not a valuation professional promising you a number should be avoided!)
Leasing a furnished home
Which report do I need for a furnished rental?
Usually a Condition Report. That's a record of the same rooms as a Contents Report, with close-ups of furniture, fixtures and finishes from several angles in place of the belongings detail, plus the places tenants tend to leave their mark: floors, baseboards, countertops and walls. If all you need is a record of what's in the house, a Contents Report will do.
How much does a Condition Report cost?
The same as a Contents Report: starting at $990 per 1,000 square feet of interior and $490 per 1,000 square feet of exterior. Same terms as everything else: pay at the end of the visit by ACH or card, with no card fee and no travel fee within about an hour of downtown LA.
Do you do move-out reports too?
Yes. Move-out is about the same amount of work as move-in, so it's priced the same. We're also working on a version that puts before-and-after photos side by side wherever there's something to show.
Does California actually require photos now?
Yes. Since April 1, 2025, California landlords have to photograph a unit at move-out, before and after any repairs or cleaning they plan to deduct for. For tenancies starting on or after July 1, 2025, they have to photograph it at move-in too (Civil Code § 1950.5(g)). The law just says "photographs." It doesn't say how many, how good, or what they need to show. That part's up to you. (Or us.)
Does a video count?
The law doesn't mention video at all. It doesn't allow it and it doesn't forbid it; it says photographs. We shoot still photographs, sharp and well lit, because that's what the law names and what holds up when someone squints at a ding on the counter’s edge or a gouge in the plaster wall. We constantly test new technologies but so far, our result has been the same: ultra high-resolution digital still photography consistently returns the highest quality result possible.
Who hires you, the owner or the agent?
Either. Whoever hires us is our client, gets the report, and decides who else sees it. We don't send anything to a tenant, an agent or an owner unless our client asks us to. Once we’ve delivered it to the client, they are welcome to send the report to anyone that they choose.
Has a report ever actually helped?
Yes. Recently, one owner used our move-in photos to confirm that a tenant damaged a fixture item during move-in, before anyone had to argue about it.
So far, none of our clients have sustained a major loss after hiring us (knock on wood).
You might be as surprised as we were to know that a good number of our clients have hired us because they’d learned a really painful lesson coming out of a major loss event, because they didn’t have good documentation to back up their claim.
Many others have been on the brink of a major loss, and/or watched their neighbors or family members go through one. Us too – we’re from fire and flood country, so we know way too many people it’s happened to, which is what lit a fire under all of us to get this done, right? Discovering just how huge a process it is, and thinking about what that would be like if we had to do it while it was still smouldering all around us, is what solidified our resolve to make it less painful.
The rest of our clients are in the process of major life transitions: downsizing into a new life stage, helping a parent downsize, or transitioning a home after their parent has. Most estate plans and probates call for a full inventory of the individual’s personal property, so if one wasn’t completed prior to the principal’s passing, then it falls to their executor. Everyone’s situation is different. Having been through that multiple times, we would like you to know it’s not just you: it makes the grief feel so much heavier, and we do not wish that on any of you. We consider it an honor to help clients lighten their loads.
Can you do this for a home I live in, not just a rental?
Yes. Homeowners can order a condition report too; everything here still applies.