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Drone flying close to a building facade for inspection

C-DRONE GUIDE · 15 AUGUST 2026

Commercial Lease Inventory Report: Using a Drone to Document Roof and Facade Before a Dispute

A logistics warehouse, a retail unit, an industrial workshop : at the start of a commercial lease as much as at its end, landlord and tenant share a document that carries real weight the day a disagreement arises — the inventory report. Since France's 2014 Pinel law, this document has been mandatory for every commercial lease, and it must be drawn up jointly by both parties. The problem: on a large professional building, the roof and the high points of the facade are often out of reach during a ground-level visit, even though they are precisely the items that cost the most to argue about when the tenant leaves. Here is why — and how — a drone fits into this legal process, without replacing the commissaire de justice who conducts it.

Published on 15 August 2026, reviewed on 15 August 2026 — regulations in force as of August 2026.

What the law requires — and why the roof concentrates most disputes

A logistics warehouse, a retail unit, an industrial workshop leased to a business: since France's Pinel law of 18 June 2014, an entry and exit inventory report has been mandatory for every commercial lease signed or renewed since 5 November 2014 (Article L. 145-40-1 of the Commercial Code). The document must be drawn up jointly and amicably between landlord and tenant, or by a third party they both appoint; failing agreement, the law requires calling on a commissaire de justice (the modern successor to the bailiff), with costs split equally between the two parties. A landlord who has not made every effort to have this inventory carried out loses a significant legal advantage: they can no longer invoke the presumption in Article 1731 of the Civil Code, which by default assumes the tenant received the premises in good repair.

The financial stakes almost always concentrate on the same items: the roof, the structure, the facades. Decree No. 2014-1317 of 3 November 2014, issued alongside the same law, excludes from charges recoverable against the tenant any expense falling under the "major repairs" of Article 606 of the Civil Code — the roof, load-bearing walls and vaults are covered — which remain, barring a limited and clearly costed lease clause, the landlord's responsibility. A roof defect that appears during the lease then becomes a genuine point of negotiation: did it already exist when the tenant moved in? Did it worsen through the tenant's lack of upkeep, or does it amount to a structural repair the landlord must fund? Without a precise, dated inventory covering exactly this point, the answer often hinges on a late, costly adversarial expert survey — one that is, by nature, less certain than a simple set of photos taken on day one.

What an aerial survey documents that no one saw from the ground

The problem, on a large professional building, is that the roof and the high points of the facade are usually out of reach during a standard inventory visit: a commissaire de justice, a landlord and a tenant walk the premises at ground level, open doors, test the fittings — but rarely climb onto a sloped steel-deck roof or a flat roof accessible only through a technical hatch. A flight lasting a few dozen minutes covers the entire roof surface: waterproofing condition, pooling water, corroded upstands and drains, the state of joints around roof lights — the same exercise we detail in our guide on roof inspection for a warehouse or commercial unit. On the facade side, the same principle applies to metal cladding, expansion joints or the high points of an industrial workshop, all out of reach of a simple walk-round.

The reliability of this record is not just a matter of access: a study by Jiang, Han and Bai published in 2021 in the Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities assessed a pipeline combining drone imagery and deep learning to automatically detect and locate defects on buildings and infrastructure, with detection rates that confirm the drone's value as an objective documentation tool, reproducible from one visit to the next (see the study on Google Scholar). For an evidentiary use like an inventory report, that reproducibility matters as much as raw precision: comparing two image sets shot under the same conditions years apart neutralises most disputes over what actually changed.

The drone's role alongside the commissaire de justice, not in their place

The drone does not draft the inventory report: it is a legal act, and joint responsibility for it stays with the landlord, the tenant, their shared appointee, or a commissaire de justice when the parties cannot agree — see our guide on a drone survey carried out by a commissaire de justice, which covers that role for other kinds of disputes (defective works, encroachment, illegal dumping). For a commercial-lease inventory, the drone supplies a supporting exhibit: a dated, geolocated photographic survey, supplemented if needed by a roof orthophoto, which the commissaire de justice or the parties attach directly to the joint report. The flight is conducted under the open category in the vast majority of cases, on private premises whose occupant authorises access; as with any professional job, checking the Géoportail restricted-zone map and holding up-to-date professional liability insurance remain standard practice. This is a different exercise from the preventive condition survey carried out before construction works with neighbouring property owners: here, only one property is involved, between the two parties to a single lease.

The real value shows up at the end of the lease: shooting the same angles as at entry and comparing image by image neutralises most disputes over what counted as normal wear — the landlord's responsibility under major repairs — and what amounts to a maintenance failure attributable to the tenant. That argument carries weight both in an amicable negotiation and in litigation: a dated photographic record usually beats an after-the-fact account of a roof's condition seen only once, years earlier.

2026 pricing

Ranges observed in France in 2026 (excl. VAT):

Set against the cost of a lease dispute over roof or facade repairs, this budget stays modest — and it pays off over the life of the lease, since the same survey serves as the reference point at both entry and exit. This service draws on our roof inspection and facade inspection offers: request a quote stating the type of premises, its roof area, and whether a commissaire de justice is already involved.

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Put it into practice

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