L’état des lieux de sortie contient une photo datée.

Because état begins with a vowel sound, so French uses elision: le becomes l’ before a vowel or a silent h.

• le + état → l’état

This is very common:

• l’école
• l’hôtel
• l’amie

État des lieux is a fixed expression in French. Grammatically, it is a noun phrase built around état.

Literally, it is something like state of the premises/places, but in real usage it refers to a formal property inspection report or inventory/checklist.

So even though it contains several words, you should learn état des lieux as one unit.

Here, des does not mean some.

In état des lieux, des is the contraction of:

• de + les = des

That happens because lieux is plural:

• les lieux = the premises / the places
• l’état des lieux = the state/report of the premises

So this des is really of the, not some.

In this expression, lieux is traditionally plural because it refers to the premises or property as a set of places/areas.

Also, lieux is the irregular plural of lieu:

• singular: lieu
• plural: lieux

Even though the whole expression état des lieux refers to one document or one inspection, the word lieux inside it stays plural.

De sortie specifies the type of inspection/report.

In housing contexts:

• état des lieux d’entrée = the move-in inspection
• état des lieux de sortie = the move-out inspection

So de sortie means something like for departure / at move-out.

It is functioning as a noun complement, not as a verb phrase.

French often uses de + noun without an article to classify or describe something.

Here, de sortie works like a label: it tells you what kind of état des lieux it is.

Compare this general pattern:

• une salle de bain
• une tasse de thé
• un ticket de métro

So état des lieux de sortie means a move-out inspection report, not the report of the exit in a more literal sense.

Because the subject is singular:

• L’état des lieux de sortie = one move-out inspection report

So the verb contenir is conjugated in the third person singular:

• je contiens
• tu contiens
• il/elle/on contient

That is why the sentence uses contient.

Because photo is feminine in French.

It is a shortened form of photographie, which is also feminine. So it takes:

• une photo

Not un photo.

Because datée agrees with photo, which is feminine singular.

It comes from the past participle/adjective daté (dated), and adjectives must agree with the noun they describe:

• masculine singular: daté
• feminine singular: datée
• masculine plural: datés
• feminine plural: datées

Since photo is feminine singular, French uses datée.

In French, most adjectives come after the noun, especially adjectives like this one, which are often closer to participles.

So:

• une photo datée

not normally:

• une datée photo

This is very typical in French:

• une porte fermée
• un document signé
• une lettre envoyée

Not necessarily.

In this context, datée usually means dated in the sense of bearing a date or time-stamped, not old-fashioned or from a long time ago.

So it suggests that the photo includes a date, which is useful as evidence in a property inspection.

A careful approximate pronunciation would be:

lay-ta dah lyuh duh sor-tee kon-tyan uhn foh-toh da-tay

A few useful notes:

• l’état sounds like lay-ta
• lieux is pronounced roughly like lyuh
• contient ends with a nasal sound, roughly -tyan
• datée is pronounced da-tay

You may also hear smooth linking between words in natural speech, but the main thing is to recognize the chunks:

• l’état des lieux
• de sortie
• contient
• une photo datée