It's all in the detail

With a number of new residential developments nearing completion, our property inspection portfolio is rapidly expanding. As new apartments and houses near completion, developers are often eager to press their off-plan buyers to visit the properties and 'snag' these.

Snagging is a process that is necessary just before handover and completion. It allows the owner of the property to check all the finishes for any possible defect and for the general standard of finish. A list of 'snags' or defects is then produced which the developer will then work to rectify while the completion process is finalised.

Our experienced team is extremely thorough with all our new property inspections. We start our inspection process from the standpoint of the buyer - who, of course, is our client. When very large sums of money are changing hands, the buyer expects perfection even in the detail, and anything less is not really acceptable. That is what we set out to look for - the quality of finish in the detail as well as the overall completion of the property.

So what to we look for in a 'snagging' inspection?

First of all, we are not surveyors or engineers. We inspect the finishes and our clients assume that the construction snag has been carried out fully by the developer, the contractors and building inspectors.

We start our inspections outside the entrance door of each property and check everything, from the door handle, frames, locks, door closers right through to the sealant and the paint finish.

We record everything we see that might be an imperfection: peeling or cracking sealant, marks on the paintwork, fingerprints on the gloss, a door closer that needs adjusting, a lock that is too stiff to turn with reasonable effort, and so on.

Inside the property, we take a room or area at a time, sifting through everything with a fine tooth comb. Sometimes flaws are not always immediately visible, especially if the property is not yet connected to the power supply and is poorly lit. Torches come in handy in our arsenal of tools, as do smartphones with their cameras and zoom lenses which help us find even the tiniest of gaps in skirtings and sealant (it is these gaps through which vermin can enter properties even in tall tower blocks!).

Where we can, we test the flow of water in taps and flush the toilets, to see that there are no immediately visible leaks. We open and close all cupboards to test hinges, we lift and lower fold out beds in studio flats, we look behind toilets and in the nooks and crannies of built-in wardrobes.

We have seen poorly cut worktops (has this been cut with a bread knife? was our inspector's horrified statement!); We have been invited into properties to snag finishes where the sink is missing from the bathroom, or there's a hole in the bath; We have seen balcony balustrades leaning slightly outwards on high floors; We have found scratches on glazed sliding doors, breaks in sealant around kitchen sinks, cracks on ceramic hobs, wooden door frames not sealed or painted (these have a horrible habit of absorbing moisture from the atmosphere in the home and then swelling so the doors get stuck); We have found corroded sink plugs, scratches on wooden laminate floors, cracked wall tiles, wardrobe doors with no soft closers that just bang shut, window frames shifting out of the wall recess, workmen's leftover sandwiches curling at the edges in the sink....

Then we report everything we see that does not appear to us to be quite right, and we submit that report to the owner along with a digital photo album, so they can see along with us. We remind owners that if something is corroded, the corrosion will only get worse, if wood is not treated and sealed, it will warp, if there is cracking or gaps in a kitchen worktop, there is a warm, moist place for germs to fester, if there is a crack in the glazing, then there is a possibility of weakness in the glass (and your beautiful view outdoors may be spoiled). And besides, that, a large sum of money exchanges hands, and nothing less than 'just right' should be exchanged with it.

You may prefer to inspect the property yourself, and we do recommend to buyers that whenever they can, they should visit to ensure that the property has been built according to whatever agreement they have with the developer; we have encountered situations where they are not, and then clients have to make their way through to their lawyers' offices!

Whether you hire an independent party such as Advanced Property Care to check your new property, or you head to the 'snagging' inspection yourself, keep in mind that the details really do matter.