How to snag a new build yourself, without hiring a surveyor

Can you do it yourself?

Honestly, yes, for most homes. The bulk of what turns up on a new build snag list is finish work: paint that stops short of the ceiling line, sealant with gaps at the corners, a door that catches on the carpet, a socket that is not level, a tile that sounds hollow when you tap it. None of that needs a qualification to spot. It needs someone prepared to look at every surface slowly, in the right light, and write down what they find.

What a professional brings is different. A good inspector knows the warranty tolerances, so they can tell you which of your forty items the builder will accept and which will be refused. They look where you would not think to: the roof space, the drainage falls, the cavity trays above windows, the meter boxes. They carry a ladder and a moisture meter. And their report arrives in a format the developer’s customer care team has seen before, which gets it read faster.

Doing it yourself is fine when the property is a standard developer house or flat, you can attend in daylight, you are willing to be slow rather than fast, and you are prepared to look up the standard on the two or three items that matter. If any of those are not true, skip to the section on when a professional is worth paying for.

When to inspect

There are five moments, and most buyers only use one of them.

The home demonstration. The developer walks you round before completion to show you the boiler, the stopcock and the consumer unit. It is a sales walk, not an inspection. Use it to ask who receives the snag list, what their process is, and whether you can come back for a proper look before completion. Note anything obvious while you are there.

A pre-completion inspection, if you are allowed one. The New Homes Quality Code, run by the New Homes Quality Board, gives buyers from registered developers the right to arrange a pre-completion inspection by a suitably qualified inspector. Check whether your developer is registered. If you want to walk it yourself before completion, ask, but be ready for a no: developers often will not allow access before legal completion beyond the demonstration.

The first week after moving in. Because of the point above, this is when most people snag. Do it before the furniture goes against the walls, before pictures go up and before there is any doubt about whether a scratch is theirs or yours. Some developers state a window for the initial list. Find out what it is and send well inside it.

Before the end of year one. Some things only show after a heating season. Drying shrinkage cracks at plasterboard joints and around frames are normal and are usually made good at the end of the first year rather than immediately, so keep a running list rather than reporting each hairline as it appears.

Before the end of year two. Under an NHBC Buildmark warranty or a similar scheme, the builder is normally responsible for fixing defects reported in the first two years. After that the cover narrows to structural items. Walk the whole house again a month or two before the second anniversary so anything you find can be reported in time.

What to bring

Daylight first. Most finish defects only show in light raking across a surface, and site lighting or a ceiling pendant hides nearly all of them. Book the walk for a bright morning or afternoon, and turn the room lights off while you check walls and ceilings.

Then a short kit, none of it expensive: a torch for cupboards, the loft and under the stairs; a spirit level for sockets, worktops, cills and tiles; a tape measure; a plug-in socket tester, which tells you in seconds whether a socket is wired correctly; a marble or ball bearing to check that shower trays fall towards the waste; a roll of low tack blue tape to flag items on the wall; and your phone or a notebook to record as you go.

Before you mark anything, agree the method with the site manager. Tape flags are accepted on nearly every site. Marker pen and stickers on new paintwork will irritate people and can create a snag of their own.

The method

Walk a fixed route and do not leave it. Ground floor clockwise from the front door, first floor clockwise from the top of the stairs, then the loft, then outside clockwise from the front elevation. The route matters more than the checklist, because the snags you miss are always in the room you skipped when the phone rang.

In each room, inspect one element at a time rather than scanning the whole space. Doors and windows first, then walls and ceilings, then floor and skirting, then fittings and services. Your eye settles into one kind of defect at a time and finds far more of them that way.

Look in raking light. Stand with the window behind you, then move so it is to one side, and look along each wall rather than at it. Roller marks, missed patches, trowel lines and hollow spots appear from the side and vanish from the front.

Test everything that moves or switches. Open and close every door and window fully, lock every lock, operate every switch, plug the tester into every socket. Run every tap, flush every WC, run the shower long enough to see the water reach the waste, and check under every sink while the water is running. Do not assume a fan works because it makes a noise: hold a tissue to it.

Do not skip outside. The expensive defects live on the elevations, the roof and the drainage, and this is the part people rush because they are tired by then. Stand back to see whole elevations, then walk in close. Lift the drain covers.

The room by room detail of what to look for is in the new build snagging checklist. This guide is about the process around it. Ten items that regularly get missed even by people working from a checklist:

Recording it so it gets fixed

The most common reason a snag survives three visits is that the trade who turned up could not find it. A photo of a scratch on a white wall tells a decorator nothing about which of the eleven white walls in the house it is on.

Every item needs six things. A precise location: not “bedroom” but “bedroom 2, wall to the left of the window, 300mm above the skirting”. A factual description of what is wrong, without adjectives. The remedy you expect, so the builder knows whether you want it filled and painted or replaced. Two photos: a wide shot showing where it is and a close shot showing what it is. A caption on each photo, because photos get separated from lists. And a number, so that when you and the site manager talk about item 23 you are both looking at the same thing.

You can do this on paper with the free snag list template and a camera, and then spend an evening matching photos to rows. Or you can record it once. Site Audit is an Android app built for this exact walk: each snag holds as many captioned photos as it needs, you can draw on the photo to circle the defect, set the room and the trade, and number every item automatically. It works offline, so a house with no broadband yet is not a problem, and there is no account or subscription. One project is free, which is exactly what a homeowner needs, and the finished PDF report is included with a small footer credit line.

Sending it

Send the list to one named person, usually the site manager or the customer care contact you were given at the demonstration, and copy anyone the developer’s process says to copy. Do not hand it over verbally on the doorstep, and do not send it as a stream of WhatsApp photos. Send a single numbered document, and keep your own copy.

Ask for a written acknowledgement with a date against each item. An unacknowledged list is not a record of anything. If you send a PDF from Site Audit it is easy for them to reply against your item numbers, which is what you want.

Expect the response to split the list in two: things that will be done now, and things deferred to the end of the first year. That is normal, and for shrinkage cracks it is the right answer. Get the split in writing, because the site manager who agreed it will be on another site by the time the anniversary comes round.

Then keep the record. Note the date each item was reported, acknowledged, fixed and checked. This takes minutes and it is what decides any argument later.

Re-inspection and escalation

Check every fix yourself, in daylight, against your original photo. Do not close an item because a trade told you it was done or sent you a photo. Some fixes make things worse: a filled crack that has not been sanded, a replaced tile in a different shade. Keep the closed items in the list rather than deleting them. When the same defect comes back in month ten, the record that it was closed in month two is the whole argument.

If items stall, escalate in order. First the site manager. Then the developer’s customer care department, in writing, with your numbered list and the dates they acknowledged. Most items get resolved here.

If the developer will not act, your warranty provider usually has a resolution service for defects reported within the builder’s liability period. NHBC, for example, offers this for Buildmark policies. Read your policy for what it covers and how to start a claim.

If your developer is registered with the New Homes Quality Board, you also have access to the New Homes Ombudsman Service for complaints about the developer’s conduct and service, once you have been through their own complaints process. Check whether your developer is registered, because the route only exists for those that are.

When a professional is worth paying for

There are four situations where paying for a snagging survey is a sensible use of money rather than a luxury.

A high value property. The cost of a survey is small against the purchase price, and the cost of missing a roof or drainage defect is not.

Timber frame or a complex build. A lot of what matters in a timber frame house is hidden behind the plasterboard, and a professional knows what to look for at the junctions that remain visible. The same applies to unusual roofs, basements and anything with a green roof or a heat pump.

You cannot attend in daylight. If the only time you can get to the house is after work in winter, you will not find the finish defects. Someone who can attend at eleven in the morning will.

The developer is disputing what you have found. A report from an independent inspector who quotes the tolerance and measures the deviation changes the conversation. Your own list, however careful, is one party’s opinion.

When you choose one, look for a construction background rather than a sales one, a sample report you can read before you book, and clear pricing. Ask how long they spend on site for a house of your size, and whether they check the loft and the outside. The report should give item numbers, locations and photos you could send to the developer as it stands. The guide to how snagging inspectors work is written for people entering the trade, but it is a useful picture of what a good one does and what their report should contain.

Whichever route you take, the walk is the same. Take the room by room checklist, record what you find so a stranger could walk to it, and keep the record until the warranty period has passed. If you are still unsure what belongs on the list in the first place, start with what a snag list is.