When can you snag your new build?
When you inspect your new build home often determines how much you find, and how easily you can prove that a problem was present when you first moved in.
This page outlines when you can inspect your property, the best time to inspect once the home is yours, the best time of day to inspect, how long to allow, and why in the first year of a new build you should complete more than one walkthrough.
The content in this article applies to any new build home in the UK, whether you are inspecting before completion or years after you moved in. sendingsnags is independent of the New Homes Quality Board.
Can you snag your home before you complete?
Often yes, and where the New Homes Quality Code applies to your home, your developer must give you the opportunity to inspect the property yourself before completion, or to appoint a suitably qualified inspector to complete the inspection for you.
The Code applies where both:
- Your developer is registered with the New Homes Quality Board
- You reserved your home on or after the date your developer's registration was activated
You can check whether a developer is registered on the register at nhqb.org.uk, and your reservation paperwork should also name the code that applies to your purchase.
Where the Code applies, the inspection is timed from the point of notice to completion, which is the formal notice from your developer that the home will be ready for you to complete from a specific date. The window itself depends on which version of the Code applies to your purchase, and is determined by the specific date you reserved the property.
| You reserved | Code version | When the inspection takes place |
|---|---|---|
| On or after 2 March 2026 | Version 2, March 2026 | After the notice to complete has been served and before the completion date, or earlier where you and your developer both agree |
| Before 2 March 2026, but on or after your developer's activation date | Version 1, October 2023 | Within the five days after the notice to complete has been served, or earlier where you and your developer both agree |
Always ask for your inspection date in writing as soon as the notice arrives, because the window is short and having a request on record makes it far more difficult to miss. The full detail, including what changed between the two code versions, and what to do if you are refused access to the property for the inspection, is documented on our page Your right to inspect your own new build.
Where the Code does not apply to your home, you can still request to visit the property before completion. Many developers will allow this. Always ask in writing, as early as possible, because the response determines whether your first record of the home's condition is made before you own it or after.
A pre-completion visit is often shorter and more restricted than a visit to your own home post-completion. Your developer may limit how long you have in the property, and some services may not be available, so you may not be able to test the heating or fill a bath. Record anything you could not check, with the reason you could not check it, rather than excluding it from your list. An honest gap preserves the credibility of your list, whereas a missing record may lead a reader to assume you checked and didn't find any issues.
When should you snag after you get the keys?
As soon as you can, before your furniture arrives where possible.
An empty home is the easiest home to inspect. Every wall, floor and window is visible, nothing is covered by a sofa or a bed, and you can stand back far enough to see a whole surface at once. Once the room is furnished, a scuffed skirting or a patch of thin paint may be hidden, or attributed to your own actions post-moving into the property.
Timing also affects how your list is read. A snag recorded in the first days, with a date and a photo, is much harder to attribute to your own use of the home than the same snag raised for the first time a year later. The earlier the record, the fewer questions there are about where the problem originated from, and the more likely the issue is to be recognised as having resulted from the development.
Some buyers, however, may complete and move in on the same day. If this is true for you, work through the home room by room as you unpack, and photograph each room before you furnish it. One empty photo of each room, taken on the day from the doorway, is a useful record in its own right.
We always recommend noting the date of every walkthrough you carry out, including the walkthroughs that find nothing, because a dated series of visits will clearly highlight when you first observed a problem.
What time of day is best for snagging?
In daylight, and ideally in the middle of the day.
Natural light can help to make a surface fault visible. Thin paint, roller marks, filler that has not been sanded back and uneven plaster can be almost invisible under a ceiling light, yet clearly visible when viewed in daylight from a window. A fault you cannot see is a fault you cannot record, and a fault you cannot record is much more likely to be disputed later, once the home is furnished and decorated.
A daylight visit also gives you better photos, and the photos are your primary evidence of the snag once you have left the room. Our page on what photo evidence you need for a snag covers how to light and frame each shot.
Some visits, however, can only be arranged early or late in the day, particularly in winter. If this applies to you, make sure you still visit the property, take a torch, and hold it to one side of the surface you are checking so that the light rakes across it rather than hitting it flat. Note in your list which rooms you could only see in artificial light, and make sure you check these rooms again in daylight when you can.
How long should you allow for a walkthrough?
Aim to allow one to two hours for a typical home, and more for a larger one.
A thorough walkthrough can sometimes feel slow because it is repetitive. Every socket, every switch, every tap, every window catch and every cupboard door is opened, run or tested, and every snag you find needs a clear description and photos before you can move on. Rushing this process produces a short list, and a short list is more likely to miss issues and inaccurately suggest that the home is in good order.
How to keep the time down without cutting the inspection short:
- Work through one room at a time, and always finish the previous room before you move to the next
- Bring a second person, so one of you can test while the other records and photographs
- Set your rooms up for your report before you arrive, so you are not identifying and naming rooms while you stand in them
- Split the walkthrough across two visits where the home is large, and take breaks where needed to avoid losing concentration
Where your time is limited, particularly on a pre-completion visit, start with the rooms that carry the most fittings, which are usually the kitchen and the bathrooms. Always record what you could not reach or check thoroughly.
Our page on whether you can do your own snagging inspection covers what to bring and lists examples of what you can realistically check yourself, without a professional inspector.
Should you snag your home more than once?
Yes. A new build often changes over its first year, and reporting changes requires at least two records to compare.
Snagging is too often treated as a one-off task that ends when the list is sent externally. A new home dries out, settles and reacts to weather, which can result in faults that weren't visible on your handover day.
| When | What often appears then | Why it appears then |
|---|---|---|
| Before completion, or in your first week | Finish and fit faults: paint, plaster, sealant, tiling, doors, windows, sockets | The home is empty and clean, so almost nothing is hidden |
| The first few weeks of normal use | Taps, wastes, showers, appliances, door catches and handles | You are using every fitting properly for the first time |
| The first cold weather | Heating and hot water faults, cold rooms, draughts around windows and doors, condensation | The heating runs under load for the first time |
| The first heavy rain | Leaks, damp patches, blocked or leaking gutters, water standing on paths and drives | Rainwater finds gaps that dry weather never shows |
| The first few months, as the home dries out | Shrinkage cracks in plaster, gaps at skirtings and joints, doors that begin to stick | New materials lose moisture and the structure settles |
Not everything in that last row is a fault. Fine shrinkage cracks are common in a new home while it dries out, and they are often dealt with together once the drying out has completed, rather than one at a time. Record them with a size, a location and a date, because a crack that grows is potentially more severe than one that stays the same size, and only a dated record can show the difference.
We always recommend re-snagging the whole home rather than only the rooms you are worried about, and keeping a record of earlier sets of photos, so that each list can be compared against the last version.
How long do you have to report a snag?
You can record a snag at any point the home is yours. However, the routes for resolving your snags do not stay open indefinitely.
Your reservation paperwork and your warranty documents name the periods that apply to your home, outline who is responsible during each of them, and where a problem is directed once the first period ends. Read them at the start of your snagging process, rather than at the end, because the answer changes who you write to and how quickly you need to complete your inspection.
What to do with a snag you have found:
- Record the issue on the day you find it, with its location, its size and photos
- Report it in writing, to whoever your paperwork names as responsible at that point, so the date it was identified and raised is on record
- Keep the reply, and the dates of any visit or repair, with the original record
- Where a period is close to ending, put the issue in writing before it ends rather than waiting until you have finished gathering everything
Waiting is what most often weakens a snag. The longer an issue goes unreported, the more of the explanation falls to you, and an issue reported promptly is harder to attribute to wear, to your own use of the home, or to something you did to the property.
Our page on how to describe a snag so it's harder to dispute covers what your written record should say.
How we can help
sendingsnags is an app that turns your own walkthrough of a new build home into a clear, photographed snag report you can send to your developer or housing provider. It asks whether you have completed yet, and adapts what it tells you, so a safety issue found before completion is flagged to you at once, with the advice to raise it with the site team before you complete rather than leaving it for a report you send afterwards.
Where a visit is cut short or a service is not running, you can mark a check you could not complete, with the reason. This record stays on your list to come back to, and is named in your report as not assessed on the day. There is no limit on the number of reports you can generate, and past versions are preserved, so your first walkthrough and any subsequent walkthroughs sit side by side with their own dates and photos.
You can start your report at sendingsnags.com. We hope you find it useful.