Snagging survey in Liverpool

In a place like One Park Lane in L1 or Abbey Row on Devon Street in L3, the first things our inspectors pick up are cosmetic defects. Paint overspray, plaster ripples, chipped tiles and rough silicone often hide in plain sight until the furniture goes in. Those are not items to shrug off. They are defects the developer should correct under the warranty period, and they can be easy for buyers to miss during a quick handover walk-round.

Functional problems are different, and they are common in Liverpool city centre blocks. Doors that do not latch, windows that do not seal, sockets that sit out of square and kitchen units that are not level show up in plenty of flats, from The Mercantile to City Walk. A buyer's solicitor will not crawl around checking whether every internal door closes properly, and that is why a snagging inspection matters before or just after completion.

The serious end of the list includes uneven floors, badly fitted kitchens, missing or short sealant runs, drainage falls that send water the wrong way and fire stopping that is missing or incomplete. In dockland and waterfront schemes near Liverpool ONE or the Baltic Triangle, we also look hard at ventilation and balcony drainage, because a small omission there can turn into a bigger problem later. Old terrace stock in Toxteth, Anfield, Wavertree and Kensington has different issues, but new-builds still need the same disciplined check.

We document every defect with photos and room references, so the developer gets a clear list rather than a scatter of comments from handover day in L7 or L8. The point is not to create drama. It is to give the builder a precise schedule of defects, from a cosmetic mark on a living room wall to a functional fault on a window catch or a more serious construction issue behind a boxed-in service run.

• Paint, plaster and sealant defects
• Doors, windows and sockets that do not work properly
• Kitchen, flooring and joinery fit issues
• Fire stopping, ventilation and drainage concerns

Liverpool's new-build work is skewed towards apartment schemes rather than greenfield estates. The research names High Yield L2, City Residence, Miller's Place, One Park Lane, The Mercantile, One Baltic Square, ELEMENT The Quarter, The Forge, Abbey Row, City Walk and The Florrie, with postcodes running through L1, L2, L3, L7 and L8. That means a lot of snagging surveys here involve multi-storey blocks, converted mills and dense urban plots rather than simple semis on a wide estate.

That build type changes the defects we look for. On L1 and L2 apartment schemes, we see more attention needed around ventilation, fire stopping, window seals, kitchen tolerances and balcony drainage, while the older streets in Toxteth, Kensington, Tuebrook and Wavertree are more likely to show damp penetration, timber decay and pointing issues in solid brick walls. Liverpool has around 37% terraced housing and roughly 30% of homes built pre-1919, so the city still has a lot of older fabric sitting next to brand new blocks.

Flooding sits in the background too. Research puts surface water risk at 15.45%, with 5,369 properties at high risk, and river or sea flood risk at 1.22%. Liverpool is the fourth highest risk in the country for surface water flooding, so even a new-build in L8 or near Liverpool Waters needs a careful look at thresholds, finished levels, gulleys and how water leaves the plot after rain.

The city is not short of heritage constraints either, with over 2,500 listed buildings, 27 Grade I listings and 36 Conservation Areas covering 19,000 properties. That matters on schemes close to the Georgian Quarter and the Canning Quarter, where new work sits beside older masonry and the finish has to be right. Liverpool's population rose to 486,100 in 2021, up from just over 466,400 in 2011, and the number of households reached 207,491, so more homes are changing hands and more handovers need checking.