Snagging an off-plan handover: the forty things we check
You have a short window between handover and taking the keys. Here is the walk we do in it, room by room, and what a developer must put right.
The window is shorter than you think
Between the handover notice and the date you are expected to take the keys there is usually a fixed inspection window, and in most contracts it is measured in days rather than weeks. Anything you do not raise inside it becomes your maintenance bill rather than the developer's obligation.
The walk, room by room
We check every door for alignment and every window for its seal, run every tap to temperature, fill and drain every trap, test every socket and switch, and put a level on floors and thresholds. Air conditioning gets run for long enough to see whether the room actually reaches the set temperature, which a five-minute inspection never shows.
Kitchens and bathrooms take the longest because they hide the most: silicone lines, cabinet hinges, extract fans, and the fall on a shower tray that only reveals itself with a bucket of water.
What a developer must put right
Snags are defects against the specification, and they are the developer's to fix at their cost inside the defects liability period. Wear you introduce after taking possession is not. That distinction is why the walk happens before the keys change hands and why the list is submitted in writing with photographs and dates.