Property Snagging and
Handover Inspection in Dubai

The best time is before you sign off on handover, while the property is empty and unfurnished, everything is visible, and nothing that later gets damaged by movers can be confused with a construction defect. The second-best time is as soon as possible afterwards.

There is a second window worth knowing about. Whatever applies to your property after handover will be set out in your sale and purchase agreement and your handover pack, and those terms differ from developer to developer and contract to contract. They are not something we interpret for you. Read your own documents, and take proper advice if the wording matters. What we do is purely technical: we tell you what is wrong with the property, in writing, with photographs, so that whatever your documents say, you are working from evidence rather than from memory.

We also inspect properties that are being taken over from a tenant, bought on the resale market, or handed back at the end of a lease, where the point is the same: an independent, documented record of condition.

If a snag needs to be fixed rather than only listed, we have the trades on our own books: waterproofing, tile repair, door repair, painting, plumbing, electrician and full property maintenance.

Doors and windows. Alignment and gaps, opening and closing without catching, handles, locks and cylinders, hinges, seals and weather strips, glazing for scratches, chips and failed units, and whether external doors and windows close and seal properly. Sliding doors are checked on their tracks, and it is worth knowing that a sliding balcony door that binds now will be worse after a summer.

Walls and ceilings. Flatness and finish under a raking light, which shows what a straight-on look does not, paint coverage and consistency, patching, visible cracks, damaged corners, junctions and beading, and the fit and finish around bulkheads and access panels.

Floors. Tile lippage, hollow or drummy tiles tested by tapping, cracked or chipped tiles, grout condition and colour consistency, skirting fit and finish, thresholds, and level. Timber and vinyl floors are checked for movement, gaps and damaged boards.

Joinery and kitchens. Wardrobe and cabinet door alignment, hinge and soft-close operation, drawer runners, edge banding, shelf supports, worktop joints and seals, sink and tap installation, appliance fit and operation where appliances are supplied, extraction, and whether the units are actually fixed to the wall.

Bathrooms. Fall to the floor drain, tested with water rather than assumed, drainage speed, WC fixing and flush, cistern operation, silicone and grout quality, shower screen fit, mixer operation and temperature, water pressure, visible leaks under basins and behind WCs, extract fan operation, and the state of the access panel.

Common items. Light switches and fittings, ironmongery, blinds and curtain tracks where supplied, intercom and doorbell, smoke detector presence, and the finish of everything within reach of a hand.

• Hollow and drummy tiles, from tiling laid at speed with incomplete adhesive coverage, which sound fine on day one and crack under a dropped pan two years later.
• Silicone applied badly, or applied over dust, which fails early in wet areas.
• Grout haze and paint spots on new marble, which are the standard finish faults on stone floors after a fast handover, and are dealt with as grout haze and paint spots on new marble rather than by grinding the whole slab.
• Doors that bind, because they were hung and then the building and the frames settled.
• Air-conditioning condensate drains with insufficient fall, or already partly blocked with construction debris. The ceiling stain in a new apartment is the fault we get called back to most often, and this is where it usually starts.
• Ducts and grilles carrying construction dust, which then arrives in your rooms the first time the system runs at full load.
• Balconies laid to a fall that runs the wrong way, or with a drain outlet set high, so water sits against the door threshold.
• Paint over unprepared surfaces, which flashes and peels at the first wipe down.
• Missing or unlabelled circuits at the distribution board.
• Sockets and switches with reversed polarity or no earth continuity, which look identical to correct ones from the outside.

None of that is exotic. It is the normal outcome of finishing a large number of units on a programme, and it is exactly why an inspection pays for itself.

Air conditioning. Every outlet is checked for cooling, not just the unit near the thermostat. We look at airflow at each grille, thermostat operation and whether it controls what it claims to control, the condensate drain and its fall, filter condition and access, insulation on visible pipework and ducting, noise and vibration, and whether the fan coil unit is actually reachable for service, because units installed behind an inaccessible ceiling are a permanent maintenance problem you inherit. Where a unit turns out to be a unit that was undersized from the start rather than simply faulty, that is a fresh install question rather than a snag, and we will say so in those words.

Electrical. Sockets and switches tested rather than looked at, earth continuity, polarity, residual current device operation and trip test, distribution board labelling and condition, lighting circuits and fittings, and provision where you will actually need it, including a charger circuit at the board if you intend to run an electric car.

Plumbing. Water pressure at each outlet and balance between them, drainage flow and gurgling that suggests a venting problem, traps present and correctly fitted, isolation valves fitted and operable, visible leaks at connections, and water heater installation, mounting and operation.

Where relevant we check for moisture in areas that should be dry. Damp readings behind a bathroom wall or under a window at handover are worth far more than the same discovery a year later.

Where the handover is a commercial space rather than a home, the same systems checks apply, and the party who has to answer for them is usually the fit-out contractor rather than a developer's handover team.

Timing. Snag before you take handover — that is the whole point, and it is the one thing that cannot be recovered afterwards. Then again within the developer's warranty period if defects appear after you move in, since most Dubai developers carry a defects liability period after handover and the burden is on you to report inside it.

De-snagging. We re-inspect after the developer's contractor has worked, item by item against the original list, and confirm in writing what was actually fixed and what was not. A snag list nobody verifies is a list of things that did not get done.

("Snag list" is the term used in Dubai. "Punch list" is American and is not what buyers here search.)

An inspection like this is non-destructive. We do not open walls, lift floors, cut into ceilings or dismantle equipment. That means it cannot tell you about the quality of waterproofing under a tiled floor, the condition of pipework buried in a slab, whether structural elements are as designed, or a fault that only appears under conditions we cannot create on the day, such as a leak that shows up only in heavy rain.

What it does is test everything that can be tested and see everything that can be seen, systematically, by someone who has looked at a lot of properties and knows where the shortcuts get taken. Where we suspect something behind a surface, we say so in the report as something to investigate rather than presenting a guess as a finding. If you want a specific area investigated further, that can be arranged separately, including leak investigation where there is evidence of moisture.

We also do not value the property, advise on your contract, or tell you whether to accept handover. That is your decision, and the report exists to make it an informed one.

Each item is listed with the room or location, a plain description of what is wrong, and at least one photograph. Location matters: "scratch on glass" is useless, "living room, left-hand sliding door panel, lower right corner, scratch approximately 100mm" is actionable. Items are grouped by room so that a contractor can work through a space in one visit rather than criss-crossing the property, and separated by trade where that is more practical.

Items are also categorised by seriousness, so that a defect affecting the function or safety of the property is not buried in a list next to a paint touch-up. That distinction is what stops the important things being lost in the volume, because a genuine snagging list on a new unit is long, and a long list without priority gets ignored.

You receive the report in a format you can forward directly to the developer, the main contractor or the handover team. It is written to be read by them, not only by you.

If you want to see the shape of that before you book, send us the community and the unit type and we will tell you what your report will contain and how long the inspection needs.

In practice some items are accepted and fixed quickly, some are disputed, and some are described as within tolerance. Photographs and precise locations are what move an item from a matter of opinion to a matter of record. Whether and how quickly anything is dealt with is between you and the developer, and it varies enormously between developers and between projects. We do not promise you an outcome there, and anyone who does is guessing.

Where you are dealing with a landlord, a seller or an outgoing tenant rather than a developer, the report serves the same function: an independent, dated, photographed record of the condition of the property.

Villas are larger and take longer, and add roof areas, external walls, boundary and gate items, garden drainage, irrigation, pumps, an underground water tank (which is a job for underground tank cleaning before you move in), and often more air-conditioning units and a larger electrical installation.

Towers add practical constraints: building management access, contractor registration and permits, service-lift booking for any remedial work that follows, and set working hours.

Contractor registration, insurance documentation and permits are handled by us as part of any remedial work. PROTECH Dynamics is fully insured. Because the remedial list usually spans trades, running one contractor across the trades is often the cleanest way to close it.

Before buying on the resale market, a condition inspection tells you what you are actually acquiring: the state of the air conditioning, the electrical installation, evidence of past or present leaks, and the finishes. It is a smaller cost than the surprises it finds.

Before the end of the period your developer's documents describe, a check gives you the chance to raise anything that has emerged since handover while it can still be raised. Faults that appear in the first year (settlement cracks, sealant failures, air-conditioning problems that only show under summer load) are exactly the ones that were not visible on handover day.

At the start or end of a tenancy, a documented condition report protects both sides and takes the argument out of the deposit. This is the document usually called a dilapidation report: a dated, photographed record of the state of the property when one party hands it to the other, produced the same way and to the same standard as a handover snagging report.

That creates an obvious conflict of interest, and the honest way to handle it is to be direct about it. The report is the same whether or not you use us for the remedial work. Nothing gets added to a list to create work, and nothing gets left off because it is inconvenient. The report is yours to take to the developer, to another contractor, or to nobody at all. Whether the inspection can be booked on its own, and how the fee is treated if you do go on to book remedial work, is confirmed when you enquire. If we cannot write a straight report we do not have a business worth having.

Warranty. The inspection itself is a report rather than warrantable work: what you are buying is a dated, documented record of condition, and it stands on the evidence in it. Where we carry out the remedial work, warranty terms for your job are confirmed in the written quotation. Parts and equipment carry the manufacturer's own warranty, which we pass through with the paperwork.

Once the list is closed and you have moved in, the routine upkeep that stops the same faults coming back runs under our maintenance packages rather than under an inspection.

• The size of the unit and the number of rooms, since every room is checked rather than sampled.
• Whether it is an apartment, a townhouse or a villa, because a villa adds roof areas, external walls, boundary and gate items, garden drainage, irrigation, pumps and an underground water tank.
• Whether the property is empty or furnished and occupied, which changes both what can be reached and how long the visit takes.
• Whether you want a re-inspection after the remedial work, booked at the same time or later.
• Whether you want us to attend site with the developer's team to walk the list with them, which is a separate visit.
• Whether the report has to be produced in a particular format that a developer, a managing agent or a landlord has specified.

Remedial work is quoted separately from the inspection, after you have the report, so the two are never bundled into one number. You get a written quote before any work begins. To book the inspection window, tell us the handover date and the property size and we will confirm the visit.