Questions.

As soon as the developer gives you a handover window, even a provisional one. The inspection itself wants to sit three to seven days before your handover appointment: late enough that the property is genuinely finished, early enough that you receive the report and can issue the snag list while the final payment is still outstanding. Inspections cluster heavily around month-end and quarter-end because developers push completions to those dates, so the diary fills. If your date moves — and it often does — we move with it at no charge.

Yes, and it is worth doing where the developer allows it. Having a surveyor in the room changes the walkthrough from a signing ceremony into a technical conversation, and it means the defects are discussed rather than deferred. It is arranged at booking and quoted separately according to the time needed, because a handover appointment can run to a few hours. Most buyers do the full inspection first and then have the inspector attend the walkthrough with the report already in hand — that is much the stronger position.

It happens, and it is almost always resolved. Your purchase contract entitles you to inspect the property you are buying before you accept it, and to bring whoever you choose. A refusal is usually a site manager making a decision above their level rather than a company position, and a written request from you referencing the contract normally settles it within a day. If access is genuinely refused, that refusal is itself worth documenting in writing before you sign anything — a developer unwilling to let an independent surveyor look at the property is telling you something.

This is what the report format is built for. Every item is photographed, located by room and elevation, and, where it can be measured, supported by a reading — a moisture percentage, a fall in millimetres over a metre, a thermal image, a trip time. That is very difficult to argue with, which is why most disputes evaporate at the report stage. Where a genuine technical disagreement remains, we will put the reasoning in writing for the developer or your lawyer, and where an item falls outside our scope we say so and tell you which professional to appoint.

Yes, and for off-plan buyers it is the highest-value inspection available, because the things that matter most are only visible while the building is open. A stage inspection before the screeds and finishes go down lets you see waterproofing laps and upstands, drainage falls, first-fix electrical and plumbing, and structural detail that will be permanently buried a fortnight later. Most off-plan buyers take one mid-construction stage inspection and one pre-handover inspection. The stage inspection is quoted on the property and the construction stage.

You are told immediately, on the day, by phone or WhatsApp — you do not wait 48 hours for a report to learn that the pool is not bonded or that a terrace is actively leaking into the room below. The item is classified Critical in the report, with the recommendation that it is rectified before occupation. Where a finding needs a discipline beyond building surveying, the report says so plainly and tells you what to appoint: a structural engineer, a licensed electrical tester, a specialist waterproofing contractor. We do not overstate findings and we do not quietly downgrade them.

Buyers routinely do, and the report is designed to support exactly that conversation — but whether you are contractually entitled to withhold, and how much, depends on the wording of your purchase agreement, and that is a question for your lawyer rather than for us. What we can say is that a documented, photographed, severity-classified snag list issued before completion puts you in a far stronger negotiating position than a verbal list of complaints afterwards. Send the report to your lawyer; most are glad to have it.

Yes. Inspections are carried out island-wide across Phuket with no travel surcharge — Layan, Bang Tao, Laguna, Kamala, Surin, Patong, Kata, Karon, Rawai, Nai Harn, Chalong, Cape Yamu, Ao Po and everywhere between. Properties outside Phuket, in Phang Nga, Krabi and the surrounding provinces, are quoted individually to cover travel and an overnight stay where the distance requires one.

It varies by contract — commonly one year for general defects with a longer period for structure — and the term you are bound by is the one written into your own purchase agreement, so read that clause or have your lawyer read it. What matters practically is that the clock starts at handover. An inspection dated before or at handover creates a documented record of the property’s condition on day one, which is what stops a later argument about whether a fault is a construction defect or something you caused. It also catches, inside the period, the items that would otherwise surface after it.

Regularly, and it is a good arrangement. Your lawyer handles title, contract and the legal mechanics of completion; we handle whether the building has actually been built properly. The two do not overlap and both are needed. We will send the report directly to your lawyer if you ask, answer their questions on any item, and put technical points in writing in a form they can use in correspondence with the developer. We do not take referral fees from lawyers and do not pay them.