Honest answer: for a lot of new-build buyers, it's money well spent. A trained inspector will find defects you'd miss and hand you a report your builder can't easily dismiss. But whether or not you hire a pro, the snag list itself — tracking what's found, what's fixed and what appears later — stays your job for the whole two-year defect period.
A professional snagger has inspected hundreds of new builds and knows exactly where builders cut corners. They arrive with kit most of us don't own — damp meters, laser levels, thermal imaging, socket testers — and check places you'd never think to look, from roof spaces to drainage. It's common for a pro to find well over a hundred defects in a home where the owner spotted a few dozen.
A good professional report doesn't just say a wall looks wobbly — it says the wall is out of plumb beyond the tolerance set in the NHBC Standards, with a photo and a measurement. Referencing the standards your builder signed up to makes each item much harder to wave away as a fussy homeowner's opinion.
Many snagging companies go beyond the inspection itself: they'll talk you through the findings, help you push back when a builder disputes an item, and some offer re-inspections to check the fixes were actually done properly. When you're negotiating with a site manager who does this every day, that experience counts.
None of these are reasons not to hire a professional — they're just the parts of the job an inspection doesn't cover.
Expect roughly £250–£350 for a small flat and £400–£600+ for a larger house, depending on the company and where you live. For most buyers of a £300,000+ home that's money well spent — but it's not nothing.
An inspection captures the home on one day. Plenty of defects only reveal themselves after you've lived there a while — as the building dries out, the heating runs through a winter, and you actually use every room. Those later snags are yours to catch and report.
The inspector hands you the report and moves on to the next plot. Logging what the builder has fixed, what they've missed, and what's newly appeared over the two-year defect period is your job — however good the original report was.
Hire a pro, and their report becomes the starting point — not the finish line. Over the next two years you'll spot new defects as the home dries out and settles, chase the builder on the original items, and need to show clearly what's still outstanding. Skip the pro, and all of that is true from day one, plus the finding is down to you.
Either way, a note on your phone and a jumbled camera roll won't cut it once you're juggling dozens of snags. That's the gap SnagBoss fills: every defect tagged by room and category, backed by a photo, tracked from open to fixed, and exportable as a professional PDF or a private link whenever you need to put it in front of your builder — for a one-off £34.99, a fraction of the cost of an inspection.
The two work well together. Many buyers hire a professional for the initial inspection, then use SnagBoss to log everything they find afterwards and track the whole lot through to fixed.
Pro report or DIY, track every defect through to fixed. Try SnagBoss free on a demo home — no card needed.
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