Why Snagging Should Never Be Done by the Company That Built It

There is a moment in every off-plan purchase where the balance of leverage flips. Before final payment and mortgage drawdown, the developer has an obligation and you have a hold. After, you have a complaint.

Snagging is the work you do in the window before that flip.

What snagging is

A systematic inspection of the finished unit against the specification you bought: finishes, joinery, tiling and grouting, doors and windows and their seals, plumbing pressure and drainage, electrical circuits and outlets, HVAC performance and balance, waterproofing in wet areas, and the dozens of small defects that are trivial to fix while a contractor is still on site and expensive to fix afterwards.

The output is a documented defect list, tied to the specification, with photographs — the thing that turns "the bathroom doesn't feel right" into a rectification obligation.

Why it cannot be the developer's own team

A developer's handover team is inspecting its own work, and is scoped to its own liability. That is not an accusation of bad faith; it is a straightforward conflict of interest, and it is the reason an independent snagging industry now operates across Dubai as standard practice for anyone protecting a purchase properly.

The problem is sharper for an overseas buyer. You cannot walk the unit on a Saturday, you probably cannot tell a settling crack from a structural one, and you are being asked to sign off remotely on the largest single item on the purchase timeline.

Sequence matters more than thoroughness

A perfect snagging report delivered after final payment is a document. The same report delivered before is leverage. So the order runs: independent inspection → documented defect list → rectification → then final payment or mortgage drawdown released.

Buyers lose this not because they don't know about snagging, but because the handover invitation arrives with a deadline attached and nobody independent is standing between them and it.

Where it sits in the model

Independent snagging is stage five of nine for us, arranged as standard rather than offered as an upgrade — and arranged through specialist inspection firms presented as an option you are free to use or ignore, never a referral we are paid to make. The no-kickback rule has to hold at handoffs like this one, or it does not really hold at all.