Your handover is coming up and you cannot be there

Signing for a property records that it was delivered in accordance with the contract, which moves whatever is unfinished from the developer’s side of the line to yours. So the check worth having is the property against the specification annexed to your contract, made before the signature, with everything missing written down, dated and photographed while it can still be annexed as a reservation.

Why the signature is the whole thing

Acceptance documents generally record that the property has been delivered in accordance with the contract. That sentence is doing more work than it looks. Before it, unfinished work is the developer’s obligation. After it, unfinished work is a request.

The practical answer is not to refuse to sign, which has its own consequences and rarely helps anyone. It is to sign with the defects annexed as reservations: dated, photographed and specific. “Kitchen incomplete” is not a reservation anyone acts on. “Kitchen: extractor absent, two base units missing, worktop joint open at the sink, photographed 14 March” is.

Buyers who cannot attend face a sharper version of the same problem, because acceptance is usually handled by a representative under power of attorney. Whoever holds that authority is making a decision with contractual force on your behalf, and they should be working from a written record rather than an impression.

What the report contains at this point

The report is the same product at every stage of a purchase, and it costs the same. What changes is what it is filled with, and at handover the report leads with the list below.

• Photographs carrying the day they were taken
• A written note on what they show, in your language
• What the contract says should be there by now, set against what was found
• A completion range, where the building allows one to be given

What to do in the next two weeks

Useful whether or not you order anything from us. If the developer answers all of it in writing, you have what you needed and we are not required.

1. Find the acceptance clause in your contract and read what you are being asked to sign.
2. Find the specification annex. That is the document the property is measured against, and it is usually the one nobody reads twice.
3. Ask the developer in writing for the handover date and for confirmation that a representative of yours may attend.
4. Book the report so the visit lands before the date, not on it: you want the list in hand while there is still time to raise it.
5. Consider snagging as well. Our report covers what the contract required; a snagging firm covers the finish with instruments. Most people at handover take both.

The specification annex is the document the property is measured against, and a reservation only works if it is specific enough to act on. Having that comparison in writing before the handover date is what lets you, or whoever holds your power of attorney, decide about the signature from a record rather than an impression.