Is it worth paying for professional snagging on a new Dubai handover, and what should it cost?
First Dubai handover coming up and people keep telling me to pay for a professional snagging inspection before I sign off. Is it actually worth it, or can I just check it myself with a list? What does professional snagging cover that I'd miss, and roughly what does it cost versus what it saves? Trying to be sensible, not paranoid, about a new-build handover.
2 answers
For most handovers it's worth it, and the maths is simple. A professional snag inspection finds the things an untrained eye misses, hollow or lipped tiles, doors and joinery out of alignment, waterproofing and slope issues in wet areas, MEP faults, AC not balanced, and it documents them properly so the developer has to fix them free within the defects liability period. That's the leverage: defects logged in that window are the builder's cost, not yours later. The fee is typically a fraction of the repairs it catches, and on a larger or high-end unit there's simply more to go wrong, so it pays back more. A basic apartment you can partly snag yourself with a checklist, but you won't catch the technical stuff. If you use a snagging service, get a proper documented report, and a team that does a finishing and snagging team style inspection can also drive or do the fixes. Snag inside the defects period, that timing is the whole value.
We paid for snagging on our handover and it found things we'd never have spotted, waterproofing fall wrong in a bathroom, several hollow tiles. All fixed free because it was documented in the defects period. The fee was tiny next to what those repairs would have cost us later. Worth every dirham on anything but the smallest apartment.
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