New homes finished in the first half of 2005 have an average of 80 defects per property - up over 50% on 2004, and this at a time when some large house builders are announcing vast profits for the first half of 2005 (in excess of £39,000 per home).

This is according to academics at the School of the Built and Natural Environment at Glasgow Caledonian University in conjunction with a home inspection firm who recently released the first ever research paper on snagging defects in new homes, highlighting the decreasing standards of new build housing in the UK.

The data was taken from snagging inspections carried out by Inspector Home over the past four years, which was then analysed by the University. The performance of new homes, the design of new homes, the materials used in new homes and most importantly workmanship issues have all been examined in considerable detail.

Snagging - making a snag list - is the building industry term for the process of finding and fixing all those niggling little (and sometimes not so little) things that go wrong during the building process. Issues always occur with every property built and the best builders will always include a snagging process to catch these items and fix them. Unfortunately even the finest builders don’t seem to get it right, and the recent survey show that the problem is growing. These days the word snagging is more often used to describe just the finding and listing of the snag list.

Initial analysis of over 100,000 defects indicates that snagging levels in Scotland, the South East & the South Midlands are significantly worse than homes in the rest of the UK.

London had the fewest defects per home with an average of 47, however these figures could reflect the smaller size of properties built in the Capital.

Workmanship issues have also been examined and it has been found that Joiners, Painters and Plumbers are responsible for over 60% of the snagging items. Alarmingly, 95% of the new homes had already been inspected and signed off by the NHBC.

Vanessa Ambler, director of Inspector Home was not surprised by the results: "Inspector Home has been working hard with a few developers to improve quality standards and we are starting to see some fantastic results coming through" says Vanessa. "However we are also aware of a number of developers whose standards are slipping dramatically – not just in quality but also customer care. I dare anyone who says that the quality of new homes is improving to come & work in our Head Office for a day and speak to our customers – that would open up their eyes."

Whether you are buying the property to live in or as an investment you should always think about snagging defects in your new home before you exchange. As an investor, think about the possible consequences for your investment. What if you could not let or sell the property for a few months - how would this impact on your cash flow?

If you are a having property built for you holding back a retention until all snagging defects are complete is a great incentive for your developer to finish your home to standard - try to get this built in to your contract too.

It is always worth getting a snag list drawn up for any new property - whether it's the last one built in the development or the first. The first one, particularly the sales home, which was built in a rush to first issue drawings and patched up quickly for use by the developer, is likely to have - at least at one stage - one of every mistake the builder and the architect made between them.

The last one of course, is likely to suffer an extreme version of ‘the Friday’ syndrome. All the best workers are already on the next building site fathoming out yet another architect’s blunders. Everyone else is in a rush to leave and almost anyone on site - skilled or not will be pressed into service - as may also be substandard parts discarded earlier.

Your builder will be expecting you to have a snag list - and be quite relieved if you don't.

If you think about it, when you consider what you have spent buying your new home, a few hundred quid on a professional snagger is a small price to pay to make sure everything is in order. However you can do the snag list yourself if you are sufficiently methodical and observant and a professionally generated list will help in reminding you about the details you should be looking for. There are several UK websites with useful snag lists, such as the one on www.snagger.org that can be downloaded for £14.99.

Don’t be afraid to include the smallest defect on the list - you builder will be expecting it and - it’s often the small items that will not be easy to do anything about if you leave it too long. Also home building guarantees like the NHBC are more related to major building issues - more a guarantee for your builder than you.

A professional though, will go through every aspect of your apartment from major problems - such as leaks, plastering and insulation - to smaller details like crooked sockets and the presence of instruction manuals for the heating systems and the shower.

Engineers, architects and surveyors are well qualified to produce a snag list and deal with builders - many a homeowner has been fobbed off when complaining about an uneven work surface with the builder claiming that it is within the ‘normal limits’ or other nonsense. An experienced professional won't be fobbed off as easily as a first-time buyer.

Many people think that if they buy a property on an estate - particularly if there home is not one of the last to be built - then they will have access to the builder to fix any problems that occur. Although many builders will try to help with small defects, nothing could be further from the truth. In many cases the NHBC will end up getting involved before the builder agrees to undertake any expensive remedial work.

Never buy a new home without a warranty and be aware that an architect’s certificate is not a warranty and in many cases not worth the paper it is written on. Never complete on a new home with an architect’s certificate unless you have checked the property thoroughly and defects have been rectified.

Don’t forget, the average of 80 defects per property described by Inspector Home and Glasgow Caledonian University is exactly that; an average. More than one in three new homes has between 100 and 200 defects according to a survey carried out by new home buyers information service Snagging.org.

Catriona Bright, director of New Build Inspections, said, "The developers’ marketing machines sell high-quality dream homes which they simply cannot deliver. Poor quality control results in hundreds of defects. Ineffective customer service departments, overwhelmed with customer complaints, take too long to get the problems fixed."

According to the New Build inspectors, who include chartered surveyors, building control surveyors, architects, senior site managers and former NHBC employees, the top ten defects are:

A few useful websites:

http://www.snagging.org/index.php
http://www.inspectorhome.co.uk/
http://www.newbuildinspections.com/