Your builder warranty is about to expire
Have the property checked four to six weeks before the warranty period ends. What you do not report by that date becomes yours to pay for, including defects that existed from day one but only became visible later. It is the last moment a defect list is the developer's problem.
Two clocks, and confusing them is expensive
The contractual period is whatever your purchase agreement says, often twelve months from the day you took the keys. The statutory period is set by national law and cannot be shortened by contract: Portugal imposes five years on new construction, and several jurisdictions impose ten on structural failure.
The contractual clock covers the ordinary things: a door that has dropped, tiling that has lifted, a leaking joint. The statutory clock covers the serious ones, which is why a crack appearing in year three is still worth raising even though the developer will say the warranty expired.
What ends the period is the date, not the repair. A leak that starts in the first winter after a summer handover is reported inside the window. The same leak in the second winter may not be.
What the report contains at this point
The report is the same product at every one of these moments, and it costs the same. What changes is what it is filled with, and this is what it leads with here.
- Every observation from the whole history of the property: closed, still open, or returned
- What the developer actually fixed against what they said they fixed
- New divergences from the specification that have appeared in use
- The warranty obligations in your contract, and which of them are still live
- A letter to the developer listing what is to be put right under warranty
Before the date
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.
- 01Find the expiry date. It is usually counted from handover, not from completion, and the difference can be months.
- 02Collect what you already reported and what came back. Anything unresolved goes on the list regardless of how long ago it was raised.
- 03Book the check four to six weeks out, so there is time to submit and to argue.
- 04Submit in writing before the date, even if the list is incomplete. A late addition to a submitted claim is a different conversation from a first claim after expiry.
Questions on this
Why you and not a local snagging firm?
For the warranty check specifically, because of the history. Checking what the developer closed out of everything recorded during construction is only possible for whoever has that record. A firm arriving for the first time can tell you what is wrong today; it cannot tell you what was reported in month nine and quietly never fixed.
We did not use you during the build. Is it still worth it?
Yes, though you get the smaller half of it: the property against the contract and the warranty obligations, without the history to compare against. Say so when you order and the report is built accordingly.