Final walkthrough
A final walkthrough is the buyer's visit to a property shortly before closing, to confirm its condition has not changed and that agreed work has been done. It is a verification step, not a survey.
Also called: final walk-through, pre-closing walkthrough
The term comes from US residential practice, where the walkthrough happens in the last day or two before closing. Its purpose is narrow: confirm the property is in the condition agreed, that fixtures listed in the contract are still there, that repairs promised after an earlier survey were actually carried out.
In new-build and off-plan sales the same visit does more work than it was designed for. There is no earlier survey to verify against, so the walkthrough becomes the first and only time the buyer sees what they bought. Everything they might want to know about the build has to be discovered in an hour, with a closing date already fixed.
That timing is the whole problem. A walkthrough scheduled two days before closing leaves no room to act on what it finds. Discovering something serious at that point means choosing between closing anyway and collapsing a transaction with deposits and rate locks attached, which is not much of a choice, and both parties know it.
For overseas buyers in Miami and Fort Lauderdale, where a large share of new condominium stock sells off-plan to non-residents, the walkthrough often cannot happen in person at all. It is then either delegated, or reduced to a video call in which the camera points wherever the person holding it chooses.
The visit is worth making and worth documenting. But it verifies a condition against an expectation, and if nobody established the expectation while the building was going up, there is little left to verify against.
Schedule the walkthrough far enough before closing that you can still act on what it shows, and know what you are checking against before you walk in. If you cannot attend, send somebody whose only interest is yours.