What to do when the unit is not there yet

A snagging inspection is a walkthrough of a finished property that lists everything not built to specification, so the developer fixes it. You need one before you sign anything accepting the property. It checks the finish, and it cannot tell you anything about how the building was constructed.

Check the documents first, then the services, then the finish, then the property against the contract drawings. Record everything with dated photographs and get your objections onto the document you sign. What you fail to record at handover is what becomes an argument later.

You lose the leverage that came from not having signed. The defects liability period usually still protects you, but you move from conditioning acceptance to requesting repairs, and you may have to prove the defect existed before you took possession.

Check the services, the water systems and the waterproofing before anything cosmetic, and record everything with dated photographs. There is no statutory defects scheme behind you here. What you can require later is what your building agreement says and what you recorded on the day.

Check the property against the specification before you accept it, and get your objections on record before signing. Dubai has a defects liability period and a longer structural obligation, but both start from a date the developer sets, not from the day you get keys.

Three moments matter and they answer different questions: pre-drywall, while structure and services are visible; final walkthrough, before closing; and a warranty walkthrough near the end of the first year. Missing the first cannot be made up by the other two.

The paid-versus-built gap is the difference between the share of the purchase price you have paid and the share of the building that actually exists. On a healthy off-plan purchase it stays within a few points. Beyond ten, you are financing the developer rather than buying a property.

A construction stage is complete when the work described in the contract clause that defines it has been done, not when the site looks busy and not when the developer says so. Start from the clause, list what it requires, and check each requirement against the building as it stands.

An off-plan payment schedule sets when you pay and what has to be true for each payment to fall due. Two kinds exist: one tied to construction progress and one tied to dates. Which one you signed determines whether a delayed building also delays your money.

A milestone payment falls due when the contract says the stage is complete, which is usually when somebody engaged by the developer certifies it, not when the work is finished to your satisfaction. The certificate and the reality are separate things, and only one of them is checkable.

Sometimes, and the consequences are severe if you are wrong. Most off-plan contracts treat late payment as a default with interest, and many allow termination and forfeiture of what you have already paid. Establish the facts and the clause before you withhold anything.

A typical South Florida pre-construction schedule takes 30% in deposits before closing and 70% at closing. The deposits are usually tied to dates and contract events rather than to construction, which means a building running two years late does not delay a single one of your payments.

Compare what is physically built against what the contract programme says should be built by now, not against the developer's current completion date. A date that keeps moving tells you the programme is being rewritten to match the site rather than the other way round.

Most off-plan contracts allow the developer a grace period, list events that extend the date without penalty, and offer you a remedy only after a long-stop date. Find those three things in your contract before deciding whether a delay is a breach.

Funding trouble shows on the site before it shows in an announcement: fewer trades, work that stops mid-stage, materials arriving in small batches, and stage invoices that arrive early. None of these is conclusive on its own, and any one of them has an innocent explanation. Together they are the pattern worth acting on.

Establish the facts before acting: whether work has stopped or slowed, for how long, and across the whole site or part of it. Then read the delay and termination clauses, put your questions in writing, and take local advice before any long-stop date passes.

You need somebody physically on site at a regular interval, recording the same things each time against the contract programme, so that one month can be compared with the last. Everything else (updates, photographs, video calls) shows you what somebody chose to show, on a schedule that suits them.

Control four things: who represents you legally, what the contract says about stages and delay, where your money sits between payments, and who looks at the building on your behalf. Everything else can be delegated; these four cannot be left to the seller's side.

Not because developers lie, but because they select. A progress update is written by the party whose interest depends on your confidence, on a schedule they choose, showing what they choose, and measured against a completion date they are free to revise whenever it stops being achievable.

They show the parts of the building that photograph well at that stage. What is missing is consistent: services before they are covered, waterproofing details, the areas where work has stopped, and any reference that would let you compare this month with last.

Measure what is built against the stages your building agreement defines, not against the builder's updates. Bali has no statutory escrow and no certifier standing between you and the payment schedule, so whatever checking happens on your build is whatever you arrange and pay for yourself.

Payments release from a unit account against construction progress signed off by a consultant, so the question worth answering is whether that stage matches the site. The escrow regime protects your money from being spent elsewhere; it does not test the stage.

Six clauses decide almost everything: how stages are defined, what triggers payment, where your money is held, how delay is treated, what the specification is, and what happens at acceptance. Read those six before you read the price, because every one of them decides something the price cannot.

A stage is whatever the contract says it is, and many contracts say very little. Where the definition is vague, the developer's certifier supplies one, and your payment falls due on their reading rather than on a state you could have checked.

The annex is what you are actually buying. It sets the materials, brands, grades and quantities the developer must deliver, and anything it leaves open they may choose. Substitution clauses are where an expensive specification quietly becomes a cheap one.

A snagging visit lists defects in a finished property, once, shortly before handover. Progress reporting checks what has been built against your contract, repeatedly, while the building goes up. They answer different questions, and the second one stops being answerable after the money is paid.

A local engineer will visit and tell you what they saw, usually for a few hundred dollars a visit. What you take on is everything around the visit: finding them, briefing them, keeping the record consistent, and judging work in a market you cannot see.

The lawyer checks the contract and the title. The engineer checks the building. The agent introduces the sale. None of the three watches construction over time, and the gap between signing and handover is where buyers assume somebody is and nobody is.

Between a few hundred and a few thousand dollars a year, depending on how often somebody visits and where the property is. The visit fee is the small part: what actually decides the cost is frequency, travel, and how much of the work you take on yourself.