Spotting Possible Problems

By using your senses as you walk around the property, you may be able to spot a whole range of small details that may indicate a possible problem.

Use Your Ears

• As you walk from room to room and out into the garden, what can you hear?
• Try to visit when the traffic in the street outside will be at its worst. Can you hear it from the back yard?
• Visit when the neighbors are likely to be home and check if you can hear them through any connecting walls.
• If you are viewing a condo, can you hear people upstairs? Noise carries more easily if a condo has bare wood floors. Although they are very popular, some apartment leases do not allow bare wood floors.
• Run a tap or flush the toilet, then listen in the bedrooms. Loud plumbing could mean that the pipes are faulty.
• Check the location of the boiler. If it is on the other side of the bedroom wall it may wake you up when it comes on in the morning.

Use Your Nose

Try to overlook smells that you will be able to get rid of - such as odors from cats, dogs or cigarette smoke. It's the odors that may point to problems that you have to watch out for. These include:

• Gas. If you think there is a faint smell around the boiler, then it may need to be replaced.
• Damp. A musty odor, rather like potting compost. You would not expect a lived-in property to smell damp unless it had problems such as cracked walls, water penetration, or bad ventilation.
• Toilet. If a clean-looking toilet smells, then it could mean there is a leak into the flooring.

Use Your Eyes

• Look for signs of condensation and mold in the kitchen, bathroom, and toilet. This means that there is a ventilation problem. Windowless bathrooms and toilets should have an adequate extraction system to remove moisture.
• Look around the attic or any inside crawl space. Check whether it offers good storage space, whether the timbers are sound and what sort of insulation it has.