The pre-move inspection most people skip

Everyone inspects a house they're buying; almost nobody inspects the house they've just bought. The difference: before purchase you're looking at value, and on day one you should be looking at state — where things are, what condition they're in, and what the last owner didn't tell you. One hour, a torch, a phone camera, and this list.

Locate the four emergency controls

Day one, before the boxes: the main water stopcock (usually under the kitchen sink or in the hall — turn it once so you know it turns; a seized stopcock discovered during a leak is a disaster multiplier); the consumer unit / breaker panel — and read the labels, which are usually wrong (know what trips what); the gas isolation valve at the meter; the water meter if there is one — note the reading, because the two-hour no-use meter test in week one tells you whether the house has a hidden leak before it tells you expensively.

The condition walk

With a torch: the loft (daylight, staining, compressed insulation — the blind-spot list applies doubly to an unknown house), under every sink, behind the washing machine, the boiler's service record on the wall (missing? book the service), and every window and door opening fully — sticking now is information, not character. Check the smoke and CO alarms immediately: they may be expired, absent, or missing entirely — count what should be there, read the dates, and treat new alarms as the first thing you buy, not the fifth.

Photograph everything, dated

The baseline photo set is the quiet superpower of a new build-to-owner relationship: every wall, ceiling, floor, the meter readings, the boiler serial, the roof from the garden, the fences and outbuildings. Anything the survey flagged gets its own dated close-up. When something fails in year two, you'll know whether it was you or the house — and when you eventually sell, the file becomes the certificates-and-condition pack buyers fall in love with (paperwork wins arguments).

The legal-adjacent half hour

Change the locks. You have no idea how many copies of the previous keys exist — previous owners, their family, dog walkers, cleaners. This is the one job almost universally worth paying a locksmith for on day one (renters: the permission-first version). Check the certificates you were promised actually exist and chase what's missing. And meet the neighbours — they know where the bins go, when the boiler was replaced, and what that drain does in heavy rain. The best inspection report in the country doesn't know the house like the person next door does.

Reviewed September 2026 · general information, not professional advice.