Site Visit Preparation Checklist for Owners

Note where a vehicle can realistically stop at the property, and tell the professional in advance if that is restricted, shared or some distance away.

Arrival difficulties eat into a short visit and set a tone before anybody has looked at anything.

Write down which entrance you want used, and mention anything about the route in that would surprise somebody who has never been before.

Shared halls, coded gates and awkward steps are invisible to you and obstacles to a visitor carrying equipment.

Arrange who will be present, and say clearly in advance whether that person can let people into every part of the property at the time.

A visit where the loft hatch is behind a locked door and the keyholder is at work achieves very little.

Tell the professional in advance about any pets, and decide where they will be during the visit rather than improvising at the door.

It is a courtesy, and it avoids the visit being conducted by somebody holding a dog.

If the property is tenanted or shared, arrange access with the occupier in their own right rather than assuming your ownership settles the question.

An occupier has their own rights of access and notice. Check what your own arrangement with them requires and ask your legal adviser if unsure.

Note anything about the property that would make an unaccompanied visit unworkable, and say so when the visit is being arranged.

Professionals often offer to attend alone, which is efficient but useless if half the property is locked or unmarked.

Clear the space in front of anything you want looked at, since a professional cannot say anything useful about a wall behind a wardrobe.

Moving furniture while somebody waits is disruptive and usually means the thing you most wanted discussed gets skipped.

Open the cupboards that conceal services, meters or access panels before the visit, and say plainly which ones you were not able to open.

Where services run matters more than almost anything else early on, and it is largely hidden behind storage.

Note any area you have never been into, such as a closed-off roof space or an underfloor void, and mention it rather than quietly leaving it out.

Do not open, enter or disturb any such area yourself. Whether it can safely be accessed is for a qualified professional to determine.

Leave any existing damp patch, crack or stain exactly as it is, rather than covering, cleaning or repainting it before the visit.

What such marks indicate is for a suitably qualified professional to assess. Concealing them only delays a conversation you will have anyway.

Make sure the outside of the property can be walked around, and unlock side gates before the visit rather than midway through it.

The outside is where drainage, ground levels and access are read, and it is routinely the part nobody prepared.

Point out where daylight actually falls at different times if that matters to you, describing what you have observed rather than what you assume.

You have watched the property for far longer than any visitor will, and that observation is genuinely useful information.

Have any existing drawings, plan attached to your deeds or previous paperwork to hand, even the material you believe is out of date.

Superseded drawings still show what was intended once, which is often the only record of what lies behind a surface.

Write down what you know about the property's history, including work carried out by previous owners that you cannot evidence at all.

Undocumented previous work is one of the first things a professional will want to know about and one of the easiest to forget to mention.

Keep photographs of anything seasonal, such as where water collects or where the sun reaches, since a dry afternoon hides a great deal.

A visit captures one moment. Your photographs are the only way anyone sees the property in other conditions.

Note where the meters, the main water stop valve and the electrical distribution board are, so nobody is searching mid-conversation.

These locations shape early thinking, and hunting for them wastes the part of the visit you cannot get back.

Have your own list of questions on paper rather than on a phone, because visits move quickly and a phone gets put down and forgotten.

You will remember to ask the interesting question and forget the important one unless it is written in front of you.

Collect the questions other members of the household have raised, so the visit answers theirs as well as yours.

The person who is not at the visit is usually the one with the objection that surfaces much later on.

Describe the outcome you want rather than the solution you have already imagined, and see what the professional suggests unprompted.

You are partly there to find out how they think, and a fixed instruction hides that entirely.

Say plainly which parts of the property are not up for discussion, so time is not spent developing options you would never accept.

Professionals will explore the obvious moves unless told otherwise, and it is fairer to say so at the start.

Mention constraints you already know about, including anything a neighbour has raised, without presenting any of it as settled.

Repeating a constraint as though it were established can close off an option that was in fact still open.

Ask the professional what they would want to look at that you have not already offered to show them.

This question often redirects the visit towards the thing that actually matters and away from the thing you were worried about.

Avoid repeating what a previous professional told you until after this one has given their own view of the property.

An unanchored second opinion is worth far more than a response to somebody else's conclusion.

Ask what they would want to establish before advising, and who would need to be involved in establishing it.

The answer tells you what the next stage really involves, which is rarely what an owner assumes at this point.

Ask which parts of what you want look straightforward to them and which look as though they need more thought.

Hearing which parts give an experienced person pause is the most valuable thing available from a first visit.

Ask what they would expect you to arrange yourself before any work could begin, and write the list down as they say it.

Owner tasks mentioned in passing at a visit are almost always forgotten and almost always on the critical path.

Ask what they noticed that you had not mentioned at all, and record it in their words rather than your paraphrase.

The unprompted observation is where the visit either earns its keep or does not.

Ask what they need from you next and by what means they would like to receive it, before the conversation moves to the door.

Visits routinely end with both sides waiting for the other, and one question at the right moment prevents it.

Ask who would actually attend the property if the project went ahead, and whether that is the person standing in front of you.

The person who visits and the person who works are often different, which is normal but worth knowing early.

Walk the boundary before the visit and note where it is unclear to you, without asserting to anybody where you believe it runs.

Where a boundary lies is a matter of title and law. Note what you can see and take the question to your own legal adviser.

Note any structure that appears to be shared with a neighbouring property, and raise it as a question rather than as a conclusion.

What is shared, and what that means for work you are planning, is a legal question for your own adviser, not a site observation.

Write down which neighbours would be affected by access, noise or equipment, and whether you have already spoken to any of them.

Professionals plan differently when they know which side has an easy relationship and which does not.

Ask what the professional would want to know about the adjoining property, and whether that would need a neighbour's cooperation to find out.

Anything requiring the neighbour's agreement takes longer than anything that does not, and it is better identified now.

Record anything a neighbour has already said to you in factual, unattributed terms, and keep opinion out of the note entirely.

Your notes may end up being read by people you did not expect, and a neutral record ages far better.

Write your notes straight away, since a second visit overwrites the first in memory far faster than most people expect.

Before long you will remember who you liked and almost nothing of what any of them actually said.

Photograph what was pointed out to you, standing roughly where the professional stood, so the note still makes sense later.

A note saying the corner by the window is useless without the photograph that shows which corner and which window.

Send a short written summary of what you understood and ask the professional to correct anything you have taken down wrongly.

This is the simplest correction mechanism available to you, and it also shows how carefully the professional reads what you send.

Mark which statements were firm and which were described as needing further investigation before anyone could be sure.

Anything described as needing investigation stays open until a qualified professional has actually investigated it.

Note how the visit itself was conducted, including whether you felt listened to, and keep that separate from the technical content.

Both matter when choosing, but mixing them makes it hard to tell later whether you preferred the person or the thinking.