What is a snagger?
A snagger is the person who inspects a building for defects and unfinished work before it changes hands, and who writes the list that results. The list is the snag list, the activity is snagging, and the person doing it is the snagger.
It is a job title in the loose sense rather than the regulated one. In most places there is no protected title and no licence you must hold to call yourself a snagger — which is exactly why it is worth knowing what a good one does differently.
Who actually does the snagging
On a real project the same activity is carried out by several different people, with different interests:
- The contractor's own site manager or QA. Self-snagging before anyone else is invited to look. The cheapest defect to fix is the one nobody outside has seen yet.
- The architect, contract administrator or employer's agent. Inspecting on the client's behalf at practical completion, and again at the end of the defects liability period.
- An independent professional snagger. Usually engaged by the buyer of a new-build home, who has no technical team of their own and one real chance to get the developer to put things right.
- The buyer or homeowner. Self-snagging with a checklist and a phone. Perfectly viable for cosmetic defects; less so for anything behind a wall.
What a day of snagging actually involves
The work is unglamorous and methodical, and the value is almost entirely in the systematic part:
- A fixed route. Room by room, and the same direction in every room — door, then clockwise, then floor, then ceiling. Wandering is how you miss things.
- The same checks everywhere. Every door onto its stop, every window on its catch, every socket and switch, every tap and every waste, every run of sealant.
- Recording as you go. Not notes to write up later. The gap between seeing a defect and recording it is the single largest cause of a weak snag list.
- Photographing everything raised, with something in shot for scale and position where it is not obvious.
- The parts people skip. The loft, the external envelope, the meter cupboard, the communal areas, the roof from ground level with a zoom.
Some snaggers also carry a moisture meter, a thermal camera or a spirit level. Useful, but secondary — the tool that matters most is a way of recording the defect, its position and its photograph together, in one action, while standing in front of it.
Is it worth hiring one?
For a new-build purchase, the argument for a professional is not that they see things you cannot. It is that they know what the developer is obliged to put right and what they will argue about, and their list arrives in a form that is harder to dismiss. Two hundred numbered, photographed, located items read as a schedule of work. The same defects in an email read as complaints.
Where it matters less: a small cosmetic list on a property you know well, or a project where a contract administrator is already inspecting on your behalf.
What separates a good snagger
- Evidence, not adjectives. "Poor finish throughout" cannot be actioned or disputed. "Hairline crack to plaster, 300mm, above the architrave to bedroom 2" can.
- Locations someone else can find. Marked on the drawing, not described from memory.
- Numbering that never moves, so the item raised in week one is still the same item in week eight.
- The report on the day. A list issued while everyone is still on site gets acted on. One that arrives a week later has already lost half its force.
- Honest triage. Distinguishing what blocks handover from what is snagging noise. A snagger who raises everything at the same priority gets ignored at every priority.
Becoming one
Most professional snaggers come from site management, building surveying or a trade. The background matters less than knowing what "finished" looks like and which tolerances are actually acceptable. There are training courses and trade associations you can join, and while none is a legal requirement, membership of a recognised body is one of the few signals a buyer can check. If you are hiring, ask for a sample report before you ask for anything else — it tells you more than a certificate does.
A note on the name
"Snagger" is also the name of this app, deliberately, because it does the recording half of the job: pin the defect on the drawing, attach the photograph, and issue the numbered PDF before you leave site. The walking, the looking and the judgement are still yours.