New builds and warranties
You hold both a snagging list and a Level 2. Why must the snag numbers not be copied into the condition-rating boxes?
Because the numbers belong to two different documents. A snagging list counts unfinished or damaged items for the builder. Condition-rating boxes belong to the home survey and use the surveyor's scale, not the snagging firm's tally. Copying a snag number into a rating box pretends the lists are the same thing. A snagging list is not a set of condition ratings, and NHBC's warranty sections are a third document again.
Last reviewed 24 October 2026. Written for buyers in England and Wales unless this answer says otherwise. No named surveyor has signed this page. It is general guidance, not a report on your house, and not legal advice.
What is the fuller explanation?
A Level 2 uses condition-rating boxes that belong to the surveyor who signed it. A snagging firm might number forty items, many of them decorating. Dropping forty into a rating box, or dropping item 12 into the box for walls, destroys the scale the survey actually used. The reader can no longer tell a scratched door from a roof the surveyor thought urgent. The documents can be read together. They cannot be typed into each other, and a snagging list is not a set of condition ratings.
Where Buildmark is the policy, keep it as a third column too. The first two years put the builder on the hook, with NHBC guaranteeing that obligation, and the following eight years insure damage from defects in specific parts only, not every snag. A snag number does not become either a rating or an insured part by being copied across. Leave the boxes as the surveyor completed them. If a snag worries you in survey language, ask the surveyor whether they rated that element, and live with their answer rather than editing the PDF.
What should you ask your surveyor?
- Did your rating boxes follow the survey scale rather than the snag tally?
- Which snags, if any, did you also rate, and which did you leave off?
- Should a reader be told the two lists must not be merged?
What are the typical next steps?
- Read the snagging list and the Level 2 as separate documents.
- Do not type snag numbers into the condition-rating boxes.
- Ask the surveyor if a particular snag was rated, and accept the answer.
Costs vary with the building and with who you instruct. Where this page does not cite a published figure, ask the surveyor, a relevant specialist, or your solicitor for a written quote. Do not treat a forum average as the price.
Also asked about this
If both documents mention the same crack, are the numbers equal?
No. Mentioning the same crack does not make a snag number into a condition rating.
Does Buildmark use rating 3 as its claim code?
No. The policy has its own sections. A rating is not an insurance code, and a snag number is not one either.