Viewing a property in another country compresses a decision that should take weeks into about forty minutes, usually with an agent talking, a flight home the next day, and no idea what the local building norms are. You cannot survey a building in that time and you should not try. What you can do is look at the right things in the right order, so that you leave knowing whether this property is worth paying a qualified local professional to inspect properly.
The takeaway up front: a first viewing is a triage exercise, not an inspection. Its job is to separate cosmetic problems, which are negotiable, from movement, water and services problems, which are expensive — and to tell you whether to spend money on a proper survey.
Start outside, and start with water
Most serious building defects are water defects wearing a disguise. Before you look at a single room, walk the outside of the building and work out where water goes.
- Ground levels. Does the ground slope away from the walls, or toward them? Ground built up above the internal floor level — a raised terrace, a new driveway, decades of accumulated soil — is one of the most common causes of persistent damp at the base of a wall.
- Drainage and downpipes. Follow every downpipe to where it discharges. A pipe that ends in a flowerbed, or is missing its lower section, has been soaking that wall for years. Look for staining, moss and eroded render directly below gutter joints and pipe outlets.
- Flat roofs, terraces and balconies. These are the highest-risk elements on most Mediterranean and coastal properties. Look for ponding marks, lifted or blistered waterproofing, cracked upstands where the terrace meets the wall, and staining on the underside of any balcony slab.
- Retaining walls and slopes. On a hillside plot, a bulging, cracked or leaning retaining wall is a serious item — retaining structures are engineered elements, and remedial work is disproportionately expensive.
- Trees and vegetation. Mature trees close to a building can affect the ground beneath foundations on clay-type soils, and roots find drains. Note anything large and close.
Read the envelope
Now the walls and roof. You are looking for the difference between a building that is weathering and one that is moving.
Cracks. Fine, hairline cracking in render or plaster is common and usually cosmetic. What warrants attention is cracking that is wide, tapering (wider at one end), diagonal — particularly running from the corners of window and door openings — stepped through masonry joints, or present on both faces of the same wall. Also note whether a crack looks old and filled or fresh and clean-edged; a recently filled crack that has reopened is telling you something.
Alignment. Stand at a corner and sight along each elevation. Walls should be straight and vertical; window and door openings should be square and consistently spaced. Bowing, leaning or a visible sag in a roofline are structural signals.
Roof covering. From the ground, look for slipped, missing or patched tiles, ridge mortar that has failed, and flashings at chimneys and abutments — flashing failures cause a large share of roof leaks. Note repairs that look like a patch rather than a repair.
Render, pointing and paint. Blown or hollow-sounding render, spalling masonry, and paint that is flaking in a defined band rather than generally are all moisture indicators. Fresh paint on one wall only, especially at low level, deserves a question.
Inside: movement, moisture, and the smell test
Walk the property twice — once with the agent, once slowly on your own if you can.
- Smell first. A musty smell in a closed room is a damp indicator that no amount of fresh paint hides. Note which rooms and which walls.
- Look at the junctions. Cracking where walls meet ceilings, gaps opening at skirtings, and doors that no longer close square are the interior evidence of the same movement you may have seen outside.
- Check floor level. Set a small ball or a phone level down in a few rooms. Old buildings are rarely perfectly flat — the question is whether a slope is gentle and historic, or localised around a specific point.
- Trace stains to a source. A ceiling stain under a bathroom is plumbing; the same stain under a flat roof is the roof; a tide mark rising from the skirting is ground moisture. Ask when it last happened and what was done.
- Open everything. Windows and doors should operate freely. Sticking casements and doors planed at the top are classic signs of frame distortion.
- Look behind and under. Cupboards, the back of wardrobes, behind furniture on external walls, under sinks. This is where damp and leaks are still visible because nobody redecorated there.
Services are where budgets go
Services are easy to overlook on a viewing and expensive to put right, and they vary enormously between countries.
Check the age and condition of the consumer unit or distribution board, whether earthing and residual-current protection are present, and whether wiring looks original to the building or has been replaced. Run taps and check both flow and how long hot water takes. Look at the boiler, water heater or heat pump for its age plate and any service record. On air-conditioned properties, note the age of the units, whether condensate drains discharge properly, and whether the outdoor units are in reasonable condition. Ask what the heating and cooling actually cost across a year — a warm-climate property with poor insulation and single glazing can be as expensive to run as a cold-climate one.
Then hand it to a qualified local professional
Everything above is triage. It tells you whether to proceed — it does not tell you the building is sound, and it is not a substitute for a survey.
Once a property passes triage, commission a qualified professional who is local to that market. Construction methods, terminology, code requirements and the paperwork that proves a building is legal all differ by country and often by region. Concrete-frame construction with block infill behaves differently from timber frame or solid masonry; permitted-development rules, completion certificates, habitation licences and land-registry descriptions have no universal equivalent. A local professional knows which defects are normal for that construction type and which are not — and, just as importantly, whether what has been built matches what has been approved. Our fuller explainer on inspection types, timing and how to read a report is in the building inspection guide.
It also helps to read how people who understand buildings actually look at places. The Travelling Surveyor is a travel and property blog written by a chartered surveyor, and it is a useful demonstration of that habit of mind — destination write-ups that notice how buildings are put together, weathered, repaired and lived in, alongside a property section. Reading a few of those before a viewing trip is a good way to train yourself to look at the fabric rather than the furniture.
FAQ
Can I tell if a crack is serious just by looking?
Not definitively, but you can triage. Width, direction and location matter more than length: wide, tapering, diagonal cracks around openings, stepped cracks through masonry joints, and cracks visible on both faces of a wall all warrant professional assessment. Fine hairline cracking in plaster or render is usually cosmetic. When in doubt, photograph it with something for scale and ask a qualified surveyor.
What is the single most useful thing to check on a first viewing?
Where water goes. Ground levels sloping toward the building, discharging downpipes, failed flat-roof waterproofing and blocked gutters cause more expensive defects than anything else, and all four are visible from the outside in ten minutes.
Do I still need a survey if the property is newly built?
Yes — arguably more so. New builds carry defects too, and on a new property you also need to confirm the completion and compliance documentation is in order for that jurisdiction. A local professional checks both the fabric and the paperwork.
Should I use a surveyor from my own country or a local one?
Use someone qualified in the market where the property sits. Construction methods, regulations and the legal documents that prove a building is authorised are country-specific, and a professional who works in that market reads them daily. If you want the report explained in your own professional idiom afterwards, that is a separate and much cheaper conversation.
Triage first, survey second
A viewing abroad is not the moment to decide a building is sound — it is the moment to decide whether it deserves a proper look. Walk the outside and follow the water. Read the envelope for movement rather than weathering. Inside, trust your nose, the junctions and the doors. Check the services, because that is where budgets disappear. Then stop, and pay a qualified local professional to do the real work before you commit to anything.
If you want to see that surveyor's habit of looking applied to real places, the destination diaries and property writing at The Travelling Surveyor are worth a browse before your next viewing trip.
