Red flags to score at a viewing: a room-by-room checklist for damp, mould, locks, glazing and water pressure

Most guides to what to look for when viewing a house list the same faults — damp, mould, locks, glazing, water pressure — and stop there

Four people view the same flat and leave with four different memories

A viewing is a social event, not an inspection. Someone is showing you round because they want a signature at the end of it. The deciding details — the damp patch behind the wardrobe, the lock that doesn't turn — are the ones nobody photographs and nobody holds on to.

Memory is selective, and predictably so

Everyone remembers the sunny kitchen and the friendly agent. The failed window seal and the cold back bedroom survive in no one's head. Four housemates each keep a different half of what's left, which is why the group chat afterwards reads like four separate viewings.

Order and mood do the ranking

The flat you loved at 11am and the flat you compared it against at 4pm end up ranked by sequence and weather, not by the state of the property. An afternoon viewing in drizzle flatters nothing.

A score is the only version you can re-examine

A score recorded at the time is the only version of a viewing that can be re-examined later. It turns a fortnight of group-chat opinions into a table you can check rather than re-argue — the same checks, the same scale, at every property.

It's a note to your future self, not a verdict on the property.

What to look for when viewing a house: the five checks, and where to look

Give each of the five a score from 1 to 5 as you stand in the room, and write the score down before you leave. You are looking for change, not perfection: a two-hundred-year-old terrace with a working lock and a dry wall is a better bet than a new build with a patch of black mould in the corner.

Damp

Look at the corners behind wardrobes and beds, under windows, and around the base of walls. Press the plaster with the back of your hand — it should feel cold at worst, never soft or wet. A tide mark, a bubbling skirting board or paint that has been cut in badly around a patch are all signs of a repair that was painted over rather than fixed.

Mould

Mould hides in the cold corners: behind furniture, along the top of the bathroom, inside the window reveal. Black speckling on the sealant and a musty smell in a room with no open window usually mean the same moisture problem as the damp above. Ask when the room was last redecorated and listen to the answer.

Locks

Try every door yourself, front, back and each bedroom. A bedroom door with no working lock or a Yale that has been pulled off its screws is a security problem the landlord already knows about. Check the ground-floor and basement windows shut and actually latch, and ask who has keys.

Glazing

Open and close each window, then hold a hand to the frame on a cold day. Failed seals mist between the panes, and a draughty sash will show up on your heating bill. Check that every bedroom has an opening window that reaches outside air, which matters for both summer and for anything the council would ask about.

Water pressure

Turn on the shower, then a hot tap, and see whether the shower drops to a dribble. Four people showering before a 9am lecture is the real test. Run the cold tap for a minute and look at the colour and the smell.

The repair duties that are already in force while you are still looking round

The faults you score are not a matter of taste. In England, the landlord is responsible for the structure and exterior, the installations for water, gas, electricity and heating, and the sanitary fittings — whatever the tenancy says. A letting agent who shrugs at a broken lock is shrugging at their own repairing obligation, and the local authority can make them act.

What the law already covers

Section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 puts the structure, the exterior and the installations for water, gas, electricity and sanitation on the landlord, and the Housing Health and Safety Rating System lets a council act on damp, excess cold and mould. Together they mean the five checks above are not a wish list. They map onto things someone can be made to fix.

What the score tells you before you commit

The point of scoring before you sign is that nothing is agreed yet. Notice already taken on a failing window or an unsealed lock is a reason to ask for a repair, a price, or a different house — three options you lose the moment the tenancy is signed.

Score damp and mould the way a council would, not the way it looks

The council's test is not how bad it looks but what it does to health: damp and mould in a bedroom is rated differently from damp in an unused porch, and excess cold in winter counts on its own. So score the room you will sleep in hardest. A small patch on a bedroom wall you will share with a window you cannot close is worse than a larger patch in a hallway that stays warm.

Why the bedroom and the bathroom decide it

Those are the two rooms where moisture is produced and where you spend your most private hours. Extract fans that do nothing, windows that do not open, and a shower with no curtain or screen all push the same score down. Note them in the same place as the damp, so the two read together later.

Photograph the score

A score alone is your word against a landlord's. A score plus a photograph with the date on it is harder to argue with, and it costs you ten seconds at the time. Take one shot of the room and one of the fault in the same frame as something fixed, like a door or a window, so nobody can claim it is another flat.

A bad score isn't a verdict — it's the start of a paper trail

Nothing on the checklist fixes anything. A low score on damp, mould, locks, glazing or water pressure is a prompt, not a remedy. The first move is to report damp and mould to the landlord or letting agent in writing — a message you can point to later, not a phone call — and to keep it. That message is the asset the score was taken for.

If the report goes nowhere

Above the landlord are the local authority environmental health team, the Housing Ombudsman and, ultimately, the courts. Knowing they exist before you sign is what stops a known defect becoming a resigned one. Escalation has teeth: where an environmental health officer finds a serious Category 1 hazard, they must take enforcement action, such as serving an improvement notice. Dated viewing notes with photographs are exactly the sort of evidence that starts that assessment.

Know the counter-risk

Guidance on retaliatory eviction, Shelter's included, is worth reading before you complain, because a disrepair complaint can be followed by an attempt to end the tenancy. The timing and manner of the complaint affect what happens next, so send it and then stop.

Why this is done before signing

An unsigned tenancy is leverage. You can ask for a repair, ask for money off, or walk away. The same conversation after signing needs documentation you may not have kept. Our before-you-sign walkthrough sets out the order to do it in.

Set the scorecard up once, then run it at every viewing

The checklist only works if everyone scores the same way at every house. Decide the five checks with your housemates before the first viewing, agree what a 1 and a 5 look like, and fill the scores in on the doorstep rather than in the car park afterwards. Two or three viewings in, the numbers do the comparing for you, and the house nobody can agree on usually turns out to be the one with the worst score on damp.

A completed RenterReady scorecard also keeps the dates, the photographs and the agent's details in one place, so if you do sign and something turns out to be worse than it looked, the record of what you saw on the day is already there.