Before I became a full-time property investor, I spent years as a Chartered Surveyor. And one of the most useful things that background gave me was not some magical ability to know everything about a building the moment I walked through the front door.
It gave me a way of looking.
That may not sound very dramatic, but it matters.
Most normal buyers do a viewing. They walk round looking at the size of the rooms, whether they like the kitchen, whether they will need to redecorate the kid’s bedroom, and is there somewhere sensible to put the dog basket. In other words, they are looking at the property as people who may have to live there.
An investor, especially one looking at a refurb project, needs to look at it slightly differently.
The point is not simply whether you like it.
The point is what is wrong with it, what may need doing to it, how much of that work is obvious, how much might be hidden, and whether the whole thing still makes sense once you start seeing it through that lens.
That is what my surveying background really changed for me.
Not whether I liked a property, but how I looked at it.
Instead of seeing rooms, I was trained to see clues.
Instead of seeing a bit of fresh paint and thinking, “That looks fine,” I learned to wonder what might be underneath it. Instead of only noticing the layout and presentation, I found myself looking at the roofline, the walls, the floors, the drainage, the windows, the cracks, the staining, the signs of damp, and the general feel of whether the place had really been looked after or simply tarted up for sale.
And once you get into that habit, it is very useful.
That does not mean, by the way, that you suddenly become infallible.
Far from it.
Even with that background, I have still been surprised on projects. Things that were not obvious at the viewing and only became clear once the work started. Hidden damp behind a wall. Timber that looked sound enough until someone got properly into it. Previous work that looked acceptable on the surface but turned out not to have been done particularly well.
So I am not suggesting that a trained eye removes all risk.
What it does do is give you a better chance of asking the right questions before you commit yourself.
That is really the point.
When I walk round a property, I am trying to build up a picture in my head.
What work is obviously needed?
How much of it is cosmetic?
How much might be more involved?
Is there enough wrong with this property to make it a worthwhile refurb project?
Or is there so much wrong with it that it may be drifting beyond what I want to take on?
That is a very different thought process from simply asking whether the place has potential.
Of course it may have potential. Lots of run-down properties have potential. The more useful question is whether the work required to realise that potential is work you understand, can price sensibly, can organise properly, and can still make money from after allowing for the unpleasant surprises that refurbishment projects so often produce.
That is why I think there is real value in training yourself to look more critically at property.
You can teach yourself to slow down and actually look.
Look at the walls. Look at the ceilings. Look at the floors. Look outside as well as in. Roofs. Gutters. Downpipes. Ground levels. Windows. General condition. In other words, stop doing a normal buyer’s walk-round and start asking yourself whether this looks like a property that may be worth pursuing as a refurb project.
But I do want to be very clear about something.
This is not about turning yourself into a surveyor.
It is not about seeing a crack, or a damp stain, or a bit of movement, and then deciding for yourself that it is “probably nothing”. If you are inexperienced, or if you are in any doubt at all, that is exactly the point at which you should assume you need another opinion, not less.
The value of looking more carefully is not that it gives you all the answers. It usually won’t. The value is that it helps you spot that there may be questions to ask.
And that matters.
Because if, on a first inspection, the place already looks clearly too far gone, too complicated, or simply beyond what you want to take on, you may save yourself a lot of wasted time and money by walking away early.
If, on the other hand, it looks as though it may be the right sort of project, then the next step is not to kid yourself that you now understand the building properly. The next step is to get advice.
Your two obvious options are usually a builder or a surveyor.
A good builder can be extremely useful, particularly if they are experienced and practical and can give you a realistic view of what the job may involve and what it may cost.
A surveyor brings a different sort of expertise and a more formal assessment of the building and its defects.
Which you need will depend on the project, what you have seen, and how serious you think the possible issue may be. But whichever route you take, I do think this much is true: getting proper advice before you buy is often a lot cheaper than discovering the real problem afterwards.
And one thing I would definitely not rely on is the mortgage valuation.
That is there for the lender, not for you. It is not a detailed survey, and it is certainly not your personal safety net. If the valuer misses something, that does not help you very much at all.
So for me, the big lesson from my surveying background is not that I can magically spot everything.
It is that I learned to look at property properly, to notice more than a normal buyer would notice, and to understand when I need more advice rather than less.
That habit has saved me money over the years.
More importantly, it has helped me avoid going into projects with my eyes half shut.
And in refurbishment, that matters.
Here’s to successful property renovating.
Peter Jones (ex) Chartered Surveyor, author and property investor
www.thepropertyteacher.co.uk
By the way, I’ve completely rewritten and updated my course for 2026, The Successful Property Renovator’s Workshop — a comprehensive guide to renovating properties properly and profitably, based on my own experience across well over 150 projects over thirty years. For more details please go to: https://thepropertyteacher.co.uk/the-successful-property-renovators-workshop-2/