Every home sale in Scotland starts with the same piece of paperwork, and it catches a lot of sellers off guard. You cannot market your home, in Dumfries & Galloway or anywhere else in Scotland, without a Home Report. It is not optional, it is not something your agent arranges quietly in the background, and it is not free. If you are thinking about selling, it is worth understanding properly before you commit to a date.
I get asked about the Home Report on nearly every valuation I do. What does it cost, how long does it last, and what is the surveyor looking for. Here is a straight answer to all three.
What a Home Report is
A Home Report is not one document, it is three, bound together:
- The Single Survey. A chartered surveyor inspects the property and reports on its condition, room by room and element by element, from the roof down to the drains. It includes a valuation figure.
- The Energy Performance Certificate (EPC). A rating of the home's energy efficiency, with suggestions for improving it.
- The Property Questionnaire. A form you complete yourself, covering council tax band, factoring arrangements, alterations, and anything a buyer would reasonably want to know before making an offer.
All three go up on the property portals alongside your listing, so buyers can read them before they book a viewing. That is a different system to what you may have seen south of the border, where buyers commission their own survey after an offer is accepted. In Scotland, the survey comes first and everyone sees the same information.
What it costs
The seller pays for the Home Report, not the buyer, and it is arranged before marketing begins. Cost depends on the size and value of the property, but for a typical home in Dumfries & Galloway you should budget somewhere in the region of £400 to £800. A modest terraced or semi-detached house tends to sit at the lower end of that range. Larger homes, rural properties and anything with land or outbuildings usually cost more, because there is more for the surveyor to cover.
It is one of the few costs of selling that lands early, before you have a buyer or a completion date in sight. I always flag it at valuation stage so it is not a surprise later. I work with local chartered surveyors who know this area and price fairly for it.
What the surveyor checks
The Single Survey rates the condition of the property using a simple traffic light system, from the roof and chimneys down to drainage and damp. The surveyor is not styling the home or judging your taste in curtains. They are assessing structural condition, looking for damp, subsidence, roof and timber issues, and anything that would concern a lender or a buyer's solicitor.
Older properties, and there are plenty of them across this region, often pick up notes on things like traditional construction, roof age or historic repairs. That is normal and rarely a reason to panic. What matters is how it is handled. A well-prepared seller has already dealt with the obvious issues, has paperwork ready for anything that was fixed, and knows what is coming before the report lands.
A poorly prepared seller finds out about a problem for the first time when a prospective buyer reads it in the report, days before a closing date. One of those situations is manageable. The other costs you money and momentum.
Why the valuation inside the report matters so much
The Single Survey includes a valuation figure from the surveyor, and it carries more weight than most sellers expect. When your buyer applies for a mortgage, their lender will typically lend against that figure, not against whatever price was eventually agreed. If the two numbers do not line up, the sale can get harder to fund, and that is a problem for you as much as the buyer.
This is why I always price a home with the Home Report valuation in mind, not just my own market appraisal. I have written more about how a proper valuation works and why the figure at the start of a sale needs to hold up right through to settlement. An asking price the Home Report will never support is not doing you any favours, however good it feels on the day you hear it.
How long a Home Report lasts
The documents inside a Home Report cannot be more than 12 weeks old when your home first goes to market. Once you are on the market, there is no hard expiry date on the report itself, but lenders generally will not accept one over three months old to support a mortgage application. If your home has not sold within that window, the report is usually refreshed rather than redone from scratch, which is a smaller cost than the original survey.
The practical takeaway is timing. Book the Home Report once you are ready to list, not months in advance on the assumption you will get round to it. A report that goes stale before you have even had your first viewing helps no one.
Booking it without the stress
This is one of the parts of selling where having a single point of contact earns its keep. I arrange the Home Report as part of preparing your home for market, recommend a surveyor I trust, and handle the scheduling so it lands at the right moment, not too early and not holding up your listing date. You get one call to make, not three.
The Home Report is not a hurdle to get through. It is the first piece of evidence in your sale, and it is worth getting right.
If a survey does flag something, the right response is rarely to panic and always to plan. Sometimes that means a quick repair before marketing starts. Sometimes it means adjusting the pricing strategy so the figure reflects reality from day one, which is a far stronger position than discovering it through a buyer's solicitor after you have already agreed a price. Either way, you are better off knowing early.
Getting started
If you are weighing up whether now is the right time to sell, the Home Report is usually one of the first practical steps, not the first thing to worry about. I can talk you through the cost, timing and what to expect for your specific property at a free valuation, and take care of the surveyor booking as part of getting you to market. You can also read more about how the whole selling process works from instruction to settlement.
Thinking about selling in Dumfries & Galloway?
Get a free, no-obligation valuation. I'll come to you, in person, at a time that suits you, and talk you through the Home Report as part of it.
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