What to check when you visit a finished building

A finished building has one property that neither a visualisation nor a show apartment has: you can walk around it. What follows is what is actually worth seeing at a building that has already been handed over and occupied, and why some of it has to be seen in the evening or in the rain.

Why a finished building is a different conversation

At an unbuilt site a buyer is assessing a promise, and the only tool available is a document. At a finished one they are assessing a result. There is no need to guess how the materials will meet, what the lighting will be like, or whether the planting will take: it is either there or it is not, and a phone camera records it.

From that follows the frame of mind worth arriving with. You are not viewing an object from a listing but a place where somebody has already been through the first winters. The question is not whether it looks good. The question is what happened here after handover.

What the grounds tell you

The lawn. Mown or not is the first and most banal indicator, and it almost never lies. After that, look for bald patches along the edges of the paving and where water runs off: they show how the ground was prepared and whether watering and upkeep happen at all.

Shrubs and trees. At the building on Gerosios Vilties street there is a continuous band of white and pink hydrangeas, red-leaved maples and young trees. A hydrangea is a convenient plant to judge by, because it cannot look good without pruning: pruned, it holds its flowers in tidy domes; unpruned, within a couple of years it sprawls and flowers only at the tips. For the young trees: are the ties still in place and not cutting in, has the mulch been topped up, have dead ones been replaced? A replaced tree is a good sign — it means somebody walks the site and counts.

The paving. Look past the pattern at three things. First, the manhole covers: are they set into the pattern, or patched around with offcuts? Second, the falls — is water led away from the building, and are there spots on the paths where it stands after rain? Third, the hardest-worked place, which is the ramp down to the underground parking: by the ĮVAŽIAVIMAS sign the paving takes the heaviest loads, and if there is settlement or washed-out jointing anywhere, it will be there.

The bins. Where they stand is told by the courtyard, not by the brochure. Look at whether the enclosure is closed, how far it is from the nearest balconies, how the refuse truck reaches it, and whether it manoeuvres across the lawn — in which case there will be ruts there within a year. The same logic applies to the address wall: the metal letters GEROSIOS VILTIES and the number 27 stand on concrete right by the entrance, and that is a simple gauge of upkeep — either every letter is there or it is not.

What you see after dark

By day there is no lighting to see. The building's stair towers are glazed to their full height, and it is in the evening that they show what no description does. Whether every fitting is working. Whether the colour temperature is consistent — replacements are often a different tone, and a patchwork stairwell tells you what gets changed and whether it is done systematically. Whether light from the stairs falls into living-room windows.

The courtyard is lit by stele-shaped lamps along the paths. Four things are checked after dark: whether all of them are lit, whether the light is aimed at the path rather than at the windows, whether the parking ramp and the bin enclosure are lit, and whether dark stretches open up between lamps on routes people walk with a child or a dog. Lighting is the part of a courtyard that cannot be bought by daylight.

Why it is worth seeing the building in the rain

Rain shows in half an hour what would otherwise take a year to establish. Where water stands. Where it runs off the metalwork onto the wall. Whether streaks appear on the facade under the sills. Whether soil is washed from the planting onto the paving. Whether it is dry under the entrance canopies and whether there is anywhere to shake off.

Glazed stairwells in the rain are an indicator of their own. The glass is always splashed at the bottom; what matters is how high and how often it is cleaned. If it is splashed to chest height after a shower, something next to it is draining badly. If it is simply dirty, that is no longer construction but a schedule.

The same goes for the shape of the building. The block here is single, continuous and gently curved in plan, with separate entrances. In the rain that becomes practical: a gently curved wall does not line windows up directly opposite one another, and the courtyard side is more enclosed than it would be on a straight plane.

Why upkeep says more than the facade

A facade is bought once. A mown lawn, pruned hydrangeas, every lamp working and clean stairwell glass are monthly, year after year. Tidy grounds at a handed-over building therefore say more about a developer than any material in a wall: they show whether anybody still cares about this building after handover, and whether there is money for it.

One question goes with this, and it belongs to the people in the courtyard rather than to a sales office: who looks after the grounds here, and has anything changed since people moved in? The answer is the best available forecast of what the same developer's next building will look like three years from now.

The building on Gerosios Vilties street was built by UAB Savo investicija (company code 304499183), part of the international SAVO group, which has been in the market since 2006. It is built, handed over and occupied — and that state is exactly what makes this whole list checkable on foot.

The list, short enough to carry

It is worth coming twice: once by day and once in the evening or in the rain. By day, check the lawn, the pruning, the falls on the paving, the manhole covers, the parking ramp and the bin enclosure. After dark, check the lamps, the light in the stair towers and the dark stretches between paths. In the rain, check standing water, how the metalwork performs, streaks under the sills and whether there is a dry spot at the entrance.

The technical and documentary side — cadastral data, common areas, how the building is administered — is a separate step to take with your own adviser; this text is general information and not legal advice. But the walk-around comes first, and it needs nothing except a free evening.