What is a Home Report and how to read it

A Home Report is three documents in one.

This is the heart of it. A chartered surveyor inspects the property and reports its condition, room by room and element by element, scoring each part 1, 2 or 3. A score of 1 means no repair needed, 2 means repairs or replacement needed at some point, and 3 means urgent or serious work required. A property with several 3s is telling you where your refurbishment money will go before you have set foot inside.

The Single Survey also includes the surveyor's market valuation of the property in its current condition. That is an independent professional view of what it is worth today, which is gold when you are sense-checking a price or a post-refurbishment value.

This contains the EPC, the energy efficiency rating from A to G, plus the surveyor's recommendations for improving it. Scottish EPCs sit on a separate register from England and Wales, so for a Scottish property the Home Report is usually the most reliable source of the actual rating. It matters for running costs, for any social housing or lettings standard, and increasingly for resale.

Completed by the seller, this covers council tax band, factoring or shared maintenance arrangements, alterations, any history of flooding or damp, and known issues. It is where you catch the things a survey alone might miss, such as a shared roof with an expensive maintenance liability.

Work through it in this order.

Start with the surveyor's valuation. Compare it to the asking price. In Scotland properties are often marketed at "offers over" a figure, so the gap between the Home Report valuation and the asking price tells you how much competition the seller expects and where realistic offers sit.

Then read the condition scores. Every 2 and 3 is a future cost. Cluster them: a kitchen, a bathroom and a roof scoring 3 is a major refurbishment, while scattered 2s might be a light refresh. This is your refurbishment budget taking shape from an independent professional, not a guess from photos.

Next, check the EPC. A low rating means higher running costs and possible upgrade work, especially if you intend to let or use it for social housing. Note the recommended improvements and their estimated costs.

Finally, read the Property Questionnaire for the deal-killers: factoring liabilities, alterations without consent, flooding history, and the council tax band that sets part of the running cost.

Because the valuation, the condition and the EPC all arrive up front, you can assess a Scottish deal far more completely before viewing than you can in England. The surveyor's valuation is a particularly strong anchor: it is an independent, recent, property-specific figure, which is more reliable than comparable sold data alone in areas where recent sales are thin. Smart Scottish investors lean on the Home Report valuation as a primary reference and use comparables to support it.

For Scottish properties, PropDetect reads the Home Report and pulls the surveyor valuation and the EPC straight into the analysis, showing the Home Report valuation alongside the comparable-based figure so you have both. The condition information feeds the refurbishment estimate. It means a Scottish deal is assessed on the strongest data available rather than on comparables that can lag in rural and smaller markets.