What to Do When a Developer Says Snags Are Just Cosmetic

You sent a list. Maybe thirty items, maybe fifty. A week later the reply lands, and half of it comes back marked “cosmetic”, “aesthetic only”, “within acceptable tolerance”, or simply “not a defect”.

Now you are staring at that email with a strange feeling in your chest. You know something is wrong in that apartment. You just do not have the words to prove it.

We get forwarded a lot of developer replies at Prime Inspections. The word “cosmetic” appears in almost every single one. It is the most effective word in the handover business, because it sounds technical and it quietly makes you feel like you are being difficult.

Here is what we tell buyers who send us that email. The handover team is usually not lying to you. They are working from a broken classification system, and almost nobody ever corrects them.

This article is the correction. It is the same framework our inspectors carry onto site every week.

Are Cosmetic Snags Still the Developer’s Responsibility in Dubai?

Sometimes, but that is the wrong question. Most disputed snags in Dubai are not cosmetic at all. They are functional: hollow tiles, wrong falls in wet areas, missing pipe insulation, faulty earthing. They look cosmetic and behave like defects. The test is not how it looks. It is whether it affects performance, durability, safety or the specification you bought.

That single shift wins most of these arguments before they start.

Stop debating whether an item is ugly enough to matter. Start asking what it will do to your property over the next five years. You are no longer arguing about taste. You are arguing about performance, and performance can be measured.

The Three-Tier Test That Beats “It Is Just Cosmetic”

The entire Dubai handover market talks about defects as if there are only two kinds. Cosmetic, or structural.

That framing is a trap, and it is not an accident.

If there are only two buckets, and one of them is reserved for buildings that are about to fall down, everything else lands in “cosmetic” by default. Your hollow tiles. Your ponding balcony. Your sweating chilled water pipe. All of it goes into the bin marked “not our problem”.

There are three tiers, not two. The middle tier is where almost every disputed snag in Dubai actually lives.

Tier 1. Cosmetic: appearance only

A cosmetic defect affects how the property looks and nothing else.

Fix it and nothing performs better. Leave it and nothing degrades. No water path, no load path, no failing component, no future bill hiding behind it.

This tier is real. It is also far smaller than a handover team would like you to believe.

Tier 2. Functional: performance, durability, safety or specification

This is the tier nobody names, and it is the one that decides your money.

A functional defect can look like nothing today. It photographs badly. It gets dismissed in a single line. But it fails at one of four things: performance, durability, safety, or the specification you paid for.

Hollow tiles. Failed silicone at a shower tray. A balcony that drains towards your living room instead of away from it. An uninsulated chilled water pipe sitting quietly above your ceiling.

None of those threaten the stability of the building. Every one of them will eventually cost you money.

Tier 3. Structural and safety: load-bearing elements and stability

This is the tier the law reserves ten years for. Columns, slabs, beams, foundations, load paths. Anything that threatens the stability or the safety of the structure itself.

It is rare in a snag list, and it is almost certainly not the argument you are currently having.

Be honest about that. Pretending your grout line is a structural matter is the fastest way to lose credibility in the first ten minutes of a meeting.

The one-sentence test you can apply to any snag

Everything above collapses into one question you can ask standing in an empty apartment, with no engineering background whatsoever.

Does this affect performance, durability, safety, or the specification I bought? If yes, it is not cosmetic, whatever it looks like.

Two follow-up questions make it sharper.

“Will this cost money later, or only look better now?”

A cosmetic fix improves today. A functional fix prevents tomorrow.

If repairing the item now avoids a leak, a replacement, a damaged ceiling or a higher cooling bill later, it is not cosmetic. That is the whole distinction, translated into the only language a developer’s commercial team really understands.

“Does it deviate from the specification in my SPA?”

This is the question buyers forget they are allowed to ask.

Your sale and purchase agreement, the annexed specification and the brochure all describe a product you agreed to buy. If what was delivered does not match what was described, the word “cosmetic” is irrelevant. It is a specification failure, and the burden sits with the developer.

The ten most commonly dismissed snags in Dubai, classified

Snag	What the developer calls it	What it actually is	Why
Hollow-sounding tiles	Cosmetic	Functional	A void beneath the tile means it is unsupported. It will flex, crack or debond. In a wet area it is also a water ingress path.
Silicone failure around a shower tray	Cosmetic	Functional	That bead is the waterproofing line. It is the only thing standing between the shower and the substrate.
Balcony with the wrong fall	Cosmetic	Functional	Water ponds against the threshold instead of draining away. That is a specification failure, not a look.
Missing insulation on a chilled water pipe	Not visible, so never raised	Functional	The pipe sweats continuously and drips into your ceiling. You find it months later, as a stain.
Uneven grout line	Cosmetic	Cosmetic. We agree.	Appearance only. No performance, durability or safety consequence.
Minor paint blemish	Cosmetic	Cosmetic. We agree.	Same. Get it touched up if it bothers you, but it is not a defect argument.
Hairline shrinkage crack in plaster	Cosmetic	Usually cosmetic, with one condition	Normal as a new building dries out. But width, direction and location matter. Diagonal cracking at a corner, cracking that follows a structural line, or cracking that widens over time is a different conversation.
Doors that do not latch	Cosmetic	Functional	An operational failure of a component you bought and paid for.
Sockets with no earth continuity	Would never be caught by eye	Safety	Not arguable. It is tested, not looked at.
AC underperforming by several degrees	“Give it time to settle”	Functional	It is a performance specification, and it is measurable.

“Within Tolerance”: The Phrase That Ends Most Arguments, and How to End It Instead

Somewhere in that reply you will find the phrase “within acceptable tolerance”.

It is the most powerful sentence in the handover business, because it sounds like it was lifted straight out of a book.

Most of the time, it was not.

Whose tolerance? Ask them to name the standard

A tolerance is not a feeling. It is a published number, attached to a named standard, applied to a named element.

British Standards do this. Manufacturer installation instructions do this. Dubai Municipality code clauses do this. Your own SPA specification often does too.

So the question is simple, and it is perfectly polite. Which standard are you applying?

Applied to what element, and where is it written?

The second half of the question matters as much as the first.

A tolerance for a plastered wall is not a tolerance for a tiled floor. A tolerance for external render is not a tolerance for a wet room fall. A number with no element attached to it is decoration.

Ask for three things. The standard. The clause. The element it governs.

Why an unnamed tolerance is an opinion, not a standard

If they can name the standard, you have gained something real. You now know exactly what you are being measured against, and you can go and measure it yourself.

If they cannot name it, you have gained something more useful.

An unnamed tolerance is not a tolerance. It is an opinion wearing a technical costume. We have asked that question on site more than once, and the answer, or more often the silence, tells you how carefully the item was assessed in the first place.

The one sentence to put in your email

Copy this. Change nothing except the item number.

“You have described item 17 as within tolerance. Please confirm which published standard you are applying, which clause of that standard, and which element it governs, so that I can verify the measurement against the same reference.”

Almost nobody has to send that sentence twice. Either the item comes back reclassified, or the word “tolerance” quietly disappears from the next reply.

What Dubai Law Actually Says About Which Defects Must Be Fixed

This is where buyers get talked out of a perfectly good position, because they assume decennial liability is their weapon. Usually, it is not.

The law hands you two separate protections, and they do two very different jobs.

The one-year installations liability: Dubai Law No. 6 of 2019, Article 40(b)

Under Article 40(b) of Dubai Law No. 6 of 2019, the developer remains liable for one year from the date your unit is handed over, for repairing or replacing defective installations in the property.

That covers mechanical and electrical works, sanitary and sewerage installations, and similar systems.

Read it again, because something is missing from it. It says nothing about whether the defect is visible. It says nothing about whether it looks unattractive. It says defective.

Your AC, your wiring, your earthing, your drainage, your pipework. If it is defective, it sits inside that liability. Aesthetics were never part of the test.

Note the trigger date too. If an owner refuses to take possession, the clock starts from the project completion certificate instead. That is one more reason handover pressure exists, and one more reason not to sign under it.

The ten-year structural liability: Article 40(a) and the UAE Civil Code

Article 40(a) of the same law makes the developer liable for ten years from the date of the completion certificate for defects in the structural parts of the property.

Sitting behind that is decennial liability in the UAE Civil Transactions Law.

The old numbering

For four decades this lived in Articles 880 to 883 of Federal Law No. 5 of 1985.

The new numbering

Federal Decree-Law No. 25 of 2025 replaced the 1985 Civil Code in full and came into force on 1 June 2026. Decennial liability now sits at Articles 821 to 824.

The regime survives largely intact. Ten years. Joint and several liability of the contractor and the supervising engineer. A three-year window to bring a claim once the defect is discovered. Any contract clause attempting to exclude it remains void.

One practical note our clients rarely hear anywhere else. The new code is not retrospective, so which numbering applies to you depends on when your contract was concluded. Reference both, and let the lawyers pick.

The honest limit, and why we say it out loud

Here is the part most snagging companies quietly leave out.

UAE courts confine decennial liability to collapse and to defects that genuinely threaten the stability or safety of the building. Cosmetic cracking does not qualify. Neither does an isolated plumbing or electrical fault.

So if a developer tells you your hairline crack is not a ten-year structural matter, they are very probably right.

That does not help them. It simply moves the fight back to the tier where you were always going to win it, which is the one-year installations liability and your own contracted specification.

What your SPA specification adds on top of the law

The law sets a floor. Your contract can sit well above it.

The SPA, the annexed specification and the marketing brochure all describe a product. Tile type. Ironmongery. AC capacity. Finishes. Sanitaryware.

If the delivered unit does not match, you are not asking for a favour. You are asking for what you paid for, and that argument has nothing to do with whether the discrepancy is pretty or ugly.

This is the most underused weapon at a Dubai handover, and it has been sitting in your email folder the whole time.

Where the Developer Is Right, and Why Admitting It Makes You Stronger

We are about to do something no snagging article does. We are going to agree with the handover team.

Some snags genuinely are cosmetic.

• Minor tonal variation in natural stone is a property of the material, not a defect.
• Small paint blemishes tucked behind a door are cosmetic.
• Slight variation in grout width is cosmetic.
• Fine shrinkage cracking in fresh plaster is normal in Dubai’s climate, particularly in the first months while a building dries out.

We say all of that on site, out loud, in front of clients, every week.

Not because it makes us popular. Because of what it does to the other thirty-one items on the list.

A list of fifty items with zero concessions reads like a complaint. A list of fifty items where five are marked “accepted, cosmetic, no action required” reads like an assessment.

The moment a developer’s engineer sees that you have given ground where the evidence said you should, your remaining items stop being demands and start being findings. That is a completely different meeting.

Concede three items. Win thirty.

One condition on the cracking, though, because it matters. Hairline shrinkage cracking is usually fine. Cracking that runs diagonally from a corner, follows a structural line, appears at a slab junction, or widens across successive visits is not shrinkage. That one gets photographed, dated and monitored, not waved through.

How to Formally Dispute a Snag That Has Been Dismissed

Here is the process we walk clients through whenever a snag list comes back gutted.

1. Reply in writing, always. Never accept a reclassification over a phone call or a voice note. If it is not written down, it did not happen.
2. Restate the item with its original reference number. Keep the numbering from your snagging report. It builds a paper trail a third party can follow later.
3. State the classification and the reason. Use the three-tier test. “Item 17 is functional, not cosmetic. A void beneath a floor tile removes its support and creates a water ingress path in a wet area.”
4. Ask the standard question. Which published standard, which clause, which element. Ask it once, in writing, and let it sit there.
5. Attach instrument evidence, not adjectives. A moisture meter reading. A thermal image. A level reading with the fall visible. A sounding survey. Numbers are far harder to dismiss than words.
6. Reference the SPA specification the item fails against. Quote the clause. Attach the page.
7. Propose a joint site walk with both technical parties present. Yours and theirs, on site, at the same time.
8. Keep every item open until it is verified. Not until it is marked closed. Those are two different things, and a re-inspection is what separates them.

The email template

“Thank you for the response dated [date]. I accept your assessment on items [x, y, z] as cosmetic and I am requesting no action on those. I am maintaining items [list] as functional defects on the following basis. Each one affects performance, durability, safety or the contracted specification, and I have set out the mechanism for each below. For any item you continue to classify as within tolerance, please confirm the published standard, the clause, and the element it governs. I would like to propose a joint site inspection on [date] with our respective technical representatives present.”

Short. Unemotional. Very hard to file and forget.

Why a joint site walk usually settles it faster than an escalation

Escalation is slow. A site walk is fast, and the reason is entirely human.

An engineer will defend the word “cosmetic” in an email thread all day long. Standing in the bathroom with a sounding rod in his hand, in front of his own site manager, he will not.

We have watched items get reclassified in under a minute, simply because somebody finally tapped the tile.

What We See When a “Cosmetic” Snag Gets Opened Up

Here is a pattern we run into constantly, and it is the clearest example we have of why classification is everything.

A buyer reports hollow-sounding tiles in the living area. The reply comes back within days: cosmetic, within acceptable variation, no action required.

So we go back and do it properly. Not a tap here and a tap there. A full sounding survey across the floor, in a grid, tile by tile, marked up with tape as we work.

Then you step back and look at the map you have just made.

Sometimes the hollow tiles are scattered. Random ones, here and there, with no relationship between them. That is a workmanship issue on individual tiles. Irritating, cheap to fix, not a crisis.

But sometimes the hollow tiles form a line. Or a zone. A band running across a room, or a patch that traces the outline of something underneath it.

That is not a tile problem at all. That is the substrate. A screed that has debonded, a bay poured badly, or a movement joint that was never carried up through the tile bed.

Same snag on the list. Same photograph. Completely different repair, and a completely different bill.

And here is the point of the whole story. A developer marking items off one by one will never see it. The pattern only appears when you map the entire floor.

The pattern is the diagnosis. That is what you are paying an inspector for.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between a cosmetic and a structural defect?

A cosmetic defect affects appearance only. A structural defect affects load-bearing elements or the stability of the building. Almost nothing on a snag list is either one. Most disputed items are functional: they affect performance, durability, safety or specification without threatening the structure.

What defects is the developer legally required to fix in Dubai?

Under Article 40(b) of Dubai Law No. 6 of 2019, defective mechanical, electrical, sanitary and sewerage installations for one year from handover. Under Article 40(a) and the Civil Code, structural defects for ten years from the completion certificate. On top of both, anything that fails to match the specification in your SPA.

Are hollow tiles a cosmetic defect?

No. A hollow tile is an unsupported tile. It will flex, crack, debond or lift, and in a wet area it becomes a route for water into the substrate. It is a functional defect regardless of how it looks on handover day.

Are hairline cracks normal in a new build in Dubai?

Fine shrinkage cracking in plaster is common while a new building dries out, and it is usually cosmetic. Width, direction and location change the answer. Diagonal cracking at corners, cracking that follows a structural line, or cracking that widens over time should be inspected rather than accepted.

Does the defects liability period cover cosmetic issues?

The one-year statutory liability is about defective installations, not appearance. Finishing and workmanship items are usually covered contractually, through your SPA and the developer’s own defects liability terms. Read that clause. It is often broader than the reply email suggests.

What can I do if the developer refuses to fix a snag?

Respond in writing, restate the item with its reference number, give the classification and the mechanism, attach instrument evidence, and ask which standard the “tolerance” came from. If it stays unresolved, an independent re-inspection report and a joint site walk usually move it. Beyond that, complaints can be raised through the Dubai Land Department and RERA.

What does “within tolerance” actually mean?

It means a measured deviation falls inside a permitted range, published in a named standard, applied to a named element. If nobody can tell you which standard and which clause, then no tolerance has been applied to your property. An opinion has.

Can an independent inspection report override the developer’s classification?

It does not override anything automatically. What it changes is the evidence. A severity-classified, instrument-backed report from a certified inspector is what a court-appointed expert, a legal adviser or a regulator will actually read. Adjectives do not survive that process. Readings do.

Get Your Snags Classified by an Engineer, Not Argued by a Handover Team

Anyone can write a list. That has never been the hard part.

The hard part is classifying a list in a way that survives a challenge, with the mechanism written next to every item and the instrument reading attached to it.

That is what we do at Prime Inspections. Our InterNACHI-certified inspectors carry sounding tools, moisture meters, thermal imaging and levels, and every item in your report comes back with a severity classification and a reason beside it, not an adjective.

We are RERA certified and DLD approved, we cover Dubai and every other emirate, and your report lands within 24 hours of the inspection.

If your snag list has just come back with the word “cosmetic” written across it, book a New Handover Snagging inspection or a re-inspection with severity classification. Bring the developer’s reply with you. We will go through it line by line.

Book an inspection: primeinspections.ae/contact

Call: +971 50 602 1830

Email: connect@primeinspections.ae

Visit: Prime Inspections & Snagging, The Binary by Omniyat, 1914-203, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Disclaimer

We are property inspectors, not lawyers. This article explains how construction defects are classified and how to argue that classification with a developer. It is general information about inspection practice in the UAE, and it is not legal advice.

Legislation and article numbering change over time, and your own position will depend on the terms of your sale and purchase agreement. Read your SPA, and take qualified legal advice on your specific circumstances before relying on any legal position described here.