Property Maintenance Checklist for Aberdeen Homeowners and Landlords

Most property problems in Aberdeen do not start big. They start as a slipped slate, a gutter that overflows once too often, or a patch of harling that has gone soft.

By the time a homeowner or landlord notices, the water has usually been finding its way into the wall for a season or two already. We see the end result of that delay several times a month: a repair that would have cost a few hundred pounds two years ago has become a five figure job because nobody was looking.

This guide sets out what actually needs checking on an Aberdeen property, how often, and why the local weather and building stock make some of these checks more urgent here than almost anywhere else in Scotland. It also covers what landlords are legally required to do under Scotland’s Repairing Standard, since the rules here are different from England and Wales and getting them wrong carries real consequences. It is the same checklist we work to ourselves on property maintenance in Aberdeen and across the shire.

Why Aberdeen properties need a different maintenance approach

Aberdeen’s building stock is unusual. A large share of the city and shire is granite, rubble stone, or harled masonry, built at a time when walls were expected to manage moisture by letting it move through and dry out again, not by keeping it out entirely. That is a very different design philosophy from the cavity wall construction most of the rest of the UK is used to, and it means maintenance advice written for a 1990s new build in the Midlands does not always translate here.

Add the coastal climate on top of that. Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire get driving rain off the North Sea, salt laden air along the coast, and a freeze thaw cycle through the winter months that opens up any crack that formed in the wetter months. A render or pointing job that would last two decades inland can fail in half that time on an exposed elevation near Stonehaven or Fraserburgh.

The property maintenance checklist: what to check and how often

We have built this around what we are actually called out for, not a theoretical list. Every item below is something we survey, repair, or get asked about regularly across Aberdeen, Westhill, Peterhead, Stonehaven, and the wider shire.

Roof and roofline: check twice a year, after any named storm

The roof takes the first hit from every storm that comes off the North Sea, so it earns the top spot on this list.

• Slates and tiles. Walk the boundary of the property after high winds and look up. A single slipped or missing slate is a small job. Left through a wet winter, it becomes a soaked sarking board, a damaged ceiling, and a much bigger bill.
• Flashings. Lead flashing around chimneys, dormers, and roof junctions is one of the most common failure points we find. It is often the actual cause of a damp patch that a homeowner assumes is rising damp.
• Chimneys. Loose pointing on a chimney stack is a safety issue as well as a maintenance one. Aberdeen’s exposure means chimney pointing fails faster than on a sheltered inland property.
• Guttering and downpipes. Clear gutters twice a year as standard, and more often if the property sits under trees. A blocked gutter overflows down the wall face, and on a granite or harled property that water has nowhere sensible to go except into the stone or the render.

Walls, render and repointing: check annually, this is the Aberdeen specific item

If you take one thing from this guide, make it this section, because it is the single most common source of expensive damp problems in Aberdeen property maintenance.

Most damp in a period granite or rubble stone property is not rising damp. It is water getting past the wall’s outer skin because the pointing or render has failed, and then finding it cannot dry out because a previous repair used the wrong material.

• Pointing. Traditional granite and rubble walls were built with lime mortar, which is softer than the stone and allows moisture to move through the joints and evaporate. Cement pointing, which is what many properties were repaired with from the 1960s onward, is harder than the granite and does not breathe. When cement traps moisture in the wall, the water eventually forces its way out through the face of the stone itself, causing the granite to spall and erode over time. If you see pointing that looks grey, hard, and cracked rather than slightly powdery and pale, it is very likely cement, and it is worth having checked.
• Harling. Blown or cracked harling lets water directly behind the render, where it sits against the wall rather than running off. A section of harling that sounds hollow when tapped, or that has visible cracking, should be repaired before winter rather than after.
• Modern render on old stone. This is a mistake we see often enough to flag specifically. Sealing an old solid wall with an impermeable modern render can trap in moisture that the wall would otherwise release, causing damp to appear well away from the actual problem area.

For the specifics of this work on a period property, see our guide to granite repair and repointing in Aberdeen.

Doors, windows and joinery: check annually, before winter

• Seals and sticking. A door or window that has started sticking is often telling you the timber has taken on moisture, not just that the frame has warped.
• External timber. Fascias, soffits, and any exposed woodwork should be checked for soft spots, particularly at joints and end grain, where rot typically starts.
• Locks and hinges. A five minute check and a drop of oil once a year prevents call outs later.

Plumbing and heating: check annually, before the first cold snap

• Pipework in unheated spaces. Lofts and outbuildings are where pipes freeze first. Lag anything exposed before the temperature drops.
• Boiler service. An annual service by a Gas Safe registered engineer is a legal requirement for landlords and simple good sense for owner occupiers. It also protects any manufacturer warranty.
• Radiators and central heating. Cold spots on radiators usually mean they need bled or, less often, a power flush.
• Visible leaks. Small drips under a sink or around a toilet base rarely fix themselves and often point to a bigger problem building behind a wall or floor.

Drainage and external ground: check annually

• Gullies and drains. Clear leaves and debris before autumn rain arrives in earnest.
• Ground levels against the wall. Flower beds or paving built up too high against an external wall push moisture straight into the base of the structure. This is a very common, very avoidable cause of damp in older Aberdeen properties.
• Paths and driveways. Cracked or uneven surfaces are a trip hazard as well as a place for water to pool against the building.

Alarms and safety equipment: check monthly, replace on schedule

Scotland introduced a legal requirement, following the Grenfell Tower tragedy, that from February 2022 every home must have interlinked smoke alarms in the living room and every hallway or landing, a heat alarm in the kitchen, and a carbon monoxide detector in any room with a carbon fuelled appliance such as a boiler, gas fire, or flue. Test alarms monthly and replace them on the manufacturer’s stated schedule, which is typically around ten years for smoke and heat alarms.

What landlords in Scotland are legally required to maintain

If you let a property in Scotland, maintenance is not optional good practice. It is a legal obligation under the Repairing Standard, set out in the Housing (Scotland) Act 2006, and it applies from the day the tenancy starts and throughout its length, not just at the point of a check out inspection.

If a landlord does not carry out repairs, a tenant can apply to the First-tier Tribunal for Scotland, Housing and Property Chamber, which has the power to issue a Repairing Standard Enforcement Order. That is not a slow, informal process. It is a legal tribunal with the ability to compel work and, in ongoing cases, apply financial consequences for non-compliance.

For landlords, the practical takeaway is straightforward: planned, documented maintenance is cheaper and safer than reactive maintenance carried out under tribunal pressure. A written schedule, dated photographs of work carried out, and a paper trail of quotes and invoices are what protect a landlord if a dispute ever arises. The full text of the standard is published on mygov.scot.

Costing a maintenance schedule versus paying for emergencies

It is worth being honest about the maths here, because it is the argument that actually changes behaviour. A planned gutter clear costs a fraction of the plaster repair, redecoration, and possible timber replacement that follows a winter of water running down an internal wall unnoticed. A pointing repair caught early, while the mortar is loose but the stone face is intact, is a different job entirely from one where the granite itself has started to spall and needs the face stone addressed as well as the joints.

The pattern we see again and again is not the big, sudden faults. It is the slow ones: pointing, harling, and flashings, that take a year or two to turn into serious damp because nobody was checking. By the time a homeowner notices a damp patch on a bedroom wall, the actual cause has often been active for two or three wet seasons already. Every one of the checks above is designed to catch problems in that window before they compound.

For landlords, there is a second layer to this. A property that fails the Repairing Standard is not just a repair bill. It is a legal exposure, a potential rent disruption if a tenant escalates to the tribunal, and in the worst case a property that cannot legally be let until the work is done. Planned maintenance is cheaper on every axis: money, time, and legal risk.

Void periods and change of tenancy: a checklist within the checklist

Landlords and letting agents managing turnover between tenants face a compressed version of this whole list, usually with a deadline attached. A void period is the one point in a tenancy where a property can be properly inspected room by room without working around a tenant’s schedule, so it is worth using it properly rather than rushing to get the property back on the market.

A sensible void inspection covers the same structural and system checks as the annual list above, plus:

• Making good after the outgoing tenant. Filling holes, checking for damage beyond fair wear and tear, and confirming the property matches its check in inventory and photographs.
• Testing every system with nobody living there. Heating, hot water, and any appliances the landlord supplies should be run and checked while the property is empty, not left to be discovered faulty by the new tenant.
• A fresh EICR and gas safety check if either is due. Landlord safety certificates have fixed renewal windows, and a void period is the easiest time to get an engineer in without disrupting anyone.
• Photographic evidence throughout. This protects the landlord if a deposit dispute arises later and gives the incoming tenant a clear record of the property’s condition at handover.

Because every trade is under one roof in a firm like ours, a void turnaround can often be done in one coordinated visit rather than waiting on separate joiners, electricians, and decorators to each find a free day, which matters when an empty property is costing rent every week it sits unlet.

Building maintenance into a budget rather than treating it as a surprise

One pattern we see with both owner occupiers and landlords is treating maintenance as an unplanned cost that only appears when something breaks. A better approach, and one that costs less over the life of a property, is to set aside a fixed amount each year specifically for upkeep, based on the age and construction of the building rather than a generic rule of thumb.

An older granite or rubble stone property in an exposed coastal location will need more of this budget directed at the building envelope: pointing, harling, flashings, and guttering. A newer cavity wall property will need proportionally more spent on services: boilers, wiring, and appliances, since the structure itself is less exposed to the weather in the same way. Knowing which category your property falls into changes where the budget should actually go, rather than spreading it evenly across jobs that do not carry equal risk.

A seasonal maintenance schedule for Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire

Because so much of this depends on the weather Aberdeen actually gets, rather than a generic UK calendar, here is how we would sequence it across the year.

Why in house, one visit maintenance works better on older properties

A lot of maintenance problems on Aberdeen’s older housing stock are not single trade issues. A leak that starts as a roofing problem can show up as a plastering problem two rooms away, and a gutter fault can end up looking like a joinery problem at a window sill. Bringing in a joiner, then a roofer, then a plasterer separately, on separate visits, on separate invoices, is slower and usually more expensive than having one firm diagnose the actual cause and fix it in a coordinated visit.

We work directly with homeowners and with landlords and letting agents managing void periods between tenancies, and the same principle applies to both: fix the cause, not just the symptom, and document it properly with photographs and a written scope so there is a clear record of what was found and what was done.

What to check before hiring a property maintenance contractor in Aberdeen

Not every maintenance job needs a large firm, but any job involving gas, electrics, or the structure of the building does need someone properly accredited, and it is worth knowing what to actually check rather than taking a business card at face value.

None of this takes more than a phone call to establish, and it is the difference between a maintenance job done properly once and one that needs revisiting within the year. If you are weighing up who to trust with the work more generally, our guide on how to choose a builder in Aberdeen goes further.

About the author

Przemek Dunajski is the Founder of Granite Builders, a family run firm of building contractors working across Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire for over 20 years. The team covers Aberdeen city, Westhill, Cults, Bieldside, Milltimber, Dyce, Bucksburn, Bridge of Don, Portlethen, Stonehaven, Banchory, Inverurie, Ellon, Peterhead and Fraserburgh. Our gas engineers are Gas Safe registered and our electricians are NICEIC approved. Granite Builders is a Federation of Master Builders member and TrustMark registered.

Granite Builders Cirrus Building, ABZ Business Park, 6 International Ave, Aberdeen AB21 0BH. Phone: 07946 046935. Web: granitebuilders.co.uk