Understanding Traffic Light Ratings

If you've received a RICS Level 2 Home Survey report, you'll have seen a page of red, amber and green ratings against different parts of the property. It's the fastest way to get a sense of overall condition — but it's also the part most often misread, either dismissed too quickly or reacted to with more alarm than the finding deserves.

What each rating means

Green (Condition Rating 1): No repair is currently needed. The surveyor found nothing requiring attention.

Amber (Condition Rating 2): Defects exist that need repairing or replacing, but the surveyor doesn't consider them either serious or urgent. This is the most common rating on any property that isn't brand new — a house with a full page of green ratings would be unusual.

Red (Condition Rating 3): Defects that are serious and/or need to be repaired, replaced or investigated urgently. This is the rating that should prompt a genuine conversation before proceeding — either with the surveyor directly, or with a specialist for further investigation.

The most common misreading

A report with several amber ratings is not a bad report — it's a normal one. Amber means "will need attention at some point," which describes most maintenance items on most homes: ageing pointing, a window that needs redecorating, guttering nearing the end of its life. Buyers who see a page of amber and assume the property is in poor condition are usually misreading a completely typical result.

Red ratings deserve real attention, but even then, context matters — a red rating for a repairable, well-understood issue (a blocked gutter causing damp, for example) is a very different situation from a red rating flagging suspected structural movement. The rating tells you urgency; the written commentary next to it tells you what it actually means and what to do next.

Why Level 3 surveys don't use this system

A Level 3 Building Survey doesn't use traffic-light ratings at all — it uses a full narrative report instead. That's a deliberate choice, not a missing feature: on older, altered, or complex properties, forcing every finding into three colours would lose the detail that actually matters, like why a crack has appeared or whether a repair from the 1990s was done properly. See our guide on Level 2 vs Level 3 surveys for more on which report type suits which property.

How to actually use the ratings

Don't just scan the colour column. Read the written explanation attached to every amber and red rating — that's where the surveyor explains cause, and where "amber" for one issue might be far more significant in practice than "amber" for another, even though the colour looks the same. If anything is unclear, ask the surveyor directly; a rating on a page is never a substitute for a conversation about what it means for your specific purchase.

Frequently asked questions