See a flat at 3 pm, and again at 9

Every flat has one good hour, and the listing photos were shot in it. The light is soft, the road is quiet, the water is running. That hour is real. The problem is that you will live in all the other hours too, and the viewing is almost always scheduled inside the good one.

So before you sign anything, go back on your own. Not another guided tour with the broker filling every silence. Ten quiet minutes on the street, watching. Twice is enough, if you pick the hours when a building is most likely to misbehave.

The two visits

• Around 3 pm on a weekday. The sun is full on the building, so you feel the real heat of that bright west-facing bedroom. And run a tap: mid-afternoon is when a tanker-fed building is most likely to have run dry. A dry tap at 3 pm tells you more than the amenities list.
• Around 9 pm. Now you learn the noise, the lighting on the street, how full the parking really gets, and what the walk from the main road feels like in the dark.

While you are there, do the unglamorous checks nobody does on the polite tour. Run the shower and flush at the same time to feel the real water pressure. Ride the lift and notice the wait. Open the windows and listen for a minute.

Then ask the people with nothing to sell

The most useful people on that street have no listing to protect: a neighbour on the landing, the watchman, the ironing man on the corner. Two minutes with any of them beats an hour of brochure. That is the whole idea behind the community here: the people who already live there know the answers, and now there is a place to ask them before you visit at all.

A flat shows you its face. The street shows you its habits.