Drone services in Salcombe

Salcombe is unusual on this list because so much of its higher value stock is contemporary rather than historic: architect-designed houses with flat roofs, standing-seam zinc, large glazed elements and roof terraces, stacked up a hillside above the estuary.

Those are excellent buildings and they carry detailing risk that a slate roof simply does not have. A terrace over a habitable room, a large rooflight, a zinc upstand and a glazed junction are all places where wind-driven rain arriving horizontally will find any weakness.

Wind-driven rain is exactly what this position delivers. Very exposed to the south and to salt, with the water immediately below and Bolt Head to the west, this is as hard an environment as the county offers.

Zinc and metal roofing also fail in ways that are invisible from below. A lifted seam, a fixing working loose, a debris trap at a change of pitch: nothing about any of that shows from the garden.

The town is built on ground steep enough that houses sit above one another with retained gardens and shared access paths, and getting equipment to a roof can mean crossing several properties.

The seasonal population makes it worse. In summer the streets are full and parking is impossible, so anything requiring vehicles or plant is easier to arrange outside the season, which is also when nobody wants disruption.

That leaves photographic survey work as the practical option for most condition questions, and it is why owners here tend to be already familiar with the idea.

Booking around the tide and the season is normal practice rather than an inconvenience, and owners who live elsewhere generally prefer a survey arranged for a quiet week when they are not trying to let the place anyway.

Near the harbour the dense older core and the Victorian and Edwardian villas on the slopes carry slate, slate hanging and conventional pitched roofs, with the usual coastal problems accelerated by the exposure.

The harbour itself is busy through the season with moorings, tenders and sailing traffic, so flights on that side are planned around water activity as much as around wind.

Slate hanging appears here too on the older elevations, and it is doing the same job it does everywhere on this coast: keeping driving rain out of a wall that would otherwise take it directly.

A large share of the stock is second homes and holiday lets, watched by nobody for long stretches, which is the pattern that lets small problems grow.

A pre-season and post-season check is the sensible routine for that kind of ownership, and it is far cheaper than the alternative.

The letting market also drives a steady demand for photographs. A property here sells its position, the water and the view, and none of that shows from the front door.

A pre-let condition record is the other regular request, because an owner letting a property they rarely visit wants to know what state the outside is in before a season of guests rather than after it.