I've just been reading on a different site of the difficulties that a home buyer has got into after buying a property without seeing it IRL. They have retired from the UK to France, couldn't get out to view the property due to Covid, and decided to go ahead with the purchase - despite not having viewed it and the agent not sending them a promised video walk-around. They went ahead on photos and the word of the agent / buyer. Predictably, they've now moved in and are coming across a whole range of expensive problems that they are going to have to fix.
I remember when we moved to NZ from the UK there were loads of people on forums buying properties unseen - which seemed like total bargains - and we were a bit tempted to do the same. When we got there, I was so glad we hadn't! Building standards and norms are so different in other countries: we'd made a lot of assumptions based on our experience of houses in the UK that simply didn't apply in NZ.
Have you done this? How did it work out? I guess it's less of a risk doing it within the UK compared to buying in another country where you have no idea of the local housing norms. In France, for example, there are generally no surveys of properties done unless the buyer specifically organises and pays for them. It's very much 'what you see is what you get'.