How to analyse a property before taking it to market

The answer, straight away

Before the price you look at five things: what the property actually is, who could buy it, what it would cost to rebuild, what holds it back, and through which channel its buyer arrives.

The price is the conclusion of that analysis, not the starting point. Anybody who starts with the price is guessing, and usually guesses the number the owner wanted to hear.

One: what it actually is

Not the land registry entry. What makes it what it is: the position, the orientation, the view, the quiet, the access, the privacy from the neighbours, what could not be recreated elsewhere.

And also what it is not: the square metres nobody uses, the room that will never be opened.

Two: who could buy it

Derived from comparable sales of recent years. Who bought similar things, where they came from, why they were buying.

A buyer profile is not invented: it is read off the people who have already bought.

Three: what it would cost to rebuild

Land, permissions, construction cost today in that municipality, fees, time. On a protected property the answer is often that it could not be rebuilt, and that is the strongest lever you have in a negotiation.

Four: what holds it back

Every property has two or three things that stop buyers. An unclosed permission, awkward access, old services, an easement, an energy rating.

You write them down in advance with what each costs to fix and what it costs to leave. Some are solved in three weeks and move the price far more than they cost.

Five: which channel brings its buyer

Portal, network of colleagues, professionals around the buyer, direct approach. Different properties have different channels, and using the wrong one is the most common reason a good house sits still.

What comes out of this

A defensible price, which you can explain with three numbers instead of a feeling.

A strategy: who sees it first, and in what order.

And a list of things to do before starting, which is the part that separates selling in three months from selling in eighteen.

A case

On one property this analysis was done before any contact. With the price set and the profile identified, it was shown only to people who matched, and it sold in about two weeks at the figure set.

That was not luck. It was having decided in advance who to show it to.