How to write a property search in six headings

The answer, straight away

A requirement produces results when it lets a professional who has never met you recognise the right property when they come across it. Six headings, and they have to be written down, because a search that lives only in the buyer's head cannot be passed to anybody.

One: the real budget

Including what you would stretch to for the right thing.

That second number is the one that matters: most people buy above their stated budget when they find the property they wanted.

Two: the area, at neighbourhood or hamlet level

A region is not an area.

If you cannot narrow it, list three places where you would buy and three where you would not. It works better than a circle on a map.

Three: the two or three things you would not buy without

Two or three, not ten. If there are ten you are not searching: you are describing a house that does not exist.

Four: what looks like a requirement and is a preference

The most useful heading, and everybody skips it.

The number of bedrooms is almost always a preference. Orientation is almost always a requirement.

Five: the timing

By when you want to have bought, and what happens if you do not.

A buyer with no deadline goes to the bottom of everybody's list, rightly.

Six: the reason

Why you are buying. It is the heading that lets a good agent suggest the property you had not thought of, and without it you will only receive things that resemble what you asked for.

Why searches that are too narrow fail

A requirement with twelve conditions does not return nothing because the market is poor. It returns nothing because each condition cuts a slice of the market, and twelve cuts leave an empty set.

The correction is not to lower your standards. It is to separate requirements from preferences, which almost nobody has ever done in writing.

Why searches that are too broad also fail

A vague requirement reaches a hundred people and activates none, because nobody knows what to send you.

The paradox is that a precise search receives more suggestions than a vague one, not fewer.

When the client keeps changing their mind

It happens and it is normal: people work out what they want by looking.

You keep the document alive and update it after each viewing with one line on what changed. A search not updated after three viewings now describes a different person.