How we check a property before it reaches this website

Anyone can list a flat on a portal. The reason our list is short is that things are removed from it. Here is precisely what happens between a seller calling us and a property appearing on this website.

We confirm the seller is the seller

It sounds obvious. It is also the single most common problem in distressed property, where a broker two steps removed presents themselves as the owner's representative and turns out to have spoken to a cousin once. We verify identity against the title documents, and where someone is acting on a power of attorney we read the power of attorney rather than take their word for its scope.

We read the chain of title

Thirty years back where the documents exist. We are looking for gaps, for an unregistered transfer somewhere in the middle, for an inheritance that was never formalised, for a name on an old agreement that never appears again. These are the problems that surface two months into a purchase, not two days.

We establish exactly what is owed

If there is a mortgage, we want the lender, the outstanding figure and the foreclosure position in writing. If there are dues to the society, to the municipal corporation or on the electricity connection, we want the numbers. Unpaid dues attach to the flat and become the buyer's problem at registration, which is a poor way to discover them.

We check the building, not just the flat

Society conveyance status. Occupancy certificate for anything built in the last two decades. Whether the building is cessed, whether a redevelopment is proposed, agreed or stalled, and on leasehold land what the lease says and what transferring it involves. A perfect flat in a building with an unresolved redevelopment is not a good purchase, whatever the price.

We price it against reality

We check what has actually registered recently in that building and the ones beside it, rather than what portals are asking. A seller's idea of their flat's value and the registered evidence are frequently different numbers, and a discount from an imaginary price is not a discount at all.

Then we decide

A fair number of properties do not pass, and those are simply not published. We do not list something with a note advising buyers to be careful — if we would not buy it ourselves at that price, it does not go on the site. That is the whole point of a short list.