What should a property deal pack contain?

Start with the basics done properly: the full address, a link to the live listing, the photographs, the property type and bedroom count, the floor area with its source stated (the EPC record is the usual one), and the tenure, including the lease length, ground rent and service charge where the property is leasehold, because those move value and mortgageability. Some sourcers withhold the address until a buyer commits or a fee agreement is signed, which is a legitimate commercial practice, but the pack the buyer ultimately relies on must identify the property precisely: nobody can verify comparables, planning or licensing against a mystery address.

Include the facts that gate the strategy, not just the ones that sell it. For an HMO deal that means the planning position, including whether the address sits in an Article 4 area, and the licensing requirements. For a flat it means the lease detail. For anything structural it means access, and any known issues visible from the listing or a viewing. A pack that is silent on the gating facts is not shorter, it is unfinished.

State the asking or agreed price, then evidence the value rather than asserting it. That means listing the sold comparables individually: address, sold price, sale date, distance, bedrooms, type, and the condition each sold in, ideally with a link to the original listing so the reader can check the photographs. A claimed market value with no visible comparables is an opinion, and a below-market-value claim built on an opinion is a discount from an imaginary number.

The comparables should be genuine ones: recent registered sold prices, matched on type and size, condition-sorted, drawn from the same micro-market. If the pack claims the property is being bought below market value, the evidence has to show what the market value is and where the figure comes from; if the discount only appears when the property is compared against renovated stock, that is a confusion of GDV with current value, and experienced buyers will spot it immediately.

The refurbishment section should show its scope room by room or element by element: what is being done, to what specification, at what estimated cost, with a contingency stated separately and the VAT position clear. A single unexplained figure for "refurb" is the weakest number in most packs, and the one most likely to sink the deal when reality arrives. Stating the assumed specification matters as much as the cost, because the GDV depends on delivering it.

The GDV then needs its own evidence, and it is different evidence from the current-value comparables: sold prices of similar properties in finished, done-up condition, the stock your property will compete with after the works. Show which comparables support the figure, what adjustments were made, and why the chosen number is defensible rather than the top of the range. A pack that presents one comparables list and uses it for both the current value and the GDV is mixing two different questions, and one of the two answers is wrong.

If the strategy involves letting, the rent needs the same treatment as the value: matched lettings comparables near the property, same bedroom count and type, with let-agreed evidence preferred to asking rents, and the figure taken from the middle of the range rather than the top. For HMO deals, room-level evidence and the achievable standard matter, alongside the planning and licensing position that determines whether the room income is lawful at all.

Then the strategy figures, with the workings shown. For a flip: profit after purchase costs, refurbishment, finance, selling costs and the margin that remains as a percentage of GDV. For a rental: yield, monthly cash flow after the mortgage and running costs including voids and maintenance. For a refinance-led deal: the assumed end value and loan-to-value, the cash returned, the cash left in and what remains as monthly income. Every one of these should be reproducible by a reader with a calculator using only the numbers in the pack; if it is not, the pack is asking to be trusted rather than checked.

Finance assumptions belong in the open, because they move every downstream figure: the product assumed, the rate, the loan-to-value, the term, arrangement and broker fees, and for bridged deals the assumed months of holding and the exit. A pack whose numbers only work at an optimistic rate or an unrealistic loan-to-value should say so in its own tables, and a good pack makes that visible rather than burying it.

The risk section is where trust is won or lost. Every deal has risks: the survey may find more than the photographs showed, the refurbishment may overrun, the end valuation may come in under the GDV, rates may move before the refinance, planning may be refused, the rent may land at the bottom of the range. A pack should name the risks that apply and show the sensitivity: what the deal looks like if the GDV or the rent comes in lower, or the works cost more. Naming risks does not weaken a good deal; a deal that survives its own risk section is exactly what an experienced investor is looking for.

Investors who see many packs converge on the same tells. Trustworthy packs are evidenced, consistent and falsifiable: the reader can check every claim, the numbers agree with each other wherever they appear, and the assumptions are laid out so the reader can disagree with one and re-run the deal. Untrustworthy packs assert instead of evidencing, quote round numbers with no source, show a comparables list that does not survive five minutes on the portals, and treat risk as a section to be omitted.

The author matters too. A pack from a sourcer should identify who compiled it, and a professional sourcer operating in the UK should be registered for anti-money-laundering supervision, a member of a redress scheme and properly insured, which a serious pack is not shy about saying. Consistency across deals is the final tell: a sourcer whose packs apply the same method and the same honesty to every deal, including the ones that do not stack, is showing you their process rather than their sales patter.